Discussion of Anarchism [Archive] - Civilization Fanatics' Forums

Traitorfish

Mar 17, 2012, 06:09 PM

Well that's really not my problem. But if a person has a completely unrealistic worldview and is trying to have a policy that would force others to live under it, then we have a responsibility to point out what we think the outcome is really going to be.

Greenspan didn't see the melting down of the global economy as the likely outcome of his program. But he wasn't right. And people thought he was one of the smartest guys around. Same with the Wall St leaders. And the political leaders that backed them.
Ok. What does that have to do with the right to secession? Which was I thought what we were talking about.

Certainly not. And people should consider the motivations of the people who want the same things that they do when deciding if they really want those things.

Because the people who want the most personal liberty and freedom from others want to get it in the same way as those people who want to do the most harm to others and prevent the most personal freedom. Clearly one group or the other is dead wrong.
Do they? I can't say that Amadeus and the Koch Brothers strike me as seeing exactly eye to eye, even if they might share a policy proposal or two.

Well, it is something that people inherit, rather than choose themselves.
Can that be considered a free contract, then? Isn't there a reason that we cancel debts on the death of the debtor, rather than obliging his descendent to participate in a bargain for which they never volunteered?

But what of those people who find themselves essentially without a government? What do the most of them promptly do? They form a government. That tends to happen more than trying to live without one.
What do you mean by "government"? On the face of it, that can refer to anything from a village council to the British Raj, so all you're really saying there is that people tend to pursue some form of collective self-organisation. There's no obvious progression from that to the state as such.

The other factor to keep in mind is that a great many people are always asking the government to do things. If they didn't want a government, then why resort to it for so many issues?
Because if they try to do deal with it themselves, the government will send men with big sticks to hit them until they stop? Is kind of the obvious answer.

The alternative is to resort to violence right away in just about all conflicts.
How so? It seems to me that there is a lot of room between working through the system until the very end, and grabbing yer boomstick at the first sign of trouble. Liberals are generally quite enamoured with Ghandi for his non-violence, but he didn't sit in the first camp any more than the second.

Cutlass

Mar 17, 2012, 08:59 PM

Ok. What does that have to do with the right to secession? Which was I thought what we were talking about.

Secession in and of itself cannot be separated from the justification for it. There may be valid secessions, but in doing so both the reasoning and the methods have to be acceptable.

Do they? I can't say that Amadeus and the Koch Brothers strike me as seeing exactly eye to eye, even if they might share a policy proposal or two.

:confused:

Can that be considered a free contract, then? Isn't there a reason that we cancel debts on the death of the debtor, rather than obliging his descendent to participate in a bargain for which they never volunteered?

Jefferson suggested rewriting the Constitution every generation or so because he didn't foresee evolution of law under the Constitution as it existed at his time. But the law does evolve with the generations. So each generation is making the government to suit itself. Up to a point, and with conflict in the political process.

What do you mean by "government"? On the face of it, that can refer to anything from a village council to the British Raj, so all you're really saying there is that people tend to pursue some form of collective self-organisation. There's no obvious progression from that to the state as such.

This is the same old semantics that we cannot find common ground on :dunno: What else can I say?

Because if they try to do deal with it themselves, the government will send men with big sticks to hit them until they stop? Is kind of the obvious answer.

Not at all. Most conflicts are conflicts of non governmental people and non governmental organizations. The government sets the rules by which these conflicts are resolved. If the government did not do so, then the private sector would be sending men with big sticks to hit the others until the situation was resolved.

There is less actual violence with government than without it.

How so? It seems to me that there is a lot of room between working through the system until the very end, and grabbing yer boomstick at the first sign of trouble. Liberals are generally quite enamoured with Ghandi for his non-violence, but he didn't sit in the first camp any more than the second.

There may be some successful non violent ways of dispute. But it's rare enough so that it shouldn't be counted on.

ori

Mar 18, 2012, 03:37 AM

MODERATION REQUEST: please break off the posts starting from here (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=11337142&postcount=214) to here (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=11339826&postcount=234). It's valuable discussion, but not meant for this thread. Thanks.

Done, I hope I got the right ones :mischief:

Abegweit

Mar 18, 2012, 10:04 AM

Not in the sense of Proudhon, Bakunin, or Kropotkin. The traditonal anarchists consider themselves anti-capitalist, which I of course am not. I'm starting to think Rothbard shouldn't have used the "anarcho" prefix when talking about stateless, free-market capitalism.I think it's exactly the opposite. The error is the attempt to change the meaning of the word capitalism - which always meant the system of power and property enforced by state power that we currently have. The term was largely invented by the socialists and should have been left alone.

Capitalism invokes images of scumbags like Geithner and Soros who rig a system so that only insiders can profit and make billions off it. Almost as bad, it conflates them with people like Mitt Romney and Warren Buffet who made their money through genuine creation of value.

This is why I prefer to call myself a free market anarchist. What word would you choose instead of anarchist anyway?

Leoreth

Mar 18, 2012, 10:16 AM

Almost as bad, it conflates them with people like Mitt Romney and Warren Buffet who made their money through genuine creation of value.
This is ... debatable.

Abegweit

Mar 18, 2012, 10:20 AM

This is ... debatable.Tell me why you didn't bold Warren Buffet? They made their money the same way - turning around failing companies. Could it be because Buffet is a liberal?

Cutlass

Mar 18, 2012, 10:26 AM

Tell me why you didn't bold Warren Buffet? They made their money the same way - turning around failing companies. Could it be because Buffet is a liberal?

Actually they didn't make their money the same way. Not even actually all that similar. Buffet improved companies, many decent already, some with problems that could be overcome with a different approach. But he bought companies for long term investments and so worked to maximize their long term soundness.

Romney on the other hand bought companies, stripped out the good and saddled them with huge debts that resulted in the loss of many good jobs. He also helped fund companies that created crappy jobs. What he did not do was save and improve existing businesses.

Leoreth

Mar 18, 2012, 10:29 AM

I didn't bold Buffett because honestly, I don't know enough about his history to want to be entangled in a discussion about it.

Lone Wolf

Mar 18, 2012, 10:32 AM

No worries, if Romney wins the elections, he'll become the head of the evil government, and it will be okay to bash him. But until he becomes a President, he is deserving of praise, since business, is, by definition, good. Makes you wonder why successful businessmen, who are all such decent and great people, run for government offices and sponsor various election campaigns.

I don't really care about Buffet, or Romney, for that matter, one way or other. It's kinda weird to see them contrasted so much. Both are same socio-economic type, neither had been particularly unique.

And remember: if a state secedes from a state, you get two states :(

Abegweit

Mar 18, 2012, 10:42 AM

Oh, they're both evil because of their politics. No question about that. But I find little to choose between the one who wants to be Head Thief and the one that simply supports the current Thief.

Both are evil.

Abegweit

Mar 18, 2012, 10:50 AM

Actually they didn't make their money the same way. Not even actually all that similar. Buffet improved companies, many decent already, some with problems that could be overcome with a different approach. But he bought companies for long term investments and so worked to maximize their long term soundness.

Romney on the other hand bought companies, stripped out the good and saddled them with huge debts that resulted in the loss of many good jobs. He also helped fund companies that created crappy jobs. What he did not do was save and improve existing businesses.This is just nonsense. You cannot make money the way you describe. It's can't be done. Why would anyone sell a company if it was "strippable" in the way you paint it? There is no such thing as stripping anyway. It's a word made up by the anti-market left to describe the process of improving efficiency in a company, which is exactly what both Buffet and Romney did.

Buffet doesn't get targeted because of his politics. There is no other difference between them. BTW, I watched that horrible anti-market video put out by the Grinch campaign. It was mostly a bunch of union thugs complaining about the end of their gravy train. Despicable.

Integral

Mar 18, 2012, 11:38 AM

Question: my understanding of capitalism is that it rests, in part, on enforceable contracts. Who enforces the contracts in an anarchist, capitalist society?

Abegweit

Mar 18, 2012, 12:41 PM

The free market is quite capable up coming up with mechanisms to enforce contracts and has done repeatedly throughout history. It still does today.

For example, in Medieval Europe the state was unable to enforce contracts between merchants because there were many small Kingdoms and the merchants moved between them. Enforcing contracts wasn't really considered to be a function of government anyway.

So the merchants developed their own court and their own body of law, called the Law Merchant, for use across the continent. There was no mechanism of enforcement but in practice everyone obeyed a judicial ruling. No one would deal with someone who refused to obey. Ostracism is a very powerful mechanism for enforcement of the law - and especially of contracts.

This mechanism is still used in the diamond-cutting industry today and would likely be used everywhere if the state hadn't arrogated the law to itself. It did the same thing to the Common Law earlier.

Traitorfish

Mar 18, 2012, 01:44 PM

Secession in and of itself cannot be separated from the justification for it. There may be valid secessions, but in doing so both the reasoning and the methods have to be acceptable.
What bearing do you think this claim has on the what I've taken to calling the "Rainsborough principle", that "every Man that is to live under a Government ought first by his own Consent to put himself under that Government"?

:confused:
Amadeus would come under the heading of "people who want the most personal liberty and freedom from others", while the Koch Brothers would come under the heading of "people who want to do the most harm to others and prevent the most personal freedom". You say that they "want to get it in the same way", but I don't think that's entirely accurate: Amadeus, at least, take his criticism of the state interventionism to its logical conclusion by opposing the state as such, while the Kochs and their sort are invariably as enthusiastic proponents of the state as the most ardent Stalinist when it comes to their property. That is no small distinction.

Jefferson suggested rewriting the Constitution every generation or so because he didn't foresee evolution of law under the Constitution as it existed at his time. But the law does evolve with the generations. So each generation is making the government to suit itself. Up to a point, and with conflict in the political process.
A fair point, but the fact that the individual can to a limited extent renegotiate his relationship to the state doesn't mean that it's a fully voluntary relationship. Just because some vague, amorphous "People" or "Nation" can modify constitutional law does not in itself imply that the individual as an individual is free from coercion.

This is the same old semantics that we cannot find common ground on :dunno: What else can I say?
This is a matter of theory, not semantics. You say that people naturally pursue some form of government, and I agree insofar as they pursue some sort of social organisation, but you take to imply in itself a natural tendency towards the formation of States- which for purposes of convenience we can define in Weberian terms, as an entity claiming a monopoly on the legitimate use of force within a given territory- which is far more tenuous a claim. There are plenty of documented instances of people actively rejecting the state, and you could go so far as to say that the entire history of communal-peasant societies consists of trying to keep it at arms length. It's only in certain historical contexts that people find themselves depending on the state, that is, in contexts in which states already exist and in which peoples social being- that is, the means by which they collectively reproduce their society- is irrevocably bound up with them. And, without treading to heavily on all the standard examples (Pennsylvania, 1776; Paris, 1871; Barcelona, 1936, etc.), it's not at all self-evident that the man in the street will march steadily towards the centralised republic rather than simply altering his social being in such a manner as to render the state non-essential.

Not at all. Most conflicts are conflicts of non governmental people and non governmental organizations. The government sets the rules by which these conflicts are resolved. If the government did not do so, then the private sector would be sending men with big sticks to hit the others until the situation was resolved.

There is less actual violence with government than without it.
Well, you're arguing from a comparison between our world and a hypothetical stateless world, but what's the nature of that world? If it's simply one in which every member of the state apparatus spontaenously quite their jobs and went to live as crab fishermen on Fiji, then, yes, you'd probably be right: violence would sky-rocket. But what does that tell us? That the state is necessary right now? Of course it is- things have been deliberately constructed to make that the case! But that doesn't tell us anything what is possible in the future. By way of analogy, it would be equally accurate to say that the feudal baron was necessary a thousand years ago, and yet nobody today would defend the feudal system, nor were people back then wholly unwilling to challenge the status of the baron, contrived necessity and all.

There may be some successful non violent ways of dispute. But it's rare enough so that it shouldn't be counted on.
My point was that Gandhi didn't pursue his goals through the framework offered to him by the British Empire, but instead challenged the framework itself. Would you say that he was wrong to do so, even though his means were non-violent?

Lone Wolf

Mar 18, 2012, 03:44 PM

and you could go so far as to say that the entire history of communal-peasant societies consists of trying to keep it at arms length.
Communal-peasant societies? Sounds like they need some good injection of free market.
Meaning, it's a good example of anti-statism, but not that good example of anarcho-capitalism.

My primary beef with anarcho-capitalism is it proposing a strong distinction between "business" and "government" that, I feel, doesn't exist to the degree they postulate it. Historically, there are many cases of them not only conflicting, but also intertwining and cooperating. When, during the Indian Famines, the British Government refused to provide food to the Indians, because it would disrupt the market prices on wheat, was the "government" or "the market" responsible? When a weapons manufacturer lobbies for a war, can "business" said to be responsible for the war, or are the warring governments solely responsible ones here?

Abegweit

Mar 18, 2012, 04:17 PM

My primary beef with anarcho-capitalism is it proposing a strong distinction between "business" and "government" that, I feel, doesn't exist to the degree they postulate it. Historically, there are many cases of them not only conflicting, but also intertwining and cooperating. When, during the Indian Famines, the British Government refused to provide food to the Indians, because it would disrupt the market prices on wheat, was the "government" or "the market" responsible? When a weapons manufacturer lobbies for a war, can "business" said to be responsible for the war, or are the warring governments solely responsible ones here?Anarcho-capitalists agree completely with you on this proposition. Business, in particular big business, repeatedly conspires with the state against the rest of us. In fact, it's the norm, not the exception. I don't know where you got this idea that they disagree.

The anarcho-capitalist position is that government is the enabler. Without the coercive power of the state, businesses could never do any of these things. Among others things, it is fundamentally wrong to say that merchants of war have anything to do with the free market. Their very existence is dependant on state power.

Similarly, the market had nothing to do with the refusal to supply food to Indians. Business and government may well have colluded to do this (I don't know the story but it's certainly plausible). If they did, then it was by violent interference with the operations of the free market. Some of the beneficiaries of such interference are often private individuals, true. But the method used is invariably state violence and state coercion.

Without state coercion, people would have been able to get their food. BTW, famines are every and always caused by state action, whether it be theft or war. One of the few benefits of modern democracy is that it seems to have abolished famines. People just don't accept this kind of violence in democracies so it doesn't happen.

Lone Wolf

Mar 18, 2012, 04:24 PM

The anarcho-capitalist position is that government is the enabler. Without the coercive power of the state, businesses could never do any of these things.
True. But, since state mechanisms can support big business as well as go against it, doesn't it make sense for businessmen to attempt to create a state-like organization when there's no state present? At worst, creating a state would be a complicated decision for big business, with its own drawbacks and benefits.

Abegweit

Mar 18, 2012, 04:40 PM

True. But, since state mechanisms can support big business as well as go against it, doesn't it make sense for businessmen to attempt to create a state-like organization when there's no state present?It makes sense for any exploiter to create a state-like mechanism. There's nothing special about big business. The purpose of the state is to provide a legal means for the powerful to steal from the powerless. The prime effect of democracy has been to muddy the line between the powerful and powerless.

There are plenty of powerful groups beside business. Politicians, bureaucrats, police and lawyers, just for starters. Cartels are everywhere, preventing people from working freely. Virtually every profession runs its own cartel, preventing ordinary people from joining their ranks and driving up the prices of the products they need.

As Martha Stewart and Conrad Black demonstrate, being rich does not necessarily make you powerful and the state goons will come after you if they choose. Of course they, especially Stewart, worked largely in the free market. The state takes care of its own. The thieves in cahoots with it, like the banksters, are protected. In fact, when they screw up, they are bailed out with other people's money.

The purpose of the state is to provide a legal means for the powerful to steal from the powerless. As I said, it is not always clear who the powerful are but the poor are not among them. State action to help the poor is an oxymoron.

Traitorfish

Mar 18, 2012, 04:47 PM

Lone Wolf

Mar 18, 2012, 04:47 PM

It makes sense for any exploiter to create a state-like mechanism.
And how do you propose preventing it in an anarchist society? I assume that any attempt to organize a state will be met with the resistance by the majority?

Dachs

Mar 18, 2012, 04:56 PM

(The problem with Abegweit's position, of course, is that however sainted by the free market they may be, business-owners outside of the state-complex are just as fond of the state's ability to crack the skulls of misbehaving proles as the most corrupt corporate stooges. Probably why they tend to constitute the leadership and social base of fascist movements.)
That's an awfully casual use of the term "fascist", especially for you.

Abegweit

Mar 18, 2012, 05:00 PM

That's an awfully casual use of the term "fascist", especially for you.It's a completely accurate use of the term. Of course, he did not in any way refute my position.

Without the state, business cannot use it for its purposes. This is not complicated.

Cutlass

Mar 18, 2012, 05:01 PM

What bearing do you think this claim has on the what I've taken to calling the "Rainsborough principle", that "every Man that is to live under a Government ought first by his own Consent to put himself under that Government"?

Fine in theory. But can't be done in practice. And so is no more than a theoretical exercise.

In economics there is a lot of literature on the Free Rider Problem. Essentially a lot of people can claim that they don't consent to certain things the government does, and so then they can claim that they don't have to pay for it. But the problem with Public Goods is that you cannot separate who gets a benefit from them from just those who agree to pay for them. So your 2 choices are that everyone pays, and everyone benefits, or no one pays, and no one benefits. To try to have only some pay and only that some benefit just can't be done. But many people try. Those are the free riders.

The system fails if everyone does not pay for the public goods. Everyone is worse off in the long run.

Should most of the population simply resign itself to being poorer now and in perpetuity simply because a minority wants to opt out? How dare they do that to us?

Here's your irony: The alternative to the "tyranny of the majority" is a tyranny of a minority.

Amadeus would come under the heading of "people who want the most personal liberty and freedom from others", while the Koch Brothers would come under the heading of "people who want to do the most harm to others and prevent the most personal freedom". You say that they "want to get it in the same way", but I don't think that's entirely accurate: Amadeus, at least, take his criticism of the state interventionism to its logical conclusion by opposing the state as such, while the Kochs and their sort are invariably as enthusiastic proponents of the state as the most ardent Stalinist when it comes to their property. That is no small distinction.

OK, I see your point. But the flaw in the reasoning is that amadeus' view (as you describe it, he can chime in if he feels you haven't accurately described his position) is not an objective view of the world.

There is a set of theories called "Public Choice". Essentially it says that everything government does is to serve special interests against the public, so the government should do nothing and the public will be better off. But is that true? There's no question that many special interests work to try and make it true. And that at different times and places it has more or less success. The irony with this, of course, is that the politicians who say that the government should do the least are the most likely to be the same politicians that do the most to make the government serve special interests at the expense of the public interests. So Public Choice becomes a self fulfilling prophecy because it becomes a tool used to give special interests what it wants.

Because, you know, the biggest thing that special interests want is to have a government that does nothing. This is why conservatives and libertarians are constantly talking about deregulation: To remove any constraints on the actions of special interests.

And that is because when all is said and done most of what the government does, at least in the developed nations, is not at the expense of the public, but rather at the expense of those who want to enrich themselves at the expense of the public.

So to the extent that ama would want the same policies as the Koch brothers for a different intended outcome, he's wrong. He will get not the outcome he wants, but the one the Koch brothers want. The fact that he doesn't know going in that he is working for his worst enemies only shows that his enemies have a more rational grasp of the world than he does.

A fair point, but the fact that the individual can to a limited extent renegotiate his relationship to the state doesn't mean that it's a fully voluntary relationship. Just because some vague, amorphous "People" or "Nation" can modify constitutional law does not in itself imply that the individual as an individual is free from

Nor would they be in any alternative situation. This hypothetical world in which no one is "coerced" is something where I can't even imagine the theoretical situation, it is so utterly and completely impossible.

So you are essentially saying "In a world that cannot exist, X would happen. And because X is such a wonderful thing, we should live in a world that cannot exist". To which my reply is :huh:

This is a matter of theory, not semantics. You say that people naturally pursue some form of government, and I agree insofar as they pursue some sort of social organisation, but you take to imply in itself a natural tendency towards the formation of States- which for purposes of convenience we can define in Weberian terms, as an entity claiming a monopoly on the legitimate use of force within a given territory- which is far more tenuous a claim. There are plenty of documented instances of people actively rejecting the state, and you could go so far as to say that the entire history of communal-peasant societies consists of trying to keep it at arms length. It's only in certain historical contexts that people find themselves depending on the state, that is, in contexts in which states already exist and in which peoples social being- that is, the means by which they collectively reproduce their society- is irrevocably bound up with them. And, without treading to heavily on all the standard examples (Pennsylvania, 1776; Paris, 1871; Barcelona, 1936, etc.), it's not at all self-evident that the man in the street will march steadily towards the centralised republic rather than simply altering his social being in such a manner as to render the state non-essential.

They will as soon as someone decides to march an army through their communal peasant society. Essentially you can hope to get away with that only to the extent that no one tries to take it away from you. And even if there are historical examples of that happening, why should I believe that they might be possible now?

Well, you're arguing from a comparison between our world and a hypothetical stateless world, but what's the nature of that world? If it's simply one in which every member of the state apparatus spontaenously quite their jobs and went to live as crab fishermen on Fiji, then, yes, you'd probably be right: violence would sky-rocket. But what does that tell us? That the state is necessary right now? Of course it is- things have been deliberately constructed to make that the case! But that doesn't tell us anything what is possible in the future. By way of analogy, it would be equally accurate to say that the feudal baron was necessary a thousand years ago, and yet nobody today would defend the feudal system, nor were people back then wholly unwilling to challenge the status of the baron, contrived necessity and all.

Fair enough. But I don't believe in that world. And I cannot see any sense in which it may come about in the foreseeable future. And I certainly wouldn't want to try to live in it in the absence of seeing a successful trial run for a few decades first.

Theory tells me that it cannot be done. So does the real world.

My point was that Gandhi didn't pursue his goals through the framework offered to him by the British Empire, but instead challenged the framework itself. Would you say that he was wrong to do so, even though his means were non-violent?

For that matter the American Revolution did that as well. Just in a more traditional manner than Gandhi. We petitioned the parliament, we petitioned the governors, we petitioned the king, we petitioned the courts. These were the avenues open to us. Were they really the correct one? They didn't work in any case. And so we started civil disobedience. The British decided to make a war of it. Not us.

Abegweit

Mar 18, 2012, 05:04 PM

And how do you propose preventing it in an anarchist society? I assume that any attempt to organize a state will be met with the resistance by the majority?There's a lot of literature on this subject. The short answer is that the state subsidies violence. Without this artificial lowering of the costs of imposing your will on other people, it is extremely difficult to pull off.

Dachs

Mar 18, 2012, 06:07 PM

It's a completely accurate use of the term.
No, it's not, because "fascist" does not refer to "generic far-right".

Abegweit

Mar 18, 2012, 06:22 PM

No, it's not, because "fascist" does not refer to "generic far-right".True but we weren't saying that. Fascism is not a movement of the right at all; it belongs to the centre left. It is pretty accurate to say that the US is fascist. Corporatism? check. Nationalism? check. Warmongering and beating up on the rest of the world? check. The Nazis would have been right at home with the concept of "American exceptionalism".

Most other countries stop at corporatism.

Dachs

Mar 18, 2012, 06:48 PM

True but we weren't saying that. Fascism is not a movement of the right at all; it belongs to the centre left. It is pretty accurate to say that the US is fascist. Corporatism? check. Nationalism? check. Warmongering and beating up on the rest of the world? check. The Nazis would have been right at home with the concept of "American exceptionalism".

Most other countries stop at corporatism.
The National Socialists of Germany were not particularly fascist, either. And, ideologically, they did not approve of American exceptionalism any more than they approved of Russian exceptionalism or British exceptionalism or Japanese exceptionalism.

Your refusal to use words with generally agreed-upon definitions makes it pointless to try to carry on a political discussion with you; I'd prefer to actually speak to Traitorfish, if at all possible.

Abegweit

Mar 18, 2012, 07:18 PM

The National Socialists of Germany were not particularly fascist, either. And, ideologically, they did not approve of American exceptionalism any more than they approved of Russian exceptionalism or British exceptionalism or Japanese exceptionalism.No. They approved of German exceptionalism, which is precisely the point. Americans approve of American exceptionalism. The Japanese and the British had the same POV (haven't run across Russian exceptionalism but maybe...). They all despise exceptionalism from anyone other than themselves. That's pretty much the definition of exceptionalism.

Your refusal to use words with generally agreed-upon definitions makes it pointless to try to carry on a political discussion with you; I'd prefer to actually speak to Traitorfish, if at all possible.Traitorfish is an intelligent thoughtful poster who makes original and thought-provoking comments. In contrast, I have never seen you do anything but indulge in drive-by shootings. Such as your original comment to him.

Attempting to actually make an argument (providing your definition of fascism would be a good start) would help move your case along. But, I know, you've already stated that this is too much trouble. Drive-by shootings are much more fun.

