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Look, I believe that the proposed system could work for people on average. The mafia works well for the people it protects, on average. Ask your average Sicil

Look, I believe that the proposed system could work for people on average. The mafia works well for the people it protects, on average. Ask your average Sicilian shop owner if they are happy to pay the mafia for protection and they will tell you that yes they are, otherwise their store would surely get broken into. My problem is with the edge cases. What happens if I don't have any money, insurance, friends, family, or employment prospects? For example, if I'm schizophrenic, addicted to drugs and alcohol, and on the street? Outside of charitable giving, there's no guarantee that other customers will care about me, no company cares about me, so who goes to jail when I get murdered because I defecated on your lawn last night? As far as rich people go, basically they tend to run corporations and history shows that they abuse their power as much as possible to drive prices down. We see this with oil, diamonds, running shoes, electronics, etc. etc. etc. Corporations would be even more able to buy laws than they already are. Want to dump some nuclear waste in the river in China? Well, if it's going to make your profits go up enough in the US, you can probably afford to buy the regulations you need. To some extent this already happens. I want less of this, not more. It's strange, I'm having the same argument in a related thread concurrently, but basically my ideal is the opposite of yours: one government, one currency, one set of laws, no borders, no passports. I think they're about as likely as each other though, that is to say not at all anytime soon.

snitko 13y ago
>My problem is with the edge cases. What happens if a government starts abusing its power, spying on its own citizens, starting wars at their expense and detaining and killing innocent people all over the world? Or what if a person receiving a welfare check drinks and gambles on it? Because if we are to play the "what if" game, we should play it both ways. You can't completely avoid edge cases in any system. But you can minimize them and you can also be moral. Edge cases are no justification for the existence of government and legalized theft. If you really care about those unfortunate people, convince me to donate to a charity! Don't come to me with some IRS officers and steal my money because you think it's the right thing to do. Also a note about mafia. > Ask your average Sicilian shop owner if they are happy to pay the mafia for protection and they will tell you that yes they are, otherwise their store would surely get broken into. In this case, the situation is also distorted by the existence of a government. Government collects taxes and it doesn't care that much about the actual protection of people from mafia. It also controls tightly any possible market-solutions, making it prohibitively expensive for private companies to enter the protection market. Mafia knows it and exploits the situation, basically establishing a monopoly in one particular region.
- foobarbazqux 13y ago
  > What happens if a government starts abusing its power, spying on its own citizens, starting wars at their expense and detaining and killing innocent people all over the world? You mean like the US? This is why I like the idea of one world government. Let's treat each country in the world like a single individual, such that we have about 200 people on the planet. To me, this approximates how an anarcho-capitalist society would function, since there is (basically) no governing body. Yet the rich individuals in this system quite clearly abuse the poor individuals. Life is very nice though if you're a rich individual. I cannot see any guarantee that this won't happen with true anarchy. If we had one world government, everybody would be subject to the same laws, there would be no outsourcing of torture and environmental destruction, there would be no military, and there would be no war. Importantly, your lot in life would not depend on where you were born, since there would be no immigration barriers. And there would be the full spectrum of political choices available. Why is it such a problem that the US government collects taxes from a population earning fiat currency in an economy that the government provides? I like paying taxes, it keeps the country running. It also means that those people less fortunate than me are guaranteed some level of basic protection.

snitko 13y ago

>My problem is with the edge cases. What happens if a government starts abusing its power, spying on its own citizens, starting wars at their expense and detaining and killing innocent people all over the world? Or what if a person receiving a welfare check drinks and gambles on it? Because if we are to play the "what if" game, we should play it both ways. You can't completely avoid edge cases in any system. But you can minimize them and you can also be moral. Edge cases are no justification for the existence of government and legalized theft. If you really care about those unfortunate people, convince me to donate to a charity! Don't come to me with some IRS officers and steal my money because you think it's the right thing to do. Also a note about mafia. > Ask your average Sicilian shop owner if they are happy to pay the mafia for protection and they will tell you that yes they are, otherwise their store would surely get broken into. In this case, the situation is also distorted by the existence of a government. Government collects taxes and it doesn't care that much about the actual protection of people from mafia. It also controls tightly any possible market-solutions, making it prohibitively expensive for private companies to enter the protection market. Mafia knows it and exploits the situation, basically establishing a monopoly in one particular region.

foobarbazqux 13y ago
> What happens if a government starts abusing its power, spying on its own citizens, starting wars at their expense and detaining and killing innocent people all over the world? You mean like the US? This is why I like the idea of one world government. Let's treat each country in the world like a single individual, such that we have about 200 people on the planet. To me, this approximates how an anarcho-capitalist society would function, since there is (basically) no governing body. Yet the rich individuals in this system quite clearly abuse the poor individuals. Life is very nice though if you're a rich individual. I cannot see any guarantee that this won't happen with true anarchy. If we had one world government, everybody would be subject to the same laws, there would be no outsourcing of torture and environmental destruction, there would be no military, and there would be no war. Importantly, your lot in life would not depend on where you were born, since there would be no immigration barriers. And there would be the full spectrum of political choices available. Why is it such a problem that the US government collects taxes from a population earning fiat currency in an economy that the government provides? I like paying taxes, it keeps the country running. It also means that those people less fortunate than me are guaranteed some level of basic protection.