Bitcoin Forum

Because Rarity apparently can't take criticism, the thread was locked before I could post this. Ah well, it was off-topic anyway.


No, of course, such a rapid change would cause serious social disruption. We may not have much choice, but given the option, I would rather a gradual shift away from government solutions, preferably one industry at a time, to allow society to adjust. The best way would be to simply remove the laws granting those industries government monopolies. Failing that, of course, there's always black market opportunities, but that opens a whole can of worms. Not least of which is making dispute resolution available to the entrepreneurs and customers, since black market means necessarily remove the government courts from the equation.

I agree, any small/no government approach would most likely completely fail if implemented in the US right now. These approaches actually benefit from the relative stability we currently enjoy. In some thread somewhere Mathew N Wright made an interesting analogy between different social philosophies and the process of growing up and aging. For an ancap society to really flourish it may be necessary that it is spawned from some more restrictive state, similar to moving out of your parents house.

So really, should we want a libertarian government right now when almost everything is off the charts? I think probably not. The problems are pretty much beyond fixable, it is better to just build things in the background and encourage attitudes to lessen the blow when this non-robust system fails.

Another way of putting the same concept i am trying to articulate is that states are unethical entities, but ethics are a luxury.

Oh, small government, even no government, could work just fine, here and now, if all the competition were available. With a few notable exceptions, those alternatives to the government systems don't exist, and aren't well known if they do exist. That's why I suggest doing it industry by industry, to let those competitors develop. Of course, developing those competitors in the black market, especially the justice industry, Is a fine alternative, and allows for a "proof of concept" before implementing it in the white market.

This all implies cooperation from the government which I just don't see happening.  There isn't going to be any planning involved.  The government will resist this tooth & nail until the whole thing collapses.  Obviously, that isn't ideal, but we aren't going to have a choice.  Why would the government support something threatening its existence?  We are talking about the death of a huge industry.  The US military is the largest employer in the world according to BBC.  Not to mention the non-military & state employees and whole other industries built off government contracts/grants.  They will not go down without fighting.  I really hope people won't resort to violence, but one side is better trained & armed.  Maybe bitcoin will start to make the US dollar so worthless that the government will be looted of supplies & resources long before an act of war is declared.

Which is why I (and other agorists) believe that black market solutions are the only ones that will work. If the government would cooperate in it's dismantling, that would be great, but we know that's not going to happen.

Black market solutions are the only way bitcoin can succeed.  There's just not enough incentive for law abiding citizens to switch to bitcoin right now.  Too volatile, untested, and complicated.  If it wasn't for silkroad, satoshidice, etc, bitcoin would still be worthless.  Once those services grow, stabilize the market, and seed more consumer friendly applications, then it will start eating away at white/gray markets.  And as gradual & long term as that sounds, I hope it takes over as peaceful as the internet has.  But like in a few countries where the internet has spawned violent revolutions, I fear the same for 1st world countries this time around.  Freedom of press/speech already existed in 1st world countries so the internet didn't do much but crush mostly non-government businesses.  But bitcoin will crush government businesses & they usually don't go down w/o a fight.

Transitioning a Society towards Anarcho-Capitalism is wrong.

Society ought to be transitioned towards Freed Markets. From within the scope of Freed Markets people may choose how they wish to organize themselves (this is where Anarcho-Capitalism, Communism, Syndicalism, Primitivism, Mutualism, Left Libertarianism, Right Libertarianism etc come in).

Why? Because many people will reject Anarcho-Capitalism and as such it will have to be enforced, through a State, the same problem Lenin and the Bolsheviks ran into. And once you start doing that... you make enemies and you need to protect a central hub (State) so it hires security (Soldiers/Law Enforcement) and then you're right back where you started.

You make a good point, that it's actually free markets we want, not a specific method of organizing those markets. But in my opinion, AnCap is the best way to ensure those free markets, because the services which define it are provided on those markets, and it is permissive of other systems within it's framework. "Enforcing AnCap" would amount to enforcing a free market, Which AnCap does quite well on it's own, without a State. Remember that market systems are not mandatory, nobody forces you to sign up with a defense agency, or any other AnCap construct. You're more than welcome to join a commune or arrange yourselves in any voluntary way you choose.

Possibly.  It really all depends where the equilibrium for a state is.  And right now (pre-bitcoin) the equilibrium appears to be a socialistic state.  But once bitcoin becomes popular enough, that equilibrium could rapidly change.  Just like freedom of press & speech via the internet is changing Syria, Egypt, Russia, etc.  At the very least, bitcoin places huge restraints on government's control of currency.  Worse case, people just stop paying their taxes.  Will bitcoin dissolve governments to AnCap or smaller local governments?  We'll just have to wait & see.

That's more or less what happened in the former USSR. When the government realized that the system was going to fail they looted what was left and then voted to disband.

Never forget this.

