Help from Libertarians/Anarchists
POSTED BY: Geezer
UPDATED: Friday, January 18, 2008 14:04
VIEWED: 12974
PAGE 3 of 18
Geezer
"The freeway was built by the folks who own the freeway, having either bought the property or negotiated a lease agreement with the owners."
How did the original owners get that property ? What keeps multiple people from claiming that property ? Who adjudicates multiple claims (other than roving bands of people with guns, that is) ? What happens when one party unilaterally changes the conditions of the lease - or adds conditions to the sale ? Who maintains the currency used to buy and sell, or lease ?
"You pay to use it, just like you pay income and gas taxes to use the government-built freeways."
Who vetted the information used to create an up-to-spec road ? Who checked the construction ? And most importantly - again - who adjudicates disputes in case of faulty construction ? Who insures that the road is indeed equally open to anyone and that everyone is charged the same price ?
"You do have insurance (you can still contract for most anything), which provides ambulance and medical service to the specifications of your policy."
How do you insure the insurance company WILL pay the claim ? How does that insurance company operate over multiple jurisdictions (for example, out of reach of it's spec'd ambulance service or hospitals) ? Assuming young healthy people don't buy insurance, how do you keep this from devolving into a pay-as-you-go scenario and unaffordable to the unlucky, ill or elderly ?
"They are vetted by companies (see Consumer Reports and Washington checkbook, but not non-profit) who provide their references for a fee (probably to the insurance company). Those who do badly go out of business."
How do you insure the vetters aren't merely sub-units of the insurance company (assuming there is no 'law' saying they have to be independent) ? How do you insure the vetters aren't unintentionally biased toward the companies giving them money ? What keeps the vetters from taking large sums of money to intentionally provide bogus reports to increase their profits (as they are 'for profit' it would be a temptation to inrease profits this way) ? Who researches and develops relevant, impartial and efficient standards ? Who oversees the standards used by the vetters ?
"I'm not sure that death absolves one of liability and the need for compensation in the Libertarian world, so the drunk's estate may be liable."
How does this differ from India where children are sold into servitude to pay off 'family' debt ?
"This assumes that there is a function available to determine the driver was drunk. That's also a question."
This also assumes that driving drunk is considered 'wrong'. How do you assign fault when there is no 'law' saying it's 'wrong' and therefore liable for compensation to the injured party ?
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Anyway, it's more within human nature to congregate and cooperate than it is to isolate and confront (US society notwithstanding - I consider it pathological). Even Socrates believed people came together if only for 'economic' reasons: "I think a city comes to be because none of us is self-sufficient, but we need many things."
Let's say people can effectively interact in a group of 100 (I think that's high, but it's only a rough estimate anyway).
Let's say a society needs roughly 1,000 people in order for people to specialize (I think that's low, but it's for the sake of argument).
Somewhere between 100 and 1,000, new and 'un-natural' ways of relating come into being - ways that aren't formed by the long chain of evolution in small groups.
We can either purposefully seek the best ways of congregating - or we can let them happen by chance, understanding that they are subject to 'initial conditions' and there's nothing naturally 'forbidden' about going down a hellish dead end.
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"Global warming - it's not just a fact, it's a choice."
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Actually once specialization evolves there is no putting it back in the box unless you do something like China's cultural revolution. I doubt many doctors make good chicken farmers and probably few would want to. You would end up with people with specific skills that communities would have to find some way of attracting (or perhaps they steal doctors, like those cultists did with Simon?)
The reality will be that those folks with skills that the rest of the community realy on will end up running the place. The communities will end up being run by the guy that has the most land and/or the largest industrial employer, the doctor and the priest.
Even if you force the redistribution of wealth you would still have the problem that those folks that have specialist and rare functions will run things.
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Quote:The fact that sovereignty goes hand in hand with land ownership is a big obstacle for anarchism (left or right). If I were to build an anarcho-libertarian country, I would make public roads one of the few functions of government. There are other solutions, but none so expedient and simple as public ownership of publically traveled land.
(Say, who built the freeway? Who owns it?)
That is another reason why Firefly is such a great model for anarcho-libertarianism. Space travel frees us from the no-sovereighty-without-land dilemma. As long as one owns a running ship (which is not as limited a commodity as land), one has a shot at sovereignty.
God, I love Firefly.
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...and we'll never be under the heel of nobody ever again.
--Firefly
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Fletch2
Maybe.
Not directly related but I came across this the other day, and it had an interesting connection to a virtually unknown fact.
