Freedom in spite of government

[southerndog]

Guys, what's "AC"?

[Exsubmariner]

Here ya go.

[pvn]

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It was the largest telephone corporation which invented two of the most important pieces of technology of the 20th century--the vacuum-tube amplifier and the semiconductor. The latter was also subsidized by a large amount of tax dollars.

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But the technology to apply this invention to universal long-distance coverage required the investment of billions of dollars, which required the structure of the world's largest corporation to accumulate.

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Yeah. Thank god for Ma Bell. After all, if we didn't have a government-created telephone monopoly, we might have had touch tone phones, answering machines, modems and god knows what else decades ago instead of being stuck with dazzling array of choices that we had:

From 1940 until nineteen eighty-[censored]-FOUR:


THAT'S PROGRESS!

Oh, well, there were SOME options.

1959:


1965:


Wow.

[bobman0330]

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passive investment

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Because god forbid people actually have to think about the business they're putting their life savings into.

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Are we disagreeing?

And in any case, it's not just about thoughtlessness. There are many enterprises deserving of capital in the economic sense that simply couldn't get it if ownership would expose their owners to all their liabilities. Furthermore, diversification, which is key to low-cost capital for business, would be unavailable if every new business you owned was more potential liability. And, to make matters worse, shareholder liability would increase the costs of centralized management.

[BCPVP]

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The thing that the market does not provide which a government does is a military.

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Demonstrate logically why a market would not provide militaries for property protection against invaders.

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Because when you are facing a horde of Mongols who ride out nowhere from a desert which is thought to be uncrossable, it is really hard to get your [censored] together in time to defend yourself. This happened across Asian circa 1250 to many free market economies located in the Caliphates of the day. You should read history more.

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You would agree, though, that the ability for a small group to fight a larger group is considerably better in this age. Take Switzerland (fast becoming the new anti-Somalia among ACists...). A small country that managed to avoid being overrun by the Wehrmacht during WWII. Why? Because they were armed to the teeth and the Germans knew that attacking would be very costly.

[DVaut1]

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But in empirical terms, the places where "natural property systems" exist in the present day are the places where "respect for the rule of law" was *so low* that the states that were there outright failed.

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This is somewhat misleading if not outright false. There are lots of places where the current world where the state hasn't failed but natural property systems are the dominant property rights regime -- they operate on their own local conventions, typically without state interference. These places are located in developing states that more or less ignore these regions and their economies. The states don't "fail" there because the state never and still doesn't have a presence. De Soto, after his near-decade long research, concluded that something in the neighborhood of 65-85% of housing is 'extralegal' (think squatter settlements and the like) in the developing world, and that the vast majority of retail markets and mass transportation in these regions also exist outside of the formal sector and sans state intervention. And keep in mind, most of these places exist within states, not "states that outright failed". Because these places lack norms and laws, people in these natural property regimes can't mortgage their house to raise money for a new venture, or govern and appraise property with agreed-upon rules that hold across neighborhoods, towns, or regions. All of the assets they have (which De Soto thinks are quite considerable) are hard, if not impossible to manage (a fact the West takes for granted and which De Soto credits to our vast network of legal infrastructure). Their property and assets lack fungibility and so lack a market value. Compare these natural property systems to most of the states in the West and it's not even close (as hmk concedes) who outperforms who.

[Nielsio]

awesome

[morphball]

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All anarcho-capitalists are against the existence of corporations. They accomplish two things: 1) shield their shareholders from fraud (which is not a good thing imo), and 2) produce tax benefits, which is just protection from something that the government is wrongly doing to them in the first place. It's like buying "insurance" from the mafia.

I agree that some market innovation has been facilitated by government subsidies, just as I believe that the government has passed some laws that did good (the pure food and drug act, for example). But overall, I believe the net result is wholly negative.

Calling American business "capitalism" is preposterous. Capitalism specifically denotes a free market, and ours is anything but.

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FYI - Corporations do not provide protection from taxes. Shareholders either pay the same taxes or more, depending on if the entity is a pass-thru or not.

<u>Edit</u>-I guess this in theory only some of the time...we all know about those wily accountants and tax lawyers... [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]

[morphball]

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The market elements in our society is the source of prosperity and freedom, while the government elements restrict them. I claim that we don't have a free market, because that would suggest that the government elements do not exist.

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Not true. You cannot have an efficient market without confidence that your property will be protected, and that you will have recourse when others break their word. The AC'ers readily accept this and counter that privately owned courts will function better than state owned ones.

But, to get back on track, when we look at say the british and american systems (the latter is based on britian's, btw), we see that successful markets did develop because of the state's protection of property and contractual rights.

Thus, I think you are right that the government does restrict new freedoms created by the market, however, you over look that without a state (or other system) to protect property and contractual rights, that market would not have come to be at all.

[Exsubmariner]

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You would agree, though, that the ability for a small group to fight a larger group is considerably better in this age. Take Switzerland (fast becoming the new anti-Somalia among ACists...). A small country that managed to avoid being overrun by the Wehrmacht during WWII. Why? Because they were armed to the teeth and the Germans knew that attacking would be very costly.



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You bring up an interesting case about the Swiss. They have been traditionally bankers and mercenaries. The government of Switzerland is based in the medieval military orders which founded the country, and is a very strong government with liberal rules toward free enterprise. The terrain of Switzerland is also a factor in the calculation. They are surrounded by natural fortification (the Alps). I have thought a great deal about what you say above. The conclusion I have come to is that I generally agree with you, with the caveat that a small, well off group who has access to the latest in weapons technology have lately found it easier to defend themselves against large numbers. However, in AC world, it would be -ev to engage in gun battles, so no one would bother to arm themselves because they could better spend the resources on something else. Therefore, this arguement is moot.