Originally posted by
[email protected] 07, 2007 06:02 pm
Sigh, do you think you understand the market now? This is what I hate about people jumping from ideology to ideology, they grab their new ideology whole heartedly and insist it is correct for six months or so without thinking it through. You see plenty of so called Communists and Anarchists here doing the same, and you are a good example of a free marketer doing it.
If this market anarchy is so wonderful, please explain, how without using coercion, the following things will be prevented:
People simply taking others property violating their property "rights"
Nobody supplying public goods because there is no good way to get anybody to pay for them
The wealthy raising private armies and effectively becoming a de facto government of their own
Crimes being committed
Corporations cheating their clients
Corporations forming cartels and effectively shutting down the free market
Corporations banding together and forming de facto governments, possibly with the aformentioned private armies
Once you have explained all that, also explain to me how this system is going to come to be in the first place, particularly without coercion?
I was actually convinced by their moral argument about a year and a half ago and at least intuitively agreed with them. I have been trying to find refutations of their ideas that made sense but alas I did not, so I finally had to accept the view. That is just intellectual honesty. I am in constant debate over my thoughts and have proggressively accepted things when I could not refute them.
When I say coercion, I mean the initiation of force. Force can be used to defend one's life and property. Other than nitpicking about the necessity of an asset and an owner in the use of self-ownership, I have not heard a good moral argument for why a person has the right to tell me that I cannot stab myself. We are separate entities, and we think we are making choices, thus even if we don't freewill, existentially we exist in such a state. If you believe that a person is a separate entity that thinks, self ownership follows and with it the right to life and property. I simply don't buy the non-atomistic view held by materialists. The individual can be viewed as a coherent whole, but society not so much. We are not insects in a hive. I really don't think collectivism suits our and at the very least my existential needs.
1) Private defense organizations or voluntary cooperative community police forces. If you do not trust the idea of private defense organization contracting the defense of property, for example, like mall security, and such are unable to fulfill the demand, people will realize this and engage in cooperative behaviour in their communities and hire an agency that they pay collectively defend and patrol that area. Obviously, the people in this community would be smart to arm themselves, in case the police try to pull something. In a statist solution, the police have a right to protect themselves with weapons but the citizens don't. That is authoritarianism.
2)The wealthy raising private armies- First of all what prevents the state from using its money and military to enslave us? In a socialist society the same thing can occur. The point is essentially moot, because this is always a possibility, but I will show you why I do not think it will happen. And it is essentially the case that say a group of wealthy individuals decide to start amassing armies, purchases are generally public so people will know that this person is ammassing armies. Thus, other wealthy individuals and individuals in communities will be afraid so other PDA's and wealthy individuals will try to balance the power with him or stop doing business with him. Think about how we do weal with international relations, such is a situation of systemic anarchy yet, there are ways of preventing the hobbesian war of all against all and consolidation of power by a world government.
3)Crimes being committed? This will always happen and what prevents it with a state? We have methods to punish the people who committ crimes but some people will always commit crimes. See 1 for my explanation.
4) Without a government protecting a corporation through bankruptcy protection and corporate personhood among other things a coporation is far more accountable to the people. It is ultimately possible that a corporation will cheat its clients, but think about Ebay, which is an example of a free market there are rating systems. If a company cheats a client, a client could file the information with a private or voluntary public institution that rates companies on whether they are reliable, much like the system on ebay.
Also, there are things called DRO's (dispute resolution organizations) which would be accepted by both the corporation and the client and have certain rules about protocol in business relations. They serve as a third party to arbitrate in the case of issues arising and everything is legally binding through contract law.
5)Corporations do not form cartels, oligopolies or monopolies unless they have protection from a government. There is simple game theory behind this, collusion is not good for a firm as they always are tempted to undercut the person they are in association with to gain a larger market share, and there is an opportunity in a market for a new actor to come in, especially without heavy regulation. If the price is inflated an entrepenuer can pursue such an end and gain far more profit by having a lower price. The market is not a zero sum game. For example, the robber barons existed in a time in the US where they embraced a sort of mercantilism that had extremely high tarriffs that prevented foreign competition.
6) I think 4 and 5 addressed this quite well and it is not logically impossible, but it is not in the interest of the company to do this. And such an idea presupposes a hobbesian or machiavallian view of humanity and if that is the case then a government is no better as then we have ordered tyranny instead of chaotic tyranny. But, for the sake of argument lets say that there are some good and some bad people working in companies, that is some willing to do what you say and some that are not. This seems realistic enough. If a company starts amassing armies other companies will react and do the same, we can reference the Cold War in this sense and systemic anarchy and the buildup of weapons. If people are that power hungry and competitive that companies will try to take over certain areas than cooperation between different companies does not seem to follow.
There are many approaches saying how this could come into play. One is the process of gradual privatization which I oppose because it subordinates things being voluntary to private ownership. I support the Agorist idea that people should begin to embrace black and grey market transactions and try to make those "illegal" markets grow until the government has little control over the market and it can held accountable as the criminal organization it is.
I understand you want everything to be guaranteed, but that is not the case with anything. There is nothing stopping the government coming in and killing me or you because of our views that oppose the status quo, so a lot of these arguments are moot as they are just as possible in occurring in a statist society as in an anarchist society.