Moving this off the reblog chain with @rustingbridges
Yeah, property is violence. I don’t disagree with you. What’s plan b, though? I want something and you want something, how are we going to settle this? Negotiation when it’s most advantageous and violence when it’s not.
One of the hopes of the ancap system (and most other systems of government) is to incentivize conflict resolution in a way that reduces the creation of negative externalities.
Democracy is how we deal with this type of decision. At the very least, accepting that property is coercion means that we should reject totally the idea of democratic “interference“ in property as being inherently incorrect.
No, I agree that the anarcho capitalist future probably doesn’t end particularly well (but then, I feel that way about most (all?) potential systems). Claiming that homosexuals, feminists and minorities must be expelled ignores history though (they had to pass laws to keep market competition from reducing segregation).
Alright, so the problem here comes with the larger issue. As
minorities, feminists, and others gained power, they change society in a
social democratic direction. If you reason like this, the empowerment
of minorities becomes an externality, it can be good for the person
involved but is catastrophic for the greater society. It’s very similar
to when Peter Thiel said we lost the ability to be a free society when
we let women vote.
And this connects with the other point,
political stability is the greatest externality there is, and we know in
regimes where property rights are supreme how it gets resolved. Reactionary militias and death squads are used to enforce the will of
the property owners. Sometimes this is through the state, but the state
is by no means required.
These ideas of private security
forces is laughable, why would you hire purely for profit mercenaries
that will run away when instead you get cheaper and more dedicated
reactionaries to do the job as long as you let them let them torture some
feminists and minorities.
Of course things won’t work out exactly like he imagines.
But the unimaginable catastrophe is ongoing. How many millions died without need in 2016? How many will die this year?
And many of the libertarian policy proposals are actually plausible, in that there are people who would stand to benefit if they came in place. Even with that, it’s hard enough to get anything political done.
And why do you think this would be better? How good did the
“liberalization“ of Russia work? What happened in Greece when they had
their “free market reforms” after the crash, did that work better? Do you really
think that things today can’t get much much worse? This is peak
interventionists fallacy here.
Democracy is how we deal with this type of decision. At the very least, accepting that property is coercion means that we should reject totally the idea of democratic “interference“ in property as being inherently incorrect.
I’m no monarchist, and I don’t entirely reject the idea of democracy (ask me about land value taxes! (actually don’t internet, I don’t know anything, tell me about them if you have strong opinions. but it sounds like a good idea.))
But the issues of rampant democracy are well known. The common decency of man works to limit the rate of the damage - just as most won’t steal a phone off the ground, neither will most support a law of blatant robbery. But the moral hazard is very real.
And the moralizers are even worse! Someone with no real stake in the matter has decided that selling marijuana ought to be punished by jail time. So that they could feel better about themselves (at best) or enrich their crony friends (at worst) many people have suffered (and so has my paycheck, as with every other working american).
Alright, so the problem here comes with the larger issue. As minorities, feminists, and others gained power, they change society in a social democratic direction.
I don’t believe this at present.
If you reason like this, the empowerment of minorities becomes an externality, it can be good for the person involved but is catastrophic for the greater society.
That is an excellent case for putting it to individuals who might pursue a self interested course, rather than putting it up to a mechanism that a majority can use to violently enforce discriminatory norms against a minority.
It’s very similar to when Peter Thiel said we lost the ability to be a free society when we let women vote.
Well, if peter thiel wants to spend more money to be without women, let him. Good riddance and we’ll be alright without him.
And this connects with the other point, political stability is the greatest externality there is, and we know in regimes where property rights are supreme how it gets resolved. Reactionary militias and death squads are used to enforce the will of the property owners. Sometimes this is through the state, but the state is by no means required.
Political stability is valuable. And once we have that I think the best you can hope for from government is to limit the misgovernance.
These ideas of private security forces is laughable, why would you hire purely for profit mercenaries that will run away when instead you get cheaper and more dedicated reactionaries to do the job as long as you let them let them torture some feminists and minorities.
This is just as true for publicly provided mercenaries as it for private. You can’t dodge this sort of problem by publicizing it.
There are more private security personnel in the united states than there are police officers. And in my experience they’ve generally been more courteous and less bloodthirsty than their public counterparts.
It probably helps that they can actually be held liable for murder.
Do you really think that things today can’t get much much worse? This is peak interventionists fallacy here.
Of course things can get much worse than they are. That seems a distinct possibility. The traditional lever for making things much worse is a powerful centralized government. As such, I see it as being in my self interest to bind the hands of any future tyrant as much as possible.
Does that mean we should overthrow the government today? No, if you want that sort of radicalism you’ll have to look elsewhere. I want to sell the detritus of the state until we stop getting a good deal.
Do you want to keep up the drug war?
Do you want another land war in the mid east?
Do you want it to be illegal to build housing near to jobs?
Do you want billions of dollars to be wasted on signature campaign projects rather than meaningful public transit?
I don’t.
Does that mean we should overthrow the government today? No, if you want that sort of radicalism you’ll have to look elsewhere. I want to sell the detritus of the state until we stop getting a good deal.
I mentioned Greece and Russia before, so let me mention them again. This does not actually work.
Look the problem here is that you can’t just assume away the need to get approval. The need to get public approval doesn’t go away. I think you vastly underestimate the amount of government that is need to do this for a modern society.
In the current system you can blame government for all the sins, because it that carries out the jobs nobody wants to admit to needing. You abolish government, you don’t abolish the desire for cheap oil and the desire to keep wealth through housing or the desire of some people bust heads, You just abolish democracy and accountability. You just get nasty politics. You get the authoritarian leaders who promise you those things. And in your desire to bind tyrants you just create them as the rules you choose become unbearable for the people living in them.
The state is not the cause of sin, it is just it’s bearer.
