If you are an evolutionist . . .

[Borodog]

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No pureblood AC structure has existed ever. End of story.

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So what? You say this like it means something. There was a time when there had never been a representative democracy. There was a time when there had never been a monarchy. There was a time when there had never been state socialism. Your argument says that all of them were then impossible because they had not previously existed.

Monarchy did not exist before someone produced a political theory to justify it and propagated that theory to the masses. The same is true of representative democracy. And state socialism. And every other form of government. And the same will be true of the lack thereof.

Anarcho-capitalist theory is brand-new on historical timescales. All that needs to be done to make it viable is to spread the word to the masses.

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And what has history taught us about making statements of the form, "this new civilizational model is the ultimate in social evolution, and is the form of government that makes all other forms of government obsolete"?

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Ah but the difference is that those statements were wrong, and have been shown to be wrong theoretically. Empirical results confirm those theoretical analyses. Meanwhile, correct economic analysis shows that the free market does in fact provide for any good or service better than a coercive monopoly, and this is backed up by mountains of historical empirical evidence. The fact that thus far we have not yet managed to kick the vampire free of society in every industry at the same time doen't mean that it is somehow good to be preyed upon or that it is inevitable.

[Borodog]

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. . . then you should be an anarchist. Do you see why?


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No, I don't. Care to ellaborate?

(I do understand evolution)

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Read the rest of the thread.

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All I see is you ranting about AC, but no connection to evolution.

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Nevermind then.

[soon2bepro]

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. . . then you should be an anarchist. Do you see why?


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No, I don't. Care to ellaborate?

(I do understand evolution)

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Read the rest of the thread.

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All I see is you ranting about AC, but no connection to evolution.

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Nevermind then.

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Do you teach this to your students?

[m_the0ry]

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And what has history taught us about making statements of the form, "this new civilizational model is the ultimate in social evolution, and is the form of government that makes all other forms of government obsolete"?

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Ah but the difference is that those statements were wrong, and have been shown to be wrong theoretically. Empirical results confirm those theoretical analyses. Meanwhile, correct economic analysis shows that the free market does in fact provide for any good or service better than a coercive monopoly, and this is backed up by mountains of historical empirical evidence. The fact that thus far we have not yet managed to kick the vampire free of society in every industry at the same time doen't mean that it is somehow good to be preyed upon or that it is inevitable.

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I guess we'll have to agree to disagree because I see all of this as too hypothetical at this point in time to justify these kinds of statements. 'Correct economical analysis' just sounds like a collection of buzzwords to me. There have been no controlled studies or well documented cases to characterize how a society like this would actually flesh out.

Just to clarify I think that AC is a legitimate idea for a social structure but it will be subject to gradualism as much as any other has been in the past. This is why I refuse to jump on the purebred AC bandwagon. ACists will need to be opportunists more than anything else if they want to see their dream realized. Don't try and force the fall of Rome, just be ready to pick up the pieces when it happens.

[Borodog]

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. . . then you should be an anarchist. Do you see why?


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No, I don't. Care to ellaborate?

(I do understand evolution)

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Read the rest of the thread.

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All I see is you ranting about AC, but no connection to evolution.

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Nevermind then.

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Do you teach this to your students?

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What do you want? Me to repost a bunch of stuff that I've already posted so that you can not read that either? I don't have the time or the patience.

[Borodog]

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And what has history taught us about making statements of the form, "this new civilizational model is the ultimate in social evolution, and is the form of government that makes all other forms of government obsolete"?

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Ah but the difference is that those statements were wrong, and have been shown to be wrong theoretically. Empirical results confirm those theoretical analyses. Meanwhile, correct economic analysis shows that the free market does in fact provide for any good or service better than a coercive monopoly, and this is backed up by mountains of historical empirical evidence. The fact that thus far we have not yet managed to kick the vampire free of society in every industry at the same time doen't mean that it is somehow good to be preyed upon or that it is inevitable.

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I guess we'll have to agree to disagree because I see all of this as too hypothetical at this point in time to justify these kinds of statements. 'Correct economical analysis' just sounds like a collection of buzzwords to me. There have been no controlled studies or well documented cases to characterize how a society like this would actually flesh out.

Just to clarify I think that AC is a legitimate idea for a social structure but it will be subject to gradualism as much as any other has been in the past. This is why I refuse to jump on the purebred AC bandwagon. ACists will need to be opportunists more than anything else if they want to see their dream realized. Don't try and force the fall of Rome, just be ready to pick up the pieces when it happens.

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You can't be ready to pick up the pieces unless you educate enough people. And really, you have to educate them to not pick up the pieces. The pieces are evil, like the black rock in the toaster oven at the end of Time Bandits.

[ChrisV]

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No pureblood AC structure has existed ever. End of story.