Anarcho-Capitalism allows for most of the sub-categories to exist within itself, but they have to be on a voluntary level (i.e. you don't get to have your magic uniform going around and skewering people who don't do what you want them to do when you have no moral grounds for making them do it, other than some post-modernist drivel bullshit or some attempt at imposing an outside "morality").

In an an-cap society, it is perfectly acceptable for a bunch of people to try to get together and create a syndicalist neighborhood.  If they are all willing participants in the soon-to-fail experiment (sorry, you just can't rewrite human nature.), that's fine and well.  They get to bear the consequences, good or bad, or whatever way of organizing themselves they have decided upon.  Or let's say you have a sub-division or neighborhood that everyone who buys a house there must sign a behavioral contract, restricting them from doing gaudy things with their lawns or houses, and have to pitch in to pay for 24/7 security and lawcare services.  If I walked into that as a voluntary, non-coerced participant and I decide that it is worth it for me to sign a contracting guaranteeing X amount of my resources per month, then that's cool.

Anarcho-capitalism is about morality and ethics!  Free markets are only a cog in that essential machine - they are an extension of the recognition of inalienable human rights, simultaneously possessed by all human beings by nature of the fact that they are human being.  All of the details are not and can not be up to one group to decide "on behalf" of another, or what not.   The "morality" of those other societal structures and Utopic dreams is not moral if it is blanket applied to all human beings.  It always requires some to be slaves to others at gunpoint, without exception.  Anarcho-capitalism is the highest form of morality because all of its moral axioms can and must be applied equally to all human beings simultaneously.  Within that, you will likely have people doing a lot of really, really stupid shit, like believing that you can re-write human nature, etc.  But you have the right to think that stuff and hang out with and do business with other like-minded people.  An-cap just makes sure I have the right to give the crazies a really wide berth and do business with, be friends with, and associate with people who exist in the rational world...

stupid question: how exactly does anything ever get done in an ancap society? i mean, if you already have a community, group or whatever you want to call that entity, that has contracted companies to enforce laws, maintain all the infrastructure, provide schools and whatnot, how to you ever make a new contract, law or whatever? without having voting contracts that turn your ancap into a totally mundane democracy?
how exactly do you maintain total freedom over your property with the need for a society to, at some point, enforce a new rule for everyone?
say for example you want to make it a new rule that its forbidden to have landmines on a property within 200 meter radius of a school.

Adolf Hitler was a great believer in "survival of the fittest" and had the different branches of government compete against each other for maximum efficiency. I wonder how well that worked out. Anyone know?

You don't run the society at the level of specificity. We don't have to change our societal structures to make a trivial rule and neither would an AnCap society. If people wanted the ability to create such rules, they'd create structures with the power to pass them. For example, in our society, we have homeowner's associations that can pass rules that benefit all the people who live in a particular area. Nothing prevents such organizations from existing in an AnCap society.

However, this gets back to the transition problem. It's hard to see how you can make these kinds of organizations when you don't have them already. Theoretically, 100% universal agreement of every landowner in a region is required. Perhaps you could achieve that by using ostracism and social pressure.

I think most AnCap advocates would tell you that they don't want laws that are that specific. They're happy with a general rule that you can't do anything that poses an unreasonable threat to your neighbors. They don't think we need a law to solve every minor problem. (And that's a particularly bad law because it allows some jerk to set up a one person school right next to a landmine factory and blackmail the factory owner.)

Joel makes some good points, as usual, but he's a minarchist.

You actually wouldn't want to deal with it at that level of generality. Let's say a school wanted to prevent any property installing landmines within 200 meters. (Pretty wise, actually, I'd rather not have my kid blown to bits.) So the school administrators call or visit the locals, conversing with each of them personally. Every property owner within that 200 meters gets a visit, and they negotiate a contract with them. Goes something like this:

Hey, we'd like to ensure the safety of our students, what can we offer to get you to agree to never install landmines?

Once they work out a deal, they'll include a rider where that contract gets incorporated into the next (and all subsequent) owner's purchase agreement.

Problem solved.

I'm not exactly a minarchist. I know we have *way* too much government now and I know we could make things a lot better by getting rid of most of it. But I don't pretend to know just how much we can actually get rid of. It's entirely possible (though I don't think it's likely) that we get all the way to minarchy and decide we don't need the rest of government. But I'd prefer not to get bogged down in those theoretical issues because there's so much we just don't know.

And tactically, it's better to build a consensus on the direction we need to go and the fact that we need to go very far in that direction. That could make a broad consensus among Libertarians, Anarchists, Objectivsts, and Minarchists possible.

This is where you're missing the big picture.

The dissolving was incredibly signifigant because that's the means by which the rulers dumped the dependent class. The rulers discovered that totalitarian central planning is not an effective method of extracting wealth from the population so they abandoned it for a more efficient (for them) system, and most importantly they defaulted on the promises made to retirees, which were unaffordable even if the rulers cared about paying.

