How could the changeover to AC occur?

[tomdemaine]

The other thread have somewhat predictably disolved into the classic 2+2 politics thread so I'm laying down some ground rules. Only people who think that AC is awesome are allowed to post here. To me the how is now much much more interesting than the why.

Can AC come about through libertarian party politics? Will it have to come from within the current democratic system? Is that even possible? Will it need a non-violent revolution? A violent one? Would the ends ever justify the means?

[hmkpoker]

Smart Consumers, Rise! (Part 1)

Smart Consumers, Rise! (Part 2)

Smart Consumers, Rise! (Part 3)

[tomdemaine]

All well and good but it's not a manifesto. If all you're offering me is "tell people to be smarter" becoming an ACist doesn't change my behaviour so even if I agree it's the greatest thing ever what's the point?

[hmkpoker]

(DISCLAIMER: this is a lot longer than I intended it to be. I'm going to make a lot of seemingly unsupported claims, mainly because properly supporting all the arguments contained herein would take a level of exhaustive research that I have no current desire to do. Feel free, however, to argue with any of my rationale that you specifically disagree with, and we'll go from there)



The point is this:

Any major social change is a reflection of the will and values of the people, whether through violent revolution or apathetic passivity. Anarchocapitalism cannot exist in a society of people that, for the most part, don't want it. If anarchocapitalism were to somehow manifest on a group of idiots, any shrewd capitalist would realize that there is money to be made through the potential protectionism and taxation that the populus would support, would garner support of the government, and once again you have statism.

Functional anarchocapitalism has a few prerequisites that do not sufficiently exist yet:

1) A widespread love of liberty, a right to property, and personal responsibility. Far too many people think capitalism is evil.

2) Industries that produce minimal amounts of negative externality that are actively preferred by entrepreneurs. I've seen some libertarians say that pollution is only a problem on public property, and this is true of littering and such, but the physical nature of air pollution creates a very different problem: the externality is very diluted, but affects a wide number of people. Pollution is, undeniably, an act of aggression, but the transaction costs of getting just compensation for so many multiples of small amounts make this a difficult problem for a free market with today's technology.

The free market needs technology that won't run into this problem. Luckily, there seems to be a strong awareness of the need for non-pollutive energy, and if it is efficient enough to be preferred by entrepreneurs (which I think is entirely possible), then government is rendered pointless in the need to regulate the environment.

3) A widespread reduction in time preference. The problem with laissez-faire capitalism in a society with few resources is that the high time preference makes aggression strategically correct.

Let me explain what I mean. Assume an iterated game theory problem that works something like this: a poor man has two options. He can either steal, or engage in voluntary trade. The EV of stealing is greater than the EV of working/trading (for the first iteration). He can do this over and over and over again. However, there is a strange caviat: each time he steals, the EV of stealing gets lower (increased probability of getting caught, reduction of available resources), and each time he works the EV of working gets higher (promotions, increased marketable skills from experience, increase of available resources. While the typical game theory automaton, concerned only with maximizing his EV overall, will inevitably choose civilized trade, this is not true of human nature. Humans act in time, and are often willing to sacrifice great levels of wealth for proximity to resource acquisition.

The problem, then, is how do I prevent a high time preference individual from aggressing against my property? The answer, unfortunately, is force. I know a lot of ACists here argue for private security and private courts and such, but the fact of the matter is that you're paying for a service that acts against the will of another, who does not consent to it. It may be justified, it may be necessary, and it may be +EV, but no matter what, the acts of any criminal justice system does involve the force against another. No criminal wants to be thrown in jail. (We could, of course, say that one waives his property rights when he aggresses against another's, but we're just left with an ambiguous definition of what "property" is.)

It is for this reason that I have said quite often that statism is necessary for the evolution of civilization. In the absence of a presence of organized, coercive force of some sort, a society of high time preference individuals is doomed to perpetual squalor; trade is worthless because the EV is initially so low compared to the EV of theft, that a productive trader would have no incentive to get off the ground unless he organized with others to create a system of rules for mutual benefit. Unfortunately, these rules are not consented to by most of the high time preference society, as they strongly restrict their resources for a "brief" period of time; as a result, civilization makes slow, grindy progress for the first 5,000 years.

