Reactions to AC

[pvn]

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What I was referencing was that if government is smaller then it hopefully won't have as much power (a factor of being smaller) so it's less likely they'll start taking over.

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And people say ACists are fantansyland utopians.

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The idea is that if the government only handles those things the markets can't, then they'll lack the monitary resources to grow too large.

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It doesn't matter how small you start. The current US government under the Constitution started out pretty dang small, with more "safeguards" and "checks and balances" than had ever been seen in the history of mankind, and look at it now. And this wasn't an unforseen outcome.

Recommended reading: The Antifederalist Papers. A few highlights:

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"This new government would have been supported at a vast expense, by
which our taxes... would be doubled or trebled."

" it is very easy to change a free government into an arbitrary one,
but that it is very difficult to convert tyranny into freedom."

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"...every body of men, invested with power, are ever disposed to increase it."

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"It is beyond a doubt that the new federal constitution, if adopted,
will in a great measure destroy, if it does not totally annihilate,
the separate governments of the several states."

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"...of what avail would be a prosperous state of commerce, when the
produce of it would be at the absolute disposal of an arbitrary
unchecked general government?"

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"...though this country is now blessed with a Washington, Franklin,
Hancock and Adams, yet posterity may have reason to rue the day when
their political welfare depends on the decision of men who may fill
the places of these worthies.

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"Congress may mortgage any or all the revenues of the union, as a fund
to loan money upon; and it is probable, in this way, they may borrow
of foreign nations, a principal sum, the interest of which will be
equal to the annual revenues of the country. By this means, they may
create a national debt, so large, as to exceed the ability of the
country ever to sink."

[pvn]

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But it's not an issue in Ac. If people don't like something and feel that it is growing too large they just stop paying for it and it shrinks.

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Oh but it is, any group with guns can demand your money, unless you're immune from bullets, in which case you'll likely destroy us all.

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So creating a bigger group with guns, one you yourself argue is unstoppable by the people (handguns vs. "harriers and napalm" as I think you said) is a good idea?

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I think it's important that you claim that the government can only be limited if it limits itself.

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Isn't this obvious, I already said people are greedy, if this is true, then it follows that without checks, people will make efforts to collect power. Now there are exceptions (see: George Washingon, a pretty nice guy) but for the most part, people would want more control over peoples lives. Have to have some way to keep that small.

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What checks??? Even *with* checks, people will still make efforts to collect power.

[2OuterJitsu]

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Yay, i got my own gimmick account.

Dear gimmicky,

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We have indeed been through this. Ideas aren't scarce I agree. My car is blue. Non sequitur that either is not property.

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Perhaps you followed through the conversations you might have noticed this

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The same thing that happens when someone independently discovers your farm an hour after you did.

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It happens every day on this forum, someone posts that IP is just like regular P. The fact that we have to continue to point out that physical objects and ideas are not identical (nor even similar) is a prerequisite to starting the conversation about how or why IP should be protected. Without making it clear that IP falls into a different category than physical P an intelligent conversation cannot happen. Much like having a debate on evolution V ID, if your opponent continues to call evolution a random process you have to correct them and explain how even though random mutations provide the information basis for natural selection, the actual selection process in non random. It is pointless to have a with someone who thinks that there is no difference between a physical thing and a non physical thing. As soon as people stop either asserting (or making the comparison between) that physical property and intellectual property are parallels, I promise to stop replying pointing out that the two are different.

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I have replied in a new thread. "Scarcity and IP"

-2OuterJitsu a.k.a. Gimmicky

[pvn]

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What if I hired a private insurance company that ensured my safety from such threats?

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I'll hire a bigger one/bribe the one you have to do nothing because I have more money, goodnight nurse. Any number of other awful things and you have no recourse, except your town/commune's arbiter, good luck holding me to your "laws".

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This strategy is much, much more effective when the officials you are bribing have monopoly positions. Do you see why?

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Why would the need to fund a Large home-invasion war? Wouldn't they crush us immediately seeing as how we are so incapable of organizing ourselves as you have stated?

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Wait what? If we're talking government, they're going to need the home invasion war, although they probably would go slower. Of course if they kill us, then it's just the army, 535 senators and reps, and assorted aids and officers. Why bbe a tyrant if you have no people to govern.

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This should flip the lightbulb on for you. This point illustrates why an armed populace, even if they only have personal firearms, CAN successfully defeat a government with superior armament. No government is going to engage in *total* war against its own citizens, because it NEEDS those citizens to keep producing in order to generate production that can be taxed. 300,000,000 civilians vs. 1-2 million active duty military (assuming no defections!) - it's pretty clear who would win if it came down to this.

