Topic: Question for the "anarchists" in the crowd. - page 3. (Read 5889 times)

You mean... when people don't have to take personal responsibility, they don't? 

I'd say it's their fault for the first set of illnesses, and hers for the second. The first ones, they should have asked, the second, she'd been informed, and even seeking employment in food service is a bad move.

Yeah, but that's their fault, not hers. It remains the case that if this were really an important issue, then they would ask.  One can even argue that statism make people more vulnerable to being taken advantage of in several ways because people are not used to vetting their trading partners. This is one of the reasons why I feel Trendon Shavers was able to con so many people.

This makes sense. Of course, it's questionable whether her employers ever asked, or even would have thought to ask.

Because not all flavors prefer that term, since it has negative connotations in certain circles.  It's also not literally accurate, since it literally means "no government" and not "self government".  Any particular individual can either govern himself, or he cannot.  He may not have ever been taught to govern himself, as is the present case with way too many publicly educated Americans; or he may have simply never accepted basic mores with which to govern himself with; or he simply may be mentally incapable of reliablely governing himself.  I can certainly accept that 98+% of the adult population is capable of self-governance from the age of reason (roughly 12, depending upon the person) till either death or senility, but it cannot be argued that those people actually will.  In a truly anarchist/libertarian/minimalist/volunteerist society, most crimes today won't be crimes and the crimes that remain will have immediate and permanent effects upon the violator; so it's not hard to imagine a society with a vanishingly small incidence of violent crime simply due to Darwinistic 'survival-of-the-least-offensive' forces.  Still, there will always be that vanishingly small percentage of people who are actually incapable of reliable self-governance, which is why I consider a truly anarchist society (The Probability Broach) to be impossible.  A more likely outcome would be voluntary self-identification, such as the 'phyles' concept (The Diamond Age).  Either way, we can't get there from here, so at some point we are going to have to transition through a harsh period of hightened suffering and violence, (Alongside Night) which is exactly the condition that Karl Marx suggested would be the best opprotunity for socialists to change the nature of socity itself into his dream world.  Obviously, history shows us that socialism doesn't work, but that same history also shows us that such retoric does work, if the true goal is snatching of power by a core of like minded sociopaths.  If any minimalist society is to ever become real, it's only possible if by a deliberate plan involving years of education and development.  Periods of civil unrest are unlikely to result in a peaceful & anarchist society and are very likely to result in a dictator (in fact, although not likely in name).

It's not a flaw in reasoning, it's a misunderstanding of the situation at hand, but the reasoning still is the same. It's the responsibility of the people hiring her to ask her if she has tested positive for this disease, or to check references to see if prior employes are sick, etc. If she deliberately misrepresents this, saying she was never told she had the disease or saying she didn't have prior employers (which is different from saying she doesn't want to provide references), then she would again be acting fraudulently. In a lot of anarchist societies, this would get you a trade ban which is effectively death by starvation.

Possibly some charitable group would offer to feed her if she agreed to quarantine herself.

The one flaw in your reasoning is that Mary worked as a cook in people's homes. No middlemen like a restaurant. Also, she didn't know she was infected, and even after being quarantined and informed that she was, continued to uphold that she was not, putting the responsibility not on the bacteria, but her.

I'm pretty sure it was the typhoid and not Mary that was causing harm. This is a pretty important distinction because I don't see Mary as having violated the NAP. Ultimately, the people who were infected by her cooking were responsible for their own infection because they didn't demand an infection-free guarantee from the restaurant they were eating at. However, if there were such a guarantee in place, then it would be the fault of the restaurant for employing her when there was a risk of her being infected, and this leaves them open to the liability. If they did check with Mary on her condition, and she lied about it, then she has acted fraudulently and there are anarchist solutions for this.

Anarchism does require people to demand the safety they want, though. The power comes from the interaction at the time of trade. If people truly don't think that infectious diseases are a major issue with respect to eating out, they they will risk it. Otherwise, they will make the choice to demand their food sources will have liability.

Unlike the Japanese interned in camps during WW2 Mary was causing harm whether she accepted that or not so both the Anarchists and the Libertarians would likely agree that she must be quarantined or rendered harmless in some way.

The OP argument seems to be suggesting that her right to work and freedom must be held higher than everyone else's right not to be killed in order to satisfy the NAP? Further it sugests that spontaneous order fails because the outcome of either idiom is the forced incarceration or ostracism of the dangerous individual simply because they don't know or don't care if they're dangerous.

What does federally mandated force do other than allow one group to overpower another or make you comfortable since you don't need to take responsibility for any of their decisions?

As an aside why is "anarchists" in the title in quotation marks?

History is full of tales of sick merchants being given a bed to recover in, only to die and pass on the disease to those around them. Of course, they didn't understand the vectors, at that time, either, so now it might be possible to be compassionate and safe at the same time.

