How hard is it to predict that allowing people to start their own businesses would reduce the level of desperate people in the world? How hard is it to predict that allowing people to choose their own wages would reduce the level of desperate people in the world? How hard is it to predict that allowing people to freely contract for whatever services or goods they choose to provide or purchase would reduce the level of desperate people in the world?
So, just so we're clear then, and as a summary of my accusations here that you have extreme difficulty thinking outside the boundaries of your ideology, can we safely assume, as you have been insisting, that the above three items are the only factors which will determine the desperation of people within a society?
That's not what he said at all.
Here's what he said:
How hard is to imagine that those three imaginings only imagine a subset of the variables that influence the total number of desperate people in a society? Once again, I think it's incumbent upon you to be more objective and think (without being influenced by your ideology) about a lot of other factors that go into creating desperate situations for people.
Name three not directly related to government intervention.
So, to be more precise, he's implying that there are no other factors which could influence the desperation of people unless caused by government. I contend there are, and it would take someone heavily blinded by their ideology to not be able to imagine them.
Holliday,
Are you also really unable to think of any factors which would influence the desperation of people not caused by government?
I find it hard to imagine that there is much of anything that isn't touched by government intervention. I believe the entire planet is a single, yet complex, ecosystem and if you poke or prod a single element, like throwing a pebble into a pond, you will see ripples over the entire surface.
So, while I may be able to give specific examples of desperation not directly caused by the government, I would be hard pressed to say that government intervention didn't influence it in some way.
For example, let's consider desperation from hunger due to lack of crops from a drought. Was it the weather patterns that caused the desperation, or was it government intervention in the form of corn / cotton subsidies and outlawing hemp which wreaked havoc on the world's food supply?
Most of the civilized world has grown up with some form of government. Everything we do is influenced by our environment.
This question is probably too complex and would take a life time of research to provide a factual answer.
You've completely missed the context of the discussion. Myrkul claims that in AnCap, he can predict most assuredly that people will be less desperate, because he claims he understands all the variables that go into the equation that determines how desperate people will be.
Now, let's examine some of the cases in which you describe how people could become desperate above. Can you be certain that such calamities would not happen in AnCap, or would definitely happen to a lesser degree?
Imagine all of the following:
- Famine
- Genetic engineering of crops gone awry
- Reduction in building codes
- Increased speed of biovectors due to increased population
- Reduction of ecosystem services
- Corporate warfare
- Inability to handle medical expenses
- Increased deleterious effects of synergies between artificial compounds
- Unsustainable harvesting
Are these not all things which could in theory cause desperation among people? Can we definitively say that AnCap always reduces these effects as opposed to possibly exacerbating them. Who would be so foolish as to make assumptions about AnCap when it is so untested on a large scale?
The conversation goes back to determining the value of X, where X is the number of desperate people in a society. Myrkul listed three factors which he claimed would determine the value of X. He challenged me to come up with three factors which could happen without government intervention. I laughed at him, because I couldn't believe that he was allowing his blinded way of thinking not allowing him to come up with those three factors himself.
Look at the list I made above. Is it possible that any of those could occur without government intervention in an AnCap world?