It's a lesson that apparently not many government dependents in the West have learned from.

roflmao.  I'm not sure where you got this from, but it is literally as dead wrong as it could possible be.

Hitler was immensely opposed to all decentralized forms of government, specifically stripping away the rights of all of the German states and co-opting those powers. 

page 566 of Mein Kampff "[T]he individual states of the American Union . . . could not have possessed any state sovereignty of their own. For it was not these states that formed the Union, on the contrary it was the Union which formed a great part of such so-called states."

Hitler (p. 567) mocked what he called "so-called sovereign states" in Germany because they stood in the way of a centralized Reich with their "impotence" and "fragmentation."

"And so today this state, for the sake of its own existence, is obliged to curtail the sovereign rights of the individual provinces more and more, not only out of general material considerations, but from ideal considerations as well" (p. 572). Thus, a rule "basic for us National Socialists is derived: A powerful national Reich . . ." (emphasis in original, p. 572).

"Certainly all the states in the world are moving toward a certain unification in their inner organization. And in this Germany will be no exception. Today it is an absurdity to speak of a ‘state sovereignty' of individual provinces . . ." (p. 572)

"the cry for the elimination of centralization is really nothing more than a party machination without any serious thought behind it" and reveals "the inner hypocrisy of these so-called federalistic circles. The federative state idea, like religion in part, is only an instrument for their often unclean party interests" (p. 573).

"Since for us the state as such is only a form, but the essential is its content, the nation, the people, it is clear that everything else must be subordinated to its sovereign interests. In particular we cannot grant to any individual state within the nation and the state representing it state sovereignty and sovereignty in point of political power" (p. 575).


Do you need any more than that, or did that do enough of a job of showing you that you need to seriously read your actual history and not come to an intellectual discussion armed with a nerf gun and a bag of overcooked pasta...

Hitler was dead opposed to individual state rights.  As was Stalin, as was Muzzonlini, as was Mao.  There are 100 million innocent bodies on those men.  The religion of statism is not one you should be proud to endorse, since it's got more murder, rape, torture, and destruction in the last 100 years than any and all other religions combined in the history of the human race.

The problem with this attitude is that it rejects the moral argument that is central to libertarianism: Using violence to get what you want is wrong. As soon as you allow for a state, you're saying "violence is wrong except when the state does it".

From the Libertarian perspective, after you make this compromise, your fighting the wrong battle. You've gone from a philosophical revolution (war of ideas) to a plain old revolution (fighting the state directly, since you have condoned it's existence and rejected NAP).

if thats really all that is to libertarianism, its a damn stupid idea. a large enough society cannot exist without violence. at some point, interests always collide. you can declare that senf-defense is justified, but very often there is really no specific line at which you can say its my survival thats threatened or just "what i want".

If you are unable to distinguish between self defense and aggression, and don't understand how to resolve differences of opinion without resorting to violence you should talk about these things with your therapist instead of projecting your limitations onto the world at large.

+1. Leave your anger issues out of this.

First, I don't think that moral argument works. If I eat a banana, is that using violence to get what I want? Well, yes if it's your banana. But no, not if it's a mine. So that argument translates into an absolutist argument for defense of property rights.

Now, I actually agree with the absolutist argument for defense of property rights. The problem is, it just doesn't apply to the world we currently live in. It puts you straight into the transition problem. Who has morally clear title to "my house"? Well, right now, nobody, and it's not clear how anyone could get it.

There's no compromise involved. I still fully intend to condemn the state when it does wrong. And while I accept that concepts behind NAP, it makes a lousy rallying cry because it's a dishonest version of "property rights are absolute".

Well, you've come to the right thread.

I see two main options, at least in this case. We'll - for the moment - ignore the fact that if you're in the US or Australia, the land your house was built on was probably taken by force from the natives that occupied it, and if you're in Europe, or most of the rest of the world, your land has been fought over more times than we can count.

If you've paid off your house, We don't even need to ask this question, you own the land free and clear, the only people claiming obligation from you is the Tax man, and we won't be needing to worry about him in this discussion.

If you're in a mortgage, that's where the two possibilities come in:

1.: You entered a binding contract with the lender, and that debt still needs to be paid off, though the denomination might need to change, and you might be able to renegotiate.

2.: That contract was entered in bad faith on the part of the lender, and should be repudiated.

So in a transition scenario, either you own your house outright, or you still owe the bank, just you now have to pay it something other than Gov't fiat scrip. (renters still have to pay their landlord, but the landlord might have a property free and clear now, resulting in a reduced rate)

I can't find any moral grounds to accept a "flag day" on which everyone who lawfully possess property under the law prior to the flag day is deemed to have moral title to it under the just laws after the flag day. I don't believe that I have just moral title to my house because I acquired such title under the present laws.

For one thing, the laws of the United States of America presently make possible to private property owners only a fee simple interest in property. I'd have to acquire allodial title by magic. No private property owner in the United States today owns their property free and clear. And the folks I bought this property from never had such ownership and could never have transferred to me something they themselves did not have.

