Some objections to AC

[JMAnon]

Hi ACers,

I made some objections to anarchy in the long thread, but they got lost in the torrent of comments. I am interested in your responses, however, so I thought I would try again in a new thread. I will be out of town on business for the next few days, so I probably won't have time to respond to your points, but I promise I will read them all when I get home Wedenesday or Thursday. Here goes.

One problem I see with AC is that the theory ignores collective-action problems (i.e. free riders). For example, imagine a cat burglar is breaking into homes in a community. The victims don't have much incentive to spend money to catch the criminal -- they have already been robbed. They will realize that there is very little chance of them recovering stolen valuables, and there is little personal benefit in seeing the thief caught. Spending money to catch the thief is the equivalent of chasing sunk costs.

What about the remainder of the community that has yet to be robbed? Each will have an incentive to let his neighbors foot the bill for catching the thief. Although it is in the best interest of everyone to catch the thief, no one person's individual interest likely will be enough to inspire him to pay to apprehend the burglar. If a group gets together to fund the criminal's apprehension, all non-members in the community get a free ride on the group's expenditures. Eventually, the group will resent the free-riders (i.e., realize they are paying more than their share of the costs of criminal law enforcement) and will stop paying to catch burglars. Each community member will then be forced to spend an inefficient amount of resources burglar-proofing his home, when a collective solution would be preferable.

Having a government compel all residents of the community to fund the mechanism for catching burglars is a good solution to this free rider problem.

A second problem I see involves powerless (i.e., poor) victims of crime. For example, who prevents child abuse and child neglect in an AC world? No one would have an economic incentive to spend money to prevent degenerate parents from making child porn with their kids. The children themselves will have little or no resources. Similarly, what prevents a wealthy capitalist from raping a peasant girl? Must the poor depend on magnanimous industrialists (i.e., voluntary charity) to watch out for their interests? If so, that is not a solution I like.

A third problem I see (mentioned by someone else in the long thread) is pollution externalities. What would prevent businesses from polluting the air whenever doing so made for a cheaper manufacturing process? A polluting business does not internalize the full cost of its pollution, but it retains the full benefits. Only polluters could compete, unless consumers would be willing to pay a premium for goods of non-polluters (highly unlikely).

When I posted some of these concerns, Borodog responded
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Two words: Insurance companes.


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I don't see how the incentives of insurance companies will be different than those of the individuals in my cat-burglar example unless there are only a very few insurance companies in the market. If the insurance industry was sufficiently concentrated, I suppose it could sufficiently self-police to prevent free riding by its member insurance companies, but this is unlikely in a totally unregulated insurance market in my view.

In other words, imagine the burglar robs a series of insured houses. If only one insurance company spends resources apprehending the robber, its competitors will be able to offer cheaper premiums to their clients. Absent some sort of cartel arrangement, complete with proportional reimbursement for apprehension costs, each insurance company will have an incentive to free ride. If the insurance companies all collaborate, however, the "free" market for insurance is eliminated and "premiums" will end up being the functional equivalent of taxes when the insurers inevitably conspire to fix prices as well. I don't think you envision anarchy as rule by an insurance cartel.

The arguments seem to rest on a faulty factual premise as well, i.e., the collectibility of judgments. Most thieves are broke. What good is a "judgment" in favor of the insurance company against a deadbeat who robbed my house? Insurance companies, like individuals have no incentive to expend resources pursuing the thief unless they expect to be able to collect a judgment obtained against the thief.

This solution also seems to focus on restitution of losses from crime, while ignoring the deterrence and incapacitation functions of the criminal justice system. In other words, insurance companies have no incentive to jail thieves indefinitely to protect all of society or to punish criminals for the sake of deterrence. The more an insurance company needs to pay to jail thieves, the more expensive its premiums will be. Again, absent a cartel, there is no reason for insurers to pay for collective crime prevention.