ParkCungHee

Mar 18, 2012, 07:27 PM

(The problem with Abegweit's position, of course, is that however sainted by the free market they may be, business-owners outside of the state-complex are just as fond of the state's ability to crack the skulls of misbehaving proles as the most corrupt corporate stooges. Probably why they tend to constitute the leadership and social base of fascist movements.)
Also because it's based on factual wrong romantic notions of medieval society.
I'm as big a fan of Tannistry as anyone, but I know contract disputes tended to be settled by the number of soldiers you could raise.

Abegweit

Mar 18, 2012, 07:31 PM

Also because it's based on factual wrong romantic notions of medieval society.Citation please.
I'm as big a fan of Tannistry as anyone, but I know contract disputes tended to be settled by the number of soldiers you could raise.What contract dispute has ever been settled by soldiers except, of course, those between states?

Quackers

Mar 18, 2012, 07:39 PM

The anarcho-capitalist position is that government is the enabler. Without the coercive power of the state, businesses could never do any of these things.

Can you prove this?
Large firms can easily collude to set prices and set production quotas to maximise their own welfare. I don't see why they necessarily need government to enable this, however I do agree to a certain extent that a combination of corporate and government power can create conditions unfair for the consumer, see how some european governments choose monopoly providers like air travel. I just want to know why the absence of government leads to an automatically better condition for consumers in this aspect, from what I see they can do it within a democratic, capitalist system without the need for goverment and between themselves.

Cutlass

Mar 18, 2012, 07:45 PM

Can you prove this?
Large firms can easily collude to set prices and set production quotas to maximise their own welfare. I don't see why they necessarily need government to enable this, however I do agree to a certain extent that a combination of corporate and government power can create conditions unfair for the consumer, see how some european governments choose monopoly providers like air travel. I just want to know why the absence of government leads to an automatically better condition for consumers in this aspect, from what I see they can do it within a democratic, capitalist system without the need for goverment and between themselves.

It doesn't. In the absence of government most markets end in monopoly that will be defended by any means necessary. Including mercenaries and assassins. Consumers do not get freedom of choice.

Abegweit

Mar 18, 2012, 08:21 PM

Can you prove this?
Large firms can easily collude to set prices and set production quotas to maximise their own welfare.This has been tried many times throughout history. The problem is that the temptation to cheat is simply too strong. If the price is artificially high, then you can get a huge piece of the market by undercutting it. It is also brings new players into the game, ready to exploit the opportunities.

I don't see why they necessarily need government to enable this/Government force is required to keep the cartel together and to prevent other folks from entering the market. Consider hairdressers. In most states, it takes hundreds of hours of "education" and a state-given license to have the right to cut hair. Are you seriously suggesting that some talented amateur could not equal those who have paid for the process? Of course not. The purpose of the system is to drive up the price of haircuts, thereby benefiting those with licenses and those who pretend to teach cutting hair. The consequence is that consumers pay more and those who can't afford the expensive courses (e.g. the poor) are driven even further into poverty.

_random_

Mar 18, 2012, 08:53 PM

In contrast, I have never seen you do anything but indulge in drive-by shootings. Such as your original comment to him.
That just means you've yet to get him really pissed. Keep saying stupid things about history (especially pertaining to Ancient Greece, the American Civil War, and World War I), and the time will come when the fury of the Dachspwn is unleashed upon you.

Abegweit

Mar 18, 2012, 09:09 PM

That just means you've yet to get him really pissed. Keep saying stupid things about history (especially pertaining to Ancient Greece, the American Civil War, and World War I), and the time will come when the fury of the Dachspwn is unleashed upon you.I've gotten him pissed. Repeatedly. He has already whinged that he doesn't want to talk to me. Not fury. Just whinging. Seems to me that I won.

_random_

Mar 18, 2012, 09:21 PM

Abegweit

Mar 18, 2012, 09:30 PM

No, you don't get it. Dachs is like Season 2 of Breaking Bad. Every episode you start out with random shots of Walt's pool with a charred teddy bear in it, and the character arcs all build up to the plane crash, but until it actually happens, the openings of each episode make no sense. You've managed to annoy Dachs, which means he'll give a little hint about the ways you're wrong. Individually, his criticisms might be unsatisfying, but if you keep pushing him it will culminate in a post that describes in full humiliating detail just how hard you miss the point. I'd advise against it frankly.Dachs has already blown his mind over me. About four times actually. He whinges that he doesn't want to talk to me anymore. More mind blowing. I am not afraid of him unloading his state-worship. I really doubt that he can do it. Certainly he hasn't tried.

Bring it on. This is my official challenge.

Elta

Mar 18, 2012, 09:31 PM

Dear mods, in the future can we get the link to the original thread in the OP?

It would be a lot easier to read the thread in such cases.

Thank you.

Quackers

Mar 18, 2012, 10:38 PM

No, you don't get it. Dachs is like Season 2 of Breaking Bad. Every episode you start out with random shots of Walt's pool with a charred teddy bear in it, and the character arcs all build up to the plane crash, but until it actually happens, the openings of each episode make no sense. You've managed to annoy Dachs, which means he'll give a little hint about the ways you're wrong. Individually, his criticisms might be unsatisfying, but if you keep pushing him it will culminate in a post that describes in full humiliating detail just how hard you miss the point. I'd advise against it frankly.

Frankly, your Dach's worship is more embarassing :cry:

@abeg:

What is stopping hair dressers colluding amongst themselves, setting an artifically high price and enjoying the fat profits whilst the consumer suffers? You still haven't demonstrated why this wouldn't happen without government preventing it. Your naive, you think another firm could just enter the market and sell haircuts at a lower price? The cartel will make sure it's extremely difficult to enter the market; if that fails they will just allow them to enter the cartel.

ParkCungHee

Mar 18, 2012, 11:13 PM

Citation please.
Journal of Irish Studies, Volume XIV, Pages 33-62.

Dachs

Mar 19, 2012, 02:33 AM

No. They approved of German exceptionalism, which is precisely the point. Americans approve of American exceptionalism. The Japanese and the British had the same POV (haven't run across Russian exceptionalism but maybe...). They all despise exceptionalism from anyone other than themselves. That's pretty much the definition of exceptionalism.
So...you admit that you're wrong? That's nice. I didn't even have to do anything.
Dachs has already blown his mind over me. About four times actually. He whinges that he doesn't want to talk to me anymore. More mind blowing. I am not afraid of him unloading his state-worship. I really doubt that he can do it. Certainly he hasn't tried.

Bring it on. This is my official challenge.
Nah, I'm actually pretty detached. random has it more or less right, minus the deification; I'm not mad until I start making long posts (like, tens of thousands of chars, much longer than this little guppy) with lots of history and some flaming/trolling. And I know not to try to make those about things I don't know much about.

If you think that all I ever do on CFC is drive-by posting, check my sig for some history articles I've written. I guarantee that you won't care about the actual subjects, and God knows half of the stuff in them has been superseded by now, but I think you'll find that they amount to a great deal more than hit-and-runs.

Anyway. Actual subject. Traitorfish initially stated that "business-owners outside of the state-complex [...] tend to constitute the leadership and social base of fascist movements". I disagreed with this, on the grounds that this does not really apply all that well to fascist movements, although it serves reasonably well to describe the far right in general. This is part of a semi-ongoing bit of repartee between me and him, based on his usually fairly exacting definitions of political stuff. I had in mind specific examples, like Hugo Stinnes and Alfred Hugenberg, neither of whom was particularly supportive of the Nazis - much less "fascist", which is a somewhat different beast - which became even more relevant when you brought up the Nazis.

In Italy especially, but also in Spain, fascism's initial backing did not come from the ranks of big business. Italy's fascists were initially from the Arditi, ex-soldiers that became paramilitaries in the quasirevolutionary ferment that the Italian state found itself in at the end of the First World War, and later gained a great deal of support from gang bosses and men who used fascism to become the equivalent of gang bosses (the archetypal ras). Businessmen, landowners, and industrialists attempted to back virtually every other possible rightist and centrist premier (so long as he wasn't one of the papist Popolari, anyway) before finally siding with Mussolini, hardly a ringing vote of confidence. Spain's fascists were not particularly numerous, but formed a hard core of dedicated students, intellectuals, and some soldiers; only after the Falange metamorphosed into a big-tent organization with the onset of the Civil War did its ranks swell to encompass Spain's few industrialists and businessmen.

You described fascism as an ideology that relies on corporatism and nationalism, both of which are true enough, albeit incomplete, and warmongering and beating up the rest of the world, which is not true. (Corporatism is not organic to fascism, but it goes along with fascist belief often enough that it might as well be.) You then claimed that the Nazis - again, not the best example of fascists - would have approved of American exceptionalism, something that seems to me to be completely off topic even if it were right, and it's not, as you admitted above. What does American exceptionalism - a phenomenon hardly confined to the One Percent - have to do with businessmen and fascism?

The reason that the NSDAP was not a particularly good example of a fascist organization is because the nationalism it espoused does not match up very well with archetypal fascist conceptions of the nation. Fascism is, at its core, an anti-individualist ideology; there is no individual, only the nation, and the state as its embodiment. Nazism didn't really work like that; the state and the Volk were separate entities, and the Führer mediated between them. The NSDAP, for what it's worth, also abandoned corporatism fairly early; even halfhearted measures like KdF were terminated by the onset of war, and KdF was hardly a corporatist policy in a meaningful sense.

In an abstract sense, it's pretty easy to see why businessmen and industrialists wouldn't be all that interested in an ideology that relies on anti-individualism and the restriction of individual rights.

Camikaze

Mar 19, 2012, 02:46 AM

Question: my understanding of capitalism is that it rests, in part, on enforceable contracts. Who enforces the contracts in an anarchist, capitalist society?

This is a fantastic question that's been puzzling me too. I'm guessing the answer that would be provided has to do with relational contracts (businesses are more concerned about their social relationships/reputations than with legally binding contractual terms; for instance they are likely to let a breach of contract slide in the interests of preserving a long term business relationship) and that the free market would enforce breaches of contract by directing business away from those who have been known to not perform their end of the agreement, but this still falls way too short of actually explaining how contract disputes that could not be resolved outside of court would be resolved (and so how contracts would continue to be viable, and so how capitalism, which relies on contracts, would continue to be viable), as these relational contracts are still inevitability backed up by the force of the law.

ParkCungHee

Mar 19, 2012, 02:52 AM

Dachs

Mar 19, 2012, 02:58 AM

Plus there's the whole issue of the Nazis racialism being fundamentally incompatible with Nationalism. Nazi ideology pretty well said that man is a product of his biological nature, which pretty much undermines the entire fascist rational for the destruction of the individual: That an individuals character is determined by the community, and conflict between the Individual's interest and that of society is impossible and non-nonsensical.

It's not that racialism creates problems around the edges of Fascist thought, it's that if you accept biological determinism, every justification for Fascism becomes absurd.
That too. I admit that I'm not all that well read on Nazi ideology, it being part of that horrible Second World War morass I do my best to avoid, but I'm glad to know that there are other problems with the Nazi = fascist categorization.

Not that I'd go so far to describe Nazism as a wholly non-fascist ideology. Virote, somebody else who's better-read on this than I am, likened the connection, in a thread last year, to that between socialism and anarchism. Fascism and Nazism were initially indistinguishable, but eventually grew apart for various reasons and lost a lot of the ideological links.

Hygro

Mar 19, 2012, 04:03 AM

Frankly, your Dach's worship is more embarassing :cry:

@abeg:

What is stopping hair dressers colluding amongst themselves, setting an artifically high price and enjoying the fat profits whilst the consumer suffers? You still haven't demonstrated why this wouldn't happen without government preventing it. Your naive, you think another firm could just enter the market and sell haircuts at a lower price? The cartel will make sure it's extremely difficult to enter the market; if that fails they will just allow them to enter the cartel.

Because the secrets of hair dressing are no longer closely guarded by the guild but held by the knowledge of the public, and all it takes is one enterprising hairdresser to charge less. The cartel can't do anything to prevent it, economically. They could in the middle ages--there's a reason the masons got so wealthy, when architects and engineers are a dime a dozen. Or $100/hr, but still ;) More important, consumers of haircuts will just start cutting their own hair or decide that 60s manes are all the rage again, putting the cartel out of business. The same is true for any demand-elastic industry.

I have not seen any arguments about the economic dangers of monopoly. There are political dangers of monopoly, however, if a monopoly chooses social control over profits and harms others. This is a real danger. But monopolies are just as subject to market forces as firms in competitive markets: the market sets the price, and in the end the maximum consumer and producer equilibrium is reached. This is Carl Menger in action and as much as I bag on Austrian economics, I can't argue with this one. Maybe Integral will show me up.

The additional political dangers of monopoly comes from the consumer side. If consumers are feeling maligned they might take aim at the firm in a destructive, non-market way.

Governments role in regulating monopoly is therefore to prevent violence and oppression, and to ensure its goals of promoting economic equality for citizens (and not economic optimization for consumers).

Traitorfish

Mar 19, 2012, 05:42 AM

That's an awfully casual use of the term "fascist", especially for you.
Fair point, fair point. Letting my desire for cheap political points getting ahead of me. (They're like kids' breakfast cereal: you know that you shouldn't want them, that you're supposed to be too grown up for that and they're bad for you anway, but you just can't help yourself.)

Plus there's the whole issue of the Nazis racialism being fundamentally incompatible with Nationalism. Nazi ideology pretty well said that man is a product of his biological nature, which pretty much undermines the entire fascist rational for the destruction of the individual: That an individuals character is determined by the community, and conflict between the Individual's interest and that of society is impossible and non-nonsensical.

It's not that racialism creates problems around the edges of Fascist thought, it's that if you accept biological determinism, every justification for Fascism becomes absurd.
Didn't Mussolini actually claim that racialism was a "materialist deviation", and attributed it to the influence of liberalism? Sure I read that somewhere. :hmm:

Frankly, your Dach's worship is more embarassing :cry:
There's a saying among the Eksimos, something like "we don't worship, we fear". I'd say that just about describes the average CFC history enthusiast's relationship to the Dachspwn. :mischief:

(And I will respond to Cutlass' post at some point, I'm just killing time between classes right now, not really in the right mental place to make a decent job of it.)

_random_

Mar 19, 2012, 06:53 AM

Frankly, your Dach's worship is more embarassing :cry:

Nah, I'm actually pretty detached. random has it more or less right, minus the deification;

Yeah, I did get a tad carried away there. Sorry about that.

Leoreth

Mar 19, 2012, 07:01 AM

Attempting to actually make an argument (providing your definition of fascism would be a good start) would help move your case along. But, I know, you've already stated that this is too much trouble. Drive-by shootings are much more fun.
That's a pretty hypocritical position for someone who makes at least half of his posts like that:
It is funny to see how even statists are cynics about statism. I've seen this before.

Ziggy Stardust

Mar 19, 2012, 07:02 AM

Leoreth

Mar 19, 2012, 07:05 AM

That's my main problem, too. It pretty much rests on the assumption of perfect information for market participants, which really only holds true for the most simple classical market models.

innonimatu

Mar 19, 2012, 08:47 AM

There's a lot of literature on this subject. The short answer is that the state subsidies violence. Without this artificial lowering of the costs of imposing your will on other people, it is extremely difficult to pull off.

Tĥat's your delusion. There isn't one single example of an enduring stateless territory existing in peace. And it isn't just because they get attached by outside, more powerful, states. It's because whenever one state falls into anarchy some other form of state eventually emerges to replace it. At worst several factions end up fighting a civil war to set up their now version of state. Even if there are no powerful groups ready to fight for dominance to start with, they will arise shortly as people naturally create their webs of cooperation and interests. And they can be of many different kinds, not only business: political, religious, ethnic, etc.

What does not happen, and never happened in the modern world, is your utopia of a stable stateless society simply spontaneously arising out of chaos.
You assume that anarchy - chaos! - in a human society is stable? Sorry, but all it takes at that point to recreate a state is the will by organized groups to make a grab for power. No need for any "subsidy for violence": violence can be made to pay for itself (and can very well not be started for economic motives anyway). How can you get people to renounce such attempts? And even if you do, more importantly, how can you get the next generation to also renounce them? And the next... who will enforce the anti-state propaganda?

There is a "marxist" end-of-state idea was that in the absence of material causes for conflict people would cease needing a state: that would be communism. I don't see a stateless world even under those conditions because people themselves are still a "material good" and will probably remain so. Think of it: increasing material abundance so far has ended up shifting employment towards... services! And some of those services are economic relations of domination which no amount of material wealth will ever make obsolete - in a material utopia the only remaining scarce commodity would be... human services! Perhaps that could be made residual, but I'm skeptical. Still, we managed to make slavery illegal, and to cease using the number of personal attendants as a mark of status, so perhaps there is hope for further improvements. It's too early to call on this one, can't be tried yet: material resources are still too scarce, maybe they will always be.

Then there is the "anarcho-capitalist" version: that people can keep up their conflicts over material wealth and will just solve them to everyone's satisfaction, in the absence of state power to enforce deals, through non-violent deals, always and for ever. That simply doesn't happen: is is theoretically possible now (unlike communism) and yet is has never been shown to work! Instead, people immediately start fighting to safeguard or increase their share of material resources.

Cutlass

Mar 19, 2012, 11:51 AM

Because the secrets of hair dressing are no longer closely guarded by the guild but held by the knowledge of the public, and all it takes is one enterprising hairdresser to charge less. The cartel can't do anything to prevent it, economically. They could in the middle ages--there's a reason the masons got so wealthy, when architects and engineers are a dime a dozen. Or $100/hr, but still ;) More important, consumers of haircuts will just start cutting their own hair or decide that 60s manes are all the rage again, putting the cartel out of business. The same is true for any demand-elastic industry.

I have not seen any arguments about the economic dangers of monopoly. There are political dangers of monopoly, however, if a monopoly chooses social control over profits and harms others. This is a real danger. But monopolies are just as subject to market forces as firms in competitive markets: the market sets the price, and in the end the maximum consumer and producer equilibrium is reached. This is Carl Menger in action and as much as I bag on Austrian economics, I can't argue with this one. Maybe Integral will show me up.

The additional political dangers of monopoly comes from the consumer side. If consumers are feeling maligned they might take aim at the firm in a destructive, non-market way.

Governments role in regulating monopoly is therefore to prevent violence and oppression, and to ensure its goals of promoting economic equality for citizens (and not economic optimization for consumers).

That's a very much wrong headed view of monopoly that I don't see as supported by any economics. The idea that there would be entry of a competitor ignores what barriers any competitor might face. In hairdressing the barriers to entry are small, because the capital requirements, skill requirements, and scale requirements, are small. But in industries where those things are large, monopoly should be considered the natural result, because it is the most profitable result. And business people are not known for intentionally leaving money on the table. In the real world the places where monopoly has not emerged is mainly where government has not permitted it to. And even in those cases monopoly power has been common, to the detriment of the consumers and the market as a whole. Oligopoly has ruled industries for decades, and only foreign competition, backed by governments, has had the muscle to enter and destabilize the oligopoly, like American autos and steel.

ParkCungHee

Mar 19, 2012, 12:58 PM

Didn't Mussolini actually claim that racialism was a "materialist deviation", and attributed it to the influence of liberalism? Sure I read that somewhere. :hmm:
That sounds about right from a theoretical perspective yes. Wouldn't be surprised if that was Gentile, or Gentile writing for Mussolini.

Traitorfish

Mar 19, 2012, 05:38 PM

Right, let's have a shot at this.

Fine in theory. But can't be done in practice. And so is no more than a theoretical exercise.

In economics there is a lot of literature on the Free Rider Problem. Essentially a lot of people can claim that they don't consent to certain things the government does, and so then they can claim that they don't have to pay for it. But the problem with Public Goods is that you cannot separate who gets a benefit from them from just those who agree to pay for them. So your 2 choices are that everyone pays, and everyone benefits, or no one pays, and no one benefits. To try to have only some pay and only that some benefit just can't be done. But many people try. Those are the free riders.

The system fails if everyone does not pay for the public goods. Everyone is worse off in the long run.

Should most of the population simply resign itself to being poorer now and in perpetuity simply because a minority wants to opt out? How dare they do that to us?

Here's your irony: The alternative to the "tyranny of the majority" is a tyranny of a minority.
That's certainly a problem with an attempt to opt of responsibilities without simultaneously giving up the relevant benefits, but what bearing does that have on actual secession? If we take the term to mean a genuine non-participation in state-society, rather than some rhetorically overwrought form of tax avoidance, then it seems that this wouldn't be a problem, because responsibilities would be given up along benefits. (Or, at least, not direct benefits; obviously, there may be certain spill-over benefits of one kind or another. But you could equally say that Canada or Mexico benefit from the military budget of the United States, and yet I've never hear you propose that the US start demanding imperial tribute from its neighbours.)

OK, I see your point. But the flaw in the reasoning is that amadeus' view (as you describe it, he can chime in if he feels you haven't accurately described his position) is not an objective view of the world.

There is a set of theories called "Public Choice". Essentially it says that everything government does is to serve special interests against the public, so the government should do nothing and the public will be better off. But is that true? There's no question that many special interests work to try and make it true. And that at different times and places it has more or less success. The irony with this, of course, is that the politicians who say that the government should do the least are the most likely to be the same politicians that do the most to make the government serve special interests at the expense of the public interests. So Public Choice becomes a self fulfilling prophecy because it becomes a tool used to give special interests what it wants.

Because, you know, the biggest thing that special interests want is to have a government that does nothing. This is why conservatives and libertarians are constantly talking about deregulation: To remove any constraints on the actions of special interests.

And that is because when all is said and done most of what the government does, at least in the developed nations, is not at the expense of the public, but rather at the expense of those who want to enrich themselves at the expense of the public.

So to the extent that ama would want the same policies as the Koch brothers for a different intended outcome, he's wrong. He will get not the outcome he wants, but the one the Koch brothers want. The fact that he doesn't know going in that he is working for his worst enemies only shows that his enemies have a more rational grasp of the world than he does.
The bolded would be my main point of contention: I don't think that this is accurate. Even if we set aside the issues of the military-industrial complex, internal conflicts within big business (manufacturing vs FIRE, etc.), state union-busting, and so on, and assume for purposes of argument that "special interests", collectively, stand arm-in-arm behind an ultra-Gladstonian laissez faire, that does not in any sense imply that they want a state that "does nothing". They might want a state with limited economic powers, but, as I said, when it comes to the defence of private property, in particular but above all as such, they have not the barest hint of the smell of the shadow of the reflection of a qualm with the state wielding violence as sternly and as eagerly as any tinpot despot. And that represents a very fundamental departure from the anarchism espoused by Amadeus. Private property as it exists in a state society is quite fundamentally predicated on violence, the threat and therefore the use of violence, and that is something that he makes it quite explicit that he has absolutely no truck with.

Do I think that his politics actually offer an escape from a society of domination and violence? I can't say that I think it particularly likely, which I'm fairly sure will come as a surprise to nobody. But I can at least recognise that his criticisms, taken to their logical conclusion, are as incompatible with the politics of the Kochs and their ilk as mine are.

Nor would they be in any alternative situation. This hypothetical world in which no one is "coerced" is something where I can't even imagine the theoretical situation, it is so utterly and completely impossible.

So you are essentially saying "In a world that cannot exist, X would happen. And because X is such a wonderful thing, we should live in a world that cannot exist". To which my reply is :huh:
Not at all: I make no positive proposals of any sort. All I'm arguing is that the liberal state is an inherently coercive project, and so the logic of the free and voluntary contract does not function as a legitimisation. If one holds voluntary contracts to be the basis of a free society, then one must be an anarchist. Perhaps you don't- it certainly seems that you take a more utilitarian line- but it does mean that you're not able to refute the anarcho-capitalist project using their own logic of free contracts, at the very least as it applies to individuals who reject the state.

They will as soon as someone decides to march an army through their communal peasant society. Essentially you can hope to get away with that only to the extent that no one tries to take it away from you.
All you're really saying here is that protection rackets can be quite effective, which I don't think that anyone would disagree with. (There's a reason why the peasant societies that have most effectively resisted the state are generally in awkward places, like the South-East Asian highlanders, or able to punch above their weight, like the early Cossacks.) It doesn't really constitute an argument for the state as such, or at least no more than it constitutes an argument for feudal barons, which I don't imagine you'd make even in the context of such a society.

And even if there are historical examples of that happening, why should I believe that they might be possible now?

...

Fair enough. But I don't believe in that world. And I cannot see any sense in which it may come about in the foreseeable future. And I certainly wouldn't want to try to live in it in the absence of seeing a successful trial run for a few decades first.

Theory tells me that it cannot be done. So does the real world.
Well, that's a discussion in itself. As I said, I'm not arguing for any particular program, simply defending anti-statism, in the broadest sense, as a coherent body of criticism.

For that matter the American Revolution did that as well. Just in a more traditional manner than Gandhi. We petitioned the parliament, we petitioned the governors, we petitioned the king, we petitioned the courts. These were the avenues open to us. Were they really the correct one? They didn't work in any case. And so we started civil disobedience. The British decided to make a war of it. Not us.
But, again, I have to ask: do you think that the Americans were morally obliged to work within that framework for its own sake, or merely as a pragmatic measure? Is unilateral political secession wrong because "thou shalt not", or simply because it tends to lead to more violent outcomes?