If you're going to make a society-wide gift of free and clear property ownership, I can't see how giving it to those who most prospered under the unjust system you are replacing is a sensible distribution plan.

It's a transition problem, of course. It's not a criticism of AnCap itself. My larger point is though is that we don't have to address these issues now. We can't predict what problems we will face as such a transition begins, so it's all just wild guesses. We need a consensus on the direction that we have to move, and then we'll see what goes right and what goes wrong and, with luck, we'll maintain a consensus to move in that direction.

There won't be a great moral victory because the moral claims aren't really right yet. They translate into absolute respect for property rights, and nobody yet has any property rights deserving of that respect because they've not been justly acquired.

So, you don't ignore the fact that nobody's land was gotten peacefully in the first place?

What would be an equitable arrangement for determining property rights, in that transition? Any theories?

I can't ignore it. I think it's not logical to advance arguments about absolute respect for property rights in a world where most property was acquired unjustly unless you make clear that it only applies to justly acquired property.

That's why I advocate a gradual transition. I don't think anyone has any idea how to do this, and I don't think the problem will actually arise during any foreseeable transition.

Fortunately, I don't think it matters all that much. The initial distribution of wealth in a fair system won't matter all that much in a few hundred years. But I honestly cannot reject out of hand those who argue for a massive redistribution of wealth as part of a transition to a just government.

It is a very, very thorny problem. And I think advocates of AnCap are doing precisely the opposite of what they should be doing by ignoring or dismissing the transition problem. It's the transition that's the key to a non-violent AnCap, if there's ever going to be one.

This is pretty much the soul of my argument, It doesn't really matter where you start, so long as the system is fair.

FWIW, if someone can show, or even give a really good argument as to, the land I reside on being ancestrally theirs and taken by force, I probably would at least give them some manner of reparations.

I agree. So I guess the best we can do is start where we are.

I would hope that rising prosperity would lead to enough voluntary charity that inequities from the starting position could be wiped out even faster. I think there's a general consensus that these are at least in part unjust.

I still believe the only realistic chance AnCap has is to form an alliance with other groups that advocate for smaller government and to move in that direction. We don't need to sell the roads day one, and I don't think we can. And I think we can't have any confidence that AnCap is right until we start shrinking the government and see what happens. Getting rid of the courts and police will be something people can only have the confidence to do if getting rid of other things works as AnCap advocates hope.

And seriously, what AnCap advocate wouldn't consider a minarchy a vast improvement over what we have?

I honestly, I think AnCap advocates and Libertarians should ditch the NAP argument. It's just a deceptive way of trying to convince people in absolute private property rights while pretending to be arguing against force or fraud. Taxation isn't force if the government is taking money that is legitimately its money because that's what the law say.

No argument with anything up to this point except to say that we needn't get rid of anything, just remove the monopoly and the forced payment.

However...

This is a load of bull. The NAP is not "deceptive", it's straight out based on absolute private property rights, starting with ownership of your own body. Writing words on paper, even if that writing is done by someone who has been selected by a majority, does not make applying those words to the people who disagree any less "force".

Democracy: Two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
Representative Republicanism: Two wolves and a sheep voting on who picks dinner.

Problem solved? How funny. Because to me, it sounds like a problem in the making.

How so? Edge effects and migratory patterns and all that other agenda 21 bullshit you're always on about doesn't apply here.

Don't be an idiot twice over.

1. You're not as bright as you think you are with regard to the environment.
2. Nobody said the problem had anything to do with the environment.

Your problem is your optimism with regard to your fantasy utopia. Think harder about your proposed solutions. I shouldn't have to play devil's advocate for you. If you want people to respect your ideas, then hit them hard yourself and see where it gets you.

It's your claim, back it up, or back down.

I don't have to back it up. That's because your idea has no traction anyway. But you, on the other hand, do need to identify the problem, if you want a robust solution. You're like kids playing in a sandbox - all make believe. Find the problem, expose it, and then try and find a solution. Until then, know that your ideas are being laughed at.

...by a child.

Such a response only reveals your inability to self analyze your own plan. My participation would only encourage you to make your plan stronger, if you were able. You're the one who ultimately loses if I choose not to participate. Good luck with your whimsical fantasies.

That sounds strangely similar to something else I heard lately....


So, typical of your posts, you toss out an empty denigration of the proposal, but never back up your assertion.

Just like Pirate, you can't reveal your secret, because you don't have one to reveal.

It's not so much based on it, it's *identical* to it. The reason people phrase it in terms of "non aggression" is because that sounds better. The NAP is incoherent without absolute private property rights.

Well that's the thing. For the NAP to work, you first need to know what is force and what is fraud, and you can't have that without a theory of property rights and a theory of government. To present the NAP as the core is deceptive because the NAP requires a foundation.

