Princeps
More bombs than God
- Joined
- Aug 22, 2004
- Messages
- 5,265
Of course cheap labor is economical, which is why slavery has persisted. Today there are more slaves in the world then ever before, except in societies were slavery can be prevented by law. I theorize that in a anarcho-capitalist private tyranny, slaves would not be all of the labour, but rather, cheap, expendible and numerous, while the core of the labour force, the necessary professionals and managerial staff, would be formed by highly paid and privileged people. Likewise, the military arm of a private tyranny would be well paid and privileged, thus guaranteeing their loyalty. It is not in the rational self-interest of the capitalist to broadly share the benefits of his entreprise among the labour force, but rather, share it with a narrow core group and enforces. The slaves could be indoctornated with propaganda, because giving them more resources would simply strenghen them.
No. Some landlords did release their serfs, primarily because they were offered with economic incentives and preasured by a combination of public policy and their peers in industry. I theorize that the reason why public policy and the industrial rich wanted to end the institution of serfdom was largely a side effect of protectionism, which increased the value of local labor. It was not the result of free market policies. Under a free market, both the feudal and the industrial overlords could had their slaves at a reasonable cost.
However, for the most part, the feudal privileged harshly resisted the abolition of serfdom, which lead to many massacres and wars when progressive movements tried to weaken it. Also, a lot of inequities and problems of serfdom were inherited by the subsequent industrial economy, so the struggle certainly didn't end.
Bullets are cheaper than paying fair wages.
No production is cheap and as for quality, there are ways of improving it.
Serfdom in europe was really born in the late period of the Roman Empire under fairly free market conditions and abolished in conditions of protectionism. The suqsequent Medieval kingdoms were never especially protectionist on the avarage. The Roman Empire was essentially one enormous unprecedented free market zone with quite free movement of goods and services. In the empire, the interest of the rich were protected by legions, popular organizations were crushed and thus extreme inequality permeated. The rich could exploit the free trade to their advantage over the rest of the population and also as a source of luxury goods from China and India. This meant that as inequality increased, power and wealth was concentrated to the hands of elites, local and central Roman, creating two divergent elites. These two elites evantually collided, because as the central roman government wanted to muster more resources and recruit (gang press, basically) more people into the military, the local elite didn't want it slaves, capital and money taken by the military bureocracy and they lobbied for their interests in the senate and the court, and also bribed officials. Again, the slave driving rich didn't want to give up their slaves as your theory would have it, but rather they would see the empire crumble and burn before them. Then the Germanics basically came and took over the slave economy, installing themselves into the position of an elite. The Germanics would have to be more generous toward the majority however, and evidence suggests that the diet of folks improved as the empire (and free markets) declined.
It is simply moronic to suggest that slavery as a practice would have to be subsidized by the free population. All historical evidence suggests that slavery was pretty widespread and profitable business and existed in various forms. It has never dissappeared actually, there are more slaves now than ever before. In countries were slavery was effectively abolished, it was done so by means of law enforcement.
Security would be the last line of business to be allowed to decline: the mercenaries would be highly paid, professional and disciplined (like in past dictatorships which survived for centuries). It would be essential to the survival of a violent cartel.
And as for the overall quality of products. Since the cartels would be essentially allowed to form freely and establish whatever violent political systems they can afford to enforce. Evantually some strong would bring down the rest of the weaker powers and the cartel regime would be become a state for all intents and purposes. And like all states in the past, small and big, they could and likely would try to extend their power over others. They'd dismantle the manifactures of others and literally force other societies to purchase the goods produced by the privileged industries of the cartel-state. The quality of most products would be allowed to decline or stagnate while the luxury goods produced for the rich would be of great quality, even perhaps subject to competition.
But while people do care only the existence of poplar democratic institutions and the laws and popular preasures that enforce them, allow them to influence the politics. In anarcho-capitalism, these collective institutions would be abolished and private tyrants would be set loose without any regulation on their activities.
Anarcho-capitalism has inherent problems. The word 'anarcho' refers to a context, i.e. anarchism, while the capitalism is proposition, a preference. The reason why anarcho-capitalism isn't anarchistic is because it doesn't seek to abolish politics and the violence of statism, but only to unwittingly recontextualize it in private power, which amounts to the abolition of democracy, nothing else.
Of course, democracy doesn't always function perfectly, but historically, nondemocratic leaders have risen in to power through backroom deals, coups and violence, not through the ballot box. Sometimes people accept dictatorship, but mostly when they are deluded.