Abegweit

Mar 19, 2012, 06:53 PM

What is stopping hair dressers colluding amongst themselves, setting an artifically high price and enjoying the fat profits whilst the consumer suffers? You still haven't demonstrated why this wouldn't happen without government preventing it. Your naive, you think another firm could just enter the market and sell haircuts at a lower price? The cartel will make sure it's extremely difficult to enter the market; if that fails they will just allow them to enter the cartel.This has been tried many times in various markets. W/o the state to enforce the cartel, it falls apart. It's not just about new entrants either. The members of the cartel themselves have a strong incentive to cheat in order to increase market share - and they do.

Cutlass

Mar 19, 2012, 07:03 PM

Right, let's have a shot at this.

That's certainly a problem with an attempt to opt of responsibilities without simultaneously giving up the relevant benefits, but what bearing does that have on actual secession? If we take the term to mean a genuine non-participation in state-society, rather than some rhetorically overwrought form of tax avoidance, then it seems that this wouldn't be a problem, because responsibilities would be given up along benefits. (Or, at least, not direct benefits; obviously, there may be certain spill-over benefits of one kind or another. But you could equally say that Canada or Mexico benefit from the military budget of the United States, and yet I've never hear you propose that the US start demanding imperial tribute from its neighbours.)

Depends on what secession. The problem with individual secession is that they want to retain the benefits but not the responsibilities. The problem with regional secession is that they want to take with them many people that they don't have a right to take, and, in the case of the ACW, they refused to do it in a way that was acceptable to all parties.

Now a secession could be legitimate in some instances. But the way it is done and the motive for doing so count. Saying "We aren't going to follow your rules, because we want to oppress our people more than you would allow us to" isn't a very good motive for secession. Saying " We have little in common and are only part of the same country because some defunct empire forced us together" is a whole different story.

The bolded would be my main point of contention: I don't think that this is accurate. Even if we set aside the issues of the military-industrial complex, internal conflicts within big business (manufacturing vs FIRE, etc.), state union-busting, and so on, and assume for purposes of argument that "special interests", collectively, stand arm-in-arm behind an ultra-Gladstonian laissez faire, that does not in any sense imply that they want a state that "does nothing". They might want a state with limited economic powers, but, as I said, when it comes to the defence of private property, in particular but above all as such, they have not the barest hint of the smell of the shadow of the reflection of a qualm with the state wielding violence as sternly and as eagerly as any tinpot despot. And that represents a very fundamental departure from the anarchism espoused by Amadeus. Private property as it exists in a state society is quite fundamentally predicated on violence, the threat and therefore the use of violence, and that is something that he makes it quite explicit that he has absolutely no truck with.

Do I think that his politics actually offer an escape from a society of domination and violence? I can't say that I think it particularly likely, which I'm fairly sure will come as a surprise to nobody. But I can at least recognise that his criticisms, taken to their logical conclusion, are as incompatible with the politics of the Kochs and their ilk as mine are.

I said the biggest, not the only. And it is. While it is true that businesses get many benefits from government (the US economy has been a public-private partnership from day one), the biggest thing businesses ask for is to be left alone to do any damned thing they please.

Businesses have funded think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute and CATO, and funded university programs like the Chicago School, for decades to build an intellectual foundation for laissez faire. Vast fortunes and decades of efforts have gone into justifying deregulation. And that doesn't even count the costs of lobbyists and campaign contributions. Deregulation is a major industry in the US.

Businesses have fought to get out from under regulations for as long as there has been regulations. A lot of the "right-libertarian" ideology as a whole was developed for no reason other than to fight to set businesses free. Not to mention the Austrian and Chicago schools of economics.

Given that the effort and cost that goes into the concept, far more than is even spent on tax breaks and lobbying for defense contracts, how is it not what they want the most?

Not at all: I make no positive proposals of any sort. All I'm arguing is that the liberal state is an inherently coercive project, and so the logic of the free and voluntary contract does not function as a legitimisation. If one holds voluntary contracts to be the basis of a free society, then one must be an anarchist. Perhaps you don't- it certainly seems that you take a more utilitarian line- but it does mean that you're not able to refute the anarcho-capitalist project using their own logic of free contracts, at the very least as it applies to individuals who reject the state.

What free contracts? Seems to me the anarcho-capitalists are going to prevent free contracts, by force if necessary. They cannot get what they want except by preventing others from making free choices.

How are they better than any other aristocracy?

All you're really saying here is that protection rackets can be quite effective, which I don't think that anyone would disagree with. (There's a reason why the peasant societies that have most effectively resisted the state are generally in awkward places, like the South-East Asian highlanders, or able to punch above their weight, like the early Cossacks.) It doesn't really constitute an argument for the state as such, or at least no more than it constitutes an argument for feudal barons, which I don't imagine you'd make even in the context of such a society.

So you are saying that in order to not have a state, people not only have to keep their heads down and not be noticed, but they also have to be either in a location where no one else wants what they have, can take what they have, or they the military force to protect themselves from any likely aggressor.

But what was their form of government internally? Did they really have none? Or is it instead just a microstate?

Well, that's a discussion in itself. As I said, I'm not arguing for any particular program, simply defending anti-statism, in the broadest sense, as a coherent body of criticism.

Is it coherent? Seems to me it's more based on a bunch of failed comprehension of the real world.

But, again, I have to ask: do you think that the Americans were morally obliged to work within that framework for its own sake, or merely as a pragmatic measure? Is unilateral political secession wrong because "thou shalt not", or simply because it tends to lead to more violent outcomes?

Yes. It is a moral obligation to make a serious attempt to resolve disputes within a mutually acceptable framework before going outside of it.

Abegweit

Mar 19, 2012, 07:10 PM

That's a very much wrong headed view of monopoly that I don't see as supported by any economics.Really? You need to learn some economics instead of making these strange proclamations. You could start with Henry Hazlitt's "Economics in One Lesson".

The idea that there would be entry of a competitor ignores what barriers any competitor might face.So long as there are no barriers to entry, a monopolist will act as though he has competition. You repeatedly see that in the computer industry where one company after another has gained a dominant position and then been swept away by upstarts. Meanwhile the scum in the "Justice" Department are repeatedly moving in to abuse the latest leader. First it was IBM. Then Microsoft. Now Google.

The best example of a monopoly w/o state involvement was ALCOA which was the only producer of aluminum in North America for sixty years. At one point it produced two-thirds of the aluminum in the world. During that period, the price of aluminum dropped relentlessly as ALCOA refined their processes. After the thugs in the Roosevelt administration broke the company up, prices rose.

Part of the reason of this is that there is no such thing as a monopoly at all. It's simply a fantasy made up by people who have no notion how a market works. ALCOA never had a monopoly. They competed with steel manufacturers and, in fact, they competed with every other company in the world. All the companies vie with each other to order to convince the consumer to spend his hard-earned money on their product instead of someone else's.

Abegweit

Mar 19, 2012, 07:22 PM

So...you admit that you're wrong? That's nice. I didn't even have to do anything.I never intended to imply that NAZIs approved of American exceptionalism but rather that a basic characteristic of fascism is that they believe the home country is exceptional. If my posts were unclear, then I apologise for that.

Anyway. Actual subject. Traitorfish initially stated that "business-owners outside of the state-complex [...] tend to constitute the leadership and social base of fascist movements". I disagreed with this, on the grounds that this does not really apply all that well to fascist movements, although it serves reasonably well to describe the far right in general. This is part of a semi-ongoing bit of repartee between me and him, based on his usually fairly exacting definitions of political stuff. I had in mind specific examples, like Hugo Stinnes and Alfred Hugenberg, neither of whom was particularly supportive of the Nazis - much less "fascist", which is a somewhat different beast - which became even more relevant when you brought up the Nazis.

In Italy especially, but also in Spain, fascism's initial backing did not come from the ranks of big business. Italy's fascists were initially from the Arditi, ex-soldiers that became paramilitaries in the quasirevolutionary ferment that the Italian state found itself in at the end of the First World War, and later gained a great deal of support from gang bosses and men who used fascism to become the equivalent of gang bosses (the archetypal ras). Businessmen, landowners, and industrialists attempted to back virtually every other possible rightist and centrist premier (so long as he wasn't one of the papist Popolari, anyway) before finally siding with Mussolini, hardly a ringing vote of confidence. Spain's fascists were not particularly numerous, but formed a hard core of dedicated students, intellectuals, and some soldiers; only after the Falange metamorphosed into a big-tent organization with the onset of the Civil War did its ranks swell to encompass Spain's few industrialists and businessmen.

You described fascism as an ideology that relies on corporatism and nationalism, both of which are true enough, albeit incomplete, and warmongering and beating up the rest of the world, which is not true. (Corporatism is not organic to fascism, but it goes along with fascist belief often enough that it might as well be.) You then claimed that the Nazis - again, not the best example of fascists - would have approved of American exceptionalism, something that seems to me to be completely off topic even if it were right, and it's not, as you admitted above. What does American exceptionalism - a phenomenon hardly confined to the One Percent - have to do with businessmen and fascism?

The reason that the NSDAP was not a particularly good example of a fascist organization is because the nationalism it espoused does not match up very well with archetypal fascist conceptions of the nation. Fascism is, at its core, an anti-individualist ideology; there is no individual, only the nation, and the state as its embodiment. Nazism didn't really work like that; the state and the Volk were separate entities, and the Führer mediated between them. The NSDAP, for what it's worth, also abandoned corporatism fairly early; even halfhearted measures like KdF were terminated by the onset of war, and KdF was hardly a corporatist policy in a meaningful sense.

In an abstract sense, it's pretty easy to see why businessmen and industrialists wouldn't be all that interested in an ideology that relies on anti-individualism and the restriction of individual rights.Far enough. Thanks for the elaboration. A quite convincing argument. I will not be using the word "fascist" to describe western governments anymore. Not even Bush's. Although I should add that businessmen and industrialists are perfectly happy to use the state to advance their goals.

Abegweit

Mar 19, 2012, 07:35 PM

Something I have been wondering with regard to eliminating government, is the effect on the food industry.

What mechanism prevents me having to become a food additive expert to be able to determine what's in the can of food I'm buying? The free market directing business from companies who put a lot of crap into the tin to companies who don't, requires an informed buyer after all.Nothing at all except the company's desire to please its customers. I, for one, would not buy anything if I didn't know what goes into it. The current labels are incomprehensible and often outright lies. Big Agra bribes the FDA to set up the rules this way. This "per serving" stuff is simply a method of hiding what's actually in the product. And because it's government-mandated you have no recourse.

Added to that, and I have asked this before but since there's now a dedicated thread for this, what mechanism ensures that the ingredients which are on the label are the ingredients that are actually in the can?It's called reputation. Anyone who was caught lying would be liable to be put out of business. Companies spend a lot of effort to be accurate in their claims, even (maybe especially) those who aren't subject to government regulations on the subject.

Last time an independent customer service bureau was opted. But such an organisation needs to be paid and held accountable as well, so I wonder how this would play out.I don't know what exactly you are referring to but I have no doubt that any agency that got caught doing such a thing, assuming it didn't have a government mandate, would probably be bankrupted. At a minimum, it would be a huge setback to the bottom line.

Ziggy Stardust

Mar 20, 2012, 02:03 AM

Nothing at all except the company's desire to please its customers. I, for one, would not buy anything if I didn't know what goes into it. The current labels are incomprehensible and often outright lies.So you're not buying anything these days?
Big Agra bribes the FDA to set up the rules this way. This "per serving" stuff is simply a method of hiding what's actually in the product. And because it's government-mandated you have no recourse.Big Agra?

Companies spend a lot of effort to be accurate in their claims:lol:
Yeah. Right. In reality companies try to be as vague as possible within the regulations. I have first hand experience, and you should too. Orange Juice is allowed to put 100% Orange Juice on the package because that's what the product is, but they're trying to suggest 100% juice from oranges. Which it usually isn't.

I don't know what exactly you are referring to but I have no doubt that any agency that got caught doing such a thing, assuming it didn't have a government mandate, would probably be bankrupted. At a minimum, it would be a huge setback to the bottom line.Didn't answer my question.

If any other anarchist wants to chime in, please.

Ayn Rand

Mar 20, 2012, 02:30 AM

I don't know what exactly you are referring to but I have no doubt that any agency that got caught doing such a thing, assuming it didn't have a government mandate, would probably be bankrupted. At a minimum, it would be a huge setback to the bottom line.

Capitalism is inherently risky - and so it is incorrect to believe that risk of bankruptcy is going to deter certain types of behaviour from private companies.

This right here is the problem I have with anarchism - the lack of realism and pragmatism. Individuals and companies do not act in scripted ways, kept in line by mystical ethical or motivational forces that make certain actions impossible. Some real, objective and forceful mechanism must be put in place to safeguard rights in society - or else, some convincing and workable alternative must be substituted in place of it.

The role of the State can't simply be dismissed - although it should be curtailed, limited and kept in its proper place.

Hygro

Mar 20, 2012, 10:22 AM

Really? You need to learn some economics instead of making these strange proclamations. You could start with Henry Hazlitt's "Economics in One Lesson".That book... I got 25ish pages into it and counted at least 2 fundamental, glaring errors that undermined his entire thesis. I can't remember what they are as it was a while ago, but I know that that's a poor book to learn economics. I would suggest Principles of Economics by Robert Frank and Ben Bernanke. But Cutlass already knows most/all of the material in there. It's a really good textbook.

So long as there are no barriers to entry, a monopolist will act as though he has competition. You repeatedly see that in the computer industry where one company after another has gained a dominant position and then been swept away by upstarts. Meanwhile the scum in the "Justice" Department are repeatedly moving in to abuse the latest leader. First it was IBM. Then Microsoft. Now Google.

The best example of a monopoly w/o state involvement was ALCOA which was the only producer of aluminum in North America for sixty years. At one point it produced two-thirds of the aluminum in the world. During that period, the price of aluminum dropped relentlessly as ALCOA refined their processes. After the thugs in the Roosevelt administration broke the company up, prices rose.

Part of the reason of this is that there is no such thing as a monopoly at all. It's simply a fantasy made up by people who have no notion how a market works. ALCOA never had a monopoly. They competed with steel manufacturers and, in fact, they competed with every other company in the world. All the companies vie with each other to order to convince the consumer to spend his hard-earned money on their product instead of someone else's.

Monopoly markets can exist without the state, but you are right that large all-powerful single firms are still in competitive markets and even in capital intensive markets that are won by economy of scale, the "monopolist" is actually in competition. And not only with competitors in the market but potential competitors who recreate what the market is (trucks vs trains, cell vs landline, search vs social media, etc)
That's a very much wrong headed view of monopoly that I don't see as supported by any economics. The idea that there would be entry of a competitor ignores what barriers any competitor might face. In hairdressing the barriers to entry are small, because the capital requirements, skill requirements, and scale requirements, are small. But in industries where those things are large, monopoly should be considered the natural result, because it is the most profitable result. And business people are not known for intentionally leaving money on the table. In the real world the places where monopoly has not emerged is mainly where government has not permitted it to. And even in those cases monopoly power has been common, to the detriment of the consumers and the market as a whole. Oligopoly has ruled industries for decades, and only foreign competition, backed by governments, has had the muscle to enter and destabilize the oligopoly, like American autos and steel.

Barriers to entry as caused by capital requirements just mean that no investor sees there being significant opportunity to break into the market at that level of capital risk. Which as abegweit points out is a function of the monopolist acting competitively. Again, driving down price to marginal cost may be of benefit to the consumer, and for necessities like electricity etc, this might be a worthy reason for government intervention. But having the cheapest goods for the consumer isn't always that good for the economy anyway. It hurts profitability which hurts everything. I suggest The Economics of Global Turbulence by Robert Brenner, or even Supercapitalism by Robert Reich. Both are definitely American liberals....

And the logical conclusion of finding intrinsic fault in monopoly pricing, price above marginal cost, would by a total regulation of all successful enterprise.

I can't believe I'm arguing against you on the side of abegweit here :crazyeye:

But to break from his view: again, the dangers of a monopoly come from their political power. And some industries we see as necessities/rights/whatever and so its for the common good to make them cheap.

Cutlass

Mar 20, 2012, 10:55 AM

Barriers to entry as caused by capital requirements just mean that no investor sees there being significant opportunity to break into the market at that level of capital risk. Which as abegweit points out is a function of the monopolist acting competitively. Again, driving down price to marginal cost may be of benefit to the consumer, and for necessities like electricity etc, this might be a worthy reason for government intervention. But having the cheapest goods for the consumer isn't always that good for the economy anyway. It hurts profitability which hurts everything. I suggest The Economics of Global Turbulence by Robert Brenner, or even Supercapitalism by Robert Reich. Both are definitely American liberals....

And the logical conclusion of finding intrinsic fault in monopoly pricing, price above marginal cost, would by a total regulation of all successful enterprise.

I can't believe I'm arguing against you on the side of abegweit here :crazyeye:

But to break from his view: again, the dangers of a monopoly come from their political power. And some industries we see as necessities/rights/whatever and so its for the common good to make them cheap.

The mistake you make is in thinking that the monopolist has to price low enough to prevent entry. That is false. All they need to do is present the credible threat that they will do so for the brief time span where the erstwhile competitor drops out. They get the monopoly pricing essentially all of the time that way. And you forget also other actions to stifle competition, such as coercing or bribing 3rd parties and simply buying out or colluding with "competitors".

Any or all of those tactics simply raise the risks to competitive capital to a point where it is too great to justify the investment.

Hygro

Mar 20, 2012, 11:21 AM

The mistake you make is in thinking that the monopolist has to price low enough to prevent entry. That is false. All they need to do is present the credible threat that they will do so for the brief time span where the erstwhile competitor drops out. They get the monopoly pricing essentially all of the time that way. And you forget also other actions to stifle competition, such as coercing or bribing 3rd parties and simply buying out or colluding with "competitors".

Any or all of those tactics simply raise the risks to competitive capital to a point where it is too great to justify the investment.

They can't sustain a price to keep out a competitor, because if there's a high capital cost to enter, then their competitor can hold out too. More important, a competitor won't enter such a high stakes market anyway unless they have a process that gives them a competitive edge, like cheaper production. And yet even more important, the monopolist can't raise price above market conditions, anyway. Just because the monopolist is earning economic profits does not mean he can raise prices to whatever ceiling. It's equally true for a firm in competition not receiving monopoly profit.

The 3rd party coercion stuff I am absolutely not forgetting, and most of that falls outside of economics. Buying out competitors just means you can buy what they are willing to sell. Collusion just means you are setting one of you up for inefficiency, unless you are combining forces to increase efficiency in which case that's economically good.

And bribing whom? Government? Other firms? Either that's not economically effective and benefits competitors in the long term, is economically effective and a positive way, or is outside economics and is therefore, again, the greater danger of monopolies which is aggregated political leverage.

We still haven't identified why economic profit is bad, either.

Cutlass

Mar 20, 2012, 11:30 AM

Hygro

Mar 20, 2012, 11:40 AM

I'm really not seeing where you are coming from. How did the market discipline Standard Oil? Oh wait, it didn't. It took a full human lifetime for the market to discipline General Motors.

The question is, can firms get a price and level of profit above what a competitive market would allow them to get. And clearly the management and owners of firms believe that the answer is yes, otherwise vast areas of common business behavior become entirely nonsensical.

If the answer was no, then there's just no economic justification for most of these horizontal mergers and acquisitions among large firms.

The ultimate irony is that the two biggest periods of income growth among all social classes in the United States occurred during the times of Standard Oil's and GM's alleged unfair market practices.

I don't understand the specific meaning of your question. Can you rephrase?

warpus

Mar 20, 2012, 12:05 PM

Hygro

Mar 20, 2012, 12:19 PM

warpus, we've been talking about monopolies for the last many posts.

Cutlass

Mar 20, 2012, 04:20 PM

The ultimate irony is that the two biggest periods of income growth among all social classes in the United States occurred during the times of Standard Oil's and GM's alleged unfair market practices.

I don't understand the specific meaning of your question. Can you rephrase?

And what would they have been otherwise?

Let's go back to first principles: The single highest rate of profit that can be squeezed out of any given industry is by a monopoly. Businesses are in the business of making as much money as they can. Why would they pass up the most profit they can make? What is stopping them?

Kaiserguard

Mar 20, 2012, 04:23 PM

This right here is the problem I have with anarchism - the lack of realism and pragmatism.

Then why bother being an objectivist at all?!

Ayn Rand

Mar 20, 2012, 04:57 PM

Then why bother being an objectivist at all?!

Dunno. Why project your own mental state onto others?

Yes, I've had this conversation many times before

No, it's not getting any more interesting each time I have itI like boobies

Abegweit

Mar 20, 2012, 08:09 PM

How would a stateless, unregulated free-market deal with monopolies? How would you prevent them from forming?There is no such thing as a monopoly which is not backed by state force. It doesn't exist and never has. Stateless monopolies are an oxymoron.

Abegweit

Mar 20, 2012, 08:17 PM

That book... I got 25ish pages into it and counted at least 2 fundamental, glaring errors that undermined his entire thesis. I can't remember what they are as it was a while ago, but I know that that's a poor book to learn economics.Maybe you should try to remember. And try to defend your claim. It is basic.

I would suggest Principles of Economics by Robert Frank and Ben Bernanke.Helicopter Ben? Just please. Don't go there. Just don't.

But Cutlass already knows most/all of the material in there. It's a really good textbook.Cutlass has the strange tendency to claim that people who deny his nonsense don't exist. It really is bizarre.

Joecoolyo

Mar 20, 2012, 09:35 PM

There is no such thing as a monopoly which is not backed by state force. It doesn't exist and never has. Stateless monopolies are an oxymoron.

-Stateless society
-I own a farm
-I burn down all other farms near me
-I'm the only farm left
-People forced to buy from me to get their food and not starve
-BANG monopoly

ParkCungHee

Mar 20, 2012, 10:52 PM

If any other anarchist wants to chime in, please.
I'll chime in because the problem is uniquely complicated from the Anarcho-Pacifist perspective.

See most problems we're given, like Joecoolyo's are simple to answer. People rarely like the answer, or find it realistic, but it doesn't take much brain power to figure out the appropriate course of action there.

Okay, now forcing food labeling is obviously out. You need violence to achieve that. Even if you intended some sort of penalty/fine type system, that requires property, so again, violence.

Now, the issue here is that while failure to label things can result in violence, such as poisoning an allergic person, the connection between producer and consumer is so distant that it requires not only virtue, but wisdom to avoid harming someone this way.

I would say, that at the very least a society without property would be a society without as much use for profit, which would strongly reduce the incentives to inaccurately label food, which at least be more consistent then a society which incentivizes people to do such a thing in the first place, and then uses violence to prevent it afterwards.

Hygro

Mar 20, 2012, 11:56 PM

And what would they have been otherwise?

Let's go back to first principles: The single highest rate of profit that can be squeezed out of any given industry is by a monopoly. Businesses are in the business of making as much money as they can. Why would they pass up the most profit they can make? What is stopping them?

What would they have been otherwise? Lol we don't know, but we do know your two most "egregious" examples correlate to the greatest growth, so postulating how much better it could have been is a bit silly, don't you think? Maybe they would have been like other times of economic growth without the equal-ish income distribution gains? I dunno, the two times are pretty different from each other, anyway.

You still haven't said why profits are bad. This is very important. Because if profits are bad, then all business should be regulated. If they are good, what's the problem?

Integral

Mar 21, 2012, 12:17 AM

Helicopter Ben? Just please. Don't go there. Just don't.
You're adorable.

I have not seen any arguments about the economic dangers of monopoly. There are political dangers of monopoly, however, if a monopoly chooses social control over profits and harms others. This is a real danger. But monopolies are just as subject to market forces as firms in competitive markets: the market sets the price, and in the end the maximum consumer and producer equilibrium is reached. This is Carl Menger in action and as much as I bag on Austrian economics, I can't argue with this one. Maybe Integral will show me up.
I see your substantive issue and sidestep it until I've had a chance to read the thread.

[briefly, and I don't even know yet if I'm addressing the conversation-] We know monopolies are economically inefficient, for a variety of reasons. Yes, the market sets the price in a monopolistic industry; but quantity is chosen by the monopolist, and chosen to an inefficiently low level. As a result prices are higher than they would be in a competitive industry.

All of the above assumes there are sufficiently high barriers to entry to keep out potential competitors, and an absence of government interference, but those extensions can be handled quite naturally and without difficulty.

Hygro

Mar 21, 2012, 12:31 AM

But quantity isn't chosen by the monopolist, so long as he's a rational actor seeking to maximize profit.

ParkCungHee

Mar 21, 2012, 12:41 AM

Well, I suppose it's here that it becomes clear that economic problems of monopolies, and social problems of monopolies are not unrelated. Leveraging social control can often maximize profits.

Integral

Mar 21, 2012, 12:43 AM

But quantity isn't chosen by the monopolist, so long as he's a rational actor seeking to maximize profit.

?