Well, yeah, but that's tantamount to saying that the golden rule is just a sneaky way of saying that you should be nice to each other. We're getting really close to philosophical masturbation, here, and I'm not high enough for that.

This is rapidly approaching the logical and inevitable conclusion of any debate I have with you, Joel. Agreeing at each other at increasing volume. ;) You're right, of course, that the Non-aggression principle is sort of a "ground floor" of libertarianism, while self ownership is the foundation. But just like a house, you don't need to see the foundation if the ground floor is sound. Sure, you can look around in the basement if you like, and any decent tour of the house is going to include it, but for most people, the ground floor is enough.

lol, where exactly did i say i was talking about "different opinions"?
with limited resources there will always be situations in which one group of people doesnt have enough resources to survive. be it food, water, heating, electricity or the means to produce or transport any of those.
unless they get those resources for free, there will eventually be violence. as far as i understand ancap doesnt force anybody to give anything away for free, ever. so what exactly is the regulatory mechanism here that will stop violence from arising?

That would be a good counterargument to anyone who argued that an AnCap society wouldn't have any violence. However, I don't think anyone is arguing that paradise on Earth is possible. The idea is to avoid making a system that rewards violence and theft. But of course, there will still be the occasional case where people either irrationally resort to violence or, despite our best efforts, find themselves in a situation where violence will benefit them. In those cases, there will definitely be violence.

i am not talking about paradise on earth. i am talking about the thing between paradise and civil unrest. maybe i am understanding absolute property rights wrong, but to me it seems material wealth is the only source of power in an ancap. so it accumulates even faster than usual and the system will quickly become unstable, because there is nothing that provides a counterbalance to wealth.

If someone else has something that you want, there are only two ways you can get it from him. You can offer him something in exchange for it or you can take it by force. You seem to think these things need to balance each other out. However, I would say it's preferable to eliminate the latter leaving only the former.

If an AnCap society is working correctly, there really isn't any "power". Of course you can trade material wealth for other material wealth you may desire and you can trade your labor for wealth. But everything else we would hope would be cancelled out -- unjust force met with just retaliation with as little net effect as possible.

what about those that dont have much to offer? and those that dont need anything else? if trade is no option how do you ensure survival? i am not saying force should be the counterbalance to willing cooperation. i am saying poperty can itself be force and therefore needs another force to balance it.


having things other people need is power. when there are no restrictions on what you can have and what you can do with the things you have, there is no limit to power.

Survival is not assured. There is no known system that can ensure survival. If a person cannot produce enough to ensure their own survival, then the only choice is for them to rely on the charity of others. The only question is whether such charity will be voluntary or coerced.

Okay, then there's no limit to that kind of power. But that kind of power is not harmful because pretty much the only way you can acquire it is by giving others what they most want. That's what will be compensated with wealth.

You've made a mistake here because the two are not related in the way you're implying. A process (giving a subset of people what they want) which provides an attribute (power) is a cause and an effect, but it implies nothing about what one can do with that power (such as make life miserable for any other subset of people or, even worse, cease giving others what they want and simply wielding one's power).

OK, let's say you're the richest man on the planet, in an AnCap society, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and Carlos Helu all rolled into one  How do you wield your wealth so as to make others miserable?

I don't see how this invalidates the moral argument. Once people accept the moral argument, the transition is just a matter of implementation.

I don't see what you mean by it being "dishonest"?

The moral argument is extremely effective. Whatever pragmatic argument someone wants to make for violence, all you have to do is point out the violence. Most people reject violence, but don't make the connection between the state and violence.

"We need a social safety net for the disadvantaged". You want to point a gun at me and force me to give money to poor people? Ultimately they are forced to admit that they advocate violence or that charity should be voluntary.

in my opinion, a society that doesnt guarantee a minimal living standard for everyone is both barbaric and inefficient. all moral arguments aside, i just wouldnt want to live there.


how that power is aquired has really nothing to do how it is used. specificly, the harmful effects you can cause with your wealth dont need to have any proportion with the supposed good you did when you aquired it.

get the monopoly of an essential resource, then blackmail your society.

Any society that attempts to guarantee a minimal living standard for everyone becomes barbaric and inefficient. The only way to do so is through force (barbarism) and government programs (inefficiency). Private charities can help, but as they are voluntary, there's no guarantee that they will provide for everyone.


Which resource?

Do you know a system that prevents this? I mean, other than "if you have what we want, even if you justly acquired it, we'll take it from you".

It is extremely difficult to build a monopoly without using force. If you used force to get it, nobody disputes that others can take it away from you by force. If you somehow do manage to build it without force, it's going to be very temporary. And the more you leverage it, the more incentive others have to find some resource that replaces it.

In any event, who cares? I'd gladly trade the remote possibility of some temporary blackmail for living under those conditions permanently where the government has an eternal monopoly on a long list of things.