However, when time preference is low (as a result of more resources being distributed), trade becomes preferable and theft aversive, even in the absence of force. Reward is better than punishment. By this point, statism is more of an enemy than a friend; what once was a minimal necessity to facilitate productivity by taxation has grown to overwhelming levels because it can now tax much more of the supply that it helped create. It is at this point (the point where even the poor are no longer worried about where their next meal is coming from, at which we have unquestionably arrived at in America and most of the civilized world) that humans can be expected to behave more rationally in the above mentioned circumstance, and freely engage in peaceful trade in the absence of coercion.




In the end, AC can only come into fruition if the people understand it and want it. If the will of the people changes, the politics will change to reflect them, or suffer violent overthrow. This is why I am more interested in helping and educating individuals than I am in libertarian legislation. The best one can do, imho, is to live peacefully, try to want what you have rather than having what you want, making something of yourself, and then help others to do the same.

Anarcho-capitalism is a far-off, distant asymptote of a goal that requires the gradual removal of government as a result of a change of educated preference in society.

Oh, and here's your manifesto. It won't do an ounce of good, though. Anarchocapitalism requires an actual understanding of economics and isn't based on emotional appeal unlike some *other* manifestos. Using propaganda to spread capitalism is like hiring a belligerent preacher to teach skeptic philosophy.

Smart consumers, rise.

[Nielsio]

[ QUOTE ]
2) Industries that produce minimal amounts of negative externality that are actively preferred by entrepreneurs. I've seen some libertarians say that pollution is only a problem on public property, and this is true of littering and such, but the physical nature of air pollution creates a very different problem: the externality is very diluted, but affects a wide number of people. Pollution is, undeniably, an act of aggression, but the transaction costs of getting just compensation for so many multiples of small amounts make this a difficult problem for a free market with today's technology.

The free market needs technology that won't run into this problem. Luckily, there seems to be a strong awareness of the need for non-pollutive energy, and if it is efficient enough to be preferred by entrepreneurs (which I think is entirely possible), then government is rendered pointless in the need to regulate the environment.

[/ QUOTE ]

You're vastly overrating this problem and underrating free market solutions. Polution or other forms of property destruction can easily be solved within the DRO and/or insurance system.

The claim that the state has any kind of legitimate function relating to the environment is absurd.

http://www.freedomainradio.com/Listen_In_1.htm, numbers 103,104,105 and 115; if you're interested.

[ShakeZula06]

TL;DR

Just kidding hmk, a lot of good points.

[tomdemaine]

Excellent post HMK I agree wholeheartedly. But there is another important question. Assuming (because I don't personally have a proof) that the current government debt based system i completly unsutainable and also the people time preferences become more short term focused in a crisis, will the freedom movement that nieslo alludes to have made enough progress by the time modern governments collapse or will we have another round of totalitarian states and an intellectual dark ages. Or is it not a simple dichotomy?

[Nielsio]

[ QUOTE ]
will the freedom movement that nieslo alludes to have made enough progress by the time modern governments collapse

[/ QUOTE ]


I have a feeling they go hand in hand; that it's a natural process of the state being in worse condition and the uprise of thought activism and understanding. I could be wrong.

[hmkpoker]

[ QUOTE ]
Excellent post HMK I agree wholeheartedly. But there is another important question. Assuming (because I don't personally have a proof) that the current government debt based system i completly unsutainable and also the people time preferences become more short term focused in a crisis, will the freedom movement that nieslo alludes to have made enough progress by the time modern governments collapse or will we have another round of totalitarian states and an intellectual dark ages. Or is it not a simple dichotomy?

[/ QUOTE ]

I can't answer that. I have no idea how the next century is going to unravel.

btw tom, what's your political swing? Libertarian? I thought you were a pinko of some sort [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

[BCPVP]

For a New Liberty Ch. 15 A Strategy for Liberty (audio)

Written version