Let's start with theory then work back to something resembling the real world. I'm confused now.

The monopolist's problem is to maximize profit. He does that when MR = MC. Now MR and MC are functions of quantity, so the firm chooses quantity optimally to satisfy his problem (dependent in part on the characteristics of the market esp. demand elasticity), the price is determined by the market (given the optimal quantity), and profits are determined jointly by the cost structure, optimal quantity, and optimal price.

And there is some evidence that firms do indeed choose quantity, sometimes. The Japanese self-imposed quotas on car imports in the 80s, for example. OPEC chooses quantities.

More broadly, the firm has to choose either price or quantity. Both can't be given to him - otherwise there is no problem for the firm to solve! :)

Hygro

Mar 21, 2012, 02:14 AM

but "maximum profit" is given to them, according to the calculus, the same as in competition. And if they aren't sufficiently maximizing profit (or have the government to protect them to keep price down) they are at risk of other firms entering the market anyway. Barriers to entry are real, but only up to a point before they really aren't economic in nature. And that point can be broken by innovation, which is how you break into a saturated competitive market, too.

@Park, that's true, which is why the dangers of monopoly come outside of economics.

ParkCungHee

Mar 21, 2012, 02:20 AM

Hygro

Mar 21, 2012, 03:37 AM

I thought economics was supposed to be the study of the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services.
How can any action undertaken to maximize your access to goods and services be outside of economics?
All realms of human activity can relate to these things, so all human things can be measured economically. But that doesn't mean economics is the appropriate discipline for their study or classification. If a firm uses its great wealth to influence social control to stifle future competition, buys legislators, engages in government corruption, starts shooting its organizing workers, etc, those all have measurable economic effects, sometimes critically so. But they are actions outside of economics. You can very reasonably disagree but I think it's a useful distinction.

ParkCungHee

Mar 21, 2012, 03:41 AM

Hygro

Mar 21, 2012, 04:39 AM

I don't think so. I think it's an entirely artificial, ideological distinction.

It makes me so angry that I want to put in a decade of study, get my degrees, and branch out to do economic studies of piracy, cattle rustling, extortion rackets and machine politics because damnit, people have been making their money that way a lot longer then LLCs.

:lol:

Look I don't disagree with your newfound academic dream, and there's nothing un-economic about oil companies using paramilitaries to root out resistance to their drilling and making sure they hire the grimmest thugs to do it, the kind that will cut off villagers' hands to make a point.

But there is something un-economic about using those tactics to secure power and social domination outside of profit. So rather, I was talking about the reverse order of things: using your profit for ill ends, rather than ill means for profit. Even if they can play into each other.

And what do you mean the distinction was "ideological"?

ParkCungHee

Mar 21, 2012, 04:46 AM

And what do you mean the distinction was "ideological"?
Well mainly that it seems to draw a distinction between "legitimate" and "illegitimate" violence when considering if something is a topic for economics or not. Economics largely works on the assumption of property which already is a statement of violence, and feels totally free to consider the actions of state violence (Taxation Policy, etc.) but the moment when other forms of violence come up, it's treated as foreign to economics.

It seems to largely consider certain forms of action to be within the "normal" range of procuring goods, and certain activities to be outside them, and the ones "within" economics largely conforms to behavior expected of us by the state.

Ayn Rand

Mar 21, 2012, 05:05 AM

Hygro

Mar 21, 2012, 05:24 AM

Well mainly that it seems to draw a distinction between "legitimate" and "illegitimate" violence when considering if something is a topic for economics or not. Economics largely works on the assumption of property which already is a statement of violence, and feels totally free to consider the actions of state violence (Taxation Policy, etc.) but the moment when other forms of violence come up, it's treated as foreign to economics.

It seems to largely consider certain forms of action to be within the "normal" range of procuring goods, and certain activities to be outside them, and the ones "within" economics largely conforms to behavior expected of us by the state.
I agree with this criticism, but I'm not sure how this is particularly ideological. It just means we're trying to work with different interpretive categories to communicate things.

So for example, my original argument was that monopolies can pose a political and social threat, but as a profit-maximizing agent--implicitly I meant respecting the rule of law (and not much law needed)--it poses no "economic threat" by charging prices above marginal cost, or by being profitable.

So that's not a particular ideologically driven set of distinctions. Instead it is a set of distinctions to help us understand something in relation to other things.

This is one reason why many people have no respect for economics - it simply doesn't deal with the real World, as you say.

And why most of my classes are critiques of economics. I'm taking a class taught by Christina and David Romer. Top macro economists in the world. They regard the shocks, the "black swans" as we know them, as "random". They are outside macroeconomics. But they are the single most important agent of economic change in the macroeconomy! Sure, the discipline is good at knowing how to react to them, but if the most important part of your study is outside the scope of your study..... awful.

Traitorfish

Mar 21, 2012, 06:00 AM

Depends on what secession. The problem with individual secession is that they want to retain the benefits but not the responsibilities. The problem with regional secession is that they want to take with them many people that they don't have a right to take, and, in the case of the ACW, they refused to do it in a way that was acceptable to all parties.

Now a secession could be legitimate in some instances. But the way it is done and the motive for doing so count. Saying "We aren't going to follow your rules, because we want to oppress our people more than you would allow us to" isn't a very good motive for secession. Saying " We have little in common and are only part of the same country because some defunct empire forced us together" is a whole different story.
So what's your criteria (in terms however broad) for a legitimate secession?

I said the biggest, not the only. And it is. While it is true that businesses get many benefits from government (the US economy has been a public-private partnership from day one), the biggest thing businesses ask for is to be left alone to do any damned thing they please.

Businesses have funded think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute and CATO, and funded university programs like the Chicago School, for decades to build an intellectual foundation for laissez faire. Vast fortunes and decades of efforts have gone into justifying deregulation. And that doesn't even count the costs of lobbyists and campaign contributions. Deregulation is a major industry in the US.

Businesses have fought to get out from under regulations for as long as there has been regulations. A lot of the "right-libertarian" ideology as a whole was developed for no reason other than to fight to set businesses free. Not to mention the Austrian and Chicago schools of economics.

Given that the effort and cost that goes into the concept, far more than is even spent on tax breaks and lobbying for defense contracts, how is it not what they want the most?
I think that your taking an overly reductionist approach to this issue. By reducing "government intervention" to a single form of activity, which a given party may want more or less of, you lose sight of the distinctions between different forms of government activity. Business wants less of certain kinds of government activity- enforcing union contracts, collecting taxes, etc.- but they are perfectly happy with other kinds of government activity, and, indeed, would like to see plenty more- suppressing protests, protecting private property, etc. Amadeus, in declaring the authority of the state illegitimate in both regards, that it has no more right to hold a head to the gun of the striking worker than to the CEO, makes a fundamental break with laissez faire statism.

What free contracts? Seems to me the anarcho-capitalists are going to prevent free contracts, by force if necessary. They cannot get what they want except by preventing others from making free choices.
I don't really follow. Anarcho-capitalists regard free and voluntary contracts as the only legitimate basis of collective activity, and so regard the unfree and coerced contract established between the state and the individual as illegitimate. What in that implies that they are opposed to free contracts? :confused:

How are they better than any other aristocracy?
In what sense do anarcho-capitalists represent an "aristocracy"? I know that Americans are quite loose of the word compared to Europeans, but I've honestly never heard it used to describe a disparate political tendency.

So you are saying that in order to not have a state, people not only have to keep their heads down and not be noticed, but they also have to be either in a location where no one else wants what they have, can take what they have, or they the military force to protect themselves from any likely aggressor.
I'm simply observing the historical circumstances in which such societies existed. Any stateless society today would have to be quite different.

But what was their form of government internally? Did they really have none? Or is it instead just a microstate?
They certainly had government in the sense of social organisation, it simply did not take the form of state government. That's an historically specific form of social organisation- again, for purposes of discussion we can assume a Weberian definition of "an entity claiming a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence"- not one inherent to social organisation as such. If that was the case, then every hunter-gatherer band would be a "state", which would strech the concept so much as to render it entirely meaningless.

Is it coherent? Seems to me it's more based on a bunch of failed comprehension of the real world.
How so? Unless I'm misunderstanding, your primary objections to it are analytical and ethical, rather than empirical; not a disagreement about what happens, but how we understand it, and whether it is legitimate or illegitimate.

Yes. It is a moral obligation to make a serious attempt to resolve disputes within a mutually acceptable framework before going outside of it.
How do we determine if a framework is indeed "mutually acceptable"? That's a subjective judgement, so it's not something that can be prescribed (let alone retrospectively).

Hygro

Mar 21, 2012, 06:25 AM

Side note, I have a 5 page paper due on Weber.

Anyway, yeah, Traitorfish is correct, Cutlass, on the stark division between the anarcho-capitalist idea articulated by amadeus and the liberalist statism articulated by those you hold in poor regard. Not that it doesn't have its own, often similar, problems. But there's a real hard wall between them.

Maybe you should try to remember. And try to defend your claim. It is basic.
Yeah it was basic, hence why I stopped reading the book. I remembered one, which is that "supply is demand". Rofl. An intelligent postulate when invented, thankfully abandoned when the resulting logic didn't hold to the real world. Demand for the medium of exchange, or money, is enough to debunk it let alone that it is demand that generates supply, not supply that is its own demand.

Cutlass

Mar 21, 2012, 07:21 AM

There is no such thing as a monopoly which is not backed by state force. It doesn't exist and never has. Stateless monopolies are an oxymoron.

Since government is the only force that can prevent or break up a monopoly, that statement is nonsensical.

What would they have been otherwise? Lol we don't know, but we do know your two most "egregious" examples correlate to the greatest growth, so postulating how much better it could have been is a bit silly, don't you think? Maybe they would have been like other times of economic growth without the equal-ish income distribution gains? I dunno, the two times are pretty different from each other, anyway.

You still haven't said why profits are bad. This is very important. Because if profits are bad, then all business should be regulated. If they are good, what's the problem?

I never claimed profits were bad. Only profits above what can be earned in a competitive market. (And I am excluding profits to patents from other monopolies) Why is that? You get a suboptimal distribution of resources. Consumers get less for their money, and are notably worse off. Producers are essentially confiscating something that they could not earn on their own.

So it is unjust, but it also encourages a lack of innovation and slower economic growth. Consumers have less disposable income, so businesses will invest less to earn that income. Businesses will innovate less, the monopolist because it is profit maximizing to sell the same thing for as long as possible, the other industries simply because there is less money to be made.

Monopoly is the enemy of Schumpeter. There is less creation of the new to challenge the old. So the sum total creation of wealth over time will be restricted.

But quantity isn't chosen by the monopolist, so long as he's a rational actor seeking to maximize profit.

Quantity is always chosen by the firm. That's what firms do. It can't really be otherwise. Aggregate quantity is chosen by the aggregate of firms. So that is out of the control of any one firm in a competitive market. But in a non-competitive market controlling output is the way to go.

Now in some cases firms also control quality of output. In the US auto industry, quality sucked, despite the Big 3 being the biggest, best capitalized, and in many respects most innovative firms. But the Big 3 from WWII until the 1980s did not compete on quality or price. One of the Big 3 would make a public announcement every year "We are raising our prices across the board 4-5-6 or whatever percent" and the other 2 would match that percentage increase within 1 or 2 points shortly thereafter. And the market shares of the Big 3 remained essentially unchanged for half a century.

but "maximum profit" is given to them, according to the calculus, the same as in competition. And if they aren't sufficiently maximizing profit (or have the government to protect them to keep price down) they are at risk of other firms entering the market anyway. Barriers to entry are real, but only up to a point before they really aren't economic in nature. And that point can be broken by innovation, which is how you break into a saturated competitive market, too.

@Park, that's true, which is why the dangers of monopoly come outside of economics.

I don't think you have a very realistic view of barriers to entry. You seem to be assuming that capital markets are efficient to the good of the whole rather than the good of the stockholders. But if the goal is to maximize the return to the stockholder, well the monopoly is what does that. So why would the capital markets fund something that by its very nature reduces total return to stockholders?

And while innovation may break in to a non-competitive market, that does not mean that it will happen. You just can't count on it, and you have to look at each market situation individually. And even if it does happen, it can take decades where the sum total of the economy is made worse off.

Further, what's to stop firms from using those "extra market" actions and treats if government is not doing so?

What you don't seem to understand about barriers to entry is that if the threat is real, then most of the time the threat is sufficient, and so there are no monetary costs to maintaining the barrier.

:lol:

Look I don't disagree with your newfound academic dream, and there's nothing un-economic about oil companies using paramilitaries to root out resistance to their drilling and making sure they hire the grimmest thugs to do it, the kind that will cut off villagers' hands to make a point.

But there is something un-economic about using those tactics to secure power and social domination outside of profit. So rather, I was talking about the reverse order of things: using your profit for ill ends, rather than ill means for profit. Even if they can play into each other.

And what do you mean the distinction was "ideological"?

If you are securing power and social domination, you are securing profit. :)

Essentially you have a Chicago School "the free market will solve anything" viewpoint, and the past decade really should have cured you of that.

Cutlass

Mar 21, 2012, 12:04 PM

So what's your criteria (in terms however broad) for a legitimate secession?

There would have to be referendum of some form to make certain that the majority of the people really did want it. There would have to be every reasonable attempt made within the existing legal framework to reconcile the grievances short of violence. There would have to be some sort of compensation agreement so that those who are harmed get redress. There may have to be relocation assistance to those who do not want to be part of the break away area. The reasoning would have to be for the benefit of the populace, not to gain the ability to oppress them further. Things along those lines.

I would still be generally reluctant to go along with it, but would not oppose it in all cases. It becomes situational, not a general principle.

I think that your taking an overly reductionist approach to this issue. By reducing "government intervention" to a single form of activity, which a given party may want more or less of, you lose sight of the distinctions between different forms of government activity. Business wants less of certain kinds of government activity- enforcing union contracts, collecting taxes, etc.- but they are perfectly happy with other kinds of government activity, and, indeed, would like to see plenty more- suppressing protests, protecting private property, etc. Amadeus, in declaring the authority of the state illegitimate in both regards, that it has no more right to hold a head to the gun of the striking worker than to the CEO, makes a fundamental break with laissez faire statism.

Well if that is true than Ama takes a more extreme view than many people I have read and interacted with in the past. That, however, I don't see as invalidating the other parts of my point.

I don't really follow. Anarcho-capitalists regard free and voluntary contracts as the only legitimate basis of collective activity, and so regard the unfree and coerced contract established between the state and the individual as illegitimate. What in that implies that they are opposed to free contracts? :confused:

Quite a few times I have managed to piss off amadeus by suggesting that he or his views are much more authoritarian than anything I am willing to accept.

Here's the irony: He may think of himself as an anarchist, but his positions really are more authoritarian than I am willing to accept.

How does that work? It works because you are not defending free and voluntary contracts. You are defending the most aggressive of coercion. For the vast majority of people under the system you are describing the choices are to do exactly what they are told to do or be subject to crushing punishment. No third options are being presented. No freedom of choice is being presented. No liberty is being presented.

You make the case that with government, it is inherited generation to generation, and so there was no informed consent going in for each additional individual. How much more so is that true when under this Anarcho-capitalists model there isn't, not just no way to opt out of it, but no way to redress grievances within it. If you are born in a liberal democracy, you can at least make an effort to change the laws. If you are born in Anarcho-capitalism, you don't even have that much right to consent to how others control your life.

You frame it as a choice between consent and non-consent, when the real choice is between a system in which you can at least try to change it and one in which you are utterly and completely powerless to do anything other than exactly what you are told to do, or resort to armed insurrection.

This Anarcho-capitalism that you describe doesn't have even a small fraction of the personal liberty that the US has right now.

And it doesn't even have a small fraction of the choosing to consent to it.

If I want public schools, under Anarcho-capitalism I can't have it. If I want public libraries, under Anarcho-capitalism I can't have it. If I want public roads, under Anarcho-capitalism I can't have it. If I want public law enforcement and courts, under Anarcho-capitalism I can't have it. Even if the majority of the people agree with me. These options are simply off the table.

By fiat, not by consent.

I never got an answer to THIS POST (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=11194644&postcount=145) in that old tread. What is the answer? It is fine to believe in these things, but how do you enforce them without a government?

Or here's a differing libertarian view on it from a blog that Integral linked one day:

A Libertarian Rehabilitation of Hobbes
By Kevin Vallier On February 21, 2012

I think that libertarian hostility to Hobbes has blinded them to one of his deepest insights, an insight that in many ways makes him less authoritarian than many of the libertarians I know.
...

Let’s begin with some review. Hobbes believes that all people are naturally free and equal.* That is, no one was born with natural authority over others. Political authority can only come from agreement. Yes, Hobbes has a notion of tacit consent and yes, Hobbes believed in a limited set of natural laws that prescribe some natural duties. But he nonetheless recognized that in a great many circumstances, for John to have a duty to obey Reba, John must have agreed to that duty.

...

Traditional libertarians criticize Hobbes for thinking that disagreement is a disaster. Through the market, private property and limited government, we can go our separate ways and live together well. I agree with that criticism. Libertarians also recognize that some property claims will be the subject of dispute and so arbiters are needed (at least in the form of protection agencies or a minimal state). I agree with that too.

However, the problem with traditional libertarians is that they confine the range of reasonable disagreement to disputes about how to make libertarian property rights more determinate and resolve disputes among legitimate property holders. In other words, they think the range of disagreement is rather small and so arbiters have limited authority.

But let’s confront traditional libertarians with an undeniable truth: reasonable people disagree about way more political and moral matters than the scope of libertarian property rights. In fact, the large majority of reasonable people find libertarian conceptions of property rights deeply objectionable. And many of those reasonable disagreements remain after they become familiar with libertarian arguments.

So let me pose a question to traditional libertarians (related to one of my previous posts): you want to set up a libertarian society because you think it is required by justice and to serve the common good. But your free and equal fellows reasonably reject your conception of property rights. As a result, the coercion you are prepared to use to defend your property against their encroachments will be coercion that they have strong reason to reject.

Libertarians avoid the problem of private judgment by implicitly assuming that libertarian property rights are the default no-coercion point. A society without coercion is a society with property rights. But that’s false. Property rights are coercive. That does not mean that property rights cannot be justified. It just means that the coercion involved in defending property rights must be justified to all persons.

I suspect most libertarians will respond that they can use coercion to protect their justly acquired property no matter what other reasonable people think. After all, libertarianism is true and statism is false. But that means that you, libertarian, are prepared to coerce your equal to do what you demand even though she has not agreed and will likely not agree were you to explain your reasoning to her. That is, you are prepared to subordinate your non-libertarian fellows to your will.

...
http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2012/02/a-libertarian-rehabilitation-of-hobbes/

There's the trick, you see. Everything is boiled down to what the handful of property owners tell you it is all boiled down to. There is no freedom, no liberty, other than the very narrow definition which gives the few absolute power over the many.

Which is the answer to your next point:

In what sense do anarcho-capitalists represent an "aristocracy"? I know that Americans are quite loose of the word compared to Europeans, but I've honestly never heard it used to describe a disparate political tendency.

The few control everything. The many have no say. How is that not broadly similar to the worst of what aristocracy has to offer? And, btw, is more or less what the Confederates wanted as well.

I'm simply observing the historical circumstances in which such societies existed. Any stateless society today would have to be quite different.

In other words, not really relevant to anything. :p

They certainly had government in the sense of social organisation, it simply did not take the form of state government. That's an historically specific form of social organisation- again, for purposes of discussion we can assume a Weberian definition of "an entity claiming a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence"- not one inherent to social organisation as such. If that was the case, then every hunter-gatherer band would be a "state", which would strech the concept so much as to render it entirely meaningless.

:dunno:

How so? Unless I'm misunderstanding, your primary objections to it are analytical and ethical, rather than empirical; not a disagreement about what happens, but how we understand it, and whether it is legitimate or illegitimate.

(This discussion is too fragmented, I'm losing track of which points we are on and it's taking me more time to retrieve the direction of the discussion than it is to frame an answer :p )

These "anti-statist" people, as you describe them, are imagining a world with no actual reason to assume the world will be like that, other than that want it to be.

"I really like X, and I really want Y, therefor X must lead to Y". :crazyeye: What empirical evidence connects X to Y?

How do we determine if a framework is indeed "mutually acceptable"? That's a subjective judgement, so it's not something that can be prescribed (let alone retrospectively).

With any given process, not everyone can get everything that they want. But is the process one that can be agreed to as the best available one to pursue what each wants?

Whether it be democracy, or courts of law, or the battlefield, both sides want something. One side will get it. Or a compromise will be achieved somewhere in the middle.

Traitorfish

Mar 21, 2012, 03:35 PM

There would have to be referendum of some form to make certain that the majority of the people really did want it. There would have to be every reasonable attempt made within the existing legal framework to reconcile the grievances short of violence. There would have to be some sort of compensation agreement so that those who are harmed get redress. There may have to be relocation assistance to those who do not want to be part of the break away area. The reasoning would have to be for the benefit of the populace, not to gain the ability to oppress them further. Things along those lines.

I would still be generally reluctant to go along with it, but would not oppose it in all cases. It becomes situational, not a general principle.
This all seems to assume that the existing government can be understood as a legitiamte one. What you say about situations in which the existing government was not legitimate; are the secessionist party obliged to work within terms imposed by an illegitimate regime? To take an historical example, the British state in Ireland in 1798 (at that point taking the form of the semi-autonomous Kingdom of Ireland) was an undemocratic racial-supremacist state which repressed political opposition through state terror. By any reasonable measure, it was wholly illegitimate. Were the nationalists still obliged to pursue its goals to the fullest extent permitted within the framework of the illegitimate British state, or would it have been acceptable for them to reject the framework out of hand and pursue unilateral revolutionary separation, as the United Irishmen attempted in that year?

Well if that is true than Ama takes a more extreme view than many people I have read and interacted with in the past. That, however, I don't see as invalidating the other parts of my point.
That's what I was criticising, though: the idea that government activity is all of an essentially homogeneous kind, and that individualist anarchism is simply the slider set to zero. As I've said, it's not: different kinds of government activity are qualitatively distinct, so Amadeus, in rejecting all government activity, establishes a qualitative merely than quantitative distinction between himself and laissez faire statists who only reject government activities of a certain kind.

Quite a few times I have managed to piss off amadeus by suggesting that he or his views are much more authoritarian than anything I am willing to accept.

Here's the irony: He may think of himself as an anarchist, but his positions really are more authoritarian than I am willing to accept.

How does that work? It works because you are not defending free and voluntary contracts. You are defending the most aggressive of coercion. For the vast majority of people under the system you are describing the choices are to do exactly what they are told to do or be subject to crushing punishment. No third options are being presented. No freedom of choice is being presented. No liberty is being presented.

You make the case that with government, it is inherited generation to generation, and so there was no informed consent going in for each additional individual. How much more so is that true when under this Anarcho-capitalists model there isn't, not just no way to opt out of it, but no way to redress grievances within it. If you are born in a liberal democracy, you can at least make an effort to change the laws. If you are born in Anarcho-capitalism, you don't even have that much right to consent to how others control your life.

You frame it as a choice between consent and non-consent, when the real choice is between a system in which you can at least try to change it and one in which you are utterly and completely powerless to do anything other than exactly what you are told to do, or resort to armed insurrection.

This Anarcho-capitalism that you describe doesn't have even a small fraction of the personal liberty that the US has right now.

And it doesn't even have a small fraction of the choosing to consent to it.

If I want public schools, under Anarcho-capitalism I can't have it. If I want public libraries, under Anarcho-capitalism I can't have it. If I want public roads, under Anarcho-capitalism I can't have it. If I want public law enforcement and courts, under Anarcho-capitalism I can't have it. Even if the majority of the people agree with me. These options are simply off the table.

By fiat, not by consent.

I never got an answer to THIS POST (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=11194644&postcount=145) in that old tread. What is the answer? It is fine to believe in these things, but how do you enforce them without a government?

Or here's a differing libertarian view on it from a blog that Integral linked one day:

http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2012/02/a-libertarian-rehabilitation-of-hobbes/

There's the trick, you see. Everything is boiled down to what the handful of property owners tell you it is all boiled down to. There is no freedom, no liberty, other than the very narrow definition which gives the few absolute power over the many.

Which is the answer to your next point:
What this seems to amount to is a criticism of the natural rights theory of property, so I have to wonder: is this the best line to take, given that you, as a liberal, hold to a stronger version of the same theory? Rothbard et al. may regard property rights as sacrosanct, but in rejecting any state capable of enforcing them, it amounts to no more than a series of ethical claims; in practice, property rights are founded in goodwill and are thus constantly renegotiable. (A lot of market anarchists, accepting a Proudhonian critique of private property, prefer to start from here in the first place.) In contrast, while you may hold to a "softer" theory of property rights in that you accept certain infringements upon them by the state, you also accept the right of the state to use violence in defence of those rights.
And, frankly, if we're going to accuse somebody of being "authoritarian", I'd have to say that it's the person who thinks that the state should physically obliterate people who don't do what they're told.