In other words, "The solution to a feared concentration of power is not a concentration of power."

the easiest transition to AnCap is for people to opt-out of the state system.  use private arbitration, do as absolutely much business as possible in the gray market for cash/barter/metals/bitocins, etc., withhold as much of your resources as possible from the state and just watch it shrivel up and die.

I think Pennsylvania is one of the greatest studies in peaceful transitions to AnCap.  Penn thought he was getting on the easy train by imposing his taxes and such, but the Quakers would have none of it.  They didn't forcibly resist, just laughed at his attempts to impose violence, and for all intensive purposes just ignored what he asked and went on with their lives.  It was the beginning of an era of great prosperity, and hardly a drop of blood was shed to get it there, and Penn (the current governor) ended up going completely bankrupt.  Beautiful.

The mathematics are already in on this thing.  Decades of the future have been mortgaged away, and there is absolutely no avoiding the collapse that always, without exception, ensues from it.  We libertarians and ancaps are lucky in a few ways that not many are - we understand morality and economics better than 99% of the population, and therefore we can see it coming and no why it's coming, and we have NOTHING to do with it, so we are one of the few parties that any blame could possibly be assigned to (we have been dead opposed to virtually everything that has led up to this moment, right from the get go).  We can position ourselves as what people will turn to during the coming years and decades, but it won't be easy.  We are eventually looking at a hyperinflation (or at least a "mini" one, as temporary reprieve for the greatest con-artists in mankind's history), and virtually all hyperinflations are followed by severe tyranny - THAT is what we have to try to avoid, otherwise humanity gets set back not a generation or two, but a century or two.

Statists and their damned crazy religious zealotry get all of the credit for what is to come.  All of it.  I will make sure they f**king know it in their bones.

Your moral argument is a pure contrivance. That's the problem. You seem to think that there actually exists the concept of ownership outside the boundaries of a society which acknowledges it. Whatever society you are in might acknowledge that concept within the context of its own paradigm. Within the context of, say, the United States, or perhaps Germany, or some other nation, ownership has one meaning, and it might have another in your fairy tale world.

This violence you speak of, which weakens your case considerably because it demonstrates a lack of critical analysis, is no different than the violence you would speak of if in your fairy tale land, if you choose not to abide by the various contracts that exist, as per the method of living within your fairy tale world.

I personally would not want to live in your fairy tale world precisely because of all the potential coercive violence. My suggestion to you is to use the other half of your brain and realize how silly and weak your use of the term coercive violence is with regard to your rants. It's not original at all, and doesn't indicate any critical thinking on your part.

...and that's what pure, undiluted evil looks like.

Unfortunately for our aspiring O'Brian there is no room 101 yet.

Name one instance. Just one. Any one.

Every time I step off my property (assuming I'm lucky enough to own property in your world), I'm at the mercy of the landowner's property I'm on, and his taxes, fees, rules, regulations, guards, stipulations, and who knows what else. It is not a place I would want to live in.

1) How is that different from now, with the exception that they come on to your property and enforce those, and 2) That's not coercive, because you don't have to step on to their property if you don't want to.

I knew you'd respond so unimaginatively, entrenched within your fervent belief in the goodness of your idea.

1) How is it different? I'm guaranteed that where ever I live, I have access points that let me go essentially anywhere with consistent rules, and freedom of access.

2) Regarding coercion - how blind can you be to your own statement? It is so ridiculous! Look at what you just said. You're stating that I need only remain a prisoner of my own property if I don't wish to be coerced. Pathetic.

Yes, isn't it so horrible, that when you go into a McDonalds, they don't let you shit on the tables?

1)People don't want you to be trapped in your home. If you were trapped in your home, you could not purchase their goods or services. Freedom of travel is necessary for freedom of trade. Ergo, in a society built on free trade, there would necessarily be freedom of travel.

2) And once again, it's not coercion if you voluntarily agree to it, and can avoid it. Since you can avoid going into a person's property, it's not coercion if they ask you to follow their rules, or leave.

McDonald's operates within the context of the laws of the nation that hosts its restaurants.

1) Not consistently to all.

2) An utterly desperate and pointless statement. Didn't we just go over this? A resident does not have control over his neighbors, but at least in a governed society, he can expect some consistencies in rights of access from his residence to nearly anywhere else in the nation. In your world, there's no guarantee that a resident can rely on getting anywhere effectively over time from his residence. See 1, above.

So you're saying that if the food safety laws in a country allowed it, McDonalds would let you shit on the tables?

Why is consistent preferable to just? Would not the roads with the best rules be the most traveled, and thus the most profitable, and thus, the most copied?

I'm not making a statement one way or another about that. What I'm saying is the McDonald's in your world is something we know nothing about because it doesn't exist, so I suggest you stop hypothesizing about it.


We know nothing about how just things are in your world. Most likely, things are neither consistent nor just.


The most traveled roads would be the ones that are most profitable. Anywhere else, and you're going to get zero consistency with regard to quality, price, reliability, closures, or even if they exist.

