3 ms·

The point is, that when it's me with a shotgun or a hired private protection agency, we enforce property rights at the expense of property owners. When it's gov

by snitko 13y ago

The point is, that when it's me with a shotgun or a hired private protection agency, we enforce property rights at the expense of property owners. When it's government, it takes someone else's money by force to provide this service. Thus, with government, you have double violence and a lot less accountability, because you simply can't stop paying if you dislike the service.

dragonwriter 13y ago
> The point is, that when it's me with a shotgun or a hired private protection agency, we enforce property rights at the expense of property owners. Same thing with the government. > you simply can't stop paying if you dislike the service. You can do that to governments, too. Of course, many governmens don't like it if you do that, and retaliate. Of course, individual actors who assume defense of their own property rights and become governments (whether they acknowledge the name or not) by getting others to sign on with them also do that, and, unlike modern representative governments, tend not to have even theoretically available constraints to limit the extent of their retaliation.
foobarbazqux 13y ago
Of course you can stop paying the IRS if you dislike the service. You just end up in jail or with your wages garnished. Similarly, if you dislike the service of your private protection agency (which is still a government, just not monopolistic), then if you stop paying you'll just end up dead, unless you can pay for equivalent protection from someone else. This is how mafia protection works, for example. Currently, we don't kill people for running out of money, and debtor's prisons are illegal. Furthermore, in such a system if you have more money than the guy next to you, you can pay to have more rights than the guy next to you. A philosophy of a la carte rights to the highest bidder is absolutely materialistic and denies the fundamental equality of all humans. Why revert to being animals? Why do you believe that some humans are more valuable than other humans? Yes, abuse of government authority is unpleasant, but if like me you find it distasteful that the US can abuse its economic power to trample people in other nations around the world, how do you tolerate the idea of billionaires doing whatever the hell they please, including bribing all the "private protection agencies" of the people that get in their way? All that happens in the canonical libertarian ideal is that there are even less restrictions on the behavior of the very rich than we have today.
- snitko 13y ago
  Thanks, I think your questions are important, because those are the exact questions people often ask when presented the idea of private protection agencies and other libertarian ideas. So I'd like to address them and maybe try to demonstrate that those ideas would indeed work (so please let me know if I managed to convince you at least a little bit). >Similarly, if you dislike the service of your private protection agency (which is still a government, just not monopolistic), then if you stop paying you'll just end up dead, unless you can pay for equivalent protection from someone else. So, at the very least I already have a choice between one protection agency and another. If one promises to kill me if I cancel my subscription, I simply go to another agency that will be happy to have my money and ask them to protect me against the one I dislike. Because both agencies are in the business to make money, they realize that violence is more expensive and nothing happens. Then people would usually say "But what if two agencies form a cartel"? Well, in that case, nothing really prevents a third agency to spring up as a competition and take customers away. Historically, cartels break down very fast without any intervention because one of the cartel members usually breaks the rules or an outside competitor emerges. Also, intimidating even one customer because he decides to unsubscribe is very likely to cause a chain reaction where a company simply loses its business. A cartel, though, is still a better situation than a government. If a cartel decides to kill or detain anyone who's not paying, it cannot actually claim, like government does, that it's a legitimate action, because people would take it for what it is - a violent action by a criminal gang. A great majority of people would be very likely to at least stop paying the cartel as soon as they realize it doesn't do them any good and some violent resistance is also very likely. A cartel is in the business of making money, thus it is in its interest to make more money and attract more customers. They can't print money, nor can they steal without losing a lot of customers. >if like me you find it distasteful that the US can abuse its economic power to trample people in other nations around the world, how do you tolerate the idea of billionaires doing whatever the hell they please Billionaires can't really do what they please to the extent a government can. First of all, any violence that is likely to happen would be paid for out of this billionaires pockets. Governments, on the other hand, don't pay for violence. They steal money from taxpayers, then use these money to finance wars, steal more money and indoctrinate people, convincing them that what they do is not actually theft. I don't really see rich people starting wars or intimidating other people. Why? Because it's a costly activity. Creating actual value is profitable. Inducing violence to steal money is only profitable when you can steal more than you spend in the long run.