And this is, indeed, an excellent article.  However, while I can see the point that pivate business owners (restraunts, hotels, etc.) would be able to refuse entry to known carriers, this is still a far cry from preventing exposure, although likely a fairly effective one in most situations.  Also, I agree that those who know they are ill are going to want treatment and desire to not get others sick, so are inclined towards voluntary sequesteration anyway.  Still, this method of "protecting society" seems cruel to the ill, although practially no worse than the statist version.  I don't know, in a lot of ways it seems wrong to deny even an ill man a safe harbor in a winter storm or a drink of water in a summer heat wave, but then feelings don't make for good public policy anyway.

Yes, indeed.  That is a good point.

Like preventing forest fires. Good point.

I think the original question begs the premise that viral outbreaks are bad for society. Yes, they cause people to die now, but the ones that survive have a better immunity and going forward humans have a sustainable interaction with the virus that is now in the environment. The problem with the statist response is that it leaves us open to a larger outbreak of the virus within the society that has a larger potential for harm.

And thank you for the vocabulary correction!

Great article. Thanks for posting it.

This topic has already been discussed by renowned authors, like Robert Murphy: https://mises.org/daily/2635


Great point. If you require previous knowledge of every possible outcome of a particular move, you'll never move at all.
It's a known fact - thanks to sound economic theory - that free markets are superior to coercive monopolies.

You say that Mary is a household cook. Who is she a cook for? Talk to her clients and inform them of her condition. If they have any sanity, they would fire her in a heartbeat. If not, well, anything goes between consenting adults I guess.

I have always be intellectually curious of cryptoanarchism and agorism, but the more I am involved with bitcoin the more technocratic I become.

I guess the theoretical answer would be that the victims of Ms. Mary would go to their favorite enforcers and tell them that by the negligence of Ms. Mary that they are entitled to compensation.  Then they would go to Mary's employer, union or whatever and come to a agreement of compensation.  Mary is fired and tries for a new job but the unions/employment companies know who Mary is and lost a lot of money on her so they tell her to get lost.

If this would actually happen, I don't think so anymore.  The fact that people on this forum won't even take responsibility for their investments shows that when it is theoretical people will be on board, but when someone has to actually step up, cowardice will defeat *anarchos.

No, that action directly caused the typhoid outbreaks for which she was responsible. We could probably go back and forth over direct/indirect, but the fact is, she caused those outbreaks. Until her first quarantine, she may have been unwitting, but even accidental harm still requires recompense.

Now, this is a fine point. Still, it only works up until that first quarantine.

If she was innocent (not "not guilty," innocent - totally free of any wrong-doing) the first time, she was the second. Since it's doubtful she was not a carrier, then it's doubtful she was innocent.

They sure don't read like guidelines. They read like laws. The only time Maybery's laws can violate each other is when you've agreed to do something that would infringe upon someone's person or property. If you can suspend your duty to follow the second law simply by agreeing to violate it, why have it at all?

Also, the NAP is violated as a matter of course by government agents as well, and as you say, society persists, though certainly not a peaceful one.

Well, first, to answer your question, there are a number of ways a health inspection agency can be funded without taxation. First and foremost, is the donation (charity) model. A charity organization formed to promote the public health might come in and ask if they can test the food, etc. Alternatively, it could be funded by the institutions and restaurants (and possibly even private residences) that it inspects. That little "A" sticker in the window might be worn as a badge of pride, rather than simply the required cost of doing business. (Yes, I know those are a recent innovation, but you get the point.) Note that neither of these methods really give the health agency the ability to force their way in and demand an inspection, but if people are getting sick, you're probably going to be calling someone in to find out why anyway.

Secondly, to improve upon your example:
"Mary would have been arrested by the 'medical establishment', and her own security company would have immediately challenged the quarantine."

Mary most likely would not have been arrested, but if she were determined to be the likely cause of the outbreaks, she would have been tested. Diplomacy would most likely have had to been used, perhaps using the ploy that it was to clear her of suspicion, rather than to prove she's guilty. You be surprised how many people agree to being tested, if only you tell them that it's to prove them innocent, rather than to prove them guilty.

Once proof came back that she was, indeed, the carrier, most likely she would have had to agree to not seek employment in the food service industry. She might have had to pay restitution for the damages she caused, but the judgments would likely have been light. As you pointed out, she didn't mean any harm, and like the "rain god", probably simply thought people got typhoid a lot in the US.

On that second offense, though, that's when things start getting harsh. Even if she didn't flee her job at the woman's hospital, she still took it, after agreeing not to. At that point she is forcibly quarantined, and allowed to support herself, probably through a laundress job there at the facility.

I'm just asking for some speculation.  Some reasoned arguments.  I'm not asking for the world, just a little guidance about how an ancap society could have managed this case (or a similar one) without violating it's own principles, without inaction (which would have been catastrophic in this particular case), and (hopefully) without the degree of violations of Mary Mallory's rights as happend to her in the real history.  Certainly not with the end result being that someone had to assassinate her.

I'm really dissapointed in you guys.