Human nature and government

[ShakeZula06]

Below is a post i was going to make in this thread, but doing so would hijack the Op, and I think this deserves it's own thread anyway.

[ QUOTE ]
You make it sound as if government is an impediment to a more peaceful society.

[/ QUOTE ]
Government makes wars profitable by externalizing cost of war onto duped taxpayers(that history shows they first blind with propaganda and scaring them into thinking they need to go to war). They use money from taxpayers to attempt to restrict a person from doing such voluntary activities as taking drugs, selling drugs, or playing poker in a non-government deemed appropriate places (read: government's unhappy it didn't get it's cut). To satisfy it's own objectives, our government has (with taxpayer money again) financed the killing of other world leaders and installed leaders that will act as puppets for our government.

Doesn't sound like putting limits on actions to me. It seems to me that it gives humans unlimited actions. I certainly don't think Halliburton would have invaded Iraq, do you? Government created this action, it didn't limit or prevent against it.

[ QUOTE ]
People are often irrational. They become drug addicts. They lie and steal. They cheat. They hit each other. They occasionally kill each other over jealousy, or money, or religion, or skin color, or card games, or prestige, or honor, etc.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, and these people are often through government given free reign to do what they want. Government is after all, run by people. And those people, once in government, can use the strings of government to pursue the actions you posted (e.g., regulations that are favorable to certain company's, nation building for the sole purpose of war profiteering and installing puppet dictators, legislating subjective morality).
[ QUOTE ]
Government provides a framework of rules for people to live with each other. But just like sports without referees can devolve into chaos, government serves as a referee of sorts.

[/ QUOTE ]
This is a false dilemma. You're assuming that government is the only arbiter that can "referee". Notice that in sports, government has not decreed that referees must be used. The free market brought it referees. Notice that in disputes with labor unions and businesses, private arbitrators are used. These arbitrators have also risen to their places of power through the fact that they are best of what they do, rather then being politically connected to those with the power to appoint judges, or those with the connections to run a successful campaign for public office.
[ QUOTE ]
The beauty of representative democracy with built-in checks and balances is...

[/ QUOTE ]
Of course, the government that has checks and balances for itself.
[ QUOTE ]
... is that there is a minimum of abuse of those powers.

[/ QUOTE ]
I'd disagree with your usage of "minimum". I'd like to simply get rid of those powers, less anyone abuse them in the first place.
[ QUOTE ]
But they are less than in...anarchy, market-driven or otherwise.

[/ QUOTE ]
Assertion. Bill Gate's entire net worth would only finance <15% of the Iraq War. This also assumes that wars from the investor's POV is profitable, which all of history shows that in the large, large majority of cases isn't. Regardless of human nature, a free market would select against wars and aggression because it simply isn't a good business model and is unprofitable.
[ QUOTE ]
The United States is really the product of a great experiment in representative democracy written by people who distrusted central powers because they knew that absolute power would corrupt absolutely.

[/ QUOTE ]
And now we have central powers. Check out the commerce clause, the supremacy clause, and the fact that the federal government will not allow states to secede. The current attorney general has tried to reason that US citizens don't have a right to habeas corpus. States and individuals have very little power. This country has been turned into an oligarchy in democratic clothing. It's certainly not unpredictable that when you give anything ran by humans the power to grow relentlessly (and aid it with taxes) that it will grow and increase in power wherever it can.
[ QUOTE ]
Don't like what the CIA is doing? Vote for another president. Vote for other congressmen. Run for congress yourself.

[/ QUOTE ]
The little "democracy" we have left in this country is mob rule. I can only stop the government from creating these atrocities if some how I can convince a large majority of people to stop buying into the system (the system is an oligarchy that has successfully appeared to most as the voice of the people, further proving Proudhon right). Convincing majorities (especially when that majority is convinced that it's security is under attack from a vague threat, like say, I don't know, terrorism) to favor individualism and liberty goes completely against mob psychology.

The system is set up not to favor the little guy and the libertarian. Politicians rarely get money to not give specialized treatment somewhere to some company to the detriment of tax payers. You can't war profiteer without wars. You can't give out no bid contracts without a war.

People in government have power. Why would they voluntarily relinquish it? You said it yourself, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Why would someone, with power, favor doing "the right thing" (whatever that may be) over doing the thing that serves his best interests?

But, while I'd love to just have a chance to convince them not to do the things the government gets away with, I shouldn't even have to. Your telling me I have to convince THEM that what they're doing to me or others with my own money that what they're doing is wrong? If what they're doing involves using my money, the burden should be on them to get my acceptance, no matter how much of a minority I am.

Who do we commonly see running for office? Power driven people from the upper class. We typically see that those who get elected frequently do not service "the people" but themselves, their special interest groups, companies they had ties to pre-election, and people/companies that line their pockets. Elected politicians have incentives, just like every other person. Government to me would only have merit if benign angels ran it, and we don't have that. Humans given power act on their nature to be greedy. In a free market this means providing a good or service to someone else good enough to have someone voluntarily pay for it. In government it means transferring wealth from one party to another.

"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter."
-Churchill

"Democracy is nothing but the Tyranny of Majorities, the most abominable tyranny of all, for it is not based on the authority of a religion, not upon the nobility of a race, not on the merits of talents and of riches. It merely rests upon numbers and hides behind the name of the people."
-Proudhon

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote."
-Benjamin Franklin

"97% of politicians give the other 3% a bad name."
-unknown

[ShakeZula06]

bump

[for serious]

[ QUOTE ]
Government to me would only have merit if benign angels ran it, and we don't have that. Humans given power act on their nature to be greedy. In a free market this means providing a good or service to someone else good enough to have someone voluntarily pay for it. In government it means transferring wealth from one party to another.

