Topic: Nozick vs. de Molinari: The Narcisism of small differences (round 1) - page 2. (Read 1922 times)

So we are kind of saying protection was paramount in such a world and people wanted to go along with whatever lies these people would spin because it was generally the difference between a relatively certain world and an uncertain world.  Survival and death really.

I mean, if we look at the structure of Ancient Egyptian society with the Pharoahs for example, you kind of had the situation where the High Priest/s would tell everyone that the Pharoah was ordained by the Gods to be the leader.  And then the High Priest/s would get favours from the Pharoah in return.   So even back in the ancient world they had propaganda.  It wasn't simply a protection racket, there was more to it.

So it seems more likely to me that, and I'm only postulating here, I'm certainly no expert, that it had a lot to do with lack of resources.  Back when civilization started a hell of a lot more of people's resources would be allocated to farming than would be today.   Big groups were more likely to be able to defend from other groups.   There would have been a lot of fearfulness of a largely unknown world (which feeds into the religious ideas which provide answers to these questions).   I'm trying to put myself in the shoes of one of these people as to what life might have been like then.  And if there was a group that came along providing answers and protection from what must have been quite a scary world how I might react.

But at the end of the day, none of this is applicable anymore.  And government is like many of our old traditions that we are gradually purging, unnecessary and built on lies.  Just a convenience to keep people alive in a primitive world.

That's certainly mine and Rothbard's position, and for every State where we have any evidence, the evidence backs that up. de Molinari doesn't come at it from a moral POV, though, strictly economic, in the tradition of the classical liberals who were his contemporaries. I suggested that book because it addresses a few points in Nozick's formulation, namely on the natural monopoly angle.

You're not derailing the debate, the question of the origin of states (both empirical and theoretical) is *exactly* what myrkul and I are discussing.

As I understand it, he and de Molinari (the AnCaps) contend that states are born in blood, intrinsically coercive and destined to oppress their citizens.

Nozick and I (the Minarchists) allow for the possibility that states may come into existence as a natural monopoly on dispute resolution and use of retaliatory force, via the consent of the governed.

Here's a brief overview and a helpful graphic; thanks for dropping in our little debate!   

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism_and_minarchism

Well, the one thing we can pretty conclusively state, is that it was not via Nozick's invisible hand. The current best theory is that shortly (in historical terms) after hunter-gatherers settled down to be farmers, some of the roving groups of bandits decided that it would be a good deal easier to live off just one or two villages, could they but get them to go along with it, and the villagers found that being predictably robbed by only one group of bandits, and protected by them from others wasn't as bad as being randomly robbed by whoever came along.

Hopefully, I'm not derailing the thread here but I think the key for this is to know, how exactly did states come along originally?

I honestly don't know the answer to this, but I assume it had to do with various things, like for example, the fact that people only generally had primitive thought processes, the general lack of resources that meant people had to band together into groups and the bigger groups were able to get more resources, through either division of labour and warfare.

The fact that states arose in more than one place, I think, seems to attest to this fact.  That it was sort of an outgrowth of the tribal model.  Religion seems to have played a big part in it too, keeping the group together and following the leader.

But this was all pre-enlightenment pre-industrial revolution and the world is quite a different place today.  Free market economics and the wealth that it creates doesn't require these models anymore imo.

Sorry that's a bit scattershot, trying to articulate my thoughts as I'm having them.  I'll try to take a look at the books.

This is the discussion thread for iCEBREAKER and I regarding the minimal state vs. market anarchy.

This promises to be an interesting debate, as iCEBREAKER (and Nozick) contend that a minimal state will arise out of market anarchy, even without violating the Non-aggression principle.

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For those wishing to join the debate, or just follow along in the books as we argue points, here are the books (ePub format):
Anarchy, State, and Utopia, by Robert Nozick
The Production of Security, by Gustave de Molinari (a much shorter work)
The freeware program Calibre can be used to convert the files to your preferred format, and comes with reader software capable of reading either one without conversion.