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So what? You say this like it means something.

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The thing is that as far as I understand your theories, if you throw a bunch of people together, as long as there's a functioning legal tender (which there generally is, even if it's just gold or something) anarchocapitalism should be the inevitable result. I can hire people to be a security service for me and so forth. The free market in security provision should be operating. The fact that this has time and again collapsed into enclaves where a central organisation has a monopoly on force proves that AC is unstable. I don't understand what you think is the missing secret ingredient. All you've said on this point is this:

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Anarcho-capitalist theory is brand-new on historical timescales. All that needs to be done to make it viable is to spread the word to the masses.

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Right, because everyone will hear this theory and go "Oh wow, my eyes are opened, I will be a good anarchocapitalist citizen from this day forward"? This smacks of communist-style utopianism. If the system is stable, then it should be stable regardless of whether people like it or not. If it is going to collapse anytime a group of people decide they don't like anarchocapitalism, then it will be a short lived system.

Edit: To clarify a little, a system should be stable if a majority of people support it; even democracy, for instance, is unstable if a majority of people don't support it. (See also: Iraq). My contention is that AC is not stable even if a large majority support it, as long as the minority are wealthy.

[Borodog]

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anarchy is an extremely deep subject

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And so is evolution. Deeper than most people think.

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Don't I know it.

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Perhaps true. Does this change the fact that the vast majority of people who so casually dismiss anarchy in their single paragraph posts have never studied it, or that there has been a steady stream of intelligent posters who have adopted the philosophy after months of argument and study? No.

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I’m not sure that that’s a valid criticism. Considering the dearth of real world examples and pure theoreticality (yeah, it’s made up) of anarchy I don’t think it’s unreasonable that people are really skeptical of it. Of course, something being just theoretical certainly isn’t a slam dunk here a lot of people’s initial impression of doubt in the theory for something that’s been around for hundred of years with no existing examples is often correct.

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You sound like a creationist. Do you see what this sort of argument sounds like to me? There isn't a "dearth of real world examples" any more than there is a dearth of real world examples of speciation, for example. There's a rich literature on it. But since you're ignorant of it, it must not exist, right? In fact, unless you think the state predates Homo sapiens, anarchy is obviously a historical fact.

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But you've never really been able to elaborate on any of this. Frankly, it makes little sense to me. The market is every bit as "dirty" (whatever this means) as evolution and vice versa. Clearly evolution can't be so "theoretically dirty" as to prevent it from operating. Why do you so nebulously assume that the market must be?

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One aspect of the dirtiness I’m talking about is talking about the massive amount of time and resources that evolution requires to work and that for groups or individuals it doesn’t work (according to their view). Also, while many of its solutions are very clever I don’t think any evolutionist can argue that better solutions could not be designed. That’s a really important point here IMO.

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Both these points are completely irrelevent. The time scale is irrelevent because people actually do rationally plan, whereas evolution does not. Evolution's watchmaker is blind and dumb and stupid and slow and methodical, but human watchmakers aren't. Cultural evolution occurs on timescales vastly shorter than evolutionary ones, but this hardly invalidates the idea of the generation of spontaneous order. And my point is that central planning is not required for the production of social order, no more than an Intelligent Designer is required to explain biological diversity. We are told that without monopoly and central planning we will have chaos and it's wrong and anyone who understand evolution should know better. The point is not that a rational design couldn't improve on an evolved structure, sure it might. But government cannot produce that design, because it simply doesn't have the correct form or capabilities to do the job. In fact, the entrepreneurs within the economy can in fact do that job; that IS their job. To try to identify where the structure of production and the allocation of scarce resources could be adjusted to better supply consumers. Entrepreneurs do this for tiny segments of the economy continually, and if they do it poorly the market stops them and if they do it well the market and expands their opportunity to do so.

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Without turning this into a politics thread (which it’s close to already), some of the problems with AC that I have are with the speed and resources questions. In the AC threads – before they get totally hijacked – there’s often a post about something along the lines of “What if business X does this [some unethical or illegal thing that benefits them at the cost to the consumer]?” and there’s an ACer hand waving saying “Oh you dumbass, the market will take care of that.” – my problem is that how fast, etc. will this occur? If a company is screwing the people how long does it take them to figure that out? how long does it take them to take action? how well does that information get spread to others? how well does this information convince others? How long does it take to get competitors to take their business? How much of their limited resources have they already lost due to that company? How much more if that company goes under?

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All of these functions that you are asking about are currently monopolized by government. They would work faster and better in a competitive free market. Think about how long it takes to get through the government monopoly courts. Years and years and years. Delay after delay after delay. Government courts have no incentive to produce speedy trials. What alternative do you have? In the cases where you can actually resolve a dispute without going through a government court, via private arbitration or mediation, the process is very prompt. Why? Because there are many arbitrators and mediators to choose from and they actually want your business and know that they can lose it.