by snitko 13y ago

dragonwriter 13y ago

> The point is, that when it's me with a shotgun or a hired private protection agency, we enforce property rights at the expense of property owners. Same thing with the government. > you simply can't stop paying if you dislike the service. You can do that to governments, too. Of course, many governmens don't like it if you do that, and retaliate. Of course, individual actors who assume defense of their own property rights and become governments (whether they acknowledge the name or not) by getting others to sign on with them also do that, and, unlike modern representative governments, tend not to have even theoretically available constraints to limit the extent of their retaliation.

foobarbazqux 13y ago

Of course you can stop paying the IRS if you dislike the service. You just end up in jail or with your wages garnished. Similarly, if you dislike the service of your private protection agency (which is still a government, just not monopolistic), then if you stop paying you'll just end up dead, unless you can pay for equivalent protection from someone else. This is how mafia protection works, for example. Currently, we don't kill people for running out of money, and debtor's prisons are illegal. Furthermore, in such a system if you have more money than the guy next to you, you can pay to have more rights than the guy next to you. A philosophy of a la carte rights to the highest bidder is absolutely materialistic and denies the fundamental equality of all humans. Why revert to being animals? Why do you believe that some humans are more valuable than other humans? Yes, abuse of government authority is unpleasant, but if like me you find it distasteful that the US can abuse its economic power to trample people in other nations around the world, how do you tolerate the idea of billionaires doing whatever the hell they please, including bribing all the "private protection agencies" of the people that get in their way? All that happens in the canonical libertarian ideal is that there are even less restrictions on the behavior of the very rich than we have today.

snitko 13y ago
Thanks, I think your questions are important, because those are the exact questions people often ask when presented the idea of private protection agencies and other libertarian ideas. So I'd like to address them and maybe try to demonstrate that those ideas would indeed work (so please let me know if I managed to convince you at least a little bit). >Similarly, if you dislike the service of your private protection agency (which is still a government, just not monopolistic), then if you stop paying you'll just end up dead, unless you can pay for equivalent protection from someone else. So, at the very least I already have a choice between one protection agency and another. If one promises to kill me if I cancel my subscription, I simply go to another agency that will be happy to have my money and ask them to protect me against the one I dislike. Because both agencies are in the business to make money, they realize that violence is more expensive and nothing happens. Then people would usually say "But what if two agencies form a cartel"? Well, in that case, nothing really prevents a third agency to spring up as a competition and take customers away. Historically, cartels break down very fast without any intervention because one of the cartel members usually breaks the rules or an outside competitor emerges. Also, intimidating even one customer because he decides to unsubscribe is very likely to cause a chain reaction where a company simply loses its business. A cartel, though, is still a better situation than a government. If a cartel decides to kill or detain anyone who's not paying, it cannot actually claim, like government does, that it's a legitimate action, because people would take it for what it is - a violent action by a criminal gang. A great majority of people would be very likely to at least stop paying the cartel as soon as they realize it doesn't do them any good and some violent resistance is also very likely. A cartel is in the business of making money, thus it is in its interest to make more money and attract more customers. They can't print money, nor can they steal without losing a lot of customers. >if like me you find it distasteful that the US can abuse its economic power to trample people in other nations around the world, how do you tolerate the idea of billionaires doing whatever the hell they please Billionaires can't really do what they please to the extent a government can. First of all, any violence that is likely to happen would be paid for out of this billionaires pockets. Governments, on the other hand, don't pay for violence. They steal money from taxpayers, then use these money to finance wars, steal more money and indoctrinate people, convincing them that what they do is not actually theft. I don't really see rich people starting wars or intimidating other people. Why? Because it's a costly activity. Creating actual value is profitable. Inducing violence to steal money is only profitable when you can steal more than you spend in the long run.