You make so many assumptions, it's ridiculous. I suggest you go watch a movie. Have you seen Woman in the Dunes?

Would you eat a restaurant that let people shit on the tables?

Pointless question, as it does not pertain to my claims. If you need a reminder, my claims are not about patronizing establishments which invite customers. Again, you make too many assumptions.

Why would you go on people's land uninvited?

Who said I would? You seem to be having difficulty following the discussion. I'll remind you again: we're discussing freedom to move about within one's world, where travels are most frequent closer to their place of residence. Since you keep trying to deflect the discussion into points which bear little relevance to that, I think it's time you call it a day. I have provided you a film title to watch, since you obviously need to take a breather from this discussion until you collect your thoughts into something more cohesive.

You're cute, you know that? Let me lay some truth on you:

In a world* where roads, and indeed all property, is private, roads and other means of transportation would, in fact, be "establishments which invite customers," and which are free to eject them, as well. Just like at McDonalds.

If you wish to move about, you would be patronizing these establishments. They want your business, either because you're eyes on their billboards or because you pay the subscription fee, or entry tolls, or however they monetize. Since they want your business, they cater to your needs. Just like at McDonalds.

Since they want your repeat business, they will endeavor to make your experience pleasant. This means that if you do not want to be harassed by people going above a specific speed, there will most likely be a road company that requires drivers to keep to a speed limit. If you wish to be unfettered by speed limits, there will most likely be a road company that allows that. The freedom to choose ensures that everyone gets the service they desire. Just like at Burger King.


*(if you like, you can imagine Don LaFontaine saying this)

I recommend this thread to go watch some deadwood. It basically depicts the opposite scenario. Ancap -> State.

you really believe in such a naive scenario?
what happens, if, for whatever reason, like racism, religion, personal grudge, you become an unwanted customer to the road company owner? you buy a helicopter?

Or get on a different road. There's more than 1, you know. Monopoly is the problem we're looking to solve here, remember?

its not totally preventable, no. but leaving essential resources at somebodies personal whim greatly increases the likelyhood of resources being used in a fashion that is very unfavorable for a society. there are no magic market mechanisms that force a person to do whats best for his society to gain profit. its a fun theory, but the world never actually worked that way.
a government can, to some extent, ignore profitability and effectiveness. and i believe it can also be designed in manner that the power of any single person inside the government is small. i admit that we are, at this point, far from having any governments that is both able and willing to pursue the best for its people.
on the other hand, its very unfair to compare current implementation of governments with some sort of ideal ancap.
you either have to compare current implementation of both or the ideal implementation of both. in practice, ancap isnt implemented anywhere, so it cant be compared. in theory, i like an ideal government better than an ideal ancap. can an ideal government exist? probably not. but at least we still got very very much room for improvement within existing systems. id say improving existing governments is a much more viable option than trying to transition into an utopia, that, in my opinion, is neither possible nor desirable.


yeah, redundancy is an awesome solution. i really want ten roads to my house, ten water pipes, hundreds of overlapping wireless networks...thats soooo much more effective than whats currently done  ;)

Yes, your house is on one road. Good for you. If you don't like the rules of that road (more likely, community), don't move into that house. As for the water pipes, electricity system, and such, those are "dumb pipes" and can be operated as a co-op by the various providers, no need for duplication. "hundreds of overlapping wireless networks"... sounds like a mesh network to me, a very good idea.

Roads is such a non-issue to be stuck on. Road operators want traffic. They can be predicted to do things that will maximize traffic.

i really wonder what planet you live on. maximizing profit by creating artificial shortages happens all the time. maximizing profit is an optimization process in which number of sales is just one parameter.
look at oil for example. saudia-arabia isnt producing at maximum capacity. they intentionally hold back to increase the price. and if, for whatever reason, russia and saudia-arabia decided not to sell oil anymore, the consequences would be devastating. like millions of deaths-devastating.
others nations would never accept that and react with violence, and rightly so.

Myrkul seems to overlook the fact that in AnCap World, there is no stipulation or grand plan that says the landowners around my residence give a crap about being in the road business at all. Also, land changes ownership, and new owners may have new plans.

If the government ran all the supermarkets, you'd say the exact same thing about food. You would worry that all the grocery stores would close and you would starve. But, the thing is, in an AnCap world, there's money to be made by solving real problems. If the problem you've identified is a real one, then someone will find a way to solve it and charge you for that solution. And then someone else will find a better way to solve it and charge you less. And before you know it, the problem's gone. Problems are opportunities.

You might think it sucks to have to pay for everything. But the fact is, you're paying for everything now. It's just being done by an inherently inefficient government with little to no incentive to innovate and facing no competition.

As for the land ownership issue, there's a more specific response. Land ownership includes some bundle of rights. And society, if it's going to have property, has to work out what that bundle of rights is. It may be that preventing people from reasonably crossing your land to access other people's land isn't in that bundle of rights. It may be that shooting anyone who accidentally stumbles onto your land isn't in that bundle of rights. Just as, for example, taxing satellites that pass over your land likely wouldn't be.

