RE: Honey Nazis
Well, that came out a little snarkier than it sounded in my head when I wrote it. I was hoping it will quickly and efficiently describe my position in a whimsical way. Now that I'm rereading it, it sounds a bit douchy. My apologies about that.
Now to the issue. It's not surprising that you wouldn't see it as utopian if you see it as the correct model to be striving towards. I personally think the free market has a lot of power and that's what an economy should be built on. But in my opinion there are many things that a free market does not have the means to handle efficiently, effectively or sometimes at all and that's why some level of social organization is the only practical or realistic way to handle them that I can think of. Not saying governments are perfect or inherently good or anything like that, but that they serve some crucial functions even while being flawed.
Let me give a few examples of issues the market can't handle in my opinion:
- Contract enforcement
- Infrastructure
- Protection of fundamental personal rights
- Safety
How would the free market provide those better than a mediocre corrupt government? I live in a country that isn't or wasn't doing well on many of those issues and I'd still prefer that imperfect government over no government at all because I'm convinced things would devolve even more without it.
Part of my thinking also includes this - if the free market (that we arguably have at least to an extent in many places around the world) could provide everything, why hasn't it done so already?
Again, if you oppose "the market" handling those things, then you necessarily advocate violent coercion and extortion of the state handling them. (And since "government" is always the biggest VIOLATOR of individual rights, #3 is kind of amazing.) Break it down to basics: which do you think would result in you getting better "service": an organization that YOU get to choose whether to hire or not, or an organization that FORCES you to buy its services. The former is "the market." The latter is "government." To expect the latter to do a better job is kind of ridiculous, even without all of the historical examples of how it doesn't. (By the way, regarding your first comment, using force against people who have committed fraud or aggression is DEFENSIVE force, which is inherently moral, and doesn't require "government" or any special "authority.")
Again, I obviously disagree with this assertion.
Let's imagine a free market for the services I've mentioned. If the service is contract enforcement, I will choose the service that would allow me to violate the contract that says I have to pay you for services and goods you've delivered to me. If the service is law enforcement, I will chose the service that would allow me to take your stuff without punishment. If it's safety, I would choose the service that would keep me safe even after I've killed you so you don't talk about the injustices you've suffered at my hands. I suspect those services would be pretty popular to the people who could afford them. If there is just the free market, what do you think could protect you from my abuse in that situation if you can't afford the services I'm using? Would you not be coerced into things you are unhappy with in that situation? Would you not be subjected to violence?
Where are the historical examples of markets doing all of that on their own?
First of all, morality is subjective, so the distinction you are offering has no practical merit I can see. And you did not answer the question I posed for you there. How would the market protect you in that situation. Who is going to exert that "defensive force" and how will you make sure that doesn't get abused and so on and so on. Tell me how you untangle that mess without letting in some authority or allowing for people to just use violence on each other until market equilibrium or something. This is why I call the idea that the market on its own can provide everything utopian - I don't think it has any real chance of working in practice. It's just like communism. It sounds appealing to some if it could work perfectly, but it never could. If you think it can work, please tell me how, not why you think it would be just if it could. Of course it would be preferable if it could work. If I thought it could work, I would support it too.
To your first comment, what would happen if you refused to pay for the government service? How is that result not coercive?
It is coercive, sure, and so is receiving punishment for a crime. If any form of coercion is unacceptable, so is punishing people for crimes.
Force when used in self-defense is not an immoral act. If by crime you mean that someone has been victimized by the criminal (aka the criminal initiated force) and by punishment you mean bringing some sort of justice to bear against the perpetrator, then it is acceptable to act with force against that person. It is the defense of another, a form of self defense, not the initiation of force against the criminal.
Now in the US and all other places in the world there are many laws against acts that have no identifiable victims. Punishing people for these "crimes" is indeed coercive and immoral. It is the initiation of force against someone. So is forcing someone to pay for such nonsense.
