Reactions to AC

[elwoodblues]

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I would however, like to see what ACers would think about a large board of people (choosen and agreed on by everyone, ignore how likely or unlikely this is) who acted as a unifyer. Wouldn't this, as Taciturn said, end up much like government anyway. And if this is a yes, or even a probably, then aren't we flawed by design (as people) when it comes to our ability to be totally free.


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I would imagine that this would be a fairly likely scenario in ACland. A bunch of neighboring property owners get together. They decide create a set of rules that everyone can agree on. The way that they ensure that those rules will be required of future owners is they create restrictive covenants that run with the land (i.e. subsequent owners purchase the property knowing of the existence of the rules.) The rules include a mechanism by which the rules can be amended/modified/repealed/expanded (I suspect it would look like direct democracy at first and then when more and more properties become part of the community you would have elected officials.) Eventually neighborhoods would band together to form cities with similar rules (the rules would also run with the land.)

[Taciturn]

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This is not meant to be a personal slight aginst anyone, but

It's friggin amazing how brainwashed we all are and this thread is illustrative of that.

We are simply talking about leaving people alone to be free in simply living their lives and by reading some of these threads it seems as if almost the whole world would be up in arms to stop that.

I never realized how brainwashed I was at one point in my life but this thread is a good reminder.

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I think a lot of the discussion is about extending ideas and assumptions to their theoretical endpoints to try to find some sort of near perfect sustainable government - which may not exist. I don't think many of us feel that the more extreme scenarios in the thread are likely to occur, as stated, in the near future. A lot (most? virtually all?) of us want people to simply be left alone to live their lives - we're just using extreme hypothetical situations that assume the worst possible threats to live freely when we theorize about how this should come about.

[pvn]

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No. I'm just saying you won't get them. I "need" a free pony, and an real-life voltron. But I don't have them! Market failure!

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I'm thinking "market failure!" is sarcasm right? Really I think it's true. Sometimes people need things (not want, we're talking transportaion, clean water, etc) that they won't get if a monopoly (or ologopoly, which is what we've sorta been talking about) exists with nothing to break it.

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Yes, sarcasm.

What's the difference between a "want" and a "need"?

How clean is "clean water"? Is a bike enough to check off the "transportation" box or do you "need" a hummer? This is the same problem as with "security" - is the war on drugs part of satisfying this basic need?

Why won't people get these things, even with monopolies? A monopoly still has to make some money - which means you have to buy stuff from them. If they simply shut everyone out, they go broke.

Not to mention you've begged the entire question of how these monopolies form without coercive force. What kind of monopoly is going to form in the "clean water" market, considering the stuff falls from the sky on a regular basis?

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And government doesn't change that at all. Government doesn't make more resources appear, more time available, or something easier to accomplish. Not any more than voluntary methods *can*. Sure, it's possible that government WILL make something happen where the market wouldn't - but all this indicates is that someone allocated someone else's resources in a manner different than the owners would have, and less efficiently at that.

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So what's the magic powder that government adds?

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Gonna coupple these here. I'm refering to the breaking of monoloplies that would come naturally (roads because the initial cost is high and land is scarce, shoes are not because they're easy to make and there exists so many materials they can be made of that it would be hard to see them becoming a nat. monopoly). Also, government would have a larger scope of influence and planning then would private interests.

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Again, begging the question. Natural monopolies are assumed? Can you provide an example of one? I'm still not quite sure which definition of natural monopoly you're using, since there are several tossed about in this forum.

And shoes, like roads, are made from scarce materials, and require scarce labor to produce.

And I have no idea what this "larger scope of infulence and planning" is supposed to mean. The roads I drive on today are built by the state, and uniformily exhibit *poor* planning. They take forever to build, are poorly constructed at high cost, don't carry enough traffic to meet demand, etc etc etc.

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I would however, like to see what ACers would think about a large board of people (choosen and agreed on by everyone, ignore how likely or unlikely this is) who acted as a unifyer. Wouldn't this, as Taciturn said, end up much like government anyway. And if this is a yes, or even a probably, then aren't we flawed by design (as people) when it comes to our ability to be totally free.

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If everyone agrees, then who could possibly object?

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I don't have the answer there, it's just a thought.

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...I am simply trying to figure out where science comes in here. I'm confused by this shift towards "what the market seems unable to do".


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Let me try and put it like this. Without national security we ALL get taken over (this is fairly likely given the forces at play). Without some regulation of the environment, we ALL die in a heatwave/smog haze/etc. Without your Xbox, only YOU are unhappy. That's the scale I'm refering to, those things that are so big that they effect everyone regardless of belief.