Also, covenants can run with land and can specifically exclude some rights for the benefit of nearby land owners. A society has to come up with rules for how those covenants can be enforced, whether they can be valid in perpetuity, and so on.

you are always paying for everything, in any possible scenario. however i dont see any indication that companies solve every problem better than governments do. for many services, there is very little competition or incentive to provide the cheapest or best possible service.  in some markets, there are so few players so that price agreements are very easy. in other markets its very hard for a layman to jugde the overall quality of the service, so the best marketing wins.
in the end, the assumption that companies solve all problems better is just a dogma. you will always find examples in which governments handled something ridiculously ineffecient. but that doesnt prove anything. or if it does, what does fukushiima say about the ability of companies to handle critical infrastructure? companies have scenarios where they fail really badly just as governments do. mostly those that require long term reliability and viability, minimizing risks, minimizing external costs. a company can always just cut their losses and run, or go broke.


i like the thought that absolute property rights might actually lead to having less rights regarding your property  ;D
in practice though, that might be impossible. for example, would you still be allowed to build very high walls around your property? or have dangerous stuff lie around in the open?


i agree that can solve many possible problems. but sometimes you just run into problems you coudnt foresee. or could but didnt. for example the necessity for land expropriation can be the result of bad planning. the property could have been aquired much earlier. or the infrastructure could have been built elsewhere. but when there really just one place left to build something or use property in a specific way, there is no existing contract and the owner is completely unreasonable, what do you do in ancap? yes, land expropriation sucks and should be kept to an absolute minimum. but you cant always avoid all situations in which honoring property rights of a single person will be to the detriment of a whole society.

That would be a good response if anyone was arguing that companies would necessarily do everything significantly better than governments.

Companies can look at a particular project and simply pass because it won't be profitable. In fact, they're guaranteed to do so. A government has a more unifying plan (or is supposed to) and will look at a particular project and often do it because it works in a larger grand unifying plan.

It's not unlike the concept of insurance, as insurance is designed to work, not how some think insurance is supposed to work. Some individuals actually mistakenly believe insurance claims by an individual should roughly equate to insurance premiums paid in by that individual minus operating costs and some profit allowed to the insurance company. But that's not how insurance is designed. Insurance is designed to collect premiums from all whom are insured such that the unluckiest will be able to weather through monster sized claims, while everyone else has the peace of mind that comes with paying a premium, in the event that they become one of the unlucky.

Slightly OT but we've talked about this before and I want to pimp my chart. Insurance is set up to trick young (under 45) people into overestimating their risk and subsidizing the healthcare of the elderly, while providing predictable revenue to the insurance companies. The monster claims you speak of are exceedingly rare and the majority of those are actually due to predictable chronic conditions that people get in old age. Keep in mind the chart below only includes people who did have medical bills greater than zero.

http://i48.tinypic.com/egsi2a.png


If it was designed the way you claim then there would be more people on plans paying a couple hundred a year with $10-20k deductibles but covered up to $1 mil or so.

You're conflating strategies within a particular insurance industry with the general premise of insurance. Insurance is designed to function exactly as I explained it.

Furthermore, we already know those monster claims are rare. Duh. That's why insurance can pay for them even though your premiums would never add up to their totals. That's the whole point.

You might have a monster claim next week.

I suspect very, very few people's premiums + deductables + copays add up over their lifetime to less than their claims. People basically pay for any bills less than $2.5k per year, and are putting in ~$2k per year regardless of if they receive healthcare or not. If the average 30 yr old and their parents had invested that money in something that matched inflation there would be some asset worth ~$50k waiting for them in case of emergency. If any of it went unused this could then be inherited by their children, unlike the premiums which are just spent.

The general premise of insurance is fine but the current system is not designed that way.

No shit! That's the way insurance works. Most people over pay so that the unlucky can get paid for their monster claim. It's a smoothing of risk. You may be that next unlucky person next week. What do you think I've been saying for the past few posts?

Yes, I agree, the problem is that people drastically overestimate the risk of such events leading to drastically overpaying and draining their savings. Rather than just saying I "may" be that unlucky person next week/year, attach some numbers to it. My bitcoins may be worth $1 million dollars next week too. Is this more or less likely to occur than having a monster medical bill? Anyway this is OT so lets just save it for future relevant conversations.

Actually on further thought the current system is somewhat similar to how I imagine biomed research would be funded in an ancap society. You pay a subscription to some healthcare company for access to discounted care, etc. Then some portion of that money goes into paying for experimental drugs and equipment, which then goes on to fund the development of new biomed technologies. Really that is where alot of the money from these monster claims ends up anyway. From that perspective it doesn't look like such a bad price. Add on the extra $250 per taxpayer that goes to fund NIH and there you go, a decent business model for healthcare researchers.