You are telling me what you think is moral. To put it simply you are saying it's OK to punish people for crimes with victims. My objections have nothing to do with that. They are on the basis that your proposed system has no way to ensure those outcomes.
The fact that something sounds moral to you (especially keeping in mind that morality is subjective) does not mean that it will work out in practice. If the world was perfect and all people were nice, good and non-abusive, both anarchism and communism would be great to live in. But the world is not like that and perfect outcomes are impossible. That's why I call them utopias.
Let me ask you this. What is the reason that we have invented philosophical and moral principles? Note that by choosing the word "invented" I do not concede that the moral standards I live by are subjective in nature.
Now that's a big question. I'm not really sure I can even answer that properly. What's your answer and how does it relate to your point?
Living by a particular standard does not mean this standard would be sufficient to have a society working well with it as the sole guiding principle.
I guess instead of typing it all over again, I should just post this link here:
https://steemit.com/government/@larkenrose/can-we-trust-the-market
I read your post and while it's vaguely on-point, it in no way demonstrates or explains that what you are advocating is not utopian. You try to explain why you think it's moral. The question I asked you is why you think it's feasible in the way you describe it. And as you said, we did make it personal, I gave you some very specific examples and I haven't gotten a convincing answer yet.
Let me answer the questions paragraph of your post here:
Contracts, not infringing on other people's rights, rule of law, punishment for crimes and the taxes necessary to make that happen. Of course the word force is overly-emotional in this case.
In the cases when you want to spend it to illegally harm others. Like a business venture that would pollute everybody's water, you hiring an assassin to kill me, or knowingly buying a stolen item to name a few.
The above. Or fraudulent ones where you want to defraud other people.
In none.
You keep bringing up examples of things that harm people, and talk about using force to stop that. "Government" is NEVER limited to such defensive force. It ALWAYS uses immoral aggression, in the name of "taxation" and "legislation" and "regulation." When someone commits force or fraud, ANYONE has the right to do what it takes to stop that. It doesn't take politician scribbles ("laws") or special "authority" to make it justified. If you really meant your final answer to that final question, you are ALREADY a voluntaryist, and don't know it.
What is the difference between the government claiming to use defensive force and actually using excessive force and individuals or private organizations doing that under free market anarchy?
I keep bringing examples and you keep deciding on not addressing them.
And what happens? Everybody would agree on what was right and wrong? Rightful violence between people until market equilibrium? I keep asking how do you solve that practically and you keep telling me that ANYONE has the right to solve that problem. I find zero practicality in your answer. That's why I remain convinced that your position is utopian. I don't find it immoral, I find it *unfeasible.
The difference--the ONLY difference--THE difference--that makes ALL the difference ... is that "government" is imagined to have rights that you and I do NOT. It is imagined to have the moral right to INITIATE VIOLENCE in situations where normal people have no such right. In short, the belief in "government" and political "authority" is the belief that some people should be ALLOWED to do what would be universally recognized as IMMORAL if anyone else did it.
Now try to explain to me how any of the scenarios you brought up would be improved by giving some people societal permission to use immoral violence.
I apologize for the hugely belated reply, but I decided to finally come back to this discussion.
As I said before, the idea that humans could coexists with no organization, no violence at all and no coercion is utopian. It can be morally superior on every single level, but if it is impossibe to implement, it remains an non-viable idea. That's what makes it an utopia in my book. It simply cannot work like that as just a few bad actors can get it out of whack.
Having government is not perfect, but I do think it's moral to have them as they provide a better state of being with lower amounts of violence and harm than anarchy would. My assertion here is that if there is no legal system, there would be more violence. The Wild West had less government and it was more violent.
The thing with government is that it shouldn't be just any government, it should be a democracy with proper laws.
"What is the difference between the government claiming to use defensive force and actually using excessive force and individuals or private organizations doing that under free market anarchy?"
The difference is that the concepts of government and authority try to justify these acts of aggression by calling them "law".
Is there not one solution you can think of, of how this could work without government?