Scientists wanted to see if bonobos or chimps cooperated better: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/03/070308121928.htm
"For example, two bonobos were more likely to both eat when presented with food in a single dish (rather than two separate dishes) than were chimpanzees faced with a similar feeding scenario.
Bonobos also exhibited significantly more sociosexual behavior and play than did chimpanzees under these circumstances. In a related set of experiments, bonobos were found to be better than chimpanzees at cooperating (e.g., by simultaneously pulling a rope) to retrieve food that was not easily divisible--that is, food that might be easily monopolized by one of the two individuals."
This relates to the inadvertent experiment (the unknown fact) Jane Goodall performed when she wanted to entice chimps out in the open - with a big pile of food. She spent weeks observing all sorts of dominance and aggression displays - before she realized that it was unnatural behavior caused by the food being in one spot, and easily dominated by an individual.
Now, I think we humans tell ourselves what we are and so actually form our 'human nature'. Humans are selfish. Humans are violent. Humans are competitive. But there is some native version of us that we start out with - and I'd say we're a lot more like bonobos than chimps. And maybe we should be encouraging our societies to reflect that.
BTW - that isolated village I mentioned in another thread - had some other big strong dudes. But they weren't nasty, they got along with people and did all sorts of Herculean tasks (and stunts) just for the recognition of it. To say people with a specialty will necessarily 'rule' everyone else assumes the opportunistic, cut-throat motivations we actively teach people.
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"Global warming - it's not just a fact, it's a choice."
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Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
Now, I think we humans tell ourselves what we are and so actually form our 'human nature'. Humans are selfish. Humans are violent. Humans are competitive. But there is some native version of us that we start out with - and I'd say we're a lot more like bonobos than chimps. And maybe we should be encouraging our societies to reflect that.
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I'm not sure. In Sweden our company spent a lot of time and money on team building exercises some of which dealt with group dynamics. The conclusion that these courses came to was that in human interactions dominance/submission behavior is the low level "animalistic" parts of our nature and the co-operative response was the learned "higher" response. To use your examples we started out as selfish chimps but as survival required cooperation we learnt more complex cooperative social behavior because it gave us an evolutionary advantage.
When our children grow we "domesticate" them, we teach them the behavior we consider appropriate and the values that we as a group come to expect. I contend that in the absence of that upbringing people will behave selfishly because they don't see other people as being their equals and that in turn limits our in built capacity for empathy. That's also why governments in wartime try to dehumanize the enemy because most humans correctly raised by their group would tend to empathise too much with the enemy.
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Quote:Left-anarchism, or pure communism, strives for the absence of hierarchy. In communism, specialization resulting in more wealth / power would not be possible.
Originally posted by Fletch2:
Even if you force the redistribution of wealth you would still have the problem that those folks that have specialist and rare functions will run things.
However, right-anarchism, or anarcho-capitalism, has no such lofty goals. They are only concerned with absence of institutionalized monopoly of force, or government. They have no problems with some folks having more power/wealth than others.
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"My God! The thought of that evil man, loose in London--with money, from God only knows what source--fomenting riot and rebellion during a public emergency--and in control of an Engine-driven press! It's nightmarish!"
-- Gibson-Sterling, "The Difference Engine"
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Quote:Left-anarchism, or pure communism, strives for the absence of hierarchy. In communism, specialization resulting in more wealth / power would not be possible.
Originally posted by canttakesky:Quote:
Originally posted by Fletch2:
Even if you force the redistribution of wealth you would still have the problem that those folks that have specialist and rare functions will run things.
However, right-anarchism, or anarcho-capitalism, has no such lofty goals. They are only concerned with absence of institutionalized monopoly of force, or government. They have no problems with some folks having more power/wealth than others.
Then I don't understand the point? If the contention is that government has become the instrument of the powerful then how does removing it help if the powerful can still influence things? I want your property? I take it and pay off the police force. Like an extreme form of eminent domain but cheaper for me and even suckier for you.
I have a question. A thief breaks into a house steals the owners gun and uses it to hold him up. Is this the gun's fault or the owners for not keeping it close to hand. Should we ban guns to remove the possibility of the ones we own being used against us or should we just maintain better control of the ones we have?
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Fletch2
You're looking at people brought up in a large, individualistic and competitive society (even in Sweden). But you could look at the !Kung (in their original format, not their 'settled' drug-addled version) with origins thought to be closest to the original human ancestors - nomads who survived based on little more than the mutual goodwill of the members of each group. That and digging sticks.
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"Global warming - it's not just a fact, it's a choice."
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CTS
money = influence
force = influence
therefore
money = force
That puts your buds - business - in the picture.
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"Global warming - it's not just a fact, it's a choice."
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