Libertarians/Anarchists Answer Me This

[ribuck]

The most optimal resource allocation would be if the ice cream vendors were evenly spread out (something like x1 = 250m and x2 =750m). In this configuration nobody ever has to walk further than 250m to buy an ice cream.

This is a typical bland "central planning" solution. The free market admits much more flexible systems.

One vendor may employ a junior to take an ice cream cart to bring the wares to the furthest parts of the beach. The vendors might stagger their hours, with one starting early and one finishing late, and both serving the market during its peak. A third mobile vendor might cruise the length of the beach to service anyone who doesn't want to walk. Vendors might develop specializations (e.g. deluxe ice creams, or perhaps shaded seating) that would encourage some customers to visit them even if they aren't the closest vendor.

A free market is always much more interesting and vibrant than a planned one, even if it is "imperfect" according to someone's theory.

[FreeMoney]

In the UK it is illegal to smoke indoors. Otherwise I would be the single person in a group that boycotts places which allow indoor smoking. Either my life is endangered through risk to my health by someone else having their freedom, or I am a lonely person. As someone with bad asthma, it's killing when in other poorer countries people smoke everywhere and I can hardly breathe.
 

Considering that they passed the law, I have a hard time believing that there aren't other people who would have a demand for non smoking restaurants.

As gavin mentioned, the state just latches on to wherever it sees majority sentiment is. It pretty much boils down to this realization by government: Some people are still letting people smoking in their restaurants, but people are starting to be unhappy about it generally. There won't be enough people complaining about this to hurt us so we can take money from them until they comply with no risk to us.

[Vinnie]

Anarchy allows you to build whatever community you choose. I'd prefer a tribal community where people are organized by clan and sub clan with a mixture of commonly held clan property and private property along with very rigid social norms instead of laws. Why I prefer this is none of your business. Go build your own community which may include seat belt laws, no public smoking, etc. etc.

Things get interesting when the interests of two communities conflict. The cheapest and most civilized way to deal with this is through compromise. A network of alliances with neighboring communities raises the incentive to compromise for both parties. If one alliance gets too big and powerful, then 4th generation warfare is a tried and true tactic for tacking down global superpowers.

[em3rgentOrdr]

In that same way, immunisation for an individual is useless unless a critical mass of the population also immunises themselves at the same time. For me it's a slightly -EV choice. For everyone together, it's massively +EV.

It's called The Insurance Company.

Insurance want to reduce chance of insuree getting into hospital. Perform a cost analysis, decides that it's cheaper to have everyone be immunized. Offer discount for immunization, moreso if x clients sign up....

Well, you get the idea.

Thank you kiba.  As always.  I'm going to have to start a kiba fan page one of these days...

[brocktice]

No, it is not a case of cheaper total cost for insurance companies. There are good math and epidemiology behind the drive to immunize everyone. Start by looking up herd immunity. Consider that for an epidemic to occur a certain critical number of susceptible people must exist within a certain area. Vaccines change those numbers such that it is much harder for an epidemic to occur. People are getting complacent because we have good vaccine coverage now and thinking that they can safely go without. As a result we are seeing outbreaks of terrible and dangerous diseases that have long been thought gone by the general public.

[FreeMoney]

No, it is not a case of cheaper total cost for insurance companies. There are good math and epidemiology behind the drive to immunize everyone. Start by looking up herd immunity. Consider that for an epidemic to occur a certain critical number of susceptible people must exist within a certain area. Vaccines change those numbers such that it is much harder for an epidemic to occur. People are getting complacent because we have good vaccine coverage now and thinking that they can safely go without. As a result we are seeing outbreaks of terrible and dangerous diseases that have long been thought gone by the general public.

There is no good math behind immunizing everyone. A vast majority will do it willingly or even pay, they you have to turn up the pressure more and more to get the remnant. There will be a group who will resist you violently for sure. On top of this the marginal benefit is going down as nearly everyone is already protected. Imagine the very last person who isn't immunized, how much risk is he to the heard? And he'd rather die than have you stick a needle in him.

In a free world a balance will emerge. People don't want to get sick and plenty of people get a good feeling from helping others, even strangers.   Forcing people is bad and leads to bad results.