The article linked to by Borodog puts much faith in the cartel-like qualities of the insurance industry. As you ACers are fond of arguing (and as is almost certainly true in the modern insurance industry), the only reason the insurance industry exhibits so many charateristics of a cartel is because of extensive governmental regulation. If you scrap that regulation along with the police, the insurance industry could never maintain its cohesion; but that cohesion is necessary to avoid collective-action problems. Moreover, as I noted above, these very cartel qualities would result in price fixing and cooperation among the insurers (essentially we would have the equivalent of one massive insurance company) until premiums became the functional equivalent of taxes.

Finally, I don't see how insurance companies respond to my concerns about powerless victims of crime, such as children, or pollution externalities.

[hmkpoker]

All of these problems assume, however, that AC is going to be implemented in today's society. AC cannot exist yet, because there are not enough resources to ensure competition within all private sectors, and more importantly, not enough resources to lower people's time preferences to the point where the state is no longer necessary.

AC is not accomplished through people privatizing the police. Society is obviously not ready for that. At our current state of society, that does not incentivize productivity. It is like trying to set up indoor plumbing in a world with stone age technology. It's clearly impossible at that point in time, but it's also obviously incorrect that it's not useful or desireable. It's also foolish to believe that it will always be the desired norm (what if technology one day provides a superior method of utility distribution?).

Statism is and was useful for a period of time in social and technological development. The ACers are arguing that eventually it will no longer be useful.

[DougShrapnel]

I would like to add my odj.

1. There is no way to force people to pay for services which they use but don't want to pay for. If there is a way to do such, then it's just governmnet under a different name.
2. AC takes little concern over "correctness". For instance a Totalitarian regime under a perfectly correct dictator would be perfectly fine.
3. AC doesn't really improve over democracy but instead replaces the power elite with a different power elite.
4. AC places money above EVERYTHING.
5. AC exchanges fincial equlaity for political equlaity artificially.
6. AC claims effiecentcy = correctness.
7. AC is most likely a step backwards and not forwards.

[BCPVP]

An interesting article on "free riding" from an AC/libertarian perspective

[BCPVP]

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1. There is no way to force people to pay for services which they use but don't want to pay for.

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Uh...don't provide that service to them?

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2. AC takes little concern over "correctness". For instance a Totalitarian regime under a perfectly correct dictator would be perfectly fine.

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Huh? I guess if that dictator wasn't forcing people to do stuff, then yeah, but dictators rule by force and coercion as well. Thus they would not be "perfectly fine".

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3. AC doesn't really improve over democracy but instead replaces the power elite with a different power elite.

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So your objection is that the status quo is maintained? Kinda weak, man.

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4. AC places money above EVERYTHING.

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No, it places freedom from coercion above everything.

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5. AC exchanges fincial equlaity for political equlaity artificially.

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I fail to see how.

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6. AC claims effiecentcy = correctness.

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Where?

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7. AC is most likely a step backwards and not forwards.

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If AC were to come about, time prefrences would be much lower and production and capital much higher. The state would not be necessary, making AC a step forward. Remaining in a state when it was unneeded would be stagnation.

[JMAnon]

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An interesting article on "free riding" from an AC/libertarian perspective

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I have no quarrel with the main points of the article (i.e., that free-rider problems only exist for public goods and there aren't many public goods). But crime prevention meets the definition of a public good. The benefits accrue to all when a criminal is jailed. In other words, a criminal cannot commit more crimes while incarcerated, regardless of who pays for the jail.

Collective defense is another public good. Invaders don't pick and choose which houses to attack. We cannot realistically say, "let the Canadians have Iowa because Iowans not paying their share of the defense costs." If Canada invades, we must defend against the invasion. We cannot selectively defend only those individuals that pay for a portion of the costs or the whole effort will fail. Defending the invasion benefits everyone.

[DougShrapnel]

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Uh...don't provide that service to them?


[/ QUOTE ] I'm surprised that you think this is so easy. It's not really the problem of freeloading, but it goes beyond it.

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Huh? I guess if that dictator wasn't forcing people to do stuff, then yeah, but dictators rule by force and coercion as well. Thus they would not be "perfectly fine".



[/ QUOTE ] The type of "government" (ac included) is really only considered after the fact of who is in charge. It would be perfectly fine, because you would be in the wrong everytime, and every court/arbiter would agree with the dictator.

