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My claim in this thread, the thing we're ostensibly debating, is this: any reasonable political system will, at some point, have to force someone to do somethin

• etherael 12y ago
  > But ultimately, fundamentally, pedantic games aside, if you want a bunch of people to work together closely, you're eventually gonna have to use some force against some bad actors. For starters, Anarchocapitalism isn't really a political system so much as one of the ways which using free market organisation alone, society might end up according to game theoretic principles of mutual self interest of individual actors. Anarchocapitalism is not about elimination of the use of force. It is about the elimination of A) Political authority as a concept, that is, there is no singular party vested with special privileges that all people are supposed to acknowledge and respect and B) Aggression as distinct from force. That is the initiation of force. For example, acting against someone because they don't want to pay a fee you decree by political authority that you owe them, despite the fact that they have no relationship or agreement with you in any way shape or form and have never accepted any form of service from you, which is both force and aggression (taxation). As opposed to forcible self defense from an attacker intent on causing you physical harm, which is force, but not aggression. (self defense) Holders of political authority throughout history have been heavy on the use of aggression as distinct from force, this is what anarchocapitalists mostly take issue with. They are not pacifists, force in self defense is perfectly acceptable. To recap, the original claim you were attempting to refute is; "If someone doesn't like the political system, then you're acting immorally and violently by forcing them to abide by it." Nobody forces anybody to abide by the anarchocapitalist system (even neglecting the whole it's not a political system angle), but that doesn't mean people within that system will not defend themselves when aggressed upon. > Exactly. So there is no historical evidence that this is feasible. Which was /exactly/ the claim for which you accused me of ignorance. Wrong. The claim I accused you of ignorance with regards to was this, exactly; I agree, but prefer this inefficiency to something which makes exploitation easy. Worse than a false dichotomy, this is ignorant of the fact that many of the modern laws we have are what make exploitation easy. That is, you are ignoring the fact that modern laws make exploitation easy, not that polycentric law is without historical precedent. Polycentric law does have historical precedent, however anarchocapitalism in particular incorporates polycentric law as well as a raft of other ideas, and did not exist as a fully defined concept until around the 1960's iirc. There has not been enough time to actually see it implemented in reality yet, although this is a distinct possibility in the midterm future (Seasteading proposals typically revolve around ancap organisation). Disqualifying an idea as sensible because it has not yet been tried however doesn't make any sense, sticking to that idea we should still be practicing tribal hunter gatherer social organisation alone. That the ideas are well thought out and practical are demonstrated by citing historical precedents that are similar, as well as going into great detail as to all of the potential flaws with the system and how those things may be addressed. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTYkdEU_B4o http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTYkdEU_B4o) > In general, I am always skeptical history "research" which is both novel and also just happens to validate the author's political ideology. Once again, it's not a political ideology, it is an attempt to destroy the entire concept of political ideologies. If it is a political ideology, bald is a hair colour and atheism is a religion. > Regarding the rest of your post, there's a huge difference between not advocating anarchocapitalism and defending the status quo. By all means, I'd be interested to hear your ideas on what you see as superior to the status quo, especially if they don't rely on political authority, the major reason I am ancap is because I will not under any circumstances accept political authority as valid. But it's not wrong to point out that simply shooting down alternatives without offering other systems is de facto support of the status quo. > You are accusing me of being complicit in every systemic injustice of the status quo because I think your specific alternative is unrealistic. Consider your company. Supporting the status quo does make you complicit in the effects of that status quo, this is uncomfortable I know. It is the reason I abandoned it, and a large part of the reason I am now a perpetual traveller. However, you seem to be claiming not to support the status quo, although it's unclear as to what you do support.
  • nmrm 12y ago
    > Nobody forces anybody to abide by the anarchocapitalist system Okay, I tried to avoid this because it's so juvenile. I'll give the pedantic, stupid example. Guy wants to kill people for fun. Everyone tells the guy it's not allowed. The guy tries to do it anyways. Any sane implementation of anarchocapitalism provides a legal mechanism for forcing violent dude to not kill other people. That legal mechanism has to be defined and staffed. The process for doing that is a political system. Forcing people to do something against their will is not irrational or violent. It's inevitable and that's good. > ...is not a political system > ...it's not a political ideology This is the rabbit hole definition game I was referring to. You're just wrong per the standard use of both words. Worse, you're quibbling over definitions when the essence of my argument is absolutely clear. > That the ideas are well thought out and practical are demonstrated by citing historical precedents that are similar Right, you just keep ignoring my many, many arguments that these historical examples are not similar. > I'd be interested to hear your ideas on what you see as superior to the status quo Democratically selected reforms to specific problems with solutions selected on the basis of scientific discussion of the evidence. I have an aversion to "silver bullets" and radical departures, especially those that make extreme claims for which there could never, ever be satisfiable evidence. Even if the idea is good, claiming that you know things will work out because you "thought through the common objections" is nothing more than conjecture and blind faith. There are always good answers to every single argument. There is no way to know how a society will behave, and the central implicit assumption tying everything together is almost always "everyone is like me and wants to live in a world I would like living in". Which of course is never ever true. There are much simpler systems whose behavior we cannot predict. Any scientifically-minded person would concede this point, and for that reason would not even venture to offer an "alternative" to something as radical as anarchocapitalism other than "I choose the middle option". And FWIW your appeal to "game-theoretic principles" proves my earlier point regarding implicit assumptions. People behave sub-optimally and violate game theoretic axioms of every variety. People are not formal logical systems, and you can't model the dynamics of human relationships using these tools except in extremely limited contexts. And that's setting aside the (probable) fact that most people who understand the literature on game theory well (oh, I'm probably one of them; it's not an area I understand well, but I try to keep up with conference proceedings related to my work) do not consider it a reasonable basis for governance or societal organization. > simply shooting down alternatives without offering other systems is de facto support of the status quo. Believing this is why revolutionaries have a nasty tendency of chopping off the heads of lots of people they should essentially agree and get along with on the majority of issues.