AC and power

[bkholdem]

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I just lost a really long and detailed response to pvn's issues about geographic permeability in states / political arrangements, as well as his other objections to my last post... [censored] GOD DAMMIT. Like an hour's worth of stuff down the drain.

I'm going out to eat with the lady friend, but let me just say, I think this habit of responding to posts line by line really inhibits a good discussion. Sometimes you give a snappy objection to a thought that is elaborated further on in the post, or you ask why something is relevant when I'm getting to it in just a few lines. Responding to someone's thoughts in their entirety, rather than line by line, shows that you're making an effort to understand them and address their overall intent and meaning. I don't think this line-for-line, tit-for-tat method is good at all, and I think people should avoid it. It turns the conversation into a series of one-liners rather than a dialogue.

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I happen to like it a lot. It prevents people from getting away with burying presuppositions that they can not back up (or do not want to be questioned on) but try to use as part of a foundation of an argument.

p.s. I am still waiting for that reply from you.

[NT!]

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But complaining about style rather than content is a good way to get a couple of ad hominems in while looking civil and sophisticated.

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See, you're just being nasty and snide. I've spent a lot of time addressing the content of your arguments, and doing my best to do so fairly.

"An ad hominem argument, also known as argumentum ad hominem (Latin: "argument to the person", "argument against the man") consists of replying to an argument by attacking or appealing to the person making the argument, rather than by addressing the substance of the argument."

Complaints about style are not ad hominems. Perhaps it's a 'meta-complaint' but I am not attacking you as a person.

I hear what bk is saying about catching baseless assumptions, but I think it's simple enough to take the time to respond to a baseless assumption in a normal discussion format. Regarding the complaint that it's a 'pain in the ass' to go back and forth, well, perhaps that's the cost of doing business. Taking the time to read and reread a post, and refer to it in a subsequent response, requires you to do your best to understand your counterpart's position and give it a fair shake.

Speaking of which, one thing I wanted to address before leaving:


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What you are saying is that anyone who supports, accepts or acknowledges the existence of coercive states in general has a completely illegitimate approach to politics.

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See, there you go again, using your personal definition of a word I use differently to frame my position incorrectly. And since I've explicitly called you on it, you must be doing it on purpose.

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I'm a little confused by this objection. Do you feel that including the word 'coercive' makes it redundant, because you view ALL states as initiators of illegitimate force? If so, feel free to remove the word 'coercive' from my formulation. I included it because we were discussing states, or state-like entities, that attempted to be legit and non-coercive.

If not, color me confused, and please elaborate.

[pvn]

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But complaining about style rather than content is a good way to get a couple of ad hominems in while looking civil and sophisticated.

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See, you're just being nasty and snide. I've spent a lot of time addressing the content of your arguments, and doing my best to do so fairly.

"An ad hominem argument, also known as argumentum ad hominem (Latin: "argument to the person", "argument against the man") consists of replying to an argument by attacking or appealing to the person making the argument, rather than by addressing the substance of the argument."

Complaints about style are not ad hominems. Perhaps it's a 'meta-complaint' but I am not attacking you as a person.

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O RLY?

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Responding to someone's thoughts in their entirety, rather than line by line, shows that you're making an effort to understand them and address their overall intent and meaning.

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We report, you decide.



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Quote:
What you are saying is that anyone who supports, accepts or acknowledges the existence of coercive states in general has a completely illegitimate approach to politics.

----

See, there you go again, using your personal definition of a word I use differently to frame my position incorrectly. And since I've explicitly called you on it, you must be doing it on purpose.

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I'm a little confused by this objection. Do you feel that including the word 'coercive' makes it redundant, because you view ALL states as initiators of illegitimate force?

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Yes, but I feel that you should include it when you're using YOUR definition of "state" because I don't object to a whole slew of things that fall under your definition.

I *added* that word to your post. You didn't have it there.

[bkholdem]

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But complaining about style rather than content is a good way to get a couple of ad hominems in while looking civil and sophisticated.