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So your objection is that the status quo is maintained?

[/ QUOTE ] My objection is it doesn't make improvements in alot of cases only mantains the status quo. Some cases i think there is an improvement under AC but not ALL.

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No, it places freedom from coercion above everything.


[/ QUOTE ] Are you saying the market isnt' coercive?

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I fail to see how.


[/ QUOTE ] Could be my misguided notion of AC.

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Where?


[/ QUOTE ] Everywhere! I don't understand how you don't see that.

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If AC were to come about, time prefrences would be much lower and production and capital much higher. The state would not be necessary, making AC a step forward. Remaining in a state when it was unneeded would be stagnation.

[/ QUOTE ] The state being unneeded is unproven. It's a guess and a guess that my limited education on the subject cannot support. How much capital well be spent on educated people like me? It's a very ineffiecent system in this regard, because the realization of return is long term and minimal.

[BCPVP]

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But crime prevention meets the definition of a public good.

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I don't believe the state prevents crime so this isn't a great argument against AC. If you mean crime investigation, then I think the private market offers alternatives now (private investigators). So crime investigation can not be considered a public good.

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The benefits accrue to all when a criminal is jailed. In other words, a criminal cannot commit more crimes while incarcerated, regardless of who pays for the jail.

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If you're talking about what would be done with convicted criminals, there's some discussion amongst ACers as to how that would work. I'm not sure on the details of such ideas so I'll let others elaborate on that.

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Collective defense is another public good. Invaders don't pick and choose which houses to attack. We cannot realistically say, let the Canadians have Iowa because Iowans not paying their share of the defense costs. If Canada invades, we must defend against the invasion. We cannot selectively defend only those individuals that pay for a portion of the costs or the whole effort will fail. Defending the invasion benefits everyone.

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Private defense can be provided. I've linked to The Myth of National Defense enough times in this thread. Also consider this: people with much to lose by being invaded will likely invest much to keep that from happening. Obviously the poor don't have much to lose or invest, but the middle class and rich have a lot to lose. That means there's demand for defense and that it would likely be provided. There would also likely be other consequences for not helping in time of invasion such as ostracism of that person, both socially and finacially.

[JMAnon]

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I don't believe the state prevents crime so this isn't a great argument against AC.

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You honestly don't believe that when the government catches a burglar, rapist or serial killer and imprisons him, it prevents recidivous crimes? You don't believe that the threat of being imprisoned by the government prevents crime? If so, your beliefs seem highly unreasonable.

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I've linked to The Myth of National Defense enough times in this thread.


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And I've pointed out what I believe to be the biggest flaw in the article in my OP. Now defend it. Sure there would be demand for collective defense, but that wouldn't prevent free riding.

[BCPVP]

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I'm surprised that you think this is so easy. It's not really the problem of freeloading, but it goes beyond it.

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Could you give examples? Your original point was confusing.

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The type of "government" (ac included) is really only considered after the fact of who is in charge. It would be perfectly fine, because you would be in the wrong everytime, and every court/arbiter would agree with the dictator.

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Ok, now I'm even more confused. What would be "perfectly fine" with having a dictatorship and what does that have to do with AC?

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Are you saying the market isnt' coercive?

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When ACers use the term coercion, they usually mean initiation of coercion. Walking up to someone and sticking a gun in their face and telling them to give you all their money is initiating coercion, but defending yourself against that attacker is not. Make sense?

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Could be my misguided notion of AC.

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Not an uncommon thing. You're talking to a guy who used to be making a lot of the same arguments against AC.

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Everywhere! I don't understand how you don't see that.

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I meant who here has stated that efficiency = correctness? You could set up a ruthlessly efficient dictatorship and ACers would still be against it.

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The state being unneeded is unproven

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Right now the state is needed. Most ACers here don't dispute that because we're smart enough to realize that if the entire government shut down tomorrow there'd be chaos. Not something an ACer wants. I'm talking about the future. With low enough time preferences and ever expanding pools of technology and resources, a state would be less and less necessary until it was unnecessary. At such time, it would be regression to continue on with a state instead of progressing without.