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So, people want to collect power and control over eachother's lives. So what we Must do is form an institution that allows for exactly that! We must form a government because people are just so damn power hungry!

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You made a little leap, but uhh...yes? I can't really argue with that if you assume that the only outcome of government is power consolodation. We already discussed that government can be monitored, yet you assume that it's impossbile.

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If you think unjust power consolidations can be monitored, and you suppose that such power consolidations should be prevented, why do you advocate the creation of one? This is totally self-contradictory.



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I mean fundamentally.. it seems like you recognize the evil of the state and taxation

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Short answer-Yes
Long answer-Sorta, I recognize that government CAN be evil (certainly you wouldn't say that a community of willing ACers [which would be a government] would be evil right, I mean they did all agree). Government CAN be evil, but it's not always evil. As for taxation, yeah it's pretty evil, but...

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These "non-evil" governments are not really governments in any useful sense of the word. Unless you want to get into the position of claiming that organizations like my local YMCA are governments.

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but you make excuses for it.. How come?

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...sometimes we need it. I promise I'm not trying to drag my feet here. The reason I agree to some (limited) government is because of those things that the free market can't handle.

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So YOU need it. Or you think you do, which is close enough to the same thing. You want it. So have it. Now, you still haven't explained why any other person needs it, or even if they do, why they must have the SAME solution that you have.

We all need shoes (pragmatically speaking), but that is not a justification for nationalization of the shoe industry. It's OK if you wear nikes and I wear cowboy boots.

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I, and Jog, have given some examples here that PVN refuses to address.

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Many are unanswerable. And it's a never-ending tarpit. You can generate examples all day long. It's not my job to convince you that AC is "viable" or "workable" - it's YOUR burden of proof, as the party who wants to impose upon ME, to demonstrate the justness of your actions. You've already admitted that
taxation is evil, so I'm wondering where you're going to go from here.

[pvn]

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Ok you're focusing on a detail when it's the big picture that's the point.

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But you're demanding satisfactory solutions to an endless series of scenarios?!?

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The fact that it's a insurance company isn't the point, let's say it's a "security company" that I hire/bribe (and I bribe would work, because it'll be hard to complain if you're dead). More over, what if my guys don't care about repuation, they've got a lot of guys, who all have guns, and they're gonna take what they want. Granted it would take alot of manpower to do this, but it's by no means impossible.

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The more manpower, the more money it's going to take. Where is it coming from?

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I'm not assuming it's impossible. I'm saying that it has never worked. The entire history of the state is about its expansion. It only stops expanding when it collapses. Am I incorrect here? I could be.. I'm nowhere near as knowledgeable about all this as I'd like to be.

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Eh, yes and no. By and large, people in power want more power. It's an evil breed, this man. But you said it, it's not impossible, in fact, what I'm suggesting (and also AC) has never been attempted, so we're both speaking largely in hypotheticals.

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Yes. So you see why your demands for solutions to whatever problems you dream up are pointless. That leaves us with the moral aspects of your proposal. In that regard, you're lacking by your own admission.

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Some easy math, your house (and it's lovely) has 800 feet of land on it's border (just play along with the numbers). Every road takes 100 feet of border space. Once the 8th road gets build from your house (you're out of space) they owners get together and say "hahahaha well now he either has to pay to park his car in a garage and walk X miles to and from it everyday, or he has to pay our huge fees, miserable piss-ant" and you're boned. This is one of those few moments where it'd be really cool to have some large entity with authority say "play fair".

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So you have 8 companies, each demanding (for the sake of argument) $800 for access to their roads. They're colluding against you. How long before one of these guys does the "easy math" and figures out that his expected outcome is $100 (1/8 chance at $800, 7/8 chance at $0), then does some more math and figures out that if he breaks ranks, he can undercut the other guys and lock up a near-100% chance of, say, $750? And once that happens, well, the bottom falls out.

Cartels are invariably unstable without government propping them up.

[pvn]

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Oh but it is, any group with guns can demand your money, unless you're immune from bullets, in which case you'll likely destroy us all.

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Do you believe violent theft, pillaging, and murder is part of human nature?



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Yes.

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So "violent theft, pillaging, and murder is part of human nature" but you want to give some of these violent theives and murders power over others?

[Richard Tanner]

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In response to the edit: So if government were kept small that would keep them from becoming large?