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Except these are far from a given. You can't leap from a lack of *centralized* security to *zero* security. You have to demonstrate how you get from A to B. Ditto for the environment. If government isn't prohbiting private ownership of resources (and hence *real* guardianship), and isn't immunizing polluters from liability (which is *excatly* what things like pollution standards do, they set levels of "acceptable" (to some bureaucrats) pollution, which you can get away with "for free"), the level of environmental protection would be completely different from the distopia commonly assumed by critics, where everyone can pollute at will without regard to liability or property rights. The idea that AC, which would be *rooted* in property rights, could possibly work like that is completely laughable, yet people try to portray it as a given over and over again.

Tactics like this make me want to use North Korea as the example of a prototype state. After all, it has a government, and it is "working", right? I'll just make a bunch of assumptions that statism will turn out just like that. It makes my job much easier.

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Yes! if the bulk of the population wants institutionalized violence in the form of government, well, they're going to get it. The market isn't a magical force field that is going to stop them.

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We agree, I'll say it again. Life, she is a motherf%@ker eh.

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But your hypothetical population who is enlightened enough to keep government to some primordial tiny little size faces a *harder* challenge than if they were simply trying to prevent unjust concentrations of power, because, as we've pointed out, seeding a government, however small, is *starting* the process of that concentration of power - unavoidably. You've just made their job harder.

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Also true (mostly), this is the problem, people are greedy, this is no different then what I've always said.

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If you think this is a problem, why do you want to enable it?

The state provides an apparatus for the most ruthless, diabolical, power-hungry people in the population to satisfy their basest urges. It's a ready-made machine of immeasurable power waiting to be commanded. Oh, but as long as we make sure only "good" people get the keys, we'll be OK. As long as people vote the way I think they should, it turns out all right.

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So AC is *necessarily* more easily achievable

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Agree

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So AC is *necessarily* more easily...and sustainable

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Disagree, if we agree that people are greedy, which I think we do, any form of government or non-government is screwed.

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Define greed. Are we talking Gordon Gekko greed?

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However, I see that small "anti-government" as Taciturn called it, might stave off the consolodation of power longer then nothing, or it may cause it quicker. No one knows for sure, but I think if we look at it using our current populus as a guide, we would see that the limited government would slow the "take-over" more then other methods.

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How do you figure that? What current populous are you looking at? A thug like, for example, Abraham Lincoln would never have been able to kill 700,000 men, totally wreck an entire economy, and consolodate as much power as he did without the state apparatus handed to him on a silver platter. How else could he have funded that sort of destruction?

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So which ones are up for nationalization? And please square your answer with your desire to achieve a tiny state.

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Gonna have to plead ignorance on much of this, because I don't know (nor want to list) all the resources. However, things like space (once there's a monopoly on it) come to mind. Going to have to give this some more thought to form a more complete answer however.

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Take your time. While you're thinking, consider the ramifications of pre-emptively deciding (arbitrarily, apparently) that somethings should be nationalized and others shouldn't. You were deriding the idea of making such decisions by throwing darts at a board, but since you can't articulate what seperates one group from the other, I have to assume your process for seperation is in practice quite similar.

[pvn]

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No. All it means is that collectively they can outspend Bill Gates. And collectively, for *any person* you select, that person is also going to be overwhelmed by "everyone else". So nobody can outspend everyone. Which means, when you're in the context of established AC (which is logically more easily achieved than your kept-in-check tinystate), nobody can engage in sustained aggression against others.

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Huh, people band together, they form groups. Once a group gets 51% of the "power" (however we're defining it) they run the show.

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Not true. The majority is only a magic number when it comes to arbitrary decsion-making processes. In real life, all things being equal, a 51-49 battle to the death will almost always be decided in favor of the defender, regardless of whether the attacker has 51 or 49. Defense is much, much easier than offense. If this were not true, and might really did determine every face-off, we'd never progress past the stone age. Do you see why?

Of course, there is some tipping point. But at that point, even the most militaristic state is doomed. Brutal dictatorships are much, much more fragile than decentralized populations.

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Of course it's not like what people think now. If it were, we wouldn't have a state. And your objection applies equally (moreso, even) to your kept-in-check tinystate.

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You ain't kiddin'. Most people don't like to think at all, much less think about new ideas. It's a tough road to hoe. But I don't think that my "tinystate" requires the same "total mental agreement" that you say AC does.

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AC does not require "total mental agreement". It can easily withstand coercion-loving dissenters. More so than any tinystate. Once a thug sneaks his way into office, no matter how small the state, he can begin the rolling snowball of expansion. And it won't stop until it collapses, at which point the process begins again.

[pvn]

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I wonder what Bill Gates would do if he wanted to engage in sustained aggression against others in AC land? Would he join forces with a militant Paul Allen and eventually include others in a union of all billionaires in the Pacific Northwest?

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I love this hypothetical. It's even better than the "coke and pepsi battling it out in the streets" hypothetical.