I'm curious as to which were gone and are back. I just watched the House where they thought Small Pox was back.

[brocktice]

Whooping cough (pertussis) is a good recent example: http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-05-26-whooping-cough_N.htm

Are you telling me you think that all of epidemiology is bullshit? Are you familiar with predator-prey systems and the like?

[FreeMoney]

Whooping cough (pertussis) is a good recent example: http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-05-26-whooping-cough_N.htm

Are you telling me you think that all of epidemiology is bullshit? Are you familiar with predator-prey systems and the like?

Oh, no. Only that the onus is on the person who thinks it's a good idea to convince people using words, not guns. 

The fact that rate of contracting whooping cough is 23x higher is a huge incentive, I'm not sure why you think people who turn that down are going to care if you threaten them. Plus it's common sense to a lot of people that you don't force someone to do things that are good for them, so you probably lower immunization compared to a non-force method, like good education.

[Timo Y]

A free market is always much more interesting and vibrant than a planned one, even if it is "imperfect" according to someone's theory.

Once you introduce more ice cream vendors and more types of ice cream, you are changing the parameters of resource allocation space. 

But even this new space has certain constraints (scarcity of resources), so mathematically, there will exist a new global optimum somewhere.

The free market may or may not lead to this global optimum, but it's by no means guaranteed.

I agree that the constraints of 1) there may be only two ice cream vendors 2) there may be only one type of ice cream, are somewhat artificial.

Still, this simplified model illustrates the general idea.

[brocktice]

Whooping cough (pertussis) is a good recent example: http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-05-26-whooping-cough_N.htm

Are you telling me you think that all of epidemiology is bullshit? Are you familiar with predator-prey systems and the like?

Oh, no. Only that the onus is on the person who thinks it's a good idea to convince people using words, not guns. 

The fact that rate of contracting whooping cough is 23x higher is a huge incentive, I'm not sure why you think people who turn that down are going to care if you threaten them. Plus it's common sense to a lot of people that you don't force someone to do things that are good for them, so you probably lower immunization compared to a non-force method, like good education.

I'm not suggesting forcing people, and I agree with Epictetus who said, "Only the educated are free". I only meant to counter the sentiment the vaccination is some cost-saving measure cooked up by insurance companies. Unfortunately, regardless of eduction, there always seems to be some portion of the population who would rather believe the simple, easy answer than the more complicated, difficult one, even if the latter is the truthful one. I suppose there's not much to be done about them but try to make the vaccines better for the people that will use them.

[grondilu]

There is just no good reason why one should put something in someone's healthy body without his agreement.  No matter how hard you tried to convince him.  If at the end you failed, you just can't force him.  Period.

[FatherMcGruder]

I can't really call myself a libertarian or an anarchist, but I'll give it a go:

In the UK seatbelts are mandatory otherwise you get a fine. All cars come equipped with seatbelts. I love seatbelts since they significantly reduce the risk to my life by many orders of magnitude. In Iran not many people wear seatbelts. Often many cars just don't have them. So if I want to take a taxi then I can only have the choice to risk the taxi or not take it. Add to this that road laws are virtually non-existant and
cars just swamp the roads (meaning road accidents are super high). My life is endangered by someone else having their freedom.

The roads' owners will make the rules to which drivers and their vehicles must adhere. However, if someone controls a pass for which no other reasonable alternatives exits and that person tries to enforce an unreasonable unicycles-only rule, the people have the right to re-appropriate that pass.

In the UK it is illegal to smoke indoors. Otherwise I would be the single person in a group that boycotts places which allow indoor smoking. Either my life is endangered through risk to my health by someone else having their freedom, or I am a lonely person. As someone with bad asthma, it's killing when in other poorer countries people smoke everywhere and I can hardly breathe.

Libertarian ideology doesn't satisfy me in addressing this example. Unlike most other drug use, smoking tobacco, cannabis, or whatever doesn't require a specific context to put others at risk besides proximity. While consuming drugs differently, one typically has to try to operate a heavy machine in order to impinge upon others. We share the air and I see no wrong in communities collectively deciding how best to use it.