Let's say that the people in gov't decide that they can better serve you by taking 100$ from your bank account everyday. Who would stop them?

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No one would stop them. Don't you see the little game he's playing and how much fun he's having? He's putting you in the position of defending 1 million different hypothetical situations that he's just making up. A discussion like this could theoretically go on for the rest of your life and mr. cody does not show any signs that he is interested in wrapping up any time soon.

He's not looking for answers and he's not looking for reassurances. You must really enjoy trying to defend against millions of made up scenario's [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

After all, you 'agree' to AC don't you? [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

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Mr. Cody here (Actually I rather like that name). Anyway, I love this. "Don't you see, he's asking questions, and worse yet, he has alot of them, don't both answering them, it'll only create answers and knowledge about a topic." Glad we got that out of the way.

I really love how "I" show no signs of stopping, while those that are arguing your side are left out. Very even.

Mr. Cody

[Richard Tanner]

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Oh but it is, any group with guns can demand your money, unless you're immune from bullets, in which case you'll likely destroy us all.

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Do you believe violent theft, pillaging, and murder is part of human nature?



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Yes.

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If so, what does the word "society" mean to you?

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A community where there are sufficient disincentives to murder, pillage, steal, and do other naughty things that would harm the community.

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And how did [censored] sapiens manage to last so long from the time of our caveman ancestors without killing ourselves off entirely?


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How much property did cavemen have? I don't know - maybe there were some violent struggles over Mammoth carcasses and so on - perhaps some cavemen killed each other over cavewomen. I don't think being a homicidal maniac is part of human nature - But, just like other animals, using violence to get things is natural. When there are a lot of things to fight over, and we move beyond spending all of our times on hunting and gathering excursions, society develops to curb the violence.

In anarchy, a powerful group that wants your things is not going to restrain from using violence to steal from you based on some goody two-shoes notion of human nature. Perhaps the only thing that would prevent them is a group that is even more powerful/has more guns, etc.

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100%, especially regarding the last section and the change in property and "wealth" since we were cave-dwellers.

Cody

[plzleenowhammy]

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You sir, have piqued my interest. I'm not going to say anything, you tell me how I view my parents and I'll tell you how right you are.

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Ah, you're willing to listen. Half the battle is over. I'm a complete noob at this part of the discussion and it is such a difficult topic... here's my shot in the dark-

Government is entirely about power disparity. Governments have the power of the military and the police and we don't. In relation to the state we are helpless. Helpless as infants. A child can not survive without someone to take care of it. Children recognize this and form a view of their parents in terms of morality and universal rules. Universal is very important here. When a parent tells a child not to do something the child makes the connection that it is wrong for all people to do it! For example, when a child is taught that theft is wrong they believe that theft is wrong All of the time, for all people. Children do not give weight to "government" or "cops", they just see people. So when parents give these rules as universals the child is utterly dumbfounded when the rules are broken but the moral criminal still claims virtue. For example, if a parent curses after telling the child that cursing is wrong then the child forces him or herself to believe that for some people it is right to curse and for some people it is not. It is absolutely necessary to the child that their parents be virtuous (the alternative: parents who are not virtuous is a death sentence for the child) and instead of applying universal moral codes they rationalize the idea that some people can steal and be virtuous and some people can't. Some people can murder and be virtuous and some people can't. But theft is theft and murder is murder and all of the labels and costumes in the world can not change that.

89-92, 109-112

[Richard Tanner]

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You're still dodging the question.

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No I've answered it, you just don't accept the answer. That's fine, but don't pretend I haven't wrote my own novels in reply to yours.

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The fact that some issues are larger than small groups is irrelevant, because we've seen that large scale cooperation is possible under voluntary agreements.


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Then you should have no problem answering those questions I posted earlier concerning national security and the like.

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You haven't shown why it doesn't apply. You just say "it's different". What's different about these two things that makes the metaphor not apply?

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Jog actually replyed to you on this one, and his answer was the one I'd have given. It's a matter of scale. Who decides scale? Well the government does an ok job of it now, if you ignore the huge wasteful spending items.

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Military centralization is a huge negative when it comes to defense, BTW. How do you think Hitler was able to conquer France so fast? Compare US operations against a centralized Iraqi army vs. the decentralized forces in place now. Any force that could "kill" your decentralized forces would be more than enough to defeat centralized forces given the same population, same level of resources, etc. Centralized command and control structures are huges points of failure, and forces that are trained to depend on them become totally useless without them.