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That would make too much sense. They could rake in a lot of money running an extensive protection racket in Washington and Oregon - until they were forcefully assimilated into the Coca-Cola/Merck/GE/IBM empire which already includes the vast majority of the companies in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. What prevents this in AC? Even an extensive network of sovereign and enlightened citizens would not be able to compete with the resources of this empire. Maybe they'll stop drinking coca cola and boycott NBC...

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What prevents this? Who's going to *pay* for it? Bill Gates is going to get into the business of snatching purses? Stealing rice bowls? He's going to be lowering his hourly rate by engaging in such low-profit, high risk activities. He can make more money - a LOT more money - engaging in voluntary commerce.

Large-scale gangs are built around *contraband*. Only government prohibition can enable profits big enough to overcome the high costs of violence. There are no nationwide networks of bank robbing gangs, or purse snatching gangs, or three-card-monty gangs.

How is Bill Gates going to hire this army? He doesn't have a widespread indoctrination program where kids are raised from birth worshipping the flag, exposed to propoganda glorifying military service, constant barrages of pro-Bill jingoism. Kids aren't going to be coming out of highschool high on the idea of working for Bill's killing squad for peanuts. He's going to have to pay real money.


Actual image of the original salute that accompanied the Plege of Allegiance

How much does Bill Gates actually have? He needs *liquid assets*. You can't fuel a war machine with shares of Microsoft. Imagine Bill starts this campaign. What do you think is going to happen to share prices when it becomes apparent that he's using Microsoft to engage in this behavior? Would you buy shares in the US Military? We're spending $8,000,000,000 PER MONTH in Iraq, and they're producing about 1,000,000 barrels of oil per month (and not much else). Even in the case where we're actually stealing all of the oil, you're talking about $8,000 per barrel. Thats more than 100x what it's trading for on the free market.

Yes, large scale violence looks like an insanely profitable plan to me.

[pvn]

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It seems the accepted rule is that market distributions are "better" than coercive distributions. Agree or disagree (in general, for the sake of discussion)?


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You asked in general, so I agree.

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If you agree, then it's up to you to show why you think a particular scenario deviates from the rule, not for anyone else to show why it doesn't.


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I have, remember those "particular scenario"s that I brought up.

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Yes, you *brought them up*. "Bringing them up" isn't a *logical proof* that they are true.

You might prefer a different distribution of, say, roads, than would emerge from a free market. This doesn't mean that your preference is "better", or that the market allocation is "inefficent."

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Market applications are "good" because they are "not bad". It sounds dumb, but it's true.

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This isnt dumb at all, this is the basis for a linear view of science. If something must be either X or Y, then if it's not X it must be Y.

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And if AC still has advantages (freedom) over the ultimate, perfect form of central planning, while producing
at worst the same results, then, well, what the [censored] are you doing supporting central planning, in any form?

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Because I don't think that's the perfect centrally planed market, like I said. I think it's missing something. Also, your example was binary, either full on one way, or the other, no middle ground.

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Well what conditions would be "perfect"? And it is binary. It's like being pregnant. There's either distortion in the market or there isn't. It might become more obvious as it gets bigger, but it's still there from the beginning.

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If we can find flaws that are both general and specific that are going to exist in a 100% free market, we shouldn't engage in that system. If the flaws are addressed, then it's game on.

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I can find flaws (lots of them) that are both general and specific that are going to exist in any statist system you can cook up. No doubt about it. So we shouldn't engage in any statist system.

[pvn]

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It's friggin amazing how brainwashed we all are and this thread is illustrative of that.

We are simply talking about leaving people alone to be free in simply living their lives and by reading some of these threads it seems as if almost the whole world would be up in arms to stop that.

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POTD.

[pvn]

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Social norms, individual preferences, etc determine stuff at this level.

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You get ~6.2 billion "yes" votes on this proposition, and I'm down. I don't think it'll last, but let's give it a whirl.

Cody

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Get 6.2 billion yes votes on yours, and I'm down. Until then, everyone does what they want, K?

[pvn]

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PVN didn't get anything (Not trying to slight P, just saying). I came into this saying that I agree theoretically with you. But I think practically (i.e. when we apply your theory to real life) it falls short.

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Then stay inside your government bubble. Nobody wants to force you to come out.

[pvn]

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So I'm only allowed to be 'for' things that are very likely to happen in a short time frame?

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No, by all means, work out your knowledge of AC, love it, hold it, want it, but don't say things that won't happen (people in power will just give it up). Nor should you attribute to me things that aren't true (I only think in violence).

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Don't say things that won't happen? Like, err, a ministate that is perpetually frozen in a limited existence?

People in power won't *have a choice* about giving it up. When people *stop believing* in the state, it will disappear.

If you blow up all the churches in America, they will be rebuilt. If people *stop believing* those churches will crumble. Not overnight. But eventually, they'll all be gone, replaced with something else.