Edit: I'll probably be drawing from Rothbard's critique of the book, as well, you may want to grab that, too: Robert Nozick and the Immaculate Conception of the State, by Murray Rothbard

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As of this writing, I am approximately 1/3 of the way through the book, and time and again, I see a glaring error in Nozick's reasoning. He appears to have never heard of arbitration. Arbitration, for those who are not familiar, is a private court system. An arbitrator acts as a judge between the two parties involved in the case. The arbitrator is not in the employ of either party, and so is neutral. Both parties agree to trust and abide by the judgment of the arbitrator, and if both parties cannot agree, another arbitrator is selected. Thus, arbitrators who are trusted and give fair judgments get more business, and arbitrators who are not trusted get less.

To be fair, both books focus primarily on the industry of Security, defense against threats both internal and external - in a State, provided by the police and military, respectively, in a market anarchy provided by a defense agency - yet it is through the industry of Justice which Nozick's minimal State acquires it's power. It claims the right to punish (his words, not mine) any who use justice methods not approved by it. So here, then, is the flaw - the violation of non-aggression - the monopolization of justice by a defense firm.

A second flaw is that he assumes justice is better served by a larger defense firm. In truth, justice is an entirely different matter, and the quality of the justice that you receive is not limited by the size of your defense firm, but rather the quality of the arbitrator selected. To be certain, defense, especially from external threats, is better provided by larger firms, but not so much so that smaller firms could not provide adequate defense, especially if aided by the larger ones in times of need. For internal defense - police work, essentially - a smaller firm might even be better suited. But defense is not justice, and it's foolish to conflate the two.

Much of Nozick's cases rest on the interaction between "independents" and clients of the dominant protection agency. This is where his third flaw comes in: The assumption that all interactions between one agency and another, or an agency and those "independents" would be settled violently. This is what happens when you cast a defense agency in the role of adjudicator. This, too, is a simple problem to resolve with arbitration. Agencies would have, between each other, agreements to arbitrate disputes when the client of one agency accuses the client of another of violating his or her rights. The client, when they signed up for the defense service, would have, as part of the contract, agreed to abide by this agreement, and therefore, any disputes between customers of two agencies would be solved via arbitration.

The independents pose a slightly different problem, for they have no agency with which they have contracted for their defense. They are, in effect, their own agency. As such, they would need to contract with the various other agencies to arbitrate any disputes which might occur. You might assume - correctly - that this would be a rather arduous task, especially if there are a large number of agencies with which to contract. Thankfully, a solution to this problem also presents itself: the general submission to arbitration. This is an agreement, directly with an arbitrator, that any disputes which arise will be dealt with via arbitration. This connects the "independent" to the rest of the agencies' arbitration agreements, without the tedious task of contracting with all the agencies. The independent simply chooses a few arbitrators whose judgment he trusts, signs a GSA with them, and goes on about his life. It would be even simpler if the arbitrators, amongst themselves, all agreed to honor one another's GSAs.

There is a second sort of independent, however - those who have not signed a GSA. These people, along with those who have broken their agreements to arbitrate, are outlaws, in the original, literal sense of the word: neither bound nor protected by the law. These people would be trusted very little, for they are not obligated to appear for arbitration in the event of an accusation. By the same token, however, they have no recourse to require others to appear for arbitration, for they've made no agreements to that effect, and nobody has made any agreements with them. They are, in the truest sense, on their own. This is, as you might imagine, not a pleasant state for most. Given that they cannot be trusted to appear for arbitration in the event of a dispute, few would deal with them, and those that did would likely not make long-term deals with them - strictly up-front payments.

This network of arbitration agreements, backed up with the prospect of outlawry for refusal to participate, not only keeps the State at bay by separating the industries of justice and security, but provides incentive to keep society civil, without resorting to the threat of violence.