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So Nazi Germany defeated France because Frace was centralized. But so were the Nazis, as were their Allied (allied is another word for unified) enemies that beat them. Germany won because it's tactics were better, not because they were a random assortment of differnent groups working together and France was an "army", however you're defining it.

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Where did you get that I don't want to help? You assume that because I don't want to help *in the manner that you prefer* that I don't want to help others? You take my disagreement with your tactics and extrapolate to assuming that I disagree with your motivation.

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Ok, you say that when things are GOOD for me, that I want others to help, yet you fail to recognize that that's exactly what you're saying here. You said "If need was really that dire, you'd get help." Really? Well I think the need for healthcare is really dire, yet I don't get your help, what makes you think that when there's an invading army bent on taking our freedoms, you'll get mine, hell what if I think:

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Obviously, I don't *care* if your side is weaker, in fact, I'd probably prefer that, since I'm leaving.


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You can't refute the argument that it might be tough for people to unify and fight when they can't unify behind anything.

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Then how is government going to help the situation? If natural barriers exist, government can't do anything but subsidize around them - this doesn't remove barriers, it just makes someone else pay for overcoming them, adding an extra layer of bureaucracy along the way, not to mention making a slew of decisions about allocation resource that are different than market allocation would have been absent the regulation

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Once again, each situation is different, but in the case of roads (like my simple 800 feet example) there is a use. Yeah it's sad that people can't play nice on their own, but we've seen day in and day out that they can't.

I'm not going to quote it because it's in a differnt post, but you actually answered one of my examples and said something to the effect of "well what happens when one of those 8 road owners says 'I'm just gonna undercut the other guys'". Well, this would be great, a perfect example of the free market coming to the rescue. But, he's equally likely (although really I like he's more than likely) to say "Well, I can just undercut him, or we can take our prices from x to 8x and all get rich, then take that money to build monopolies other places, because hey, we're the only ones with the capital and ability to do it here in Region X, so F-'em" Cartels have strength when they work together, no government help is needed.

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Do you see the difference between declining to interact and forcibly interacting?

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Sure, and do you see the fact that anyone with more power then you can force something on you, especially if, like in the example we're talking about, they have you cut off from any resources you might need.

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What examples have not been answered?

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Well, those would be the one's I asked that you haven't answered, the Pharm example, the road example (there was a half-attempt made here), or the security example.
Plus anything the Jog has asked (I read that you hate him, but he still may've asked a question)

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I'm not even sure how to address this question. The market is not perfect. Every ACist on this board will happily admit this. This is a totally seperate issue from government doing things "right" or not - government's problems are not *because* of market imperfections, and market imperfections are not *because* of government problems, so there's no good reason to conflate these as you've done.

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So you're saying that the government is flawed, and that it would be better for everyone to allow the market to "fly free". Yet when I say here are some things that the market might drop the ball on, there's no equating the two?

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Who said anything about private armies? The BBB doesn't have an army. They don't need one. Are you incapable of thinking of anything outside of a framework of violence?

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I think outside violence, but I also recognize that some people are going to seek it as a solution. Because of that, I'm left to try and find a balance. Your arbiter says "well this is breech of contract, now for your punishment" and they can't do anythign but tarnish your repuation because they have to means of violence which is what all authority stems from.

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So since two people might not get along, you extrapolate and assume that nobody can? If this is the case, we're doomed with or without government.

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No since two people can't get along I assume that amoung more people, more issues will arise, thus friction, simple as that. Run this expariment for me, get your buddy and ask where you'd like to go eat, then get 99 buddies each with their own unique opinions and ask. Get back to me. (the answer, well we each go to our own place isn't exceptable, you have to work together).

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Making up crazy examples is not a (good) argument.

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Hahah you know, believe it or not, I really do respect you. I say "here's where I think AC is gonna run into major problems" and you say "Oh that's just crazy talk". That takes balls, to not even answer the question and insult the other guy.

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To what? Which post?

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Already mentioned them above. This thread is over 12 pages long, you and I have accouted for at least 4 of them, the least you could do (because you've told me you haven't) is read them.

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Micromanage what? Your demands for solutions to example X or example Y *are* micromanagement scenarios!

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No, they're questions that, when addressed and applied to everything (i.e. the Pharm example wouldn't just occur in the Pharm business) are Macro scenarios. Feel free to answer the question in as broad a term as you'd like, hell I'd be happy if you took the time to answer them at all.

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I think I've seen all I need to. Thanks. I really don't have anything else to say to you.

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It isn't nice to tease.

Cody