This is what competition does dude. I don't know how to make it any clearer. Competition makes things better. Monopoly makes things worse. Everything monopolized by the government just plain sucks. If you think something monoolized by the government doesn't suck it's probably because of one of two reasons: (1) You're benefiting from it, or (2) you've never seen or tried to envision an alternative.

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To bring in another evolution analogy here, imagine a rapid environmental change such as an introduction of new disease, new predator, or meteor impact. The way of thinking you’re exhibiting is “Oh evolution will solve the problem – it always does” when in actuality that results in species’ extinction, etc. because they aren’t adapted to the new environment just can’t adapt.

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This is exactly backward. It is under the free market, where anyone is allowed to identify potential problems and come up with solutions, that responds more quickly and flexibly to crises. It is under government monopolies and their bureaucracies where only the annointed get to decide what is and is not a problem, decide what is and is not a solution, and enforce it on everyone. And the size of the monolithic bureaucracy ensures that it is slow to respond.

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Also, go back to thinking about the scale of time and organisms we are talking about and how many die, etc.

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This is exactly why I don't want government. Think of the roads. 40,000 people die year in and year out on the public roads. Does the government do anything about it? Isn't that a crisis? FORTY THOUSAND PEOPLE? EVERY YEAR? Yet the government does nothing. Why should it? It has no incentive to. It makes no profit from safe roads and has no liability for unsafe roads beyond keeping public outcry to a dull roar.

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Also, think about our species’ evolutionary history. We’re hardwired for hierarchy. We’re territorial beasts. And, as someone said in some of your other threads (the one with dogs IIRC) territory is not the same as property. You have as much territory as you can defend and the person taking it is not wrong (to paraphrase Asbury). While we’ve come a long way outside of that, I think that govt. had a lot to do with it.

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Territory IS property, in every meaningful way. Government hasn't had [censored] to do with that. Property, property rights, law, contracts, courts, enforcement and social order all predate state monopolizations thereof, including the forms that we have to this very day. All of them formed in the market and were later monopolized. What causes people to respect other people's persons and property is that it is profitable to do so and costly and risky not to. Claiming that monopolists and central plans are responsible for these things is just flat out wrong and is ignorant of hundreds of years of scholarly research.

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I really can’t argue with people that are ACers on moral principles. I differ with them there, but I see their point and can respect there position. And in a certain, very specific world, I’m sure it could work great. But this idea that it’s just inevitable that AC is best for all individuals based on things like the similarities with evolutionary theory or some examples from situations where the market is the best solution is ridiculous.

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That isn't what I said.

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And please don’t think I’m anticapitalist. I think capitalism solves a great deal of problems and is preferred in most cases.

Also, I don’t think anything I said is mean-spirited, but I have houseguests and one of them just flooded one of my toilets so my mood is sour.

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Mine too, but don't take anything I've said personally. I know we disagree. It's all good.

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Edit: it's scary how close Phil and my thinking is here. Although he said it better than I did.

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I don't know what to say then. It's clear Phil has no idea what I'm even talking about.

In any event, I wich I had never brought up anarchy. The important thing about the thread is the link between praxeology and evolutionary theory.

[Borodog]

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No pureblood AC structure has existed ever. End of story.

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So what? You say this like it means something.

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The thing is that as far as I understand your theories, if you throw a bunch of people together, as long as there's a functioning legal tender (which there generally is, even if it's just gold or something) anarchocapitalism should be the inevitable result.

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No.

[ChrisV]

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No pureblood AC structure has existed ever. End of story.

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So what? You say this like it means something.

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The thing is that as far as I understand your theories, if you throw a bunch of people together, as long as there's a functioning legal tender (which there generally is, even if it's just gold or something) anarchocapitalism should be the inevitable result.

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No.

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OK, so what's the secret ingredient? How do you convert a community of people into a stable anarchocapitalist society? What are the prerequisites for such a society?

Whenever anyone mentions Somalia, or warlordism, your response is generally to ridicule them. Maybe you should explain, very slowly for those of us who aren't so smart, what the difference is between an AC society and a society of warlords (or link to somewhere where someone has already done so). In particular, I want to know what the incentive is for a privately run justice organisation (security service or court) to uphold the rule of law. What is the disincentive for breaking the law? Please don't just instruct me to read a book. Incentives only operate if they're clear enough to people that they are easily explicable. The failure of communism was (in hindsight, at least) easily predictable by the question "What incentive will people have to work efficiently/hard?", so the importance of incentives is no doubt clear to you.

Also, the answer "There is an incentive not to break the law because other, lawful justice services will punish lawbreaking" won't do because it assumes the existence of the very entities whose existence I am questioning.