Still looking for answers from "anarcho-capitalists"

[ianlippert]

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To say that a free market (or for that matter an AC world) doesnt have parallels to Darwinian evolution is just wrong. Businesses, much like organisms, compete to survive. Those that do well, survive. Those that dont, dont.



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It is an analogy in the sense that business are competing for limited resources. But its just that, an analogy. The difference is, is that in the wild animals only benefit at the expense of other organisms. The resources are taken from another organism. In the free market resources are traded between businesses and consumers. Also businesses cannot initiate force against other businesses. So its fairly weak analogy that you can have some fun with, but really confuses the actual mechanisms of the market.

[ianlippert]

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No, only individuals act--a collective is a convenient grouping or nomenclature, but it isn't a real entity in the sense that an individual is.


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To expand on this idea, collectives dont act because a collective is just a belief in an individuals head about how they should act with respect to other individuals. The trouble arises when people start making statements as if these beliefs actually exist in reality. So people often say 'the government' controls all property in the United States. But the government doesnt exist except as a large group of individuals who hold specific beliefs on how to interact with eachother. Only people can act on other people and therefore we only should concern ourselves with individual morality and political theories. There are no special cases for collectives.

[ianlippert]

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Moreover, statism's options for dealing with the poor are vastly more flexible than DCism's - rather obviously, in fact, since they include all the methods of DCism (IE markets, charity) as well as all the methods of statism.


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So I suppose spending $400 billion in Iraq is good for getting people out of poverty? If you want to help a crippled man get up, the first thing you should do is stop stepping on his leg.

[vhawk01]

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The 'mechanism' that deals with the poor and needy is inside human beings my friend, not inside government.

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Government is human beings.

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Government is a mafia esque entity that consists of human beings who like to control other human beings. They use propaganda to confuse the masses but that is what government is. I don't care if they are deluded into thinking they are doing good or what, it is mafia.

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Was George Washington mafia?
How about TJ?

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Yeah, but at least they were ashamed about it.

[Richard Tanner]

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The 'mechanism' that deals with the poor and needy is inside human beings my friend, not inside government.

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Government is human beings.

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Government is a mafia esque entity that consists of human beings who like to control other human beings. They use propaganda to confuse the masses but that is what government is. I don't care if they are deluded into thinking they are doing good or what, it is mafia.

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Was George Washington mafia?
How about TJ?

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Yeah, but at least they were ashamed about it.

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As they should be, it's what, in my opinion made them true "patriots".

Cody

[nietzreznor]

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Legislated programs to aid the poor ("involuntarily", to the extent that they require one to pay taxes) are orders of magnitude different from open warfare. (Which is basically just another way of saying "not all force is equal".)

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Clearly, and I don't think anyone here (anarchists included) is saying that they are. But that doesn't mean that such programs aren't wrong.

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Moreover, statism's options for dealing with the poor are vastly more flexible than DCism's - rather obviously, in fact, since they include all the methods of DCism (IE markets, charity) as well as all the methods of statism.

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Certainly government has more options--though this is of little value to those of us who aren't utilitarians. That said, from a consequentialist standpoint, I think you vastly overestimate the effectiveness of government programs (keep in mind that the use of their programs tends to make free markets less effective), and underestimate the effectiveness of voluntary, non-government programs.

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I'm having trouble with your "so". Apart from handouts from the strong and armed violence, what options do the weak have in DCism?

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It is sad that you advocate aggression and violence when you haven't even thought about voluntary solutions to these problems. History has plenty of examples of peaceful and voluntary solutions to problems that government has convinced us we need them to solve.

[nietzreznor]

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What makes you think this?

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Common sense? Seriously, I don't understand how this isn't obvious--anytime something like a collective is "acting" (eg, a mob), it can only act insofar as the individual members that compose the collective act.

[nietzreznor]

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What causes individuals to behave differently in a mob than they behave when they are not part of a mob?

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This seems like a psychology question--but what difference does it make? What if the answer is magic? Or astrology? I'm sure there are good and interesting reasons why, but they aren't really relevant to the discussion at hand. The point is that only individuals can act; individuals can act on their own (without a mob), but a mob can't 'act' without individual people acting.

[Richard Tanner]

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What makes you think this?

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Common sense? Seriously, I don't understand how this isn't obvious--anytime something like a collective is "acting" (eg, a mob), it can only act insofar as the individual members that compose the collective act.

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For my part, it's because it's a largely semantic argument. PVN mentioned it above, and there are plenty of studies referencing the changes in behavior between people alone and people in a group. Like I said, it's really an issue of wording but companies are "people" as are mobs. They both are a collection of people working together, and to the extent they focus on one end, the sum of their additions is what we measure.

Cody

[GMontag]

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What makes you think this?

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Common sense? Seriously, I don't understand how this isn't obvious--anytime something like a collective is "acting" (eg, a mob), it can only act insofar as the individual members that compose the collective act.

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This is a irrelevant point. Anytime an individual is "acting", it can only act insofar as the component organs that compose the individual act, yet you seem to have no problem treating the individual as a whole. Collectives are no different than individuals, just another level of abstraction up. The insistence of looking at the situation at one arbitrary level of abstraction (that of the human being) is irrational.