[/ QUOTE ]

See, you're just being nasty and snide. I've spent a lot of time addressing the content of your arguments, and doing my best to do so fairly.

"An ad hominem argument, also known as argumentum ad hominem (Latin: "argument to the person", "argument against the man") consists of replying to an argument by attacking or appealing to the person making the argument, rather than by addressing the substance of the argument."

Complaints about style are not ad hominems. Perhaps it's a 'meta-complaint' but I am not attacking you as a person.

I hear what bk is saying about catching baseless assumptions, but I think it's simple enough to take the time to respond to a baseless assumption in a normal discussion format. Regarding the complaint that it's a 'pain in the ass' to go back and forth, well, perhaps that's the cost of doing business. Taking the time to read and reread a post, and refer to it in a subsequent response, requires you to do your best to understand your counterpart's position and give it a fair shake.



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Other points about the line by line rebuttals. I don't know about PVN's education but from the little logic and semantics I took the line by line rebuttal seems to flow naturally from the little education I received on those subjects. In semantics/logic one learns to break down sentences and examine their meanings (and by extention paragraphs, etc).

And when it comes to PVN in particular I love it when he responds point by point. I happen to know something about 'reframing' as a psychological technique used in conversation to help people see situations differently. I consider myself to be pretty good at reframing. However PVN is an absolute ARTIST when it comes to reframing. He is a grandmaster in reframing and uses this skill to make very powerful points. If you are ideologically against his points I can see why this would upset you lol.

[hmkpoker]

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To look at it from a game theory POV, if everyone is willing to spend a very high amount of $ on security, then no thiefs will exist. But then, there's no reason to spend such a high amount on security in the first place. There will always be an equilibrium... some theft will always exist.

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Bingo; the theft that exists in such circumstances where time preferences are usually low enough to disincentivize them is just the inevitable variance at the end of the curve that should be expected to result from a large population. Car accidents are quite similar. There are HUGE disincentives not to drive drunk, carelessly, or tiredly, but nevertheless they DO happen from time to time. And when they do happen, they cause a lot of damage. That's why the insurance premiums are significant. It seems to me like a private security service would be similar.

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There are several things to look at then. Some people simply won't have enough $ to be able to adequetly defend themselves. I've heard the counter argument that someone too poor to afford security would be too poor to steal from, but that's patently absurd to me.

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Absurd to me too, since the poor get robbed much more frequently than the rich.

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If someone had money and I could continuously and easily take it from them, you'd better believe I would.

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But there is more to it than that. Just because a free market big security insurance service doesn't exist doesn't mean that the poor aren't actively seeking (and using) security. Try thinking about what will happen if you pick a poor person and just keep stealing from him over and over again. It's not going to take long before that person realizes that he HAS to put priority on security, and he will do what he can to defend his property. It could involve calling a favor from a friend to watch the property, it could involve getting a gun, it could involve double-padlocking the door. Whatever it is, this person is going to seek to reduce your chances of repeating the crime, increase the chances of your detection, and increase the chances of you being punished for it. Bottom line: you're better off just buying your cheap crap off of craigslist.

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What's more bothersome to me is something you've hidden away by framing this the way you have. The problem lies precisely in "defense". If there's one company in the area that provides the best defense, the obvious implication is that they are quite powerful, because they must be able to monitor the region and have enough armed forces to dissuade criminals.

What does this mean then? It means that they have, if not a monopoly on force, something quite near it. Near enough to constitute precisely the coercion that we attribute to the state. Certainly people in the region could stop funding this group, but if it had made enough profit and accrued enough guns/troops in the meantime, they would have the power to start charging "taxes".

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I see what you are saying, but I don't see why they would do such a thing. If the people are liberty-conscious (the major prerequisite for market anarchy in the first place), they are going to demand a service that does not tax, and there will be a demand for a competitor. Why would an admittedly successful security provider, that was generating huge profits and satisfying customers, suddenly decide to employ a policy that is very costly (armies ain't cheap), unsatisfactory, and poses them as a threat to the civilized world? It's like claiming that Wal-Mart will someday devour all of the competition and suddenly price-gouge everyone to hell. It's simply not going to happen, because there is no reason for it to happen.

