AC: The Economics of Revolutions

[bisonbison]

Rothbard land is not lawless.

How do you punish the breaking of laws without a proto-state? Or do you always just leave it up to the aggrieved parties to settle the matter by whatever means they deem necessary?

[bisonbison]

To put this more plainly: states are a natural monopoly.

ACers want to argue that they're not a natural monopoly, but those ACers are wrong.

[Riddick]

[ QUOTE ]
Rothbard land is not lawless.

How do you punish the breaking of laws without a proto-state? Or do you always just leave it up to the aggrieved parties to settle the matter by whatever means they deem necessary?

[/ QUOTE ]

This is where I would link the sticky.

But instead:

Rothbard on Police, Law, and Courts

David Friedman on Private Law

[NT!]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I think you'll find that if you qualify statements about people with: 'with what they can see about the present state of the universe' you can say that everyone in every situation always makes rational choices.

[/ QUOTE ]

Holy [censored]! I agree!

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't, but that's cool. I think non-rational behaviors still follow enough of a pattern that we can map most actions to either immediate self-interest or to learned or neurotic behaviors in response to previous experiences. I wouldn't go so far as to qualify them as even emotionally rational, but it's a much better idea than plain rational choice theory, which is junk.

NT

[Borodog]

[ QUOTE ]

Great business plan!


You're thinking very narrowly about this. Your imagination for what people do to each other in order to turn a buck is quaint.

You only need to corner the supply locally in order to profit from such cornering. In a lawless society, there is no barrier to making physical threats against rivals in order to reduce supply in the market.

[/ QUOTE ]

Lol.

First off, nice job completely snipping where I totally debunked your argument!

It never ceases to amaze me how you statists constantly continue to reveal exactly how little you understand that which you rail against.

Hint: Stateless != lawless.

[ QUOTE ]
And it doesn't help to drop prices if thieves of your goods can sell them well below your cost. A thief breaks into your room at a hotel while you're out and steals a necklace. How much does he have to sell that necklace for to turn a profit?

[/ QUOTE ]

You slay me dude. You really do. So your business plan is that you are going to "corner the market" by stealing all my inventory (which I of course will not invest in protection for at all, I'm sure), then sell it below my cost of production, so that you can drive me out of business, so that you can . . . what? Go out of business? You're not producing anything. [img]/images/graemlins/blush.gif[/img]

This is hilarious. It constantly amazes how statists can convince themselves to believe this [censored]. If it weren't for the state magically protecting us from ourselves, people would all be robbing each other blind, slitting each other's throats, and buggering each other's grandmothers every chance we got. Meanwhile, if this were true, WTF do you think the people controlling the apparatus of the state are doing?

Search for my posts in Riddick's thread "For the ardent ACers" or something like that. I debunk this ridiculous idea that the state provide social order there. It doesn't, and it never did. It acts to destroy order and civilization and sow chaos and destruction.

[NT!]

[ QUOTE ]
You're thinking very narrowly about this. Your imagination for what people do to each other in order to turn a buck is quaint.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is pretty much my biggest quarrel with AC as well. And nicely put. It's amazing that people can be so distrustful of the state, and yet place so much trust in capitalists and their integrity and sense of lawfulness and good faith. When recent and historical evidence suggest that both are among the most untrustworthy parties in the history of humanity.

NT

[Borodog]

[ QUOTE ]
Rothbard land is not lawless.

How do you punish the breaking of laws without a proto-state? Or do you always just leave it up to the aggrieved parties to settle the matter by whatever means they deem necessary?

[/ QUOTE ]

Why don't you try reading a book?

[bisonbison]

This is where I would link the sticky.

Tendency of man is to use force (initially bought on a market before the leader establishes a state) in order to make gains.

AC land cannot exist without the protection of a true state, because economies of scale dictate that any band willing to arm itself and treat extortion as a professional business is able to outcompete Bob in the fight for the money in Bob's wallet.

A tank is a great weapon. Fantastic weapon. Few individuals can own a tank, and since financial acuity is distributed independent of compassion or empathy, you can expect a few of those people to want to extort. The more people they recruit, the more power they can exert, because eventually, their violence is only ever sporadically applied.

And people will be recruited because, on some level, they think it's worth the money. They don't care enough about the people they hurt to quit.

The only way to avoid the imposition of such a ruler is to form a counter-coalition that must fight a sizeable free rider problem (you have to defend your neighbor because if you don't, it makes an attack on you too expensive to defend against.).

By the way, physically violent people outcompete non-physically violent people in the force market because they don't have to outsource.

[bisonbison]

This is hilarious. It constantly amazes how statists can convince themselves to believe this [censored]. If it weren't for the state magically protecting us from ourselves, people would all be robbing each other blind, slitting each other's throats, and buggering each other's grandmothers every chance we got. Meanwhile, if this were true, WTF do you think the people controlling the apparatus of the state are doing?

No. Not everyone. But 3% of the population doing it is enough to make most people want to collectivize their resources and pay for comprehensive security.

[sam h]

[ QUOTE ]
I think this is a definition that should please EVERYONE

State-like parties (professional mobs running protection rackets) will spring up almost immediately after the creation of a significant site of ACness. Such mobs have been a fact of life since at least the creation of the city.

In order to combat the threat of extortion or theft from these mobs, ACers will form cooperative leagues for mutual self-defense. These two coalitions (ACers and Mobs), in all their local franchises, will eventually conflict and civilians not party to either that live nearby may suffer collateral damage. If the local ACers lose, it is likely to result in a local monopolistic proto-state, so they'll be sure to fight hard.

[/ QUOTE ]

The piece your story is missing is the emerging proto-state next door. Its much easier to consolidate your racket if such a racket is necessary to protect people from being wiped out by the Goths. In a nutshell, that's the historical experience of European state formation.