Yes, I don't see a better solution than government that can be expected to be stable. What I usually hear as suggestions are unstable systems that could only work if everybody participating agreed not to abuse them. But this is standard for utopias. Communism would work perfectly if everybody agreed with it and was willing to participate.
No it's not an agreement where everybody needs to agree. It's the absence of the "agreement" that violence can be justified in the name of government or anything else mafia slavery.
It's also not a constitution, or other paper.
But you can believe of course what you want you can advocate for a violence. I just don't believe that they, or you, or I, can legitimately use of violence, to get someone to do what you want or what you want me to pay for..... that's all.
Thanks for the reply :)
I think you are advocating for a situation where anybody would be able to use violence against anybody unchecked. Saying I'm advocating for things I'm not is just twisting my words or inventing things that I'm not saying.
What I'm saying is that you are advocating for an utopia. Sure, an utopia can sound great when you imagine it as a perfect little world, the thing is you just can't really propose a mechanism that would keep that world better even than the imperfect world we live in. I just don't want to advocate for solutions that I don't think could ever be successfully implemented in practice with satisfactory results.
Yeah, it took me only 18 days :/ Still I got to it eventually.
rocking-dave, problems will always exist in any society. It doesn't mean we should force others to solve them for us. If you believe in the concept of government and authority, you believe politicians have the right to coerce others using threats of force if they don't comply with the politicians' laws.
None of this is what I'm saying.
When did I say a society without problems is possible? What I'm saying is that even mediocre democratic government provides more solutions to problems than anarchy.
I love it when somebody else tells me what I believe ;) But nope.
I understand why people find voluntarism morally desirable. What I don't understand is why they think it's feasible or why would you expect to have more real freedom under that than under contemporary democracy. I mentioned at least crucial benefits that having some form of organization allows. I keep asking how those would emerge from a free market, but my questions keep falling on deaf ears.
Instead I get explanations how one of its basic principles is supposedly moral. That by no means demonstrates that the idea is not utopian. To show that something is not utopian you need to somehow demonstrate or at least hint at a mechanism that could make it happen well in practice. That's the piece of the puzzle that has me unconvinced.
This is patently false: "even mediocre democratic government provides more solutions to problems than anarchy." Democratic governments--in fact, democratically-elected constitutional republics--commit more oppression, robbery and murder than any other institution in the history of the world. Right NOW you are robbed far more by the state than by anyone else. You have been taught to believe that "government" keeps people civilized, but that is absolutely 100% bullshit. The ONLY thing the belief in "authority" adds to society is more IMMORAL violence, and the legitimization of that violence.
I hope you didn't really mean that literally. I'm sure feudal societies offered so much more freedom to peasants than today's world. Or societies where most people were slaves. Or the human-sacrificing crazy religious ones. Or North Korea. How can you even say that?
The assertion that taxation is violence is almost as large of an exaggeration as what you wrote above.
Taxation is theft under threat of violence. The more you resist it the higher the violence becomes.
If you don't believe that stop paying "your" taxes and guess what happens:
Outcome 2 is the most likely.
As to the quoted bit I'd be inclined to agree with it. Feudal regimes that became too over bearing were overthrown. Modern people are so conditioned that they don't believe taxation is theft under threat of violence... and so the oppression will get a lot worse before enough people decide that enough is enough.
Taxation can be theft or violence if you claim that all the government-issued paper you manage to get your hands on in the context of said government is legitimately and naturally yours. That's not that easy of a case to make decisively I think.
When living in a society, you are indeed forced to cooperate and that's inevitable. Taxation in the context of democracy is the best practical model we have so far. If we get a better one, I would love to get rid of it. I don't like my taxes going into the pockets of corrupt politicians either. Just explain to me how we get rid of it all and end up with something better.
If you claim that modern people are less free and more oppressed than feudal peasants, I really don't know what to say. I'm sorry to put it so bluntly, but that's ridiculous.