Topic: Did the cryptography revolution begin too late? - page 2. (Read 11437 times)

Ok, I'll buy that a stable, healthy society can have a state or not. However, I remain unconvinced that statelessness offers the best framework, or lack thereof, for a society. It seems that a stateless society requires an especially disciplined populace.

For example, a pollutive factory might produce a desirable product. Perhaps only the people living downstream suffer from the pollution. They complain to a court that rules in their favor, but the factory does not comply. The downstream people, as their only non-violent recourse, boycott the factory and ostracize its workers. However, these actions affect no change because the upstream people would rather have the factory's desirable products than support their downstream brethren. The downstream people can now either put up with the pollution, flee, or attempt to shut down the factory with violence, potential instigating a war with the upstream people. Unless the upstream people choose to aid their neighbors over materialism, the issue escalates to violence.

If this society had a state however, the court could coerce the factory into compliance from the outset, preluding a violent confrontation from the start.

Just trying to understand anarchy better.

Google Translate did a surprisingly good job.

FreeMoney, I agree, solutions that actually emerge in statelessness probably won't look anything like past stateless solutions, or the new proposals thrown around today.  But the point of designing new solutions today is not to figure out exactly how it'll play out, but to undermine the perceived necessity of statist solutions to societal problems.

creighto, we can argue objectively about the merits of a non-monopolistic approach to law and law enforcement over a centrally planned approach.  If opponents are impervious to reason, then the only hope is to at least get them to respect the idea of secession to some degree.  That or wait for them to die out while focusing on raising the new generations right.

Yeah, what creighto said.  Which is why a rosy picture of a stateless society not needing any law and law enforcement is silly.

The only way I can think of to lessen the whole "might makes right" thing is to advance a reasoned respect for the law so that folks are more accepting when it doesn't rule in their favor.  Presumably this would be much easier if it weren't so corrupt.

But really there's no way to avoid it completely.  "Might makes right" is certainly true today.  The only alternatives to anarchy in the pejorative are a single dominant power, or lots of them in some state of peaceful coexistence, where if one becomes abusive, enough of the rest will jump on its ass and set it in line.

It's tough to sell the latter, since people tend to underestimate the corruptibility of a single dominant power, while being scared that having lots of powers in coexistence will just devolve into anarchy in the pejorative.

You need to look carefully at what sort of conflicts are actually resolved by the State.  Social pressure and negotiations between individuals tends to resolve a lot of our conflicts without involving the State.  However, when you have a disagreement with a neighbor about property lines or when someone cheats you in a business transaction you do indeed take it to the State's courts.  But it's very costly, time-consuming and there's no guarantee that your case will be decided justly.  This is because the State decides the law and even how to interpret the law and so you have an arbitrary decision.  Why couldn't we have a free-market system of courts, judges and arbiters?  Economics tells us that with competing courts, the judges would have to settle cases fairly and do so in a way that the "customers" see as just.  If the judge doesn't he will lose customers and go out of business.

The case of how courts would work in an anarchist system is a very good question, and much brighter minds then mine have taken a hard look at it. I would refer you to "The Market for Liberty" by the Tannehills for some specific examples of how courts, national defense, insurance, etc. might work in a laissez faire society.  We can't know for sure exactly how things would turn up, because left to a free-market individuals would try different ideas and the ones that worked well would stay around, and the ones that did not would not be able to make a profit and stay in business.

Would you call a mugging with a compliant victim peaceful? I don't, but maybe I need a different word to get across what I mean.

Mob size is the virtue of a democracy, I suggest we try something else.

And my point was that regardless of how any particular advocate of any particular ideology may think about public choice theory, they all basicly believe that what they advocate will result in a better society.  The key difference is that authoritarians of every flavor fundamentally believe that some form of proper government is the key to that better society, while libertarians (the 'big tent' version of that word) of every flavor fundamentally believe that that a proper government is impossible.

Most people resolve conflicts peacefully without the aid of the state.  In the relatively rare cases that the state police & court apparatus is required to resolve a conflict, it's never peaceful.  The fact that both sides may, in public, comply to the decisions of a judge are more often due to the implict threat of force that a judge's decision is supported by.

Shouting until red in the face goes nowhere. Demonstrate by example- live outside the state. Work towards creating a better future. It's bound to happen eventually, what with the advent of the internet and the free software movement.

