Topic: My doubts about anarchy - page 5. (Read 18191 times)

This is all very philosophical. You speak of what is justified, of rights, of how things ought best be done. None of this has anything to do with the practical running of the state - and if you're talking about rights,  you are talking about setting up a state. Rights are something only subjects of states have. They are not something you are born with, they are something you are granted as a subject, after your status as a subject is confirmed. Free people have only abilities. But I digress.

You say the idea is to make people diffuse their power. How? That's the crux of my doubt right there.

Then people may shares apartments or reduce consumption to reduce cost.

However, don't forget that cheaper labor force have effects on everything else. It may leads to cheaper goods.

To play devil's advocate: What about when competition drives wages below the point needed to actually pay for living expenses?

The unemployment rate for teenager is pretty damn high. Today it's 14 to 15 percents. Back in 2000, this rate was 33%. The minimum wage may not be the primary cause of job losses, but it doesn't help.

Remember, children and teenagers will work for peanuts. The adults will raise the specter of exploitation in order to cut the competition out.

When you have old people like FatherMcGruder saying that people should deserve fair wages, they have an interest in destroying their competitors' ability to find jobs.

The law of economics dictates what can or cannot happen. What do you suppose when we don't pay heed to economic laws? Well, we either die or become poorer.

I kind of see your argument. Sort of like people without acceptable means to repay are charged higher interest which further degrades their ability to repay. Logic would dictate to charge them less interest and more favorable loans to enhance their ability to repay.

However, it is not the "sharks" asking for the money. If the fish don't accept the conditions the "sharks" will not eat.

As far as Black Mail, take the blame for what you did wrong and there will be no Black Mail.

Sickness, Forced Labor (sweet shops), etc... I do believe that this is covered under the law. But granted, people will let themselves be subjected in order to survive.  In America (if your a legal citizen), I don't know why you would though. You can force an employer to pay minimum wage, even the people that are not getting minimum wage would be "off the books" and tax free and would counteract the lower pay.

But if all you are saying is people take advantage of people, Ahh... Yea, of course they do.  And probably always will.  Its the Nature of things, the scorpion said to the fox.

I would say that they are delusional. I acknowledge that there is a distorting influence on the labor market caused by the state. That does not equate to "using violence to force people to work".

It makes about as much sense as saying "group X is doing something to group Y that I don't like, but group Y doesn't seem to care about. this gives me justification to use physical violence against group X".

No. It's not necessary about humans being are better than other so they get leadership.

Rather, it is a communication problem. For example, it doesn't make sense to have a flat hierarchy in a large organization such as google because the information that flow from the development team to the decision maker would be overwhelming. That is why they employ managers.

Depending on how the hierarchy is organized, an organization could be really slow or really fast acting. Their speed in being able to run through a OODA loop will determine if they will live to see another day in marketplace or win the war.

This is not necessary about dominance and who's better or who's not! That's true for a few types of hierarchical organization, but not all!

The Bitcoin community is an example of an efficient organization organized through multiple type of hierarchical structures. The entrepreneurs organize the enterprises and business needed to succeed. The developers make improvements to the bitcoin client. The moderators clean up the forum of spams and abusive users. The forum acts as a medium of communication, coordinating economic, development, and marketing effort. A lot of those structures are parallel allowing the Bitcoin project to execute at multiple fronts.

Which is what both parts always say in a conflict.

edit.

So your system would check every transaction between people making sure that there was no "unfairness"?  Life is unfair.  If A agrees, however reluctantly, he does so because he thinks the transaction will make him better off.  Even if it is not the ideal exchange he could hope for.  And while I agree people should try to present "fair" trades to the best of their abilities, what system would you support that would ensure that all such trades are "fair"? 

There really are only two cases.  Either A is coerced, or he agrees (reluctantly or enthusiastically) because he will be better off than not making the trade.  Even if it is a really shitty trade.

Now I agree that people shouldn't try to take advantage of others who are a bad position, but that's more in the realm of ethics.

Traditional anarchism, that is a complete lack of hierarchy cannot exist because humans are not created equal as far as abilities go.  Some will naturally gain "dominance" over others.  Some people want leaders.  I just don't understand why you would think that somehow we can do away with all authority and hierarchy in human society.  Would you do away with families since parents are hierarchically above children? 

omg

There are three cases:

1) A agrees freely to trade with B.
2) A agrees but not freely to trade with B.
3) A does not agree and B takes A's product anyway.

The first case is a cooperative exchange. If A has some weakness that might compel him to accept an unfair deal (lack of access to a market, an addiction, hunger, sickness, a lack of access to the means of production, blackmail etc.) and B takes advantage of that weakness, we have capitalism, and subtle theft, in the second case. The third case represents straight-up theft, but it is also capitalism because B took advantage of A's weakness in his inability to prevent the theft.

If the ten spears covers the cost of building a wheel and its bill of materials, neither caveman takes a profit. If the wheel was actually worth five spears, the wheel maker would have taken a five spear profit from the buyer.

