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What you don't see here is that if you have a government, it inevitably imposes the rules the majority agree with upon the minority who disagree. There is no wa
by snitko 13y ago
What you don't see here is that if you have a government, it inevitably imposes the rules the majority agree with upon the minority who disagree. There is no way for the minority to do anything but wait until the next election and hope. So conflicts are not really resolved, but rather one side orders the other to shut up and do as they say.
A true resolution would be when both sides agree on the price. An simple example would be this:
I would like to throw a party on my lawn, but my neighbor disagrees. I really want that party though, cos it's my birthday, so I would go to my neighbor and try to convince him to let me have a party. I can see he wouldn't appreciate the noise so I would offer him something in exchange for his inconvenience: maybe I would let him use my bathtub for the next month, or maybe I would simply give him some money. If it wasn't just my one neighbor, but maybe 3 or 5 of them, I would have to convince them all and pay them all and that would make my party very expensive, so I would consider cancelling it.
Now on a larger scale, imagine you'd have various law firms, each protecting their clients interests and bargaining on their behalf. So, for instance, clients of one firm wouldn't like gay people to marry, while clients of that other firm, obviously many of the are gay, would be in favor of it. Even if we suppose that those who oppose gay marriage are the majority, they still probably wouldn't be able to outbid the minority here. That's because when people are asked to pay to teach others how to live, it becomes painfully obvious most of them are not ready spend their money on it.
- p1esk 13y agoEven your simple example of throwing a party breaks down in the real world. What do I do if my neighbor throws a loud party without asking my permission? Do I go and confront him? What if he tells me to f* off? Do you see where this leads to?
- snitko 13y agoIf he tells you to fuck off, there are numerous ways to get back at him. In the real world, you'd call your protection agency, which would in turn call his protection agency and they would settle the dispute for you (without actually going to war with each other, as some people would suggest). The difference from the current system would be that you wouldn't have a monopoly on laws and people would be compensated for their inconvenience.
- galadriel 13y agoIn real world, your neighbor is the local warlord, and you cannot possibly summon enough amount of army to counter his army. The only guy who can stop him is the guy with bigger army somewhere in capital city, and he couldn't care less about you. Welcome to feudalism. History is rife with the system you are proposing, and it did not went well for humanity.
- snitko 13y agoCan you summon enough amount of army to battle the global warlord which is the government?
- galadriel 13y agoYes, if I can convince other, I can summon army of 100 million voters who can change the system overnight (well, once every 2 years) and make whoever they want their global warlord to be. The global warlord works for them, and not the other way round. The fact is, people are happy enough with the system as it is, and they do vote out the "mafia thug" if he acts particularly bad. This global warlord requires money to maintain its strength and most people are more than happy to pay their share of taxes.
- snitko 13y agoSo wouldn't it be much easier to convince 100 people to act against your local warlord than 1 million people to act against the global warlord?
- galadriel 13y agoIt is easier to control one entity that has monopoly over force and can be ruled by reason, than to control gazzillion small forces which are accountable to no-one. We also have these local warlords that you speak of. They are called the police and the mayor.
- nemothekid 13y agoThis breakdowns tremendously in other situations, mainly because of imperfect information. Humans are notoriously bad at pricing things. Lets say I'm a very wealthy man and I'm also a serial killer. In your example, I assume I could just pay any amount of money to kill someone. I'm a wealthy guy, and I go around killing 8 year olds and paying the parents huge sums of money (10 - 20 million dollars, who would refuse?) However, what is the real price of an 8 year old boy? Lets say I go and kill little Mark Zuckerberg. By doing so I have zapped almost 100B dollars from the economy and paid his parents 10-20 million. I'm doing a disservice to everyone by killing him, should I also pay everyone who Zuckerberg will make a future millionaire, how will I know this? Even in your example, how does his neighbor know what the perceived cost of your action are? What if his property value goes down, because of your party and noise making? How will ever be able to calculate that cost? What if he has his elderly sick mother staying over the weekend? How does he put a price on his mother's piece of mind?
- snitko 13y agoPrice is subjective and only depends on your action. If you take a deal, it means you are satisfied with the price. There is no real price. I'm pretty sure a large portion of society would bet against you if you decided to kill an 8 year old boy. You would never have enough money to outbid the society. It doesn't matter how much money you pay to the parents, the society would still be willing to put you in jail, since it doesn't want people killing other people, no matter how rich they are.
- galadriel 13y agoYou can go right now to Liberia, hire enough mercenaries, and start killing bunch of people for fun if you want to. The entire society of Liberia wouldn't able to stop you from doing so. Let's see how willing they are in putting people behind jail. It is the ultimate paradise of weak government, one that cannot/will not protect its own people. On the plus side, you can avoid paying any tax.
- snitko 13y ago