The few control everything. The many have no say. How is that not broadly similar to the worst of what aristocracy has to offer? And, btw, is more or less what the Confederates wanted as well.
How does a given program producing a certain result imply that the advocates if that program are the result? It's like claiming that Thomas Jefferson was a bicameral federal republic.

In other words, not really relevant to anything. :p
Not really, just answering a question.

(This discussion is too fragmented, I'm losing track of which points we are on and it's taking me more time to retrieve the direction of the discussion than it is to frame an answer :p )

These "anti-statist" people, as you describe them, are imagining a world with no actual reason to assume the world will be like that, other than that want it to be.

"I really like X, and I really want Y, therefor X must lead to Y". :crazyeye: What empirical evidence connects X to Y?
I'm not really sure I follow. Unless I'm missing something, we've been discussing anti-statism as a body of criticism (specifically, we began with Amadeus' rejection of the legitimacy of the use of coercion to prevent political disassociation), not as any particular program, so I don't really know which individuals or what ideals you're talking about.

With any given process, not everyone can get everything that they want. But is the process one that can be agreed to as the best available one to pursue what each wants?

Whether it be democracy, or courts of law, or the battlefield, both sides want something. One side will get it. Or a compromise will be achieved somewhere in the middle.
What happens if neither party can agree on such a process?

Cutlass

Mar 21, 2012, 05:05 PM

This all seems to assume that the existing government can be understood as a legitiamte one. What you say about situations in which the existing government was not legitimate; are the secessionist party obliged to work within terms imposed by an illegitimate regime? To take an historical example, the British state in Ireland in 1798 (at that point taking the form of the semi-autonomous Kingdom of Ireland) was an undemocratic racial-supremacist state which repressed political opposition through state terror. By any reasonable measure, it was wholly illegitimate. Were the nationalists still obliged to pursue its goals to the fullest extent permitted within the framework of the illegitimate British state, or would it have been acceptable for them to reject the framework out of hand and pursue unilateral revolutionary separation, as the United Irishmen attempted in that year?

And, as I said, "every reasonable effort". Sometimes there may not be a reasonable effort other than war. But that's a last resort, not a first one.

A defining characteristic of the ACW was not that the South chose war, but that they chose war before exploring other alternatives. And they chose war where there was overall no other reason for violence. There was no harm done to the South by the North that would justify resorting to violence first.

That's what I was criticising, though: the idea that government activity is all of an essentially homogeneous kind, and that individualist anarchism is simply the slider set to zero. As I've said, it's not: different kinds of government activity are qualitatively distinct, so Amadeus, in rejecting all government activity, establishes a qualitative merely than quantitative distinction between himself and laissez faire statists who only reject government activities of a certain kind.

Fair enough.

What this seems to amount to is a criticism of the natural rights theory of property, so I have to wonder: is this the best line to take, given that you, as a liberal, hold to a stronger version of the same theory? Rothbard et al. may regard property rights as sacrosanct, but in rejecting any state capable of enforcing them, it amounts to no more than a series of ethical claims; in practice, property rights are founded in goodwill and are thus constantly renegotiable. (A lot of market anarchists, accepting a Proudhonian critique of private property, prefer to start from here in the first place.) In contrast, while you may hold to a "softer" theory of property rights in that you accept certain infringements upon them by the state, you also accept the right of the state to use violence in defence of those rights.
And, frankly, if we're going to accuse somebody of being "authoritarian", I'd have to say that it's the person who thinks that the state should physically obliterate people who don't do what they're told.

I don't know the philosophy behind some of those positions, and quite frankly have minimal interest. But how is it more authoritarian to have a government that I can petition and work with in regards to obliterating people, and a individuals who can do the same for no reason whatsoever?

You are not making a distinction between these anarchists and the worst of all governments and aristocrats. All you are telling me is that they are the same as far as the average person is concerned.

How does a given program producing a certain result imply that the advocates if that program are the result? It's like claiming that Thomas Jefferson was a bicameral federal republic.

:huh:

Not really, just answering a question.

k

I'm not really sure I follow. Unless I'm missing something, we've been discussing anti-statism as a body of criticism (specifically, we began with Amadeus' rejection of the legitimacy of the use of coercion to prevent political disassociation), not as any particular program, so I don't really know which individuals or what ideals you're talking about.

What I am trying to say is that, as best as I can understand it from what is being said, these "anti-statists", as you label them, have as the core of their criticism a group of beliefs that are in and of themselves irrational.

They are not seeing the same world that I am seeing. And so there's no way to have a constructive discussion without shocking them into seeing the world objectively.

When not speaking the same language one could at least attempt to translate. When looking at black and white and seeing stinky and smooth instead, there isn't even a common frame of reference by which to have a productive discussion.

What happens if neither party can agree on such a process?

edit: misread that last part. .

If you can't even agree on a process, then I guess you're stuck with violence. Which is why it makes sense for a state to have a legitimate monopoly on that.

Hygro

Mar 21, 2012, 09:33 PM

Since government is the only force that can prevent or break up a monopoly, that statement is nonsensical.

I never claimed profits were bad. Only profits above what can be earned in a competitive market. (And I am excluding profits to patents from other monopolies) Why is that? You get a suboptimal distribution of resources. Consumers get less for their money, and are notably worse off. Producers are essentially confiscating something that they could not earn on their own.

So it is unjust, but it also encourages a lack of innovation and slower economic growth. Consumers have less disposable income, so businesses will invest less to earn that income. Businesses will innovate less, the monopolist because it is profit maximizing to sell the same thing for as long as possible, the other industries simply because there is less money to be made.

Monopoly is the enemy of Schumpeter. There is less creation of the new to challenge the old. So the sum total creation of wealth over time will be restricted.

Quantity is always chosen by the firm. That's what firms do. It can't really be otherwise. Aggregate quantity is chosen by the aggregate of firms. So that is out of the control of any one firm in a competitive market. But in a non-competitive market controlling output is the way to go.

Now in some cases firms also control quality of output. In the US auto industry, quality sucked, despite the Big 3 being the biggest, best capitalized, and in many respects most innovative firms. But the Big 3 from WWII until the 1980s did not compete on quality or price. One of the Big 3 would make a public announcement every year "We are raising our prices across the board 4-5-6 or whatever percent" and the other 2 would match that percentage increase within 1 or 2 points shortly thereafter. And the market shares of the Big 3 remained essentially unchanged for half a century.

I don't think you have a very realistic view of barriers to entry. You seem to be assuming that capital markets are efficient to the good of the whole rather than the good of the stockholders. But if the goal is to maximize the return to the stockholder, well the monopoly is what does that. So why would the capital markets fund something that by its very nature reduces total return to stockholders?

And while innovation may break in to a non-competitive market, that does not mean that it will happen. You just can't count on it, and you have to look at each market situation individually. And even if it does happen, it can take decades where the sum total of the economy is made worse off.

Further, what's to stop firms from using those "extra market" actions and treats if government is not doing so?

What you don't seem to understand about barriers to entry is that if the threat is real, then most of the time the threat is sufficient, and so there are no monetary costs to maintaining the barrier.

If you are securing power and social domination, you are securing profit. :)

Essentially you have a Chicago School "the free market will solve anything" viewpoint, and the past decade really should have cured you of that.

Cutlass you're overreaching what you think I think, and forgetting some of the things I already addressed. Furthermore, It's hard to address "efficiency" because that means different things in different contexts. Is efficient resource distribution with present resources the most efficient, or is reinvestment more efficient? I never said monopoly shouldn't be regulated, but rather that we should reexamine why.

Additionally, any product with product differentiation is in monopolistic competition at least, making for the same above-competition profit levels. If we wanted to prevent undue monopoly we need to regulate advertising and branding. And profitability corresponds pretty directly with economic growth so we need to think carefully about the role of profits now or utility now.

I would like to address all the points in your post but everytime I think to try I get fatigued at the thought. I agree with some of it and disagree with other parts. Yes U of C economic thinking is affecting my logic. Gary Becker makes a similar case. No, I don't come to the same conclusions that he or any of them do.

Traitorfish

Mar 22, 2012, 04:20 PM

And, as I said, "every reasonable effort". Sometimes there may not be a reasonable effort other than war. But that's a last resort, not a first one.

A defining characteristic of the ACW was not that the South chose war, but that they chose war before exploring other alternatives. And they chose war where there was overall no other reason for violence. There was no harm done to the South by the North that would justify resorting to violence first.
How does "reasonableness" relate to the legitimacy of the state? To go back to the Irish example, the United Irishmen had far from exhausted the legal means available to them; a number of progressive political reforms had in fact been enacted in the 1780s under the influence of the parliamentary Irish Patriot Party, and the failure of the radical insurrection would in fact be a major justification given by the Repealers for their thoroughgoing constitutionalism. But, as I said, the British state in Ireland at that time was a racist, terroristic oligarchy; not merely an illegitimate state, but the very state in regards to which the modern theory of popular legitimacy was constructed, and which was found wanting. So was this a case of reasonable or unreasonable violence?

I don't know the philosophy behind some of those positions, and quite frankly have minimal interest. But how is it more authoritarian to have a government that I can petition and work with in regards to obliterating people, and a individuals who can do the same for no reason whatsoever?

You are not making a distinction between these anarchists and the worst of all governments and aristocrats. All you are telling me is that they are the same as far as the average person is concerned.
I'm afraid I don't really understand this bit. Who can obliterate who? Do you think that Amadeus is actually arguing that private individuals and entities are entitled to coerce each other, or simply that you don't think a stateless society would be able to prevent this from happening?

:huh:
You describe anarcho-capitalists as an "aristocracy", because their program would, you claim, produce a social elite indistinguishable from an aristocracy. But that doesn't imply that anarcho-capitalists are themselves an aristocracy; in fact, as far as I know, the overlap between this potential and proponents of anarcho-capitalism is precisely nil. (This would seem to validate my earlier comments about the fundamental authoritarianism of laissez faire statists.)

What I am trying to say is that, as best as I can understand it from what is being said, these "anti-statists", as you label them, have as the core of their criticism a group of beliefs that are in and of themselves irrational.

They are not seeing the same world that I am seeing. And so there's no way to have a constructive discussion without shocking them into seeing the world objectively.

When not speaking the same language one could at least attempt to translate. When looking at black and white and seeing stinky and smooth instead, there isn't even a common frame of reference by which to have a productive discussion.
At the risk of sounding dense, but: how so? As far as I can tell, both of you and them are working in the same basic framework of natural rights liberalism, you just draw different conclusions about the necessity of the state, the legitimacy of coercion and the inalienability of property. It amounts to an argument about which bits of Locke you like, and which bits you don't. :dunno:

If you can't even agree on a process, then I guess you're stuck with violence. Which is why it makes sense for a state to have a legitimate monopoly on that.
But what about conflicts with the state? It seems highly unreasonable, to me, to expect the state to remain the neutral arbiter that it is purported to be in conflicts which it is actually involved. It's like setting up a peace conference and then asking one of the belligerent parties to moderate. (The separation of powers is the obvious answer, but that would only seem to satisfy in regards to conflicts with parts of the state, not with the state as such.)

Cutlass

Mar 24, 2012, 01:24 PM

How does "reasonableness" relate to the legitimacy of the state? To go back to the Irish example, the United Irishmen had far from exhausted the legal means available to them; a number of progressive political reforms had in fact been enacted in the 1780s under the influence of the parliamentary Irish Patriot Party, and the failure of the radical insurrection would in fact be a major justification given by the Repealers for their thoroughgoing constitutionalism. But, as I said, the British state in Ireland at that time was a racist, terroristic oligarchy; not merely an illegitimate state, but the very state in regards to which the modern theory of popular legitimacy was constructed, and which was found wanting. So was this a case of reasonable or unreasonable violence?

If they are actively harming people, when it's reasonable to react with violence comes in a lot quicker.

I'm afraid I don't really understand this bit. Who can obliterate who? Do you think that Amadeus is actually arguing that private individuals and entities are entitled to coerce each other, or simply that you don't think a stateless society would be able to prevent this from happening?

Amadeus may not think it will happen. But that is an outrageously ridiculous thing to believe.

When Europeans first colonized the Americas, it wasn't the European states colonizing, it was private adventurers and business investors. Some with Crown backing, but not with Crown governance. And these were some of the most destructive and oppressive events in human history.

Government didn't do it, but it was among the worst things humans have ever done.

Of course they made their own governments afterward, but that was in the way of justifying what they had done as private actors.

Time and time again you find private actions that are as bad and worse than government actions. This whole concept of only the government doing the bad things, or the bad things private actors do only happening because of government actions or backing is ludicrous on the face of it. There is nothing in human history that makes it appear even remotely plausible.

It is not that a stateless society would be unable to prevent horror and oppression from happening, it would in fact actively aid and abet horror and oppression.

You describe anarcho-capitalists as an "aristocracy", because their program would, you claim, produce a social elite indistinguishable from an aristocracy. But that doesn't imply that anarcho-capitalists are themselves an aristocracy; in fact, as far as I know, the overlap between this potential and proponents of anarcho-capitalism is precisely nil. (This would seem to validate my earlier comments about the fundamental authoritarianism of laissez faire statists.)

So they are either horribly naive or want to set themselves up as the lords and masters. (Which for most of them is also horribly naive.)

At the risk of sounding dense, but: how so? As far as I can tell, both of you and them are working in the same basic framework of natural rights liberalism, you just draw different conclusions about the necessity of the state, the legitimacy of coercion and the inalienability of property. It amounts to an argument about which bits of Locke you like, and which bits you don't. :dunno:

Drawing differing conclusions from the evidence is one thing. But this has a lot more similarity to that Global Warming thread. One side is looking at the evidence, and the other side is ignoring the evidence and looking for some nefarious motive behind their opponents instead.

But what about conflicts with the state? It seems highly unreasonable, to me, to expect the state to remain the neutral arbiter that it is purported to be in conflicts which it is actually involved. It's like setting up a peace conference and then asking one of the belligerent parties to moderate. (The separation of powers is the obvious answer, but that would only seem to satisfy in regards to conflicts with parts of the state, not with the state as such.)

You want perfection, get god to intervene directly on every issue and end Free Will. But if you are willing to settle for humans settling their own disputes, then forget perfection and try to get it to be as good as human terms can get it.

innonimatu

Mar 24, 2012, 02:39 PM

I'm sure you could go on and on discussing the ethics of having a state, but I'd much rather see a useful discussion that respected the limitation of the current world. And in the current world anarchy simply cannot be a stable political regime. It will inevitably degenerate into something else. Even if the whole world suddenly became anarchic government(s) would soon emerge. Along with generalized warfare.

Cutlass is right, anarcho-capitalism could only be maintained by force. At which point it would need a state structure, try to grab the "monopoly of violence" and become a plutocracy.

@Traitorfish: states are neither legitimate not illegitimate. They simply are. Talk about legitimacy or illegitimacy is part of intra-state politics. It refers to the legitimacy or illegitimacy of the ruling factions within the state, of the rules defended by the state. Even the so-called "anti-state" rebellions have always actually pushed for either replacement of that ruling elite and its rules (with some others!) or secession and the establishment of some smaller state (with other ruling elites and rules). Anarchists only exist in the time in-between, the days of fighting, the contested borderlands where they carve out their own little states (and in the process themselves deny anarchism).

Sergio Leone made many very entertaining westerns. He also made one absolutely wonderful movie (where he could have given the stereotype of the evil german officer a break, though), unfortunately very little known, "Duck, You Sucker!". Your reference to the irish and their fight against the english put me in mind of it: it features an irish republican, along with an apparently anarchistic mexican bandit. I recommend you see it. Neither of those are what they seem. The irishman looks like a revolutionary but had actually embraced the only possible form of anarchism - the individual one that can only exist in those small gaps; the mexican seemed like he was an anarchist but only becomes one after losing everything. I don't think Leone himself realized how good the story was, perhaps because the whole thing was so self-evident for him. But every new generation has to relearn it...

Traitorfish

Mar 24, 2012, 06:53 PM

@Traitorfish: states are neither legitimate not illegitimate. They simply are. Talk about legitimacy or illegitimacy is part of intra-state politics. It refers to the legitimacy or illegitimacy of the ruling factions within the state, of the rules defended by the state.
I don't disagree, at least insofar as it concerns this particular use of "legitimate". But Cutlass, as far as I know, would subscribe to such a distinction, so it seemed like a good line of questioning to try and work out some of the grey areas in his position on unilateral secession.

Even the so-called "anti-state" rebellions have always actually pushed for either replacement of that ruling elite and its rules (with some others!) or secession and the establishment of some smaller state (with other ruling elites and rules). Anarchists only exist in the time in-between, the days of fighting, the contested borderlands where they carve out their own little states (and in the process themselves deny anarchism).
Arguably so, depending on how you theorise the state. The Weberian definition we're using here would certainly imply that the Paris Commune, the Ukranian Free Territory or CNT-controlled Catalonia constituted "states". (Personally, I don't find that theory of the state satisfying, because it neglects the mediatory function of the modern state which I regard as pretty central- but that's another topic.) And it's certainly true that these historical realities have implications for certain bodies of anarchist theory that haven't always been fully explored. (A lot of social anarchists have a very hard time getting over a "lost cause" view of the CNT, for example.)

The problem is, though, how you get to anarchism in the first place. Your typical anarcho-syndicalist, she's a utilitarian at heart; she rejects the state because she thinks the world is better off without it. This permits him a degree of pragmatism in the short term- to demand eight hour days or legal protections for trade unions or what have you. (Blatant opportunism, you might say, and he could only retort with: "Yes. And?") But not so Amadeus, who's rejection of the state is based in a particular interpretation of natural rights theory, or for that matter Park, who's rejection is the logical conclusion of his deontological pacifism. In both cases, the state is something which simply cannot be sanctioned on even the most pragmatic of grounds. And that makes things a bit more difficult, especially from the perspective of liberals who are themselves wedded to a number of similar prescriptions.

Sergio Leone made many very entertaining westerns. He also made one absolutely wonderful movie (where he could have given the stereotype of the evil german officer a break, though), unfortunately very little known, "Duck, You Sucker!". Your reference to the irish and their fight against the english put me in mind of it: it features an irish republican, along with an apparently anarchistic mexican bandit. I recommend you see it. Neither of those are what they seem. The irishman looks like a revolutionary but had actually embraced the only possible form of anarchism - the individual one that can only exist in those small gaps; the mexican seemed like he was an anarchist but only becomes one after losing everything. I don't think Leone himself realized how good the story was, perhaps because the whole thing was so self-evident for him. But every new generation has to relearn it...
I've actually seen the film (tragically overlooked, I quite agree), and that interpretation never occurred to me, but it certainly makes sense. I'll have to give it another watch with that in mind!

If they are actively harming people, when it's reasonable to react with violence comes in a lot quicker.
All states actively harm people; that's basically what they're for. So I'm afraid it remains ambiguous.

Amadeus may not think it will happen. But that is an outrageously ridiculous thing to believe.

When Europeans first colonized the Americas, it wasn't the European states colonizing, it was private adventurers and business investors. Some with Crown backing, but not with Crown governance. And these were some of the most destructive and oppressive events in human history.

Government didn't do it, but it was among the worst things humans have ever done.

Of course they made their own governments afterward, but that was in the way of justifying what they had done as private actors.

Time and time again you find private actions that are as bad and worse than government actions. This whole concept of only the government doing the bad things, or the bad things private actors do only happening because of government actions or backing is ludicrous on the face of it. There is nothing in human history that makes it appear even remotely plausible.

It is not that a stateless society would be unable to prevent horror and oppression from happening, it would in fact actively aid and abet horror and oppression.
I don't really think your examples work. Private colonies are still, to all intents and purposes, states or extensions of states, whatever the letter of the law may be. Otherwise we'd have to go around saying that, e.g. the Ottoman Empire was not a state, because the letter of the law stated that everything and everyone in it were the private property of the Sultan. They're basically examples of what happens when a state is allowed to function in an uncountable manner; if anything an argument for, not against, anarchism.

Now, you could argue that the sort of stateless-yet-capitalist society imagined by Amadeus would give rise to such an outcome, and I'm inclined to think that you may be right. (I haven't really given it much thought; it's a patently unrealisable goal, and unlike liberals I don't score any points by criticising it.) But that would constitute the re-emergence of state society, not the horrors of stateless society, so your conclusion is simply inaccurate.

So they are either horribly naive or want to set themselves up as the lords and masters. (Which for most of them is also horribly naive.)
Maybe so, but that's a different comment altogether.

Drawing differing conclusions from the evidence is one thing. But this has a lot more similarity to that Global Warming thread. One side is looking at the evidence, and the other side is ignoring the evidence and looking for some nefarious motive behind their opponents instead.
But, again, how so? It's really not sufficient to simply insist that people who disagree with you aren't looking at the evidence.

You want perfection, get god to intervene directly on every issue and end Free Will. But if you are willing to settle for humans settling their own disputes, then forget perfection and try to get it to be as good as human terms can get it.
That's not really an answer to my question. Why is it unacceptable for private parties to play arbiter in their own quarrels, but perfectly acceptable for the state to play do just that?

GhostWriter16

Mar 24, 2012, 08:18 PM

@kochman- You compared talking about how good FDR was while ignoring the camps to talking about Hitler while ignoring the Holocaust, then you say you liked FDR as a President.

Cutlass

Mar 25, 2012, 07:33 AM

All states actively harm people; that's basically what they're for. So I'm afraid it remains ambiguous.

Maybe so. But if you're going down that route, so does everything else. So There's no where else for us to go with this. :p

I don't really think your examples work. Private colonies are still, to all intents and purposes, states or extensions of states, whatever the letter of the law may be. Otherwise we'd have to go around saying that, e.g. the Ottoman Empire was not a state, because the letter of the law stated that everything and everyone in it were the private property of the Sultan. They're basically examples of what happens when a state is allowed to function in an uncountable manner; if anything an argument for, not against, anarchism.

Now, you could argue that the sort of stateless-yet-capitalist society imagined by Amadeus would give rise to such an outcome, and I'm inclined to think that you may be right. (I haven't really given it much thought; it's a patently unrealisable goal, and unlike liberals I don't score any points by criticising it.) But that would constitute the re-emergence of state society, not the horrors of stateless society, so your conclusion is simply inaccurate.

Potato potahto. Essentially I think we're just circling back to semantics over substance.

But, again, how so? It's really not sufficient to simply insist that people who disagree with you aren't looking at the evidence.

Then show me some.

That's not really an answer to my question. Why is it unacceptable for private parties to play arbiter in their own quarrels, but perfectly acceptable for the state to play do just that?

Private parties certainly can arbitrate their own disputes. And in most disputes that is what happens. Where the state comes in is where private parties cannot arbitrate their own disputes fairly and without violence.

If a company contaminates my water, I have no recourse other than the state. There is no way of getting redress without some force greater than the company taking my side.

So without the state, either violence or unresolved disputes are the only options.

Ayatollah So

Mar 25, 2012, 08:08 AM

What this [by Cutlass] seems to amount to is a criticism of the natural rights theory of property, so I have to wonder: is this the best line to take,

Answer: yes. The truth usually is.

given that you, as a liberal, hold to a stronger version of the same theory?

:huh:

Rothbard et al. may regard property rights as sacrosanct, but in rejecting any state capable of enforcing them, it amounts to no more than a series of ethical claims; in practice, property rights are founded in goodwill and are thus constantly renegotiable.

O RLY?

The absence of a monopolist of force (a state) does not imply the absence of force.

Even if the whole world suddenly became anarchic government(s) would soon emerge. Along with generalized warfare.

This. Your comment reminds me of an Iraqi woman complaining about the destruction of the Iraqi state. Paraphrasing, she said that when there was one Saddam, it was horrible but at least you had some ways of dealing with it. Now there are a million little Saddams, and no way to cope, she said.

Traitorfish

Mar 25, 2012, 05:00 PM

Maybe so. But if you're going down that route, so does everything else. So There's no where else for us to go with this. :p
I wasn't clear; I mean that states are inherently violent, that their social function revolves around their ability and will to commit acts of violence upon those who transgress against the law. In that sense, the difference between a tyrannical and non-tyrannical state is a matter of degree, not a binary quality. So how much harm, and what kind of harm, is the precondition for insurrection? Do you simply mean "more harm than good", and, if so, how do we reduce the myriad concrete forms of "harm" and "good" into an abstract form permitting comparison?

Potato potahto. Essentially I think we're just circling back to semantics over substance.
No, I think this is a pretty crucial point of theory. Describing private colonies as representing a stateless society confuses their legal relationship with the metropole, i.e. their lack of direct rule by a mutually recognise sovereign, with social-political content, i.e. the presence or absence of a functioning sate. The latter was most definitely present in the various private colonies which have existed, the proprietors inevitably claiming for themselves some political hegemony entailing a monopoly on violence. You could argue that these represents the inevitable outcome of certain forms of statelessness, but it is not in itself a form of statelessness.

Then show me some.
I don't follow.

Private parties certainly can arbitrate their own disputes. And in most disputes that is what happens. Where the state comes in is where private parties cannot arbitrate their own disputes fairly and without violence.

