Yes the international system is anarchic (sup realism). Yes the strong state oppress the weak states. This is actually a perfect illustration of my point. Without an overarching authority the strong will oppress and exploit the weak. Removing states just means that this occurs on the local level.
Right, so instead of having massive nuclear armed nation states fighting each other, fighting would be more likely to occur on a local level? Sounds like an improvement to me. It makes it easier to escape conflicts if they are on a local level, and limits the damage caused by them.
Who said anything about hiring people. The strong could simply band together and rove around oppressing and rent-seeking. Certainly the incentives are there. All I need to do is grab some friends and some guns (the latter of which you suggest I could purchase for as little as $100ea) and now my associates and I can get busy with highway robbery/rape/murder, protection rackets, etc etc. There will be other similar groups and we can have turf wars. It'll be great.
Why wouldn't an AC society descend into the Wild West?
First of all, the Wild West was nothing like how it is portrayed in movies. Certainly in parts of the Western Frontier there was excellent private security and protection provided by local communities. The data is difficult to interpret, but there is no proof that overall the Western Frontier was more violent than the east (apart from the wars, which had happened earlier in the eastern frontier and are a symptom of colonization).
Why would anyone want to have turf wars and face being killed by other gangs, or armed civilians? You have failed to make warlordism sound like an attractive prospect.
You overestimate the numbers required. An aggressor requires sufficient strength to overpower or coerce those who will resist. This group is typically far less than the total population. A 2-1 ratio may enable the resistors to be overpowered but why bother when they can simply be coerced? Make the cost of them resisting more than they can stomach. For example seize some hostages, slaughter some people, or otherwise demonstrate the cost of resistance.
Once they give in and have been disarmed the level of required oppressors is greatly reduced, and therefore the bulk of the original oppressors can be redeployed to oppress other people.
The lesson of communism is that a system which requires a new or different human will fail.
I would agree. But AC does not require a new or different human. As volition and I have stated several times, very clearly:
jennyfromdabloc said:
If you want to live in a minarchist society, fine. I'm not saying governments can't exist, I'm saying people should have a realistic, viable opportunity to opt out of them.
It is quite the opposite of communism which is forced on everyone. All I am advocating is a right to succession. Those that want to live under a government can choose that and people that have AC tendencies can choose an AC community.
Therefore, because of the process of self selection the AC community is likely to be well armed and extremely suspicious and hostile towards anyone attempting to rule them. So they would indeed be a formidable opponent to anyone trying to conquer them and most of them would probably undertake training in the use of military grade firearms.
Look at any protection racket.
Such as?
I assume you are being disingenuous again and comparing them to criminal gangs here which extort people without consent and are totally different to the sort of firms we are suggesting which are based on voluntary contracts. I realise you are saying the firms could start out voluntary and turn into this, but the triad/mafia example is just way off. These organisations never started out as legitimate private security firms, they were always criminals gangs which in many cases have derived most of their revenue from the criminalization of drugs, prostitution and gambling (do I really need to point out the culprit here).
A much better example would be private security companies that do exist today, and guess what, they haven’t become “oppressors like triad gangs.”
For new firms there are significant barriers to entry in the market.
Such as? Surely the main expense for a security firm is labour which is a variable cost. What are the huge expenses that would make it hard for new firms to compete?
For consumers the cost to switch is prohibitive.
Why? What prohibitive costs do you foresee being involved with switching?
Security firms would become oppressors just like triad gangs do. And just like triad gangs the only way a community gets a new one is when a turf war breaks out and the ownership of the community changes to a new gang.
Right. Except this has never been observed actually happening with security firms and you just made it up.
Refer to blood diamonds and other exploitation it can be quite cheap to use slaves. That is the whole point.
Good example. I wonder if the Africans being rounded up and enslaved were armed and able to defend themselves...
And why would the weak be armed in an AC world?
They wouldn’t necessarily, but at least they would have the right to be armed, rather than being deliberately and systematically disarmed by the government.
If the weak feel they would be better protected by the government, they can chose to remain under its jurisdiction. I would expect most people that would chose to move to an AC community would be from the developed world (particularly the USA), and they would tend to have guns.
East India Company - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Do you mean the East India Company that received monopoly trading privileges and direct financial and military backing from the government? You know, the one that ended up being directly controlled by the British Parliament.
Also is it really that inconceivable that chevron could hire/partner/JV with blackwater? Certainly the prices at the moment are prohibitive but imo that reflects blackwater's rent-seeking not a fair indication of the market price.
It’s not impossible, but as I said, it’s much more expensive to pay for a war yourself, than to force a whole bunch of taxpayers to bear the cost for you. It’s estimated that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost $954 billion since 2001 (
COSTOFWAR.COM - The Cost of War), which is several times greater than the entire net worth of Chervon. Considering Chervon barely foot any of the bill, having to pay several hundred billion (lets discount a bit for rent-seeking) changes the incentives in place hugely.
All your objections seem to be along the lines of "omg this could go wrong under AC" while all the time you ignore that these terrible things are happening right now under governments. Once again for the third time I have told you in this thread:
AC WILL NOT MAKE EVERYTHING WONDERFUL AND PERFECT. THERE WILL STILL BE VIOLENCE AND BAD THINGS HAPPENING. ALL I AM TRYING TO SAY IS THAT ON BALANCE THERE WOULD BE LESS BAD STUFF UNDER AC THAN UNDER THE GOVERNMENT.
Of course there are no guarantees, but if you make people pay for war themselves rather than allowing them to force others to pay, surely this makes war less likely. Do you disagree with this basic logic?
The removal of the state would not imo remove the propensity of humans to rent-seek. In an anarchic situation such as those we see in Somalia and in many other relatively lawless developing areas warlords have emerged and set about violently rent-seeking.
But by many measures the people of Somalia are actually better of under anarchy than they were under government (
http://www.peterleeson.com/Better_Off_Stateless.pdf, its definitely worth a read).
As I pointed out earlier, Somalia is not an example of what we are advocating. I do not support the violent overthrow of the government, nor do I hope for its sudden collapse (as happened in Somalia). All I want is to peacefully convince people to allow a right of succession from the state.
The question when analysing political systems is not whether a particular country under a particular system is desirable, because this will always be biased by the natural and historical qualities of the country in question.
Obviously Somalia with its lack of natural resources, location in an unstable part of the world, poorly educated fundamentalist religious population, feuding racial groups and history of violence and poverty is going to have serious problems under any political system.
Just as the Scandanavian countries which are rich in natural resources, have small ethnically quite homogenous populations and have historically been wealthy and located in a stable part of the world are more likely to be prosperous.
The question to is ask whether a given country has improved or gotten worse when its political system has changed. What can almost always be observed is that the more a country moves towards free market economics, the more prosperous it becomes. Examples include:
China
Taiwan
Singapore
Kong Kong
Estonia
Ireland
Iceland
USA
Somalia (contentious I know, but read the article)
Russia (although still beset by violence and corruption, living standards have increased massively since the collapse of the USSR).
South Korea
East Germany