[/ QUOTE ]

Government's abuse of power are well documented and I do not contest this one bit. I do not understand how public services would function in a truly AC environment. Wouldn't there always be a push to establish states to deal with crime, fire, medical emergencies, and public sanitation? How would property disputes be settled? I apologize in advance if these questions have been answered in previous AC threads as I am relatively new to this forum.

[ShakeZula06]

[ QUOTE ]
Government's abuse of power are well documented and I do not contest this one bit. I do not understand how public services would function in a truly AC environment. Wouldn't there always be a push to establish states to deal with crime, fire, medical emergencies, and public sanitation? How would property disputes be settled? I apologize in advance if these questions have been answered in previous AC threads as I am relatively new to this forum.

[/ QUOTE ]
AC faq

[Skidoo]

[ QUOTE ]
Government makes wars profitable by externalizing cost of war onto duped taxpayers

[/ QUOTE ]

Let us not forget another ever-popular externalization of the cost of war: onto the conquered people whose resources are being stolen.

[ShakeZula06]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Government makes wars profitable by externalizing cost of war onto duped taxpayers

[/ QUOTE ]

Let us not forget another ever-popular externalization of the cost of war: onto the conquered people whose resources are being stolen.

[/ QUOTE ]
Yeah I hear that's how they funded the Iraq war.

Hey Skidoo please name the last war that made more money then it costed to fund it. You can't.

[latefordinner]

I pretty much agree with everything you wrote there Shake, except for the assertion that AC will automatically select against war/aggression because it is generally unprofitable. I think this simply hasn't been the case - it /is/ more profitable to terrorize some employees if they seem to have too much bargaining power, it is profitable to kill a few thousand people that happen to be sitting on vast amounts of natural resources they don't have any desire to use. I don't know the extent than not having corporations and states that are highly interwoven would combat these tendencies - it certainly would to some extent, but not nearly to extent that ACers believe it would.

I agree that having a corporation model - literally setting up a structure whose sole function is to make money for shareholders who can't be held liable for that corporations activities - is a huge problem. But it did not arise out of nowhere - it grew out of capitalism - because that model would be more profitable than a different model. If ROI is the highest good, it will come before anything else, and no amount of free market mysticism about the market always giving people what they want and who are we to say what people want is right or wrong will change that.

Capitalism was birthed in violence and state power - as Marx writes, "the working class was born dripping of blood from head to toe". It has been maintained through violence and state power. ACers might be right that the next phase of capitalism is taking what we have discovered about the way free markets create wealth and provide freedom and moving into a phase of capitalism the is utterly divorced from its violent past.....but I don't buy it.

I don't disagree that part of the way capitalism functions is on a horizontal axis - competition and free exchange - but it also functions on a vertical access of command, control and domination - and always has. It seems ludicrous to me to think that the only reason that vertical access has functioned has been the State, (when in fact, for all its flaws, it has been the State that has reigned in the more egregious examples of the command/control aspect of capitalism throughout history - often after violent struggles between workers and capitalists) and that by chopping the State off at the knees what will be left is only the horizontal free exchange component.

[ShakeZula06]

So at the least would you agree that, al things being equal in a world with privately owned capital, no state is better then a state?
[ QUOTE ]
except for the assertion that AC will automatically select against war/aggression because it is generally unprofitable.

[/ QUOTE ]
I think it is an undeniable fact that defense costs less then offense. In other words, if you invest $X into offense and I spend $X on defense and you attack me, I will prevail more times then not. It's simply easier to attack then defend.

Naturally (well, it may not be natural, but we see that people nearly always do) people will spend part of their wealth on protecting the rest of it. People on defense theoretically can always make it attacking them -EV (at least for the investors, not the war profiteers that didn't pay for it).

Now even if I granted that sometimes aggression was profitable, this isn't an argument for the state (well, knowing your positions I know your not, but many statists make this argument [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]) being that if government will wage aggression even in unprofitable situations, it's definitely going to seize on the profitable scenarios. No one seems to believe (rightfully so) that war is usually profitable, just that most the time it's not. Even if some violence was profitable and could possibily occur, most at least seem to agree that this is very small compared to the amount of aggression we see waged today.
[ QUOTE ]
Capitalism was birthed in violence and state power

[/ QUOTE ]
Corporate capitalism perhaps. I believe you are referring to the fact (?) that when capitalism was first implemented it involved farmers forced off their land and into the cities to work for horrible wages in horrible conditions?

I would consider people working on their own land more capitalistic (well, I guess more free market) then the farmers being forced to the city to sell their labor.

This is why I think I might prefer AS to corporate capitalism. Capitalism will produce some inequal incomes and create classes. When you have a government naturally the rich and powerful will flock to it and use to benefit themselves, not the "people" that democracy advocates believe. They use it to pull wool over people's eyes and grow in power.

My argument in this thread is essentially that capitalism with no state > limited capitalism with state intervention.

[Sharkey]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Government makes wars profitable by externalizing cost of war onto duped taxpayers

[/ QUOTE ]

Let us not forget another ever-popular externalization of the cost of war: onto the conquered people whose resources are being stolen.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's your thesis alright, Surf. Now I'm waiting for your follow through with examples.

[neverforgetlol]

Corporations pass on their costs too... that's why they pay little tax, they just increase prices.