It is really quite simply.
Libertarian anti-"statism" is premised in the notion that each man has 'natural rights', self-evident, inherent in him due to the virtue of his humanity. As the old saying goes, these are the rights to life, liberty and property. Violations of these rights are called murder, enslavement and theft respectively in that order.
Natural rights, however, do not exist. They are a platonic delusion, a wish in the mind. Many moral doctrines claim to be natural or divine, and all of them have as much evidence to prove it: i.e. none. Either they're all right, which is impossible, or they're all wrong. God and mother nature enforce no rights.
Therefore all rights and laws are human constructs. The beginning of the state, I think, can be traced to the advent of agriculture when new institutions were needed to decide where barriers are drawn, what sort of customs and rules govern the marketplace and the growing population and commerce and so forth. A human society needs an rules and politics for 4 reasons mostly: 1. humans can do harm, 2. humans are many, 3. humans have needs while 4. resources are scarce (there are other reasons either too obvious or complex to mention now). A government is merely, more or less, an extension of this fact.
Nonsense. Violence can be suprisingly effective.
they make concessions, but not without a struggle.
Manipulation and violence, yes. Both could be deployed by private regimes, but mostly in democracies, these two are tempered and restrained by laws and regulations.
No, crush their resistence and make a couple of examples. Union busting doesn't usually include the massacre of the entire work force. Subjugation isn't extermination. This is elementary.
Not necessarily. They could spread competing propaganda (misinfo), sabotage reporting media, evantually to the point that there's simply too much mixed information, conflicting accounts, and so forth. I mean come on, trusting the regulation of violent power on the prospect that its improper use will result in bad rep, is childish to the point of being absurd. All empires have gotten away with the use of violence and even made a good reputation among the powerful who supported it.
Also. According to the free market reason-above-all theory of entrepreneurialism, a whole new line of business could be born and allowed to thrive. A business totally orientated to supplying the demands of disreputable regimes, businesses and people. An organization that was judged as criminal by a private court could use its swindeled money to purchase the services of this "dark economy" made of unaccountable, unregulated entrepreneurs who will wet the demands of drug barons, kinpins and private dictatorships. Anything from escape flights to frauds, weapons to organized criminals and tanks for statist wannabe empires. A ponzi swindler, for example, could prearrange his flight and the erradication of all evidence using these services.
Yes, to an extent it is good. For example, since were are it, in Iceland, the reorganization of fishing was based on a state-enforced rearrangement of the resources, i.e. a new property system, individual fishing quota which could be sold and was treated as property. iirc. in that happaned in 1970s and lead to great improvements in fishing. (this is actually further evidence that property in essence is nothing but a goverment regulation of resources).
Not necessarily equal. But extreme inequality has disadvantages.
Alleviation of inequality through moderately redistributive programs has benefits for the economy, I think.
Only those who can afford it. Nominal liberty is not genuine liberty. Libertarians and anarcho-capitalists conflate the two.
Exactly, the fact that in the world you prefer, any one can invest in any business regardless of the source of its profits, seems to be despicable.
In the private sector, actually, things can be silenced much more effectively than in, for example, the US government. Government secrets are very hard to keep hidden they're of dubious nature. This is because of popular preasure to maintain government transparency.
Private companies, however, are very secretive institutions and would be more so in an anarcho-capitalist society. Private companies would invest heavily in secrecy.
Perhaps, perhaps not.
Well, actally, before the central banking system, the US and the rest of the world had much more devastating recessions, bubbles and depressions.
So? Property and taxes are both violently enforced systems meant to entitle some at the cost of others. If you argue that there are too many taxes, one could also argue that there's too much private property. At moral level, both systems are equally justifiable. But in a democracy, it's the elected representatives who set the balance between private entitlement and taxes.
Well, violence and misery is much higher in ungoverned or very poorly governed regions.
All rich industrial countries have some sort of government guaranteed medical insurance. This is mostly because they have tried private systems, but discovered that public systems perform better in allocating resources with reasonable equality and in general performing better to meet the demands of the society.
All true, but power of organized money should be met with organized people. In anarcho-capitalism, the people would be most likely deprived of such an oppoturnity because the abolition of democracy (i.e. public and collective power) is so essential in anarcho-capitalism.
JerichoHill said:
Yet another good point.
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The fall of the western roman empire in a paragraph! 
