nvm

[MagisterCultuum]

Yes, although 37 is Mises instead.

 

[Yeekim]

The experience with which the sciences of human action have to deal is
always an experience of complex phenomena. No laboratory experiments
can be performed with regard to human action. We are never in a position
to observe the change in one element only, all other conditions of the event
remaining unchanged. Historical experience as an experience of complex
phenomena does not provide us with facts in the sense in which the natural
sciences employ this term to signify isolated events tested in experiments.

...

History can neither prove nor disprove any general statement in the
manner in which the natural sciences accept or reject a hypothesis on the
ground of laboratory experiments. Neither experimental verification nor
experimental falsification of a general proposition is possible in its field.
Complex phenomena in the production of which various causal chains
are interlaced cannot test any theory.

This is true, kind of. One can not create a society in a test lab, nor can one again "replay" any scenarios in history.
That said, this:

The information conveyed by historical experience cannot be used as
building material for the construction of theories and the prediction of future
events.

does nor follow.
We can establish trends and we can conclude that some scenarios are more likely than others.

For example, if I throw a handful of gravel out of the window, I can presume with reasonable certainty that every grain will eventually drop to the ground. I can do this regardless of the fact that no too attempts will be exactly similar because sizes, shapes and trajectories of the grains will be different, as well as weather conditions outside. I would be right in saying that possibilities of those grains of gravel slowly drifting into outer space are infinitely small, because no natural phenomenon known to us could cause anything like that.

Translated into current topic this would mean, that while historical experience can not be used for "experimental falsification" of your theory that anarchy would fix Haiti, it certainly tells us a few things.
Namely that whenever (and we can use thundreds or rather thousands of examples over thousands of years of history) any sort of central authority disappears, lots of infighting occurs, eventually leading to establishment of another central authority (or several) in its place.
This allows us to conclude that chances of this NOT happening next time are infinitely small. Mostly because no known mechanism exists that would prevent this from happening.

 

[Lord Baal]

Yes, although 37 is Mises instead.

Mises is even more wrong than Rothbard. Damn.

@xarthaz: Parroting other people's arguments doesn't make you look smart, it just shows you are incapable of applying those arguments yourself. Give us one real world concrete example of your philosophy having ever worked, and we will be forced to back down. So, go out and find us this one concrete example. In 7,000 years of recorded human history, surely at least one society has gotten it right?

 

[Yeekim]

Thats not history, thats physics.

Obviously, but that does not invalidate the comparison.

The methodology used for reaching this conclusion is different from what was used in the gravel experinent - in the gravel case the formulation of the law of gravity through isolation of elements, in the history case your arbitrary interpretaton

There is nothing "arbitrary" about the distinct lack of any kind of historical experience about any close approximation of anarcho-capitalism being workable.

 

[PiMan]

So what you're saying is, you hope anarcho-capitalism would work, but you don't have any way of knowing whether it is better.
It could be tried a million times, and fail a million times, and you would still hope that it would work the next time and you would ignore all previous instances of its failure?

 

[holy king]

@xarthaz: Parroting other people's arguments doesn't make you look smart, it just shows you are incapable of applying those arguments yourself. Give us one real world concrete example of your philosophy having ever worked, and we will be forced to back down. So, go out and find us this one concrete example. In 7,000 years of recorded human history, surely at least one society has gotten it right?

just roughly 250 years of capitalism though, to be fair.
he's an anarcho-capitalist.

for working anarcho socialist societies look up the spanish revolution.

 

[Yeekim]

The methodology of positivism in your example unfortunately does not do this at all. So while the troubles you describe may happen, the inner workings of why it happened, are unknown, and so any scientific conclusions cannot be made.

No, conclusion are obvious. The "troubles I described" have occurred every single time in every single society.
If you argue we "don't know why it happened" then you can't take any measures to stop this from happening again and thus can't hope to succeed.

 

[Yeekim]

for working anarcho socialist societies look up the spanish revolution.

Fascinating as it may have been, it lasted less than 3 years. Three years is a very short time to estimate whether a certain type of socioeconomic system is "working".

 

[Death_Machine]

Screw the rest of the world. The USA should become more nationalist & isolationist. Let the rest of the world take care of itself.

 

[Lord Baal]

Screw the rest of the world. The USA should become more nationalist & isolationist. Let the rest of the world take care of itself.

If you do that, you may wake up someday to find the rest of the world taking care of you. Isolationism may have worked in the 19th century, but in the age of space travel and ICBMs it's no longer a realistic strategy.

 

[Death_Machine]

If you do that, you may wake up someday to find the rest of the world taking care of you. Isolationism may have worked in the 19th century, but in the age of space travel and ICBMs it's no longer a realistic strategy.

Bullspit. What the hell do ICBMs have to do with anything? If we mind our own damn business nobody would have any reason to use them on us & if they did then we could turn their nation into glass.

WTH does space travel have to do with anything either?

Maybe if we left the rest of the word alone for a few years then they could STFU for a bit & then when they beg us for help from some disaster or tyrant we could use their own words as justification as to why we are only worried about keeping our own house in order.

Cut off all foreign aid & mark that money to retire the debt. Like I said, we have to get our own house in order.

 

[Cutlass]

So what you're saying is, you hope anarcho-capitalism would work, but you don't have any way of knowing whether it is better.
It could be tried a million times, and fail a million times, and you would still hope that it would work the next time and you would ignore all previous instances of its failure?