If a company contaminates my water, I have no recourse other than the state. There is no way of getting redress without some force greater than the company taking my side.

So without the state, either violence or unresolved disputes are the only options.
But, again, what about disputes involving the state? You does the unilateral use of violence become acceptable, if only in the most general sense, because it is accompanied by a flag? You criticise Amadeus' vision of stateless capitalism by observing that the common individual would be powerless against capital without resorting to violence, but is it not also true that in a state capitalist society the individual is similarly powerless against the state, and against capital insofar as it is supported by the state?

:huh:
Both Amadeus and Cutlass subscribe to a natural rights theory of property. Amadeus' variant might be described as stricter, in that he regards property as wholly inalienable, while Cutlass accepts conditional alienability. However, Cutlass' variant involves a body of heavily armed men tasked with assaulting people who transgress against private property without their say so, which in concrete terms is a far stronger theory of property rights.

This is pertinent because Cutlass' criticises Amadeus for removing the shackles from corporate power, yet would appear fully supportive of the police thumping me upside the head if I, as a common citizen, attempted to challenge this power head-on by, e.g. occupying a workplace. At least on the surface of things, it's contradictory.

Cutlass

Mar 25, 2012, 06:50 PM

I wasn't clear; I mean that states are inherently violent, that their social function revolves around their ability and will to commit acts of violence upon those who transgress against the law. In that sense, the difference between a tyrannical and non-tyrannical state is a matter of degree, not a binary quality. So how much harm, and what kind of harm, is the precondition for insurrection? Do you simply mean "more harm than good", and, if so, how do we reduce the myriad concrete forms of "harm" and "good" into an abstract form permitting comparison?

Everything is a matter of degree. You criticize governments for being inherently violent, well so is anarchy.

You don't get a choice between violence and no violence. At best you get a choice between constrained violence and unconstrained violence.

No, I think this is a pretty crucial point of theory. Describing private colonies as representing a stateless society confuses their legal relationship with the metropole, i.e. their lack of direct rule by a mutually recognise sovereign, with social-political content, i.e. the presence or absence of a functioning sate. The latter was most definitely present in the various private colonies which have existed, the proprietors inevitably claiming for themselves some political hegemony entailing a monopoly on violence. You could argue that these represents the inevitable outcome of certain forms of statelessness, but it is not in itself a form of statelessness.

No, I really think it is a form of statelessness. Essentially no state was involved in any aspect of control over what the colonists were doing. So they invented their own. Why is that different from what we should expect from anarchy?

I don't follow.

The theories concerning what anarchy would be, according to the anarchists from what I have seen and understand are not in any demonstrable way taken from real world evidence. It appears to be all just made up from thin air.

Show me something that would give me any reason at all to think that it's not just some hallucination.

But, again, what about disputes involving the state? You does the unilateral use of violence become acceptable, if only in the most general sense, because it is accompanied by a flag? You criticise Amadeus' vision of stateless capitalism by observing that the common individual would be powerless against capital without resorting to violence, but is it not also true that in a state capitalist society the individual is similarly powerless against the state, and against capital insofar as it is supported by the state?

That's where the Rule of Law comes in.

Both Amadeus and Cutlass subscribe to a natural rights theory of property. Amadeus' variant might be described as stricter, in that he regards property as wholly inalienable, while Cutlass accepts conditional alienability. However, Cutlass' variant involves a body of heavily armed men tasked with assaulting people who transgress against private property without their say so, which in concrete terms is a far stronger theory of property rights.

This is pertinent because Cutlass' criticises Amadeus for removing the shackles from corporate power, yet would appear fully supportive of the police thumping me upside the head if I, as a common citizen, attempted to challenge this power head-on by, e.g. occupying a workplace. At least on the surface of things, it's contradictory.

Not contradictory at all. I believe in constrained action and the Rule of Law within representative government. That is far less actual implementation of violence than what should be expected under anarchy.

Traitorfish

Mar 26, 2012, 04:50 AM

Everything is a matter of degree. You criticize governments for being inherently violent, well so is anarchy.

You don't get a choice between violence and no violence. At best you get a choice between constrained violence and unconstrained violence.
That's not an answer to my question. I asked how "harmful" a government has to be before we may legitimately take up arms against it, and how we know when that is; anarchy does not come into it.

No, I really think it is a form of statelessness. Essentially no state was involved in any aspect of control over what the colonists were doing. So they invented their own. Why is that different from what we should expect from anarchy?
No external state, yes, but the colonies where themselves constituted on essentailly statist lines. A body of governing individuals exists, claimed a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence, the right to mediate between individual inhabitants, and so on and so forth. By any reasonable definition, that would constitute a state- or would you say that Tsarist Russia also represented a stateless society, because the Empire was ultimate the personal property of the Tsar?

Now, as I've said, you can argue that this is the inevitable outcome of a stateless capitalism (and I'd be inclined to agree), but that doesn't mean it is a stateless capitalism. Hitting the ground is not identical to falling off a cliff.

The theories concerning what anarchy would be, according to the anarchists from what I have seen and understand are not in any demonstrable way taken from real world evidence. It appears to be all just made up from thin air.

Show me something that would give me any reason at all to think that it's not just some hallucination.
What does that have to do with the critique of the state? Whether or not ones alternative vision of society is valid has no bearing on the legitimacy of their critique of existing society. You'll recall that Thomas Jefferson's vision of agrarian republicanism turned out to be a load of pants, for example, but it didn't make his critique of British oligarchy any less reasonable.

That's where the Rule of Law comes in.
The "rule of law", by which I presume you mean constitutional government, simply provides a formal framework for the relationship between the individual and the state. It rarely, if ever, carries any provisions for a rejection of that framework that don't amount to "hit him until he stops complaining".

Not contradictory at all. I believe in constrained action and the Rule of Law within representative government. That is far less actual implementation of violence than what should be expected under anarchy.
I don't think you understood. My criticism is that you reject Amadeus' stateless capitalism because it would lead to unbridled corporate power (not an unreasonable criticism), but you're quite happy to support the use of state violence to protect the initial fact of corporate power. The very malign force which you identifying as demanding the existence of a state is one which only exists because the state is there to defend it. That seems, to me, a contradiction.

(And, let's make it clear, this isn't a question of markets vs central planning, so appealing to the greater efficiency of the one over the other won't resolve this. There are models of market econonomy that don't rely on titanic corporations to function.)

Cutlass

Mar 26, 2012, 08:11 AM

That's not an answer to my question. I asked how "harmful" a government has to be before we may legitimately take up arms against it, and how we know when that is; anarchy does not come into it.

I don't know that there is, or can be, a hard and fast rule. As a general rule, if the government is resorting to violence to prevent even attempting to change the status quo, then taking up arms is probably legitimate.

No external state, yes, but the colonies where themselves constituted on essentailly statist lines. A body of governing individuals exists, claimed a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence, the right to mediate between individual inhabitants, and so on and so forth. By any reasonable definition, that would constitute a state- or would you say that Tsarist Russia also represented a stateless society, because the Empire was ultimate the personal property of the Tsar?

Now, as I've said, you can argue that this is the inevitable outcome of a stateless capitalism (and I'd be inclined to agree), but that doesn't mean it is a stateless capitalism. Hitting the ground is not identical to falling off a cliff.

OK. But in practice I don't see where your distinction has meaning. A private company buys slaves, or enslaves people it manages to capture, and then monopolizes the use of violence. Does that make it a state, or a private concern that has abrogated to itself the rights of a state?

Semantics.

What does that have to do with the critique of the state? Whether or not ones alternative vision of society is valid has no bearing on the legitimacy of their critique of existing society. You'll recall that Thomas Jefferson's vision of agrarian republicanism turned out to be a load of pants, for example, but it didn't make his critique of British oligarchy any less reasonable.

Both sides of the coin matter. You want to criticize the state, fine. Have at it.

However, once you leave off that and offer a potential replacement, that replacement is equally open to critique.

The "rule of law", by which I presume you mean constitutional government, simply provides a formal framework for the relationship between the individual and the state. It rarely, if ever, carries any provisions for a rejection of that framework that don't amount to "hit him until he stops complaining".

Offer an alternative then. :dunno: We are still at the point of: State; you want out, you can flee, you can work for change within the system, you can take up arms. Anarchy; you want out, you can flee, you can take up arms.

I don't think you understood. My criticism is that you reject Amadeus' stateless capitalism because it would lead to unbridled corporate power (not an unreasonable criticism), but you're quite happy to support the use of state violence to protect the initial fact of corporate power. The very malign force which you identifying as demanding the existence of a state is one which only exists because the state is there to defend it. That seems, to me, a contradiction.

(And, let's make it clear, this isn't a question of markets vs central planning, so appealing to the greater efficiency of the one over the other won't resolve this. There are models of market econonomy that don't rely on titanic corporations to function.)

But, you see, I'm not in it for the corporations. I'm in it for the individuals and the nation. I want to make the whole of the people better off, to maximize their freedom, liberty, and prosperity. And in doing so maximize the power and wealth of the nation. The form of the economics and the business structure is incidental to that.

Now I happen to believe that maximizing the good of the individual will maximize the good of the nation. But I do not believe that maximizing the good of the corporations will do so. What is good for GM is not what is good for America. What is good for GM's employees is what is good for America (up to a point, and what they want is not necessarily what is good for them, labor can be conservative also).

The greatest good for the greatest number, including the greatest liberty for the greatest number, which is consistent with not letting private people or organizations infringe on the good or the liberty of other private people.

If I thought that socialism would maximize the liberty and prosperity of the people and the nation, I would be for that. But I do not. Nor do I think that communism or conservatism would do so. And I certainly do not think that anarchism or libertarianism would do so.

I am a liberal-progressive because that is what I believe works better than any alternative. And, quite frankly, economic history justifies my belief.

Economics requires liberty to create prosperity. But the liberty of the individual, not the liberty of the corporation.

In recent months in a variety of threads I have spoken out against the Zero-Sum-Game. The Koch Brothers that you brought up earlier, they are the Zero-Sum-Game. They want to maximize the concentration of wealth and power, even though in doing so they crush not just liberty, but they crush the creation of wealth.

The Koch Brothers represent the eventual death of the Unites States of America. That is not hyperbole. A nation cannot prosper when all wealth and all power are concentrated in the hands of only a few. They will inevitably rig things such that no one else can create new wealth.

The problem with the libertarians in the US is that, for their own reasons, and their own logic, most of them are on the side of the Koch Brothers rather than being on the side of the liberty of the individuals. And Amadeus' version of anarcho-capitalism just takes that to its logical conclusion and the individual, and the individual's liberty, is entirely subsumed to the liberty of the corporation.

Now maybe Amadeus does not want the outcomes that the Koch Brothers want, but in the interim he is serving to help them get what they want, at the expense of the liberty of the people as a whole.

Even if he does not think that that is where his actions lead.

And that is where the intellectual bankruptcy of the whole concept of anarchism comes in. Because the only real result they can get is tyranny at the expense of liberty. Poverty at the expense of prosperity.

Traitorfish

Mar 26, 2012, 08:57 AM

I don't know that there is, or can be, a hard and fast rule. As a general rule, if the government is resorting to violence to prevent even attempting to change the status quo, then taking up arms is probably legitimate.
We're encountering the same problem we had with "harm" here, I think: change as such is an abstraction, a generalisation of varied and heterogeneous instances of change. All states will react to certain changes with violence- stealing a car, for example, will tend to get one knocked upside the head with a truncheon. But at the same time, few states have opposed all change so fully as to react to any change with violence, even if only change instigated from within the ruling elite. So we need to make the sort of changes that justify insurrection more specific.

OK. But in practice I don't see where your distinction has meaning. A private company buys slaves, or enslaves people it manages to capture, and then monopolizes the use of violence. Does that make it a state, or a private concern that has abrogated to itself the rights of a state?

Semantics.
Well, that's what I'm saying: the distinction between a formal state, and a private entity that has taken upon itself the functions of a state is a legal fiction. You're the one who suggested otherwise- or perhaps I'm misunderstanding?

Point being, that a stateless society is not merely a legal formality- something which would imply, for example, that pre-Roman Britain was a stateless society for the simple reason that its numerous polities did not adopt the legal form of the Classical state- but a social reality. Thus, if we see de facto states emerging, it isn't a stateless society. That doesn't invalidate the claim that stateless capitalism will produce the sort of private tyrannies you describe, simply that, in the moment they emerge, stateless ceases to be, and our terminology has to be revised to describe it more appropriately.

Both sides of the coin matter. You want to criticize the state, fine. Have at it.

However, once you leave off that and offer a potential replacement, that replacement is equally open to critique.
No doubt, but that's not the discussion we've been having. You can construct a critique of the present state of things without proposing an explicit alternative. (In practical terms, I'll grant you, the one might not be much good without the other, but that's not something that really needs to concern us here.)

Offer an alternative then. :dunno: We are still at the point of: State; you want out, you can flee, you can work for change within the system, you can take up arms. Anarchy; you want out, you can flee, you can take up arms.
Why do you say that? Rothbardian anarchism does not, as I understand it, preclude any form of collective organisation- isn't a corporation a form of collective organisation? Just because "system" doesn't resemble the liberal state, lacks a technocracy to whom we can direct our policy proposals, doesn't mean that there is not a "system" in place.

*snip*
I'm sorry, but all you seem to be doing here is reaffirming your position at length. You say that you are not interested in corporate well-being, that you care about well-being of individuals. But the well-being of corporations is founded, fundamentally, in private property, an institution which you not merely defend, as Amadeus does, but demand be enforced through the use of violence, with no apparent regard for how any instance of this enforcement may effect actual individual person rather than some abstract generalised "The Individual". Is my liberty maximised by the fact that somebody else owns my house? Is anybody's liberty so maximised, except that of the people who own the houses? And yet if we failed to make the appropriate payments, you would endorse our violent expulsion. You can't tell me with a straight face that this is, in fact, a preferable state of affairs for the common plebeian, that he would be in a worse state if housing (to take only this one particular aspect of life) was accorded by need rather than by ability to pay. So, for me at least, the contradiction remains.

Hygro

Mar 26, 2012, 09:58 AM

This has been my favorite thread in quite a while.

Cutlass

Mar 26, 2012, 11:34 AM

We're encountering the same problem we had with "harm" here, I think: change as such is an abstraction, a generalisation of varied and heterogeneous instances of change. All states will react to certain changes with violence- stealing a car, for example, will tend to get one knocked upside the head with a truncheon. But at the same time, few states have opposed all change so fully as to react to any change with violence, even if only change instigated from within the ruling elite. So we need to make the sort of changes that justify insurrection more specific.

It's always specific to the situation, and the cumulative actions of either side, not to any one event. You're asking for the impossible.

Well, that's what I'm saying: the distinction between a formal state, and a private entity that has taken upon itself the functions of a state is a legal fiction. You're the one who suggested otherwise- or perhaps I'm misunderstanding?

Point being, that a stateless society is not merely a legal formality- something which would imply, for example, that pre-Roman Britain was a stateless society for the simple reason that its numerous polities did not adopt the legal form of the Classical state- but a social reality. Thus, if we see de facto states emerging, it isn't a stateless society. That doesn't invalidate the claim that stateless capitalism will produce the sort of private tyrannies you describe, simply that, in the moment they emerge, stateless ceases to be, and our terminology has to be revised to describe it more appropriately.

I don't really know how to define this so that it is not a semantic distinction. You, and I think Amadeus, appear to be saying: "I don't like the results, therefor it was a state." But if that is true, then any anarchist society is also going to be states.

No doubt, but that's not the discussion we've been having. You can construct a critique of the present state of things without proposing an explicit alternative. (In practical terms, I'll grant you, the one might not be much good without the other, but that's not something that really needs to concern us here.)

I think it does. After all, this thread is "Discussion of Anarchism", not "discussion of state". The whole point that got us down this road this far is the compare and contrast.

Why do you say that? Rothbardian anarchism does not, as I understand it, preclude any form of collective organisation- isn't a corporation a form of collective organisation? Just because "system" doesn't resemble the liberal state, lacks a technocracy to whom we can direct our policy proposals, doesn't mean that there is not a "system" in place.

I don't know precisely what Rothbard has to say. I have to filter it though what people like Amadeus has to say. And in many conversations with him the point is that all forms of redress of grievance are banned. All that's left is fight or flight.

I'm sorry, but all you seem to be doing here is reaffirming your position at length. You say that you are not interested in corporate well-being, that you care about well-being of individuals. But the well-being of corporations is founded, fundamentally, in private property, an institution which you not merely defend, as Amadeus does, but demand be enforced through the use of violence, with no apparent regard for how any instance of this enforcement may effect actual individual person rather than some abstract generalised "The Individual". Is my liberty maximised by the fact that somebody else owns my house? Is anybody's liberty so maximised, except that of the people who own the houses? And yet if we failed to make the appropriate payments, you would endorse our violent expulsion. You can't tell me with a straight face that this is, in fact, a preferable state of affairs for the common plebeian, that he would be in a worse state if housing (to take only this one particular aspect of life) was accorded by need rather than by ability to pay. So, for me at least, the contradiction remains.

You aren't really representing my position fairly. But, what really is the alternative? I am not really concerned all that much with the philosophy of it, but rather the practicalities of it.

You want a house because you need one, rather than that you have worked to earn one, who provides it? Where does it come from?

You have to create wealth before you can distribute it.

Traitorfish

Mar 26, 2012, 03:54 PM

It's always specific to the situation, and the cumulative actions of either side, not to any one event. You're asking for the impossible.
Then we'll settle for illustration. What kind of changes do you think justify insurrection to enact?

I don't really know how to define this so that it is not a semantic distinction. You, and I think Amadeus, appear to be saying: "I don't like the results, therefor it was a state." But if that is true, then any anarchist society is also going to be states.
What we're saying is that if it looks like a state, walks like a state and quacks like a state, then it's probably a state. Point being, when people from one state establish another state, as was the case with the various private colonies, doesn't really constitute an example of a stateless society, whatever legal fictions may be draped around the place. So it does not, on the face of things, seem to prove anything one way or the other.

I think it does. After all, this thread is "Discussion of Anarchism", not "discussion of state". The whole point that got us down this road this far is the compare and contrast.
The discussion began with Amadeus' rejection of the legitimacy of forcible suppression of Souther secession, and expanded to a discussion of the anarchist cirituq of the state more generally. "Discussion of Anarchism" is just the name the Ori gave it when he split the thread, we were never actually discussing stateless models of social organisation- at least as far as I'm aware.

I don't know precisely what Rothbard has to say. I have to filter it though what people like Amadeus has to say. And in many conversations with him the point is that all forms of redress of grievance are banned. All that's left is fight or flight.
"Banned" by who? If there's no state, how can something be disallowed? I think you're confusing a rejection of the state as a means of redress with the rejection of all means by which a redress may be pursued.

You aren't really representing my position fairly. But, what really is the alternative? I am not really concerned all that much with the philosophy of it, but rather the practicalities of it.

You want a house because you need one, rather than that you have worked to earn one, who provides it? Where does it come from?

You have to create wealth before you can distribute it.
Well, I think that I've wandered wildly off track here, so it's probably best if I go back to the original point: the comparative strength of your and Amadeus' defence of private property.

Amadeus defends private property as a moral principle and this moral obligation; we should respect the property of others because it is moral to do so, and acting morally will allow society to function harmoniously without the involvement of a state. His propertarianism is strong in a philosophical sense, in that he regards it as inalienable, and any attempt to take somebody's rightful property without their consent is immoral. (He rejects involuntarily taxation, for example.) However, in practical terms it is a fairly weak strain of propertarianism, because he rejects the legitimacy of any state capable of enforcing it through violence. Property is constructed through mutual goodwill, and any party that acts to harm others loses this goodwill, and so cannot expect others to respect their property claims.

Contrasting with this, you defend private property as an aspect of the law; we should respect the property of others because big men will hit us with sticks if we do not. It's a philosophically weak version of propertarianism, open to the appropriation of property on utilitarian grounds. (Continuing the example given above, you support involuntary taxation.) But in practical terms it is a relatively strong form of propertarianism, because you support the use of state violence to sustain it. Property is sustained through what amounts to a form of terror, the constant threat that those who refuse to respect the state-endorsed distribution of property-claims will be met with violence- even fatal violence, should the situation so escalate.

What this amounts to is the fact that, in terms of practical policy, you are far more supportive of corporate power than Amadeus is, because only you argue that there should exist a body of men who militantly defend the initial fact of corporate power, and, indeed, that this body should be funded through a generalised expropriation of wealth, i.e. taxation. Thus, it seems to me contradictory that you should raise a warning of unchecked corporate power against Amadeus, when the only one of you arguing that (not to put too fine a point on it) people who transgress against corporate power should be killed is you.

Cutlass

Mar 26, 2012, 04:24 PM

This has been my favorite thread in quite a while.

Why so?
Who so?
What so?

ParkCungHee

Mar 26, 2012, 04:25 PM

Cutlass

Mar 26, 2012, 04:33 PM

You know, for all the talk of unbridled corporate power in this thread, does Amadeus even believe that corporations would exist without the state?

Seems pretty obvious to me that without the state to enforce the fiction of a corporations existence, they'd quickly disappear.

Why? They're too useful. I don't know what Ama believes on the issue, because he's let TF fight the battle for him.

However, would they disappear, or would they simply recreate as much as they needed of the state functions? What's stopping them from hiring their own police and army?

Of course, the wholesale collapse of the economy might take them out. But barring that, they would be more pervasive than ever.

ParkCungHee

Mar 26, 2012, 04:45 PM

Why? They're too useful.
Many things are useful about the state. If you imagine corporations would continue to exist without a state to enforce them, why not a standing military (and military-industrial complex), or a wellfare. The entire state apparatus exists because it's "too useful."

However, would they disappear, or would they simply recreate as much as they needed of the state functions? What's stopping them from hiring their own police and army?
Well, first, that would sort of remove the whole "stateless" aspect of it, but second, that would remove the thing of being "corporations."
I'm pretty familiar with the concept of economy by groups of armed men enforcing law and seizing property as they see fit, and limited liability doesn't factor into it much. Of course, if we're talking about a "breakdown of state power" not "an emergence of a stateless society", experience has shown that corporations very rarely get very far in armed conflict, at least not without a separate state offering them shelter.

Ayatollah So

Mar 26, 2012, 04:53 PM

Both Amadeus and Cutlass subscribe to a natural rights theory of property. Amadeus' variant might be described as stricter, in that he regards property as wholly inalienable, while Cutlass accepts conditional alienability. However, Cutlass' variant involves a body of heavily armed men tasked with assaulting people who transgress against private property without their say so, which in concrete terms is a far stronger theory of property rights.

If you'd said "Cutlass endorses property rights," you'd have a point. But the attribution of "a natural rights theory" of property remains unjustified.

Cutlass

Mar 26, 2012, 05:05 PM

Many things are useful about the state. If you imagine corporations would continue to exist without a state to enforce them, why not a standing military (and military-industrial complex), or a wellfare. The entire state apparatus exists because it's "too useful."

But corporations do not require taxes to function.

Well, first, that would sort of remove the whole "stateless" aspect of it, but second, that would remove the thing of being "corporations."
I'm pretty familiar with the concept of economy by groups of armed men enforcing law and seizing property as they see fit, and limited liability doesn't factor into it much. Of course, if we're talking about a "breakdown of state power" not "an emergence of a stateless society", experience has shown that corporations very rarely get very far in armed conflict, at least not without a separate state offering them shelter.

A rose by any other name... They may lose the official protection of being a "corporation". But in return for the loss of limited liability they gain immunity from liability. Since no one would have the ability to hold them responsible for their actions.

Anarchy is not good for large scale economic enterprises. A multinational would be well advised to retreat from a place where there is chaos. But if the corporations existed in a place where the government was then peacefully disbanded, it would certainly be in their economic interest to attempt to impose order. Failing that, essentially all economic activity would cease. And so there would be no way to have any organized firm.

Traitorfish

Mar 26, 2012, 05:09 PM

If you'd said "Cutlass endorses property rights," you'd have a point. But the attribution of "a natural rights theory" of property remains unjustified.
He hasn't contradicted me on it, and I'm not sure if it would make much a difference to the point if he did. :dunno:

ParkCungHee

Mar 26, 2012, 05:13 PM

A rose by any other name... They may lose the official protection of being a "corporation". But in return for the loss of limited liability they gain immunity from liability. Since no one would have the ability to hold them responsible for their actions.
This is an absurdly broad definition of "Corporation." If by corporation we mean simply any organization not accountable to liability, then we already live under unbridled corporate power, because the American and British governments being "a rose by any other name", and having immunity from liability, are just exceedingly large and powerful corporations.

Cutlass

Mar 26, 2012, 05:19 PM

This is an absurdly broad definition of "Corporation." If by corporation we mean simply any organization not accountable to liability, then we already live under unbridled corporate power, because the American and British governments being "a rose by any other name", and having immunity from liability, are just exceedingly large and powerful corporations.

The liability part is the only part that they really stand to loose. The other important part is that they are owned by investors. That would not chance.