Immunisation only works once a majority of the population has been vaccinated. Vaccination does not prevent you getting an illness- only makes it less likely. In this way the disease is less likely to transfer across to another person and it's more difficult to spread. So difficult that it disappears. However for the individual, it's not worth the cost. And for immunisation to be effective, it needs mass mobilisation. Who would organise a state-wide immunisation campaign for a net loss?

The government should not force immunization on the people, but I see no wrong on schools forcing it on students, businesses forcing it on employees, or hospitals and insurance plans forcing it on customers.

[kiba]

Exceptions are of course, dangerous.

We invent it in the time of danger, never to waver again. Sometime we invent exceptions so we can arrest that person we don't like.

[FatherMcGruder]

Exceptions are of course, dangerous.

We invent it in the time of danger, never to waver again. Sometime we invent exceptions so we can arrest that person we don't like.

True, but don't we need reasonable contingencies for unreasonable behavior?

[kiba]

True, but don't we need reasonable contingencies for unreasonable behavior?

You have to think through your example.

Suppose that bridge have access to a single village and the bridge owner decides to institute an annoying rule to annoy travelers and village people. That village will die out. The bridge will fall into disrepair and the owner will be left with a bridge that doesn't make any money.

In other words, the bridge owner have some incentive to maintain links or else he have to find another job.

Of course, if he doesn't have a profit motive, that's another matter.

However, the same thing can happen to people who put their money into a scam, or willingly sell the bridge to an evil property owner who have preferences outside of human norms.

If you institute a regulatory authority of some kind or have some kind of mob rules, the rule of laws will disappear, and the uncertainty cost will increase. This lead to less capital formation that alleviate your bridge problem.

[nanaimogold]

Seat belt laws are not designed to protect people, they are designed to give police a blanket excuse to intimidate. If the police were directed by their masters to actually protect the citizens, why are the police more responsible for violence and murder than any other organised group?

Anti-smoking laws (and anti-drink driving laws) are not designed to protect people, they are designed to kill the public houses and restaurants where people talk to each other about the issues of concern. It is far safer for the tyrants to have everyone at home watching TV. All revolutions in the history on my race have started in the beer halls.

Forced immunisation might have started with good intention but that has been subverted. Now it's just another method of conditioning the masses to do as they are told, to make the impression that the government (that is owned by the secret wire pullers) owns the people and not the other way around. Consider that if the programs were truly for our benefit, why are people often poisoned? Why did the recent bullshit flu epidemic kill almost nobody but the vaccine killed thousands, including one of my own dear friends. Forced vaccinations is the "killer app". I predict that someday after everyone is lined up for some required injection, the whole mass of them will either die, become sterile or homosexual. Oops - sorry! Genocide in a syringe.

[FatherMcGruder]

Of course, if he doesn't have a profit motive, that's another matter.

However, the same thing can happen to people who put their money into a scam, or willingly sell the bridge to an evil property owner who have preferences outside of human norms.

What if the bridge owner suddenly became evil. Must the village put up with him?

If you institute a regulatory authority of some kind or have some kind of mob rules, the rule of laws will disappear, and the uncertainty cost will increase. This lead to less capital formation that alleviate your bridge problem.

If a bridge owner knows he is not evil, and if only evil doers have to fear the mob, where is the uncertainty?

I predict that someday after everyone is lined up for some required injection, the whole mass of them will either die, become sterile or homosexual.

What is this I don't even

[kiba]

The mobs might just be looking at him as a witchhunwfricklet.

Human judgement are fickle.

However, you could easily solve this problem by villagers owning the bridge outright.

[hugolp]

In my country (somewhere in the south of Europe) the cars got seat belts before it was mandatory by the government to wear them, so it was just a matter of choice.

[Vinnie]

However, you could easily solve this problem by villagers owning the bridge outright.

Yes! The thing many people fail to realize when it comes to anarchy, is that the freedom to design your community as you see fit will end up with thousands of different blends of local governance (or no governance,) private property, common property, public property, vice laws, no vice laws, etc. etc., all existing side by side. Anarcho-capitalism doesn't have all the answers, neither does social anarchism.

I see many advantages to common ownership (and even public ownership) of certain infrastructure and resources at a hyper-local level. Ancaps may see things differently, and design their communities accordingly.