Okay, Mom.

As I've stated before, I get suspicious when people try to justify something with natural law or God. Lost Cause apologists do the same thing.

I agree that individuals have the right to the products of their labor and that they have the right to trade without coercion. However, an exchange between an employer and his employee is inherently coercive because the employer is in charge of his employee. I agree, for the most part anyway, that we can only subjectively value the products of our labor. I happen to agree that markets are useful for determining value, but acknowledge that there are other useful ways, but the producer of a given product deserves the entirety of that value. For doing no work, a middleman deserves nothing. Now, when a merchant transports products to foreign markets by his own labor, he deserves compensation for that expense. But he has no right to take advantage of the products' builders for their lack of access to foreign markets.

No, I'm not. Capitalism consists of authoritarian relationships. Whether these relationships involve two people or a multitude, it's capitalism.

Capitalism is a choice (although some might find themselves coerced into behaving capitalistically). You have to choose to take advantage of others.

Capitalists depend on domination to profit. As such, states will exist in any capitalist society.

I'm a spelling/grammar nazi and a keen student of linguistics in general... Where do I send you a tip for this enlightenment?

You are confusing violence with aggression. I'm against aggression, not violence. Aggression is the initiation of violence. I'm against the initiation of violence. I see nothing wrong with responding to aggression with violence.

In other words, "he started it!"

So you must forever maintain the ability to counteract aggression with the ability to be aggressive yourself.  It must also be presumed that your defense must be of an equal or greater ability than any possible aggressor otherwise your position would fall.

This sounds very familiar to me for some reason. Oh, yea, the arms race that our human history has maintained since someone through the first rock, spear, arrow, bullet, missile, etc...

And yet we seem to still have wars, or recently as in Libya, a Non-War according to the President.

Aggression is the initiation of force. To say "the initiation of aggression" is to say something redundant. If you are the aggressor and I respond with violence, that's self-defense, not aggression on my part.

You obviously didn't bother to read my entire post since I anticipated such an objection and have already refuted it before you even posted it.


Clearly, I don't believe we can "think" away aggression since I just admitted as much and explained why that's not a problem for anarchism.

Initiation of aggression?

Aggression is part of our natural system of life, why do so many think they can "think" it away?

Inter-species aggression is higher then intra-species aggression (especially if you eat meat, but even not you kill the plant to eat it). Aggression within the species follows a logical flow, we try to avoid it (because it is safer), but when we think it is the only way to get a point across or to acquire something, we will dive into aggression like any other species.

You can't wish away aggression, you can't make it go away through laws; it is a natural law of nature. One day when any resource you want can be given to you at little or no cost, we "might" evolve out of aggression.

BTW: Freedom of Speech in the U.S. gave you the right to voice your opinion "through aggression".  We will also keep that right, "with aggression".
Many in China are using "aggression" to acquire that right; As China is using "aggression" to keep it from them.

I think you're over-complicating things. To draw an analogy. The strict technical meaning of the word atheist literally means someone that lacks a belief in God. However, this strict definition would also include babies, the mentally ill, etc. In practice, an atheist isn't just someone that lacks belief. It's someone that has considered the evidence and found it lacking. In otherwords, they actively disbelieve (note: I'm not claiming atheists are certain or that they are making a knowledge claim, they are just being skeptical) Likewise, just as the strict definition of an anarchist is someone that doesn't approve of rulers, in practice there is something more to it than that. There is a rationalization for WHY rulers are illigetimate.

So far, Stephan Kinsella has put it best for me:


The reason why you can't justify aggression is because by entering into a rational argument you are already presupposing that violence isn't the better way to settle that particular disagreement. Otherwise, why are you bothering with discussion instead of putting a bullet in my head? Aggression ends discussion rather than being an outcome of it.

The rest of anarcho-capitalism and Libertarianism can be condensed into the single idea of the assignment of property rights. Namely, the first person to make a claim on X has the better claim on X because everyone else is a latecomer. This, of course, includes my own body. If some latecomer comes along and says that they have a better claim to my property then what's to stop yet another latecomer from coming along and making the same argument against them? Therefore, anyone that advocates property rights, to be consistent, has to recognize the prior-later distinction. Since the first person to claim X owns X, they can also contractually transfer ownership to another party. So the only two legitimate ways of owning property are homesteading and free trade.

Of course, anarchism is not a Utopian ideal. There will always be people that wish to use aggression to accomplish their goals. The point of anarchism is to make these people diffuse their power across everyone instead of concentrating it into the hands a single asshole, or a group of them. In fact, the real Utopians are the ones that think they can use aggression to accomplish their goals without it leading to corruption and abuse. Also, just because we have a system of property rights doesn't mean we expect everyone will follow them. I have no doubt that there will always be thieves but that's an issue to be dealt with technologically, better theft prevention, etc. Anarchism makes sense exactly BECAUSE Utopian ideals are nothing but fantasy.