Traitorfish

Mar 26, 2012, 05:21 PM

Why would the corporate executive recognise the property-claims of its stockholders without any state to oblige them to do so?

Cutlass

Mar 26, 2012, 05:35 PM

Why would the corporate executive recognise the property-claims of its stockholders without any state to oblige them to do so?

To keep the money coming.

Traitorfish

Mar 26, 2012, 05:38 PM

The money which no longer exists, because there's not state to enforce it? :huh:

Cutlass

Mar 26, 2012, 05:45 PM

The money which no longer exists, because there's not state to enforce it? :huh:

The money that never did require the existence of a state in the first place. What the hell does the state have to do with the existence of money? Hell, anarcho-capitalism assumes that money would be better without the state. It's a foolish belief, but the fact that the money will be worse does not in any way imply that it will not exist.

Dachs

Mar 26, 2012, 05:50 PM

The money that never did require the existence of a state in the first place. What the hell does the state have to do with the existence of money? Hell, anarcho-capitalism assumes that money would be better without the state. It's a foolish belief, but the fact that the money will be worse does not in any way imply that it will not exist.
You're not doing a very good job of being Integral.

With respect to the whole "corporations" thing, uh, correct me if I'm wrong, but the concept of a "corporation" is a legal fiction developed largely by the English common-law judiciary in order to simplify the legal standing of certain kinds of companies that possess specific kinds of privileges under the law. There's literally no possible way for a corporation to exist independent of a state.

Now, a firm can certainly exist independent of a state, at least in theory, because unlike the corporation, the firm's definition does not depend on standing under the law of a given state. So this is probably just a case of sloppy terminology.

Traitorfish

Mar 26, 2012, 06:00 PM

ParkCungHee

Mar 26, 2012, 06:14 PM

That requires an agreeable understanding of what a state is.
Good luck with that.

If you mean simply the use of a currency without the state imposing it, Ireland certainly qualifies, as most coins in circulation were foreign. Of course, then you have to muddle about with the definition of "money" because these were largely useless for most transactions.

Integral

Mar 26, 2012, 06:17 PM

Are there any historical examples of money existing outside of the state? (I'm genuinely curious.)
Cigarettes in a POW camp? At the very least it's an example of money that doesn't have the formal backing of the state.

Cutlass

Mar 26, 2012, 06:42 PM

Then we'll settle for illustration. What kind of changes do you think justify insurrection to enact?

Changing an extractive state to an inclusive one.

What we're saying is that if it looks like a state, walks like a state and quacks like a state, then it's probably a state. Point being, when people from one state establish another state, as was the case with the various private colonies, doesn't really constitute an example of a stateless society, whatever legal fictions may be draped around the place. So it does not, on the face of things, seem to prove anything one way or the other.

So it must be a state because that's what states do.

You've created a strawman of an argument.

The point about slavery and the destruction of indigenous Americans is that the state, government, is utterly and completely irrelevant to what happened to them. As in, government simply has nothing to do with the fact that chattel slavery and the destruction of the Indians took place.

Subtract out each and every state/government action, and they were just as dead and just as enslaved.

No difference.

The private actions were going to do this, irregardless of what the legal trappings they chose to wrap around it turned out to be.

Blaming the government or state is, fundamentally, a rejection of concept of personal responsibility.

Government did not cause the American institutions of slavery or the destruction of the Indians to happen. That was happening anyways.

And, ironically, the end of slavery and the end of the destruction only occurred because of the actions of government, of the state.

Government and the state did not start these things. It did end them. In the middle centuries it occurred not because the government made it occur, but because the government did not stop it from occurring.

Government was irrelevant.

The sick irony here is that some people who claim to be libertarian have more love for Jefferson and Madison, who acted to prevent the government from stopping slavery, and more hate for Lincoln, who acted to have the government actually stop slavery.

The discussion began with Amadeus' rejection of the legitimacy of forcible suppression of Souther secession, and expanded to a discussion of the anarchist cirituq of the state more generally. "Discussion of Anarchism" is just the name the Ori gave it when he split the thread, we were never actually discussing stateless models of social organisation- at least as far as I'm aware.

I don't see how you can limit it like that and not distort things.

"Banned" by who? If there's no state, how can something be disallowed? I think you're confusing a rejection of the state as a means of redress with the rejection of all means by which a redress may be pursued.

Many of my discussions with Amadeus have come to an end based on his insistence that there can be no allowable forums for the resolution of disputes.

Well, I think that I've wandered wildly off track here, so it's probably best if I go back to the original point: the comparative strength of your and Amadeus' defence of private property.

Amadeus defends private property as a moral principle and this moral obligation; we should respect the property of others because it is moral to do so, and acting morally will allow society to function harmoniously without the involvement of a state. His propertarianism is strong in a philosophical sense, in that he regards it as inalienable, and any attempt to take somebody's rightful property without their consent is immoral. (He rejects involuntarily taxation, for example.) However, in practical terms it is a fairly weak strain of propertarianism, because he rejects the legitimacy of any state capable of enforcing it through violence. Property is constructed through mutual goodwill, and any party that acts to harm others loses this goodwill, and so cannot expect others to respect their property claims.

Contrasting with this, you defend private property as an aspect of the law; we should respect the property of others because big men will hit us with sticks if we do not. It's a philosophically weak version of propertarianism, open to the appropriation of property on utilitarian grounds. (Continuing the example given above, you support involuntary taxation.) But in practical terms it is a relatively strong form of propertarianism, because you support the use of state violence to sustain it. Property is sustained through what amounts to a form of terror, the constant threat that those who refuse to respect the state-endorsed distribution of property-claims will be met with violence- even fatal violence, should the situation so escalate.

What this amounts to is the fact that, in terms of practical policy, you are far more supportive of corporate power than Amadeus is, because only you argue that there should exist a body of men who militantly defend the initial fact of corporate power, and, indeed, that this body should be funded through a generalised expropriation of wealth, i.e. taxation. Thus, it seems to me contradictory that you should raise a warning of unchecked corporate power against Amadeus, when the only one of you arguing that (not to put too fine a point on it) people who transgress against corporate power should be killed is you.

No, you've misrepresented my point. "we should respect the property of others because big men will hit us with sticks if we do not." That is not my belief. I respect property because the individual has a right to the property they have worked to own. It is about the individual. The government is a means to that end. And the government is a necessary means to that end because relying on the goodness of others, in the absence of an enforcement mechanism, has no expectation of ever working.

People have a right to defend themselves. Assuming that they have nothing to defend themselves from is just utterly ludicrous. Legitimate government is the collective actions of self defense.

Cutlass

Mar 26, 2012, 06:46 PM

Are there any historical examples of money existing outside of the state? (I'm genuinely curious.)

In the Free Banking Era of the United States, any bank could issue any money it cared to. And so could essentially anyone else. The government was irrelevant to the money supply.

Or, there could be gold. Or, before that, cattle, seashells, wampum, whatever. More recently, barter credits.

Integral

Mar 26, 2012, 07:08 PM

Can't believe I missed that one. Good catch. In the free banking era you have currencies existing alongside, but separate from, the state.

It's not a perfect example, because the currencies exist in the context of state-provided economic institutions (contracts, property rights, etc). However it does show that the state does not necessarily have to be involved in the money-making.

I don't know if you're going to find currency proper existing prior to states - that's the main point of Graeber's Debt book.

Abegweit

Mar 26, 2012, 07:32 PM

Private parties certainly can arbitrate their own disputes. And in most disputes that is what happens. Where the state comes in is where private parties cannot arbitrate their own disputes fairly and without violence. No. Where the state comes in is when private parties are forbidden to arbitrate their own disputes fairly and without violence.

If a company contaminates my water, I have no recourse other than the state. There is no way of getting redress without some force greater than the company taking my side. Do you really think that the only possible force greater than your bugaboo is a gang of thieves?

Abegweit

Mar 26, 2012, 07:36 PM

In the Free Banking Era of the United States, any bank could issue any money it cared to. And so could essentially anyone else. The government was irrelevant to the money supply. There never was a free banking era in the US. Never happened. There were times in which manipulating money in favour of the banksters was largely run by the states instead of the central government. For real free banking check Scotland or Canada.

Integral

Mar 26, 2012, 07:48 PM

There never was a free banking era in the US. Never happened. There were times in which manipulating money in favour of the banksters was largely run by the states instead of the central government. For real free banking check Scotland or Canada.

O RLY (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banking_in_the_United_States#1837.E2.80.931863:_.2 2Free_Banking.22_Era)

Abegweit

Mar 26, 2012, 07:54 PM

Are there any historical examples of money existing outside of the state? (I'm genuinely curious.)Short answer: yes. There are many examples. Money is older than the state. Then there are cases like cigarettes used as money in prisons.

There is nothing magical about the state. There is nothing which the state does that private individuals cannot do for themselves - and with far oppression and far less waste.

Integral

Mar 26, 2012, 07:57 PM

Short answer: yes. There are many examples. Money is older than the state. Then there are cases like cigarettes used as money in prisons.

There is nothing magical about the state. There is nothing which the state does that private individuals cannot do for themselves - and with far oppression and far less waste.

I claim that it's pretty damn difficult to make a long list. I mean, I hate to be taking the Graeber's side, but you're gonna need more specific examples than that!

Abegweit

Mar 26, 2012, 08:00 PM

O RLY (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banking_in_the_United_States#1837.E2.80.931863:_.2 2Free_Banking.22_Era)On PC matters, the wikipedia is a joke. There are a lot of gatekeepers who prevent truth from getting through. I do note this: "in that year New York adopted the Free Banking Act, which permitted anyone to engage in banking, upon compliance with certain charter conditions". IOW, it wasn't free at all.

ParkCungHee

Mar 26, 2012, 08:00 PM

Abegweit

Mar 26, 2012, 08:07 PM

I claim that it's pretty damn difficult to make a long list. I mean, I hate to be taking the Graeber's side, but you're gonna need more specific examples than that!Why do you this instinctive need to defend thieves? I gave one example of non-state money, which you ignored. Another would be wampum. There are plenty more. In general, non-state money is things which are difficult to make but easy to exchange. Gold and silver come to mind. People used them before the state, And they traded them before the state.

Abegweit

Mar 26, 2012, 08:08 PM

Because in my experience with the "Guys with weapons fighting over property" system of economics...Kindly tell us more about your experience.

Cutlass

Mar 26, 2012, 08:11 PM

I think just as important to discuss is whether or not money was significant before the rise of the modern state.

Because in my experience with the "Guys with weapons fighting over property" system of economics, money itself is relatively useless, and certainly only served as a intermediary force for actors to acquire their real goals.

Sure. Money's just a tool. Follow my sig if you want to discuss that. The rise of modern money dates probably to the 12th or 13th century in Italy. Even the Roman Empire had some measure of a financial serviced industry to go with their money. Though I don't know what China's history on it is.

What money does is keep track of transactions and lower transactions costs. Not really much of anything else. So the rise of money facilitated, but did not cause, greater ease of, and so more, economic activity.

It made everything else in economics easier. And so people could do more of it.

ParkCungHee

Mar 26, 2012, 08:15 PM

Kindly tell us more about your experience.
4 years of Irish Studies, two more as a masters student, specializing in developments in later Tannistry.

Abegweit

Mar 26, 2012, 08:28 PM

Sure. Money's just a tool. Follow my sig if you want to discuss that. The rise of modern money dates probably to the 12th or 13th century in Italy. Even the Roman Empire had some measure of a financial serviced industry to go with their money. Though I don't know what China's history on it is.

What money does is keep track of transactions and lower transactions costs. Not really much of anything else. So the rise of money facilitated, but did not cause, greater ease of, and so more, economic activity.

It made everything else in economics easier. And so people could do more of it.The more I read this, the more absurd it is. Just what is the difference between "modern money" and, say, "ancient money"? And WTF do you mean by "It made everything else in economics easier"? Money makes transactions easier, not economics. That doesn't even make sense.

And so people could do more of it.Do more of what? Economics? Economics is a field of study, not something you do more of.

Integral

Mar 26, 2012, 08:31 PM

Hell man, economics is (the study of) transactions

The basic role of money is to make transactions easier by supplying a common unit of exchange. How is that in any way controversial?

Abegweit

Mar 26, 2012, 08:36 PM

4 years of Irish Studies, two more as a masters student, specializing in developments in later Tannistry.I really don't understand. You obviously are proud of having wasted your life on useless nonsense. Fine. It's your life. Do with it as you will. However your original statement was "Because in my experience with the "Guys with weapons fighting over property" system of economics..."

It doesn't even make sense. Aside from that, what does this have to do with the way you wasted your life?

Trolling. Repeat offender, so banned for a week.

Abegweit

Mar 26, 2012, 08:41 PM

Hell man, economics is (the study of) transactions

The basic role of money is to make transactions easier by supplying a common unit of exchange. How is that in any way controversial?Here we have common ground. I agree. However, you may recall that the topic was this nonsense notion that there ever was a free banking era in the US.

Cheezy the Wiz

Mar 26, 2012, 08:49 PM

I really don't understand. You obviously are proud of having wasted your life on useless nonsense. Fine. It's your life. Do with it as you will. However your original statement was "Because in my experience with the "Guys with weapons fighting over property" system of economics..."

It doesn't even make sense. Aside from that, what does this have to do with the way you wasted your life?

Because, troll, tannistry is what your theories of social economics will lead to. It means he's very familiar with the "novel" concept you've advanced because it's more than a thousand years old and there's ample scholarship proving how retarded it is, to say nothing of its inherently barbaric nature. But being the knuckle-dragger that you are, I'm sure you regard it as the acme of human intellectual capability.

Don't return fire.

Joecoolyo

Mar 26, 2012, 09:04 PM

On PC matters, the wikipedia is a joke. There are a lot of gatekeepers who prevent truth from getting through. I do note this: "in that year New York adopted the Free Banking Act, which permitted anyone to engage in banking, upon compliance with certain charter conditions". IOW, it wasn't free at all.

You might want to shine your tin foil hat, it's getting a bit dull.

Dachs

Mar 27, 2012, 01:22 AM

You might want to shine your tin foil hat, it's getting a bit dull.
While it's true that Wikipedia is flawed on history, it's about as good as any other encyclopedia would be. Which is to say, not particularly good, especially on matters that require a lot of interpretation to figure out what the hell was even happening, much less what it meant (i.e. medieval history and earlier), or on matters on which the historiography is in considerable flux.

I'm reasonably certain that early American banking doesn't qualify for either of those things.

Joecoolyo

Mar 27, 2012, 08:30 AM

While it's true that Wikipedia is flawed on history, it's about as good as any other encyclopedia would be. Which is to say, not particularly good, especially on matters that require a lot of interpretation to figure out what the hell was even happening, much less what it meant (i.e. medieval history and earlier), or on matters on which the historiography is in considerable flux.

I'm reasonably certain that early American banking doesn't qualify for either of those things.

I was mainly targeting the claim that there are "a lot of gatekeepers who prevent truth from getting through".

Wikipedia has to be general, in order to accessible to the public, which is why it's only full of basic information and would fall flat on things like what you mentioned above. That doesn't really mean that there's a secret society of fat-cat statists monitoring the tubes making sure no "truth" gets leaked through.

Traitorfish

Mar 27, 2012, 12:56 PM

Changing an extractive state to an inclusive one.
Could you elaborate on that? It sounds like it has a some theoretical solidity to it, so I'd like to see where it goes.

So it must be a state because that's what states do.

You've created a strawman of an argument.

The point about slavery and the destruction of indigenous Americans is that the state, government, is utterly and completely irrelevant to what happened to them. As in, government simply has nothing to do with the fact that chattel slavery and the destruction of the Indians took place.

Subtract out each and every state/government action, and they were just as dead and just as enslaved.

No difference.

The private actions were going to do this, irregardless of what the legal trappings they chose to wrap around it turned out to be.

Blaming the government or state is, fundamentally, a rejection of concept of personal responsibility.

Government did not cause the American institutions of slavery or the destruction of the Indians to happen. That was happening anyways.

And, ironically, the end of slavery and the end of the destruction only occurred because of the actions of government, of the state.

Government and the state did not start these things. It did end them. In the middle centuries it occurred not because the government made it occur, but because the government did not stop it from occurring.

Government was irrelevant.
I don't really understand how this contradicts anything I've said. Yes, people can commit violent acts without the involvement of a state; I already mentioned the (early) Cossacks as an example of a stateless society, and you'll be aware that they weren't always the friendliest bunch. But what you predicted is the emergence of entities not merely involved in violent activity, but taking upon themselves the social and political functions of a state, and I really cannot comprehend why we would not identity an entity that is in all essential respects a state as being a state.

The sick irony here is that some people who claim to be libertarian have more love for Jefferson and Madison, who acted to prevent the government from stopping slavery, and more hate for Lincoln, who acted to have the government actually stop slavery.
Can't say I disagree.

I don't see how you can limit it like that and not distort things.
I don't really see why it's a problem. Political theory isn't about competing policy proposals that have to be compared and contrasted, it's about, well, theory. I's perfectly reasonable to set about demolishing one set of ideas without having an alternative ready to hand- and, indeed, it's probably a better way to set about it, because it minimises bias. Uncertainty is permissible.

Many of my discussions with Amadeus have come to an end based on his insistence that there can be no allowable forums for the resolution of disputes.
I've honestly never encountered that idea. Every anarcho-capitalist I've heard about is quite happy to consider private arbitration, professional or trade organisations, and so on. The key is that these things are voluntary and non-coercive.

No, you've misrepresented my point. "we should respect the property of others because big men will hit us with sticks if we do not." That is not my belief. I respect property because the individual has a right to the property they have worked to own. It is about the individual. The government is a means to that end. And the government is a necessary means to that end because relying on the goodness of others, in the absence of an enforcement mechanism, has no expectation of ever working.

People have a right to defend themselves. Assuming that they have nothing to defend themselves from is just utterly ludicrous. Legitimate government is the collective actions of self defense.
Well, either way. In practical terms, it amounts to the same thing. You are of the opinion that failing to respect the institution of private property that underlies the reality of capitalist power should be met with violence, which Amadeus does not, so it seems absurd to attack him as an unwitting corporate stooge when only one of you is willing to see people dead on their behalf.

Cutlass

Mar 27, 2012, 05:20 PM

Could you elaborate on that? It sounds like it has a some theoretical solidity to it, so I'd like to see where it goes.

Daron Acemoglu, Why Nations Fail

One-sentence version so far (ch2): Acemoglu provides a political foundation on which to rest The Mystery of Capital.

He was interviewed on EconTalk about that last week. I haven't listened to the interview in full yet, though.

He was interviewed on NPR as well. With an exerpt.

http://onpoint.wbur.org/2012/03/21/why-nations-fail

Integral and I are reading the same new book. Essentially the premise is that there are two types of states: Extractive states, ones that are organized in such a way that those at the top take as much of the product of others for themselves as they can manage. Essentially the type of thing that gives some moral justification to Amadeus. And Inclusive states. Ones that give the moral justification to me. These create the conditions for broad based economic prosperity based on broad based political participation. Essentially the broader is the political participation the broader will be the distributed the fruits of prosperity and the greater will be the total of prosperity.

An old argument that I had with Ama is that I said that I am far richer because of the welfare state. And he thinks he is poorer because of it. He's wrong. Because the economy as a whole is just that much larger because the fruits of the economy and the opportunity and liberty in the economy are that much greater.

The personal and economic liberty is so much greater where the political liberty is greater that things like the welfare state become free. For the economy just grows that much more robustly.

So all these people you see from time to time arguing to limit political participation for one reason or another, or in the case of anarchists, to just cripple or remove the government, what they are really arguing for is to cripple the dynamic and robust economy.

Zero-Sum-Game.

Ending growth for the purpose of concentrating wealth and power.

There must be inclusive politics to have the institutions and opportunities for an economy to thrive.

And so anything which changes extractive government for inclusive government is justifiable. But anything that goes the other way is not.

The Confederacy was an extractive state. The Union an inclusive one.

I don't really understand how this contradicts anything I've said. Yes, people can commit violent acts without the involvement of a state; I already mentioned the (early) Cossacks as an example of a stateless society, and you'll be aware that they weren't always the friendliest bunch. But what you predicted is the emergence of entities not merely involved in violent activity, but taking upon themselves the social and political functions of a state, and I really cannot comprehend why we would not identity an entity that is in all essential respects a state as being a state.

Because the "state" aspect isn't actually relevent to what happened. So you have the anti-state people holding it up as an aspect of "oh the state is evil", when the reality is that some people are evil, and what they do has nothing to do with state or not state.

I don't really see why it's a problem. Political theory isn't about competing policy proposals that have to be compared and contrasted, it's about, well, theory. I's perfectly reasonable to set about demolishing one set of ideas without having an alternative ready to hand- and, indeed, it's probably a better way to set about it, because it minimises bias. Uncertainty is permissible.

Well, as I've said several times, I don't really know political theory. Nor am I all that interested. I know something about some political positions and movements, but not the theory behind political study as a whole.

I've honestly never encountered that idea. Every anarcho-capitalist I've heard about is quite happy to consider private arbitration, professional or trade organisations, and so on. The key is that these things are voluntary and non-coercive.

Tomato-tomahto. What you have to understand is that many disputes can be peacefully and privately resolved.

And many can't.

If one side refuses private arbitration, or having lost, refuses to make recompense, there is no further recourse under anarcho-capitalism. None. One side refuse to participate, the other side has no recourse at all.

And most of them know that. So if you want people to have no recourse to redress a wrong, then just tell people that only voluntary is available. You are turning loose the predators and telling them that they are free to hurt anyone they want to hurt.

You have legalized any and all sorts of violence.

Well, either way. In practical terms, it amounts to the same thing. You are of the opinion that failing to respect the institution of private property that underlies the reality of capitalist power should be met with violence, which Amadeus does not, so it seems absurd to attack him as an unwitting corporate stooge when only one of you is willing to see people dead on their behalf.

Again, you are misrepresenting my point. Knock it the frak off.

Ayatollah So

Mar 27, 2012, 08:10 PM

I've honestly never encountered that idea. Every anarcho-capitalist I've heard about is quite happy to consider private arbitration, professional or trade organisations, and so on. The key is that these things are voluntary and non-coercive.

Cutlass's reply confused me (can't tell if I disagree) so let me reply just to you.

I'll start with: whaaaat?

We're talking about rights here. Take water pollution for example. It's 1850, and you live in Anarchocapitalotopia. Firm X is polluting your water supply; your life is at risk; X disputes this. What happens if the available private arbitrators won't give you satisfaction? What are the odds that you'll just politely try to start a boycott? Pretty damn slim, I think. I think you'll notice that you own a gun, and by golly, so do most of your neighbors, who share the fouled water supply.

Of course, I'm being unrealistic here, I suppose. Free market solves everything - I forgot. The arbitration firms will be completely fair, with no bias toward the larger economic power in the transaction (who probably does the selecting of the arbitrator in most cases). So if your water is truly polluted, the arbitrator will side with you; firm X will admit error; problem solved. Free market solves everything.

Traitorfish

Mar 28, 2012, 04:41 AM

Integral and I are reading the same new book. Essentially the premise is that there are two types of states: Extractive states, ones that are organized in such a way that those at the top take as much of the product of others for themselves as they can manage. Essentially the type of thing that gives some moral justification to Amadeus. And Inclusive states. Ones that give the moral justification to me. These create the conditions for broad based economic prosperity based on broad based political participation. Essentially the broader is the political participation the broader will be the distributed the fruits of prosperity and the greater will be the total of prosperity.

An old argument that I had with Ama is that I said that I am far richer because of the welfare state. And he thinks he is poorer because of it. He's wrong. Because the economy as a whole is just that much larger because the fruits of the economy and the opportunity and liberty in the economy are that much greater.

The personal and economic liberty is so much greater where the political liberty is greater that things like the welfare state become free. For the economy just grows that much more robustly.

So all these people you see from time to time arguing to limit political participation for one reason or another, or in the case of anarchists, to just cripple or remove the government, what they are really arguing for is to cripple the dynamic and robust economy.

Zero-Sum-Game.

Ending growth for the purpose of concentrating wealth and power.

There must be inclusive politics to have the institutions and opportunities for an economy to thrive.

And so anything which changes extractive government for inclusive government is justifiable. But anything that goes the other way is not.

The Confederacy was an extractive state. The Union an inclusive one.
Interesting idea. How do you determine what is and is not an inclusive state, though? I, for example, would argue that all capitalist states are exclusive by definition, and that it's simply a matter of degrees. Would that imply that insofar as I am conviced of this reality, I possess a right of revolution if the state is not willing to reform in a socialistic direction? Or is there some third party, a neutral arbiter that is neither myself or the state, that is able to judge for us when that would and would not be permissable?

(Also, on an historical note, I think it's a bit much to describe the Union c.1961 as an inclusive state, given the depth of exploitation of working people, and the political exclusion suffered by many immigrants, particularly non-white immigrants. Even if you regard an inclusive capitalist state as possible, I can't see a reasonable argument for one existing until the development of the welfare state at a rather later date.)