That's pretty much it. It's utopian dreaming without a thing behind it except utopian dreaming. And all the other versions of utopia have failed as well. So that's why I'm for the pragmatic approaches to government.

 

[JerichoHill]

Bullspit. What the hell do ICBMs have to do with anything? If we mind our own damn business nobody would have any reason to use them on us & if they did then we could turn their nation into glass.

WTH does space travel have to do with anything either?

Maybe if we left the rest of the word alone for a few years then they could STFU for a bit & then when they beg us for help from some disaster or tyrant we could use their own words as justification as to why we are only worried about keeping our own house in order.

Cut off all foreign aid & mark that money to retire the debt. Like I said, we have to get our own house in order.

HAHAHAHA!

Cause cutting off our measly foreign aid would totally help get rid of the debt! It's 23 billion into 12 trillion. Wait, that's .19% a year! In 500 years we'd be in the clear!!!!

 

[Death_Machine]

HAHAHAHA!

Cause cutting off our measly foreign aid would totally help get rid of the debt! It's 23 billion into 12 trillion. Wait, that's .19% a year! In 500 years we'd be in the clear!!!!

It is what I would refer to as a starting point and a mindset change. Continuing this line of thought would have us bring the troops home from Germany, Japan, close those bases and those in other nations as well. Get back to me when you run those figures, smart guy.

 

[Yeekim]

yes i do argue we "don't know why it happened". Which you didnt address.

I addressed it in the second part of that same sentence. I can repeat:
If you don't know why something happens, you can't take any measures to stop it from happening again. It is as simple as that.

Cant hope to succeed? See post 12.

Post 12 makes some dubious claims about productivity of government. Nowhere does it explain how to maintain a society without government/stop government from forming.

 

[Dachs]

ninja'd/emu'd by Yeekim, surprise surprise

See post 12, what youre saying applies to statism, not free market activity

yes i do argue we "don't know why it happened". Which you didnt address. Cant hope to succeed? See post 12.

The Rothbard quote contained in that post contains no real-world examples of the consumer-driven large-scale economic activity that in theory would replace that of states, and in fact acknowledges that central problem that you were responding to, namely that we only see the effects of what actually happens, the state-driven economic activity (the dam in the example) and not the theoretical consumer-driven economic activity that would be taking place sans state organizations.

He then goes on to claim, apparently as truisms, that consumers would both be able to consistently pool resources to be able to act on the levels of states without state structures, that they inherently desire something other than entrusting their money to the state in order for the state to do whatever it does with the money, and that consumers acting in tandem to do so would be inherently less wasteful than states in so doing. None of these statements can be seriously considered to be axiomatic, yet no attempt is made (within the context of the quote, charitably speaking) to provide weight to them.

tl;dr try again son

 

[Yeekim]

Cant measure? There is the SI system. It measures everything.

Please consult dictionary:

measure - any maneuver made as part of progress toward a goal; "the situation called for strong measures"; "the police took steps to reduce crime"

How does society work without government? Rothbard describes exactly that. Every time you engage in non-governmentally enforced activity, you engage in it

At least, here we can bring examples:

 

[Heretic_Cata]

^
Neah that only happens in anarchy. In anarcho-capitalism everyone is nice to eachother so no one steals or kills people.

 

[Verbose]

Cant measure? There is the SI system. It measures everything.
How does society work without government? Rothbard describes exactly that. Every time you engage in non-governmentally enforced activity, you engage in it
Seems like a criticism on consumer rationality, aka a person not knowing what is best for him?

The fact that man does not have the creative power to imagine categories
at variance with the fundamental logical relations and with the principles of
causality and teleology enjoins upon us what may be called methodological
apriorism.
Everybody in his daily behavior again and again bears witness to the
immutability and universality of the categories of thought and action. He
who addresses fellow men, who wants to inform and convince them, who
asks questions and answers other people’s questions, can proceed in this way
only because he can appeal to something common to all men—namely, the
logical structure of human reason. The idea that A could at the same time be
non-A or that to prefer A to B could at the same time be to prefer B to A is
simply inconceivable and absurd to a human mind. We are not in the position
to comprehend any kind of prelogical or metalogical thinking. We cannot
think of a world without causality and teleogy.

So, does Rothbard spend any time discussing how seemingly inexorable through human history governments are formed and then develop?

If governments hypothetically are the problem, I still haven't seen anything to indicate avoiding them is at all possible. Maybe they are bad? It might still simply be a question of damage control, since getting rid of them is actually impossible.

Besides, ever since the Enlightenment people have been engaging with the recurrent problem that since we assume man to be rational, why is he with such depressing frequency seemingly acting differently? And the Enlightenment wasn't concerned with people living under various governments so much as they had a problem with all these people, aka "savages", living in what the would consider in or close to a "state of nature", with no (or next to) govenment, still behaving as if couldn't find a rational though between them if their lives depended upon it?

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Wait, what? How does that justify ignoring externalities? Externalities have a huge effect on the economy.

Without any externalities anarcho-capitalism could work quite well, but I don't think it is reasonable to assume all individuals will have the ethics and enough foresight to not create them. The purpose of government is to mitigate the negative externalities individuals inflict on their fellow man, hopefully in such a way as to also minimize the negative externalities of created by the state as well (although that is not often the case). I tend to think a geolibertarian minarchism is the closest we can hope to get to anarchy without individuals quickly turning it into despotism.