The state doesn't solve anything "peacefully", since it's a violent institution by definition.
But I know what you mean.
I once wrote something about it, but it's in Portuguese, you may check if an auto translation is understandable: http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=fr&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&sl=pt&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mises.org.br%2FArticle.aspx%3Fid%3D605

If you are really curious on how conflicts can be solved without a monopoly of violence search about medieval Ireland or Iceland, Merchant Law and so on... at the end of the text I liked above there are some references, in English. This short book is good too: http://mises.org/books/chaostheory.pdf

Then, speaking more broadly, how do we resolve conflicts, those which we typically resolve peacefully with the help of the state, not according to the size of one's mob?

I don't mean "convincing people isn't my job" I mean "if I could answer all these questions then we shouldn't have anarchy we should have a dictatorship, run by me".

No one knows the best solutions to all problems. Likely no one knows the best solution to any one complex problem. In fact any problem as complicated as "How should people keep their houses lit at night?" has hundreds of solutions none of which are best for everyone.

I'm talking about a new (not new really, we do solve lots of things peacefully) way to find solutions, not about the solutions themselves. The solutions are work for everyone and anyone to do, I have no particular expertise.

Showing solutions from the past is good for illustrating that there are other solutions, but I don't think it is likely that many of the old ways will end up being chosen by people when they are free to try anything.

Like I said, "if you want to convince people that a well-functioning stateless society is possible, ..."  Of course you don't have to, otherwise.

Law enforcement and courts have been provided in many past stateless societies: see medieval Iceland, medieval Ireland, the stateless American west (had a lower homicide rate than the incorporated states!), stateless Pennsylvania (short period of time), Common Law, Law Merchant (there are others that I can't remember).

Welfare and healthcare used to be provided by fraternal societies and churches.

Private roads exist today.  Highways are easy for private providers.  Intracity roads are harder, and probably require some sort of collective arrangement, but there are proposals out there:
https://www.youtube.com/user/fringeelements#p/u/0/A1gp9_oCafM
http://mises.org/books/roads_web.pdf

Current statist solutions to societal problems certainly suck, but they are in some cases better than no solution at all.  So it is indeed up to the advocate of a stateless society to argue that it could not just provide solutions, but provide them better than today's states if he wants people to accept his ideas.

That was a response to your suggestion that my advocacy of the use of force is immoral.  I was assuming that you didn't mean to imply that this applied to all uses of force.

AFAIK, the only people advocating emergent law here are certain types of anarchists and libertarians.  Republicans think they do out of ignorance to public choice theory, and (statist) socialists think they do out of ignorance to the fact that people are quite different from insects.  I'm only saying here that there is no correct way to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate uses of force.

American common law was working away the whole time.

+1

I hope I don't have to because I can't. I don't believe law enforcement and courts and roads and welfare are problems that have ever been solved. I'm suggesting that we start trying to solve them instead of forcing people to accept non-solutions at the point of a gun.

It is no more my responsibility to solve these problems than for me to tell you what to eat. If I was a nutritionist or a cookbook author I would offer you some solutions, but I don't claim to be or want to be. Some people will do this and if others like their ideas enough they will try what they suggest.

No, I don't.  In this conversation, you're the advocate; so you need to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate use of force.  That was part of my point about the 'just versus the unjust' post.  What most people think of when we use the term "law" are things that are prohibited because they are bad, but those statutes make up only a very small percentage of those produced by government.  In nearly every case of statutes that exist to punish infractions of common sense and basic civility; those actions (or something very much like them) have been prohibited in civil societies since the dawn of civilizations.  The statutes that refer to them in modern texts of law only clarify ambiguity and define consequences.  Beyond that, everything that comes from government is unjustifiable use of force.  I contend that is a given under the premise that governments are the organized use of force.


That would, indeed, be a wonderful trick.  The fly in the ointment is that is exactly what everyone else believes that whatever they advocate would accomplish.  Be they socialist or anarchists, authoritarians or libertarians, republicans or monarchists.


Why isn't it?  When the US was founded, Congress was in session for only three weeks a year, and were not paid.  If we went back to that age, when serving was an obligation instead of a career, I would wager than things might improve significantly.

If you want to convince people that a well-functioning stateless society is possible, you'll have to address how the services monopolized by "the state" today could be sufficiently provided - including courts and law enforcement.  Although today these institutions have been monopolized and now basically serve to protect the interests on an elite, they are still necessary - albeit in a much different form - for solving a host of problems faced by a society, and discerning people will not take your ideas seriously if you can't address this fact.

No.  I expect that the anarchist poster that you were responding to in that post, and whom you implied that you would rob under such a state of anarchy, to be packing heat.  For that matter, I would expect him to be packing heat now.  Granny would be the soft target in this context.

I apologize if I was unclear, then.  I'm suggesting a polycentric legal order.