Because the "state" aspect isn't actually relevent to what happened. So you have the anti-state people holding it up as an aspect of "oh the state is evil", when the reality is that some people are evil, and what they do has nothing to do with state or not state.
There's a difference between claiming that the state is A Bad Thing, and claiming that all Badness is located exclusively and eternally in the state. How many anarchists actually do this? Only those like Abegweit, as far as I can tell, and they're what you might politely call highly idiosyncratic in their thought. All that's claimed is that coercion is a Bad Thing, and that insofar as the state is coercive (which most would argue is intrinsically the case) it is a Bad Thing. It doesn't mean that Bad Things can't exist outside of the state, any more than the fact that Nazism was a Bad Thing means that all Bad Things are Nazi.

In this case, what's being suggested isn't that it would be impossible to enslave people or kill indigenous peoples without the existence of a state- that's patently nonsensical- but that those engage in slavery and genocide were by and large acting within the terms of the state- whatever particular legal structures a given state may have possessed.

Well, as I've said several times, I don't really know political theory. Nor am I all that interested. I know something about some political positions and movements, but not the theory behind political study as a whole.
Well, it's what we've been discussing for the last umpteen pages, so... :dunno:

Tomato-tomahto. What you have to understand is that many disputes can be peacefully and privately resolved.

And many can't.

If one side refuses private arbitration, or having lost, refuses to make recompense, there is no further recourse under anarcho-capitalism. None. One side refuse to participate, the other side has no recourse at all.

And most of them know that. So if you want people to have no recourse to redress a wrong, then just tell people that only voluntary is available. You are turning loose the predators and telling them that they are free to hurt anyone they want to hurt.

You have legalized any and all sorts of violence.
As I understand it, a system of private property reliant on good will rather than violence would tend to imply that acting in an anti-social manner would have more serious reprucussions than leaving those you've harmed going :(. The "sucks to be you" model of interpersonal relations only works if you're guaranteed some immunity from them simply declining to acknowledge your property rights and continuing to engage with trade in you, and in the absence of the state, that does not necessarilly appear to be the case.

Now, do I think that would work? Almost certainly not, which is why capital loves loves loves the state and all its pointy accoutrements. But we should at least lay out clearly how it would unfold and thus what it is that would fail to work, rather than simply assuming that it would just be the Gilded Era minus the postal service, as you seem to be doing.

Again, you are misrepresenting my point. Knock it the frak off.
How so? It's true that the power of capital is rooted private property, isn't it? And it's true that, in principle, you support the use of state violence in defence of private property. Two plus two being four, this means that you support the use of state violence in support of the power of capital. That may not be why you support propertarian violence, but by the same measure Amadeus doesn't support the abolition of industrial regulation because he wants more air pollution, as may be the result of a stateless capitalism.

Cutlass's reply confused me (can't tell if I disagree) so let me reply just to you.

I'll start with: whaaaat?

We're talking about rights here. Take water pollution for example. It's 1850, and you live in Anarchocapitalotopia. Firm X is polluting your water supply; your life is at risk; X disputes this. What happens if the available private arbitrators won't give you satisfaction? What are the odds that you'll just politely try to start a boycott? Pretty damn slim, I think. I think you'll notice that you own a gun, and by golly, so do most of your neighbors, who share the fouled water supply.

Of course, I'm being unrealistic here, I suppose. Free market solves everything - I forgot. The arbitration firms will be completely fair, with no bias toward the larger economic power in the transaction (who probably does the selecting of the arbitrator in most cases). So if your water is truly polluted, the arbitrator will side with you; firm X will admit error; problem solved. Free market solves everything.
Probably why I'm not an anarcho-capitalist. :dunno:

Cutlass

Mar 28, 2012, 08:03 AM

Interesting idea. How do you determine what is and is not an inclusive state, though? I, for example, would argue that all capitalist states are exclusive by definition, and that it's simply a matter of degrees. Would that imply that insofar as I am conviced of this reality, I possess a right of revolution if the state is not willing to reform in a socialistic direction? Or is there some third party, a neutral arbiter that is neither myself or the state, that is able to judge for us when that would and would not be permissable?

(Also, on an historical note, I think it's a bit much to describe the Union c.1961 as an inclusive state, given the depth of exploitation of working people, and the political exclusion suffered by many immigrants, particularly non-white immigrants. Even if you regard an inclusive capitalist state as possible, I can't see a reasonable argument for one existing until the development of the welfare state at a rather later date.)

Well I suppose if you insist on taking a Marxist definition of it, then nothing works. Ever. And so you have no other options but to find some god to take your side.

There is no outside arbitrator that that will give you hard and fast rules that apply in all times and places. Forget that. There is no point in even discussing things if you are only going to insist on formalized and unchanging rules.

As to capitalism, capitalism is the most dynamic and creates the most wealth where political institutions are inclusive. The difference is whether the state is protecting the existing wealth and power at the expense of the creation of new wealth, or is it protecting the opportunity to create new wealth?

In the Union v Confederacy, the Union states were initially less prosperous because there was huge wealth to be extracted from the institution of slavery. But as time went on, the Union areas were far more dynamic economically. There was much more political participation, it was more open and responsive. The result was the common Northerner had at least a basic education. The common Southerner did not. There were far more patents granted in the North. More Northerners owned their own land, homes, businesses. More Northerners prospered or failed based on their own personal efforts, and not their inheritances or political positions. As a result, the North's economy grew in a much stronger and more sustainable way. And when the South seceded, the North had not just a large manpower advantage (because immigrants overwhelmingly chose the North over the South as the better place to live), but also had financial and industrial advantages that the South simply could not stand against.

The Union was far more free, and so the Union was far stronger.

Now maybe it sucks to be an industrial prole, but the system as a whole for the majority of the people offered far more inclusiveness and freedom, in politics, in economics, and in life. It was certainly better than any alternative anyone else was offering. That is why people moved from throughout the world to be a part of it.

Now are there limits on this? Certainly. And one of the themes of the book is that achieving an inclusive state is not the end, but that then it must be maintained. The authors make the point that the city state of Venice was once the most dynamic and wealthiest place in the world. And at the time it was highly inclusive politically and economically. But the old money interests over time succeeded in closing down the realm of political participation, and in doing so Venice's economy stagnated. It became a backwater, and essentially no more than a tourist destination.

And this can happen again. Conservatism in the US today is primarily about the distribution of wealth at the expense of the creation of wealth. I have argued that 100 times on this forum at least, if anyone cared to remember. If you look at the presidential candidates now, what they are really arguing for is to do to the US what was done to Venice, and to end the creation of wealth for the purpose of concentrating wealth and power. They don't see it that way, but they are actually blind and indifferent to the creation of wealth, and are only concerned with the concentration of it.

What do we see? Proposals to limit political participation. Voter suppression. Citizen's United. Deregulate, deregulate, deregulate. Right to work, anti-union activities and rhetoric. Opposition to minimum wages. Cut entitlements cut welfare. Cut taxes on the rich. End the "death tax". End capital gains taxes. End income taxes.

Every one of those things, and many more, are attempts to turn the US from an inclusive state to an extractive one.

Funny, isn't it, how many libertarians and anarchists would choose to do those things rather than the opposite.

There's a difference between claiming that the state is A Bad Thing, and claiming that all Badness is located exclusively and eternally in the state. How many anarchists actually do this? Only those like Abegweit, as far as I can tell, and they're what you might politely call highly idiosyncratic in their thought. All that's claimed is that coercion is a Bad Thing, and that insofar as the state is coercive (which most would argue is intrinsically the case) it is a Bad Thing. It doesn't mean that Bad Things can't exist outside of the state, any more than the fact that Nazism was a Bad Thing means that all Bad Things are Nazi.

In this case, what's being suggested isn't that it would be impossible to enslave people or kill indigenous peoples without the existence of a state- that's patently nonsensical- but that those engage in slavery and genocide were by and large acting within the terms of the state- whatever particular legal structures a given state may have possessed.

There is a fundamental difference, morally as well as practically, between an act of omission and an act of commission. The financial crisis the US went through in 2008 was an act of omission on the part of the US government. It both could have, and should have, acted preemptively to prevent it. But choose not to, largely because Big Finance in the US fought tooth and nail for decades to convince the government to get out of its way. The financial crisis was an act of commission on the part of Big Finance. They did it. They are responsible. It was their actions, taken for their interests.

But libertarians and anarchists (and conservatives, what strange bedfellows these people keep) say that it is all the government's fault, Big Finance was forced into it. It is a fundamental shifting of responsibility. And by doing so they justify not taking the steps that would prevent it from happening again, and again, and again, and again, and again.

When you shift responsibility like that, from those who did an act of commission to those who committed an act of omission, you not just failed to learn the lessons that would prevent it from happening again and again, but you reward instead of punish those people who actually are responsible.

And that is why it matters that the difference between omission and commission be kept clear.

When you blur the distinction of the matter, such as say slavery in the US, and say it was a governmental institution, when in reality the government simply declined to deal with it, then it leads to fundamentally wrong conclusions on what to do going forward.

Well, it's what we've been discussing for the last umpteen pages, so... :dunno:

And that's precisely where you and I always have the discussion hang up. :p

As I understand it, a system of private property reliant on good will rather than violence would tend to imply that acting in an anti-social manner would have more serious reprucussions than leaving those you've harmed going :(. The "sucks to be you" model of interpersonal relations only works if you're guaranteed some immunity from them simply declining to acknowledge your property rights and continuing to engage with trade in you, and in the absence of the state, that does not necessarilly appear to be the case.

Now, do I think that would work? Almost certainly not, which is why capital loves loves loves the state and all its pointy accoutrements. But we should at least lay out clearly how it would unfold and thus what it is that would fail to work, rather than simply assuming that it would just be the Gilded Era minus the postal service, as you seem to be doing.

Oh, it would not be nearly as good as the Gilded Era. There just is not anything I can see in human history that would lead me to believe that it would work.

What you need to understand is that private violence is a profit maximizing strategy. Everyone is best off if they harm others. What kind of social stigma do you really think you can apply that will overcome that? In small, cohesive, and isolated communities social stigma as a control method may work. But it does not scale up. You cannot do it in a city. Much less a country.

How so? It's true that the power of capital is rooted private property, isn't it? And it's true that, in principle, you support the use of state violence in defence of private property. Two plus two being four, this means that you support the use of state violence in support of the power of capital. That may not be why you support propertarian violence, but by the same measure Amadeus doesn't support the abolition of industrial regulation because he wants more air pollution, as may be the result of a stateless capitalism.

The point is that the actual violence a person is likely to receive in their lives is far greater in Somalia than it is in the US. You are far, far, more likely to be the victim of violence in a place without a functioning state than in a place with one. Amadeus may not want the system he wants because he wants unlimited violence, but that's what he will get. I want the system I want because the amount of violence is trivial in comparison to what he will have.

So saying I want violence, when what I want is a vast reduction in actual violence, is insulting at the least.

Leoreth

Mar 28, 2012, 08:31 AM

I've heard conflicting positions on how anarcho-capitalists think property will work in an anarcho-capitalist society. I've learnt that they consider property a natural right. Does that mean that:

a) everyone who lives in an anarcho-capitalist society automatically respects other people's property (as kind of a necessary prerequisite for anarcho-capitalism)
b) property owners are free to organise sufficient defense for their property due to the abolishment of the state monopoly on force
c) everyone who doesn't respect property suffers from bad PR so that they'll be excluded from the market by other participants (I don't believe this is a possible position, but I've heard the bad PR + market = justice argument too often to let it pass)?

Ayatollah So

Mar 28, 2012, 06:26 PM

b) property owners are free to organise sufficient defense for their property due to the abolishment of the state monopoly on force

In my vague memory of David Friedman's book Machinery of Freedom(?), it's (B). That's part of why I questioned TF's story which focuses on (C). Not that (B) is much better - the question immediately becomes why this doesn't lead to a state, or something with all the violence and coercion of a state. A million little Saddams, to quote an Iraqi woman.

Leoreth

Mar 28, 2012, 07:00 PM

Thanks, that's what I thought. I always feel that anarcho-capitalists are a little squishy in their argumentation, and resort to the explanation that's most suitable for their current point. But maybe I only get that feeling because I hear about it from different people with different takes on the ideology.

timtofly

Mar 30, 2012, 06:04 PM

Leoreth

Mar 30, 2012, 06:31 PM

Corporations are bullies. The state is the stocky, but kindhearted child you become friends with so the bullies can't take your breakfast anymore.

(Yes, I can stretch metaphors until you all writhe in pain :D)

Cutlass

Mar 30, 2012, 07:05 PM

Traitorfish

Mar 30, 2012, 07:30 PM

Well I suppose if you insist on taking a Marxist definition of it, then nothing works. Ever. And so you have no other options but to find some god to take your side.

There is no outside arbitrator that that will give you hard and fast rules that apply in all times and places. Forget that. There is no point in even discussing things if you are only going to insist on formalized and unchanging rules.
Then, to return to the original point, how can you describe political secession as being "legitimate" or "illegitimate"? If there is no outside arbiter, there is only the opinion of the contesting parties, and it does not seem immediately apparent that either of them should be privileged with that decision.

There is a fundamental difference, morally as well as practically, between an act of omission and an act of commission. The financial crisis the US went through in 2008 was an act of omission on the part of the US government. It both could have, and should have, acted preemptively to prevent it. But choose not to, largely because Big Finance in the US fought tooth and nail for decades to convince the government to get out of its way. The financial crisis was an act of commission on the part of Big Finance. They did it. They are responsible. It was their actions, taken for their interests.

But libertarians and anarchists (and conservatives, what strange bedfellows these people keep) say that it is all the government's fault, Big Finance was forced into it. It is a fundamental shifting of responsibility. And by doing so they justify not taking the steps that would prevent it from happening again, and again, and again, and again, and again.

When you shift responsibility like that, from those who did an act of commission to those who committed an act of omission, you not just failed to learn the lessons that would prevent it from happening again and again, but you reward instead of punish those people who actually are responsible.

And that is why it matters that the difference between omission and commission be kept clear.

When you blur the distinction of the matter, such as say slavery in the US, and say it was a governmental institution, when in reality the government simply declined to deal with it, then it leads to fundamentally wrong conclusions on what to do going forward.
Speaking only for myself, I'm not convinced that it's possible to discuss the various institutions such as Big Finance, slavery, the state, and so on, as existing prior to their involvement in society. They are mutually conditioning, so to talk about slavery as being a governmental or non-governmental institution seems to confuse history with legality. But, then, right-libertarians/anarchists aren't very big on the totality (give or take the occasional half-hearted flirtation with Nietzsche), so I can't say how they'd address this.

Oh, it would not be nearly as good as the Gilded Era. There just is not anything I can see in human history that would lead me to believe that it would work.

What you need to understand is that private violence is a profit maximizing strategy. Everyone is best off if they harm others. What kind of social stigma do you really think you can apply that will overcome that? In small, cohesive, and isolated communities social stigma as a control method may work. But it does not scale up. You cannot do it in a city. Much less a country.
I understand that very well, as it happens; I read my labour history. ;) I'm simply of the opinion that private violence is this sort is invariably dependent on a more far-reaching state violence- not that the distinction between the two is necessarily that clear cut, mind you- which is why capital has, despite the proclamations of the anarcho-"capitalists", always remained firmly behind the state as such.

And, yes, maybe their control methods are complete balls. I can't say I have any faith in them myself. But the point is that they do exist, however limp and uninspiring as they may be, so if we're to properly engage with the cappie position that needs to be recognised- if only so that it can be refuted.

The point is that the actual violence a person is likely to receive in their lives is far greater in Somalia than it is in the US. You are far, far, more likely to be the victim of violence in a place without a functioning state than in a place with one. Amadeus may not want the system he wants because he wants unlimited violence, but that's what he will get. I want the system I want because the amount of violence is trivial in comparison to what he will have.

So saying I want violence, when what I want is a vast reduction in actual violence, is insulting at the least.
You seem to be getting hung up on violence, when I'm specifically talking about violence to an end. It may well be the case that Amadeus' program is, examined critically, the far more violent of the two; that is certainly my suspicion. But Amadeus's violence is a crime of omission, to return to the distinction you earlier observed, a misplaced faith in the ability of human beings living in a competitive society not to gut each other. Your violence is a crime of commission, a sombre request that the state commit violence against people who transgress against private property. As you yourself observed, there is a difference, so, as was my original point, it seems hypocritical of you to paint him as the stooge of capital when you are the one willing to commit what seems to the self-evidently greater crime on its behalf.

I'm not really sure what you are asking, rephrase?

The greatest violence occurs where there is the least state. But sometimes great violence happens with too much state as well. Either extreme can generate violence with no real limits. The odds of the average person being the victim of violence on any given day is maximized by having the least state and government.
Are "more state" and "less state" very helpful measures of anything much? For example, did Pinochet's Chile have more or less state than Atlee's Britain?

In all honesty, it seems like a confusing rather than enlightening approach to political analysis.

Integral

Mar 30, 2012, 07:37 PM

@ Intergrel/Cutlass

Is there a factor in violence, since most people are not violent, called the bully factor that happens?

How can more violence be better? I think that most people would be inclined to stay safe and expect safety in return. It is only the bully factor that makes violence acceptable.

The bully factor evolved is the state where bullies do get the freedom to be. Even the best "state" intentions devolve into the state being the tool of the bully.
That, my friend, is a unique misspelling. :)

Anyway, you have two points.

1. More violence can't be better, therefore government is bad. (there's some stuff about people being not violent in there as well)
2. Government involvement tends to be captured by the very entities it seeks to regulate.

The first point is extremely weak, I'm afraid. For your point to be right, the government must be the primary source of violence/loss of liberty in people's lives. Now at some margins that might be the case, but it doesn't lead to a reducto in which the best government is no government. Large governments can be oppressive, but large corporations, unions, and other institutions can also be oppressive. Ideally there's a balancing act involved, and one argument in favor of using government to rectify injustice is that, well, at least we choose our government. There is an interior optimum here!

The second point has considerable force particularly at current margins. The history of American regulation abounds with examples of so-called "regulatory capture," where regulated entities turn around and end up manipulating the regulator for their own benefit. We should look carefully at regulation, and we should think hard about revolving doors and incentive problems, but again this doesn't lead to a reducto in which no government is the best government.

timtofly

Mar 30, 2012, 08:37 PM

Thanks to both:

A bully is a bully in school. A corporate bully in finance. A state bully in world polotics. It is not reduced by scale. I think a government is only "good" for a couple centuries and then the cycle needs to start again. How it starts is up to the current populace.

1. More violence can't be better, therefore government is bad. (there's some stuff about people being not violent in there as well)
2. Government involvement tends to be captured by the very entities it seeks to regulate.

1.)A government that allows or fosters violence is not fair. My statement about violence and people cannot be put under the rug. People who have been educated tend to be less violent than those who who are allowed to "do as they please". The major problem is what to do with people after educating them. The other aspect is how to turn bullies into leaders, and keep it fair for the rest of society.
2.)If there is a state, obviously there has to be overseers in charge of such state. That is why a constitution is needed to keep them in check and in line as they fulfill their duties, hence after a century or two, the thing has to be rebooted to clear out RAMM and start again (Leoreth).

Bullies are leaders, but not all leaders have retained their bulliness. There comes a point in every education system in which those with certain qualities are prepared for the future leadership, but unless there are checks and balances the bullies will take charge and bulliness will remain in all aspects of leadership affecting the state as a whole.

Mr. Dictator

Mar 31, 2012, 05:04 AM

Every day I feel the Situationist International is easier to understand, and even more relevant to our world. And not just that, but also seems to be more and more discussed in my little drip of the stream.

Any of the anarchists here also notice this?

Cutlass

Mar 31, 2012, 09:20 AM

Then, to return to the original point, how can you describe political secession as being "legitimate" or "illegitimate"? If there is no outside arbiter, there is only the opinion of the contesting parties, and it does not seem immediately apparent that either of them should be privileged with that decision.

And, like with so many other human decisions, people should use their judgment. Because nothing else is left.

Speaking only for myself, I'm not convinced that it's possible to discuss the various institutions such as Big Finance, slavery, the state, and so on, as existing prior to their involvement in society. They are mutually conditioning, so to talk about slavery as being a governmental or non-governmental institution seems to confuse history with legality. But, then, right-libertarians/anarchists aren't very big on the totality (give or take the occasional half-hearted flirtation with Nietzsche), so I can't say how they'd address this.

I can see where in discussions like this the concept of "state" at all is unhelpful. Anarchists and libertarians say "look at the evil perpetrated by the state", and what they really should be looking at is why the people, no matter what aegis they are acting under, acted as they did.

What a lot of these people who are throwing around the label "statist" fail to grasp is that the state is not the goal. It is a means to an end. Not an end in and of itself. With the absolutist and extractive government, the ends are the wealth and power of the elite who run it. And so it frequently happens that there really isn't all that much government in the states where government is the most oppressive. "Communist" states being the biggest exception to that, not because they desire big government as an end, but because they justify their domination of the system through an ideology that they can only pursue by means of a big government. And things tend to take on a momentum of their own after that.

However, you look at the majority of Africa, the majority of Latin America, much of it is every bit as absolutist and extractive, but without all that much government.

And, where there is the least government, there is the most day to day violence.

You have the greatest chances of being a victim of violence at both extremes. And what that means is that you have the least real freedom at both extremes. In a stateless society, whoever has the power to achieve their goals through violence will do so. Nothing is stopping them. Simply making the assumption that people will not resort to violence in the absence of the state ignores the fact that people do so every day. It is in their interest to do so. And the only time they don't is when the state prevents it from happening.

So if you do not want violence, you must have government. There isn't another alternative. Accusing the government and its supporters of wanting to be the only one carrying a big stick to hit others with ignores the fact that that stick isn't going to see nearly as much use as the infinite number of sticks being wielded for an infinite number of reasons.

The state is not the goal. It is a means to an end. And that end is peace, liberty, prosperity.

The nations without (effective) governments are even poorer than those nations with excessive governments. And the only nations who are truly wealthy, free, and prosperous are those where the political institutions are the most inclusive.

I understand that very well, as it happens; I read my labour history. ;) I'm simply of the opinion that private violence is this sort is invariably dependent on a more far-reaching state violence- not that the distinction between the two is necessarily that clear cut, mind you- which is why capital has, despite the proclamations of the anarcho-"capitalists", always remained firmly behind the state as such.

And, yes, maybe their control methods are complete balls. I can't say I have any faith in them myself. But the point is that they do exist, however limp and uninspiring as they may be, so if we're to properly engage with the cappie position that needs to be recognised- if only so that it can be refuted.

Capital backs the state because capital receives a lot of services from the state. And in many cases, they'd like to get a lot more. Why work to earn when you can earn without working? Ultimately old money wants to control without having to earn. That happens over and over again. That is why people oppose inheritance taxes.

But to blame the violence of companies against labor on the state isn't really accurate. The government is a tool that capital can try to use against labor, but the violence is of the capital and for the capital. It is not of the state and for the state.

You seem to be getting hung up on violence, when I'm specifically talking about violence to an end. It may well be the case that Amadeus' program is, examined critically, the far more violent of the two; that is certainly my suspicion. But Amadeus's violence is a crime of omission, to return to the distinction you earlier observed, a misplaced faith in the ability of human beings living in a competitive society not to gut each other. Your violence is a crime of commission, a sombre request that the state commit violence against people who transgress against private property. As you yourself observed, there is a difference, so, as was my original point, it seems hypocritical of you to paint him as the stooge of capital when you are the one willing to commit what seems to the self-evidently greater crime on its behalf.

You're reversing yourself a bit here. You and Amadeus are making the mistake of thinking that violence is a state thing, and so you end it by ending the state. Where I am saying that violence is a human thing, and you end it by having enough state to suppress it.

Now in both cases it is an act of omission to allow the violence. But the violence resulting would be an act of commission on the parts of those people who actually, you know, engage in the violence. So I'm willing to commit a minimum amount of violence to prevent others from committing far greater amounts of violence, where Amadeus is willing to just get out of the way and allow unlimited violence. But he would prohibit anyone from acting to protect themselves from violence, and so that is an act of commission on his part. He is not just getting out of the way of the violence, he is actively aiding and abetting it.

So I am aiding and abetting the suppression of violence, even when that requires some use of violence. He is aiding and abetting the unlimited use of violence.

Are "more state" and "less state" very helpful measures of anything much? For example, did Pinochet's Chile have more or less state than Atlee's Britain?

In all honesty, it seems like a confusing rather than enlightening approach to political analysis.

If you want to compare any two states, then you have to really know a lot about those two. Atlee probably had more state, from what little I know of Chile at the time. I know Thatcher had more state than Somalia, and where were you likely to be killed?

An inclusive state can be large without being oppressive. And, in fact, that inclusiveness makes it the least likely to be oppressive. So a big, non-inclusive, state may have as much violence as little to no state has.

It is the inclusiveness that controls the level of violence, not the size of the state. But you should also consider Columbia, which is fairly inclusive, but simply lacks sufficient state to protect the people from private violence.