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You can counter that the people would now start paying some neighboring defense company, but it would be quite easy for such companies to form cartels, or for it to be not worth their time to enter into a state of violent warfare with one another (or really any sort of battle).

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Well, it is very hard to say since this is such an alien kind of business. However, we have seen in the past that free market cartels are difficult and very unstable.

[xorbie]

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But there is more to it than that. Just because a free market big security insurance service doesn't exist doesn't mean that the poor aren't actively seeking (and using) security. Try thinking about what will happen if you pick a poor person and just keep stealing from him over and over again. It's not going to take long before that person realizes that he HAS to put priority on security, and he will do what he can to defend his property. It could involve calling a favor from a friend to watch the property, it could involve getting a gun, it could involve double-padlocking the door. Whatever it is, this person is going to seek to reduce your chances of repeating the crime, increase the chances of your detection, and increase the chances of you being punished for it. Bottom line: you're better off just buying your cheap crap off of craigslist.

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I agree that this might happen. This is still, effectively, a "tax". Does that make sense? There are neighborhoods in the world in which people have money, in which people have not much in the way of defense and yet in which crime is low. I think ACists (although not AC per se, which I keep saying) fail to grasp this sort of value in strongly tied communities. That's really my point, and one which just seems to be glossed over in the debate.

[pvn]

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the poor get robbed much more frequently than the rich.

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That can't be true, the government is protecting them!

[xorbie]

In any case hmk, it's nice to have someone reasonable on the "other side of the fence" so to speak.

[Kaj]

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The reason governments are so inefficient is because they do not have to compete for tax payers. "love it or leave it" is a common arguement used against ACists and Id love it if governments actually had to face this pressure.

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If we had a confederacy or a weaker federal government then you'd have 50 state governments to choose from and they could "compete" for your citizenship. States / counties / townships compete for your tax dollars (and businesses) all the time. It doesn't require anarchy to have a system with choices. ACists should be fair and understand that today's model states aren't the only states possible, just as today's model anarchies aren't the only anarchy environments possible.

[hmkpoker]

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But there is more to it than that. Just because a free market big security insurance service doesn't exist doesn't mean that the poor aren't actively seeking (and using) security. Try thinking about what will happen if you pick a poor person and just keep stealing from him over and over again. It's not going to take long before that person realizes that he HAS to put priority on security, and he will do what he can to defend his property. It could involve calling a favor from a friend to watch the property, it could involve getting a gun, it could involve double-padlocking the door. Whatever it is, this person is going to seek to reduce your chances of repeating the crime, increase the chances of your detection, and increase the chances of you being punished for it. Bottom line: you're better off just buying your cheap crap off of craigslist.

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I agree that this might happen. This is still, effectively, a "tax". Does that make sense? There are neighborhoods in the world in which people have money, in which people have not much in the way of defense and yet in which crime is low. I think ACists (although not AC per se, which I keep saying) fail to grasp this sort of value in strongly tied communities. That's really my point, and one which just seems to be glossed over in the debate.

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This is true. And to be honest, I can't say for certain how private security would pan out in a libertarian society. Personally, I see ACism as a collection of small minarchist city-states. I don't think total individualism will be possible for a very long time (I mean, if you get married and share expenses in the co-owned house, couldn't that be considered democracy?)

The ACists here don't think about AC from the perspective of "we simply cannot allow any form of anything that might be considered government into our world!" What we want is to increase the number of options from which people can freely choose, and decentralize power as much as possible. At this point, I can't concieve of how it would be possible to provide security with the same decentralized consumer-friendliness as canned soft drinks, and it is entirely likely that jurisdictions would be confined to homeowner's communities. In that sense, yes, these would be "taxes," however the ease of entering and leaving such communities makes the contract with the "state" a legitimate one. That's how I see it anyway.