This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.

Can Anarcho-Capitalism Work?

Tyler Durden's picture




 

Submitted by Llewellyn Rockwell via The Ludwig von Mises Institute,

This talk was delivered at the Costa Mesa Mises Circle on Society Without the State, November 8, 2014.

The term “anarcho-capitalism” has, we might say, rather an arresting quality. But while the term itself may jolt the newcomer, the ideas it embodies are compelling and attractive, and represent the culmination of a long development of thought.

If I had to boil it down to a handful of insights, they would be these:

(1) each human being, to use John Locke’s formulation, “has a property in his own person”;

 

(2) there ought to be a single moral code binding all people, whether they are employed by the State or not; and

 

(3) society can run itself without central direction.

From the original property one enjoys in his own person we can derive individual rights, including property rights. When taken to its proper Rothbardian conclusion, this insight actually invalidates the State, since the State functions and survives on the basis of systematic violation of individual rights. Were it not to do so, it would cease to be the State.

In violating individual rights, the State tries to claim exemption from the moral laws we take for granted in all other areas of life. What would be called theft if carried out by a private individual is taxation for the State. What would be called kidnapping is the military draft for the State. What would be called mass murder for anyone else is war for the State. In each case, the State gets away with moral enormities because the public has been conditioned to believe that the State is a law unto itself, and can’t be held to the same moral standards we apply to ourselves.

But it’s the third of these ideas I’d like to develop at greater length. In those passages of their moral treatises dealing with economics, the Late Scholastics, particularly in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, had been groping toward the idea of laws that govern the social order. They discovered necessary cause-and-effect relationships. There was a clear connection, for example, between the flow of precious metals entering Spain from the New World on the one hand, and the phenomenon of price inflation on the other. They began to understand that these social regularities were brute facts that could not be defied by the political authority.

This insight developed into fuller maturity with the classical liberals of the eighteenth century, and the gradual emergence of economics as a full-fledged, independent discipline. This, said Ludwig von Mises, is why dictators hate the economists. True economists tell the ruler that there are limits to what he can accomplish by his sheer force of will, and that he cannot override economic law.

In the nineteenth century, Frédéric Bastiat placed great emphasis on this insight. If these laws exist, then we must study them and understand them, but certainly not be so foolish as to defy them. Conversely, he said, if there are no such laws, then men are merely inert matter upon which the State will be all too glad to impose its imprint. He wrote:

For if there are general laws that act independently of written laws, and whose action needs merely to be regularized by the latter, we must study these general laws; they can be the object of scientific investigation, and therefore there is such a thing as the science of political economy. If, on the contrary, society is a human invention, if men are only inert matter to which a great genius, as Rousseau says, must impart feeling and will, movement and life, then there is no such science as political economy: there is only an indefinite number of possible and contingent arrangements, and the fate of nations depends on the founding father to whom chance has entrusted their destiny.

The next step in the development of what would later become anarcho-capitalism was the radical one taken by Gustave de Molinari, in his essay “The Private Production of Security.” Molinari asked if the production of defense services, which even the classical liberals took for granted had to be carried out by the State, might be accomplished by private firms under market competition. Molinari made express reference to the insight we have been developing thus far, that society operates according to fixed, intelligible laws. If this is so, he said, then the provision of this service ought to be subject to the same laws of free competition that govern the production of all other goods. Wouldn’t the problems of monopoly exist with any monopoly, even the State’s that we have been conditioned to believe is unavoidable and benign?

It offends reason to believe that a well-established natural law can admit of exceptions. A natural law must hold everywhere and always, or be invalid. I cannot believe, for example, that the universal law of gravitation, which governs the physical world, is ever suspended in any instance or at any point of the universe. Now I consider economic laws comparable to natural laws, and I have just as much faith in the principle of the division of labor as I have in the universal law of gravitation. I believe that while these principles can be disturbed, they admit of no exceptions.

 

But, if this is the case, the production of security should not be removed from the jurisdiction of free competition; and if it is removed, society as a whole suffers a loss.

It was Murray N. Rothbard who developed the coherent, consistent, and rigorous system of thought — out of classical liberalism, American individualist anarchism, and Austrian economics — that he called anarcho-capitalism. In a career of dozens of books and thousands of articles, Rothbard subjected the State to an incisive, withering analysis, unlike anything seen before. I dedicated Against the State to this great pioneer, and dear friend.

But can it work? It is all very well to raise moral and philosophical objections to the State, but we are going to need a plausible scenario by which society regulates itself in the absence of the State, even in the areas of law and defense. These are serious and difficult questions, and glib answers will naturally be inadequate, but I want to propose at least a few suggestive ideas.

The conventional wisdom, of course, is that without a monopoly provider of these services, we will revert to the Hobbesian state of nature, in which everyone is at war with everyone else and life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” A ceaseless series of assaults of one person against another ensues, and society sinks ever deeper into barbarism.

For one thing, it’s not even clear that the logic behind Thomas Hobbes’s fears really makes any sense. As Michael Huemer points out, Hobbes posits a rough equality among human beings in that none of us is totally invulnerable. We are all potential murder victims at the hands of anyone else, he says. He likewise insists that human beings are motivated by, and indeed altogether obsessed with, self-interest.

Now suppose that were true: all we care about is our own self-interest, our own well-being, our own security. Would it make sense for us to rush out and attack other people, if we have a 50 percent chance of being killed ourselves? Even if we happen to be skilled in battle, there is still a significant chance that any attack we launch will end in our death. How does this advance our self-interest?

Hobbes likewise speaks of pre-emptive attacks, that people will attack others out of a fear that those others may first attack them. If this is true, then it’s even more irrational for people to go around attacking others: if their fellows are inclined to preemptively attack people they fear, whom would they fear more than people who go around indiscriminately attacking people? In other words, the more you attack people, the more you open yourself up to preemptive attacks by others. So here we see another reason that it makes no sense, from the point of view of the very self-interest Hobbes insists everyone is motivated by, for people to behave the way he insists they must.

As for law, history affords an abundance of examples of what we might call trickle-up law, in which legal norms develop through the course of normal human interaction and the accumulation of a body of general principles. We are inclined to think of law as by nature a top-down institution, because we confuse law with the modern phenomenon of legislation. Every year the world’s legislative bodies pour forth a staggering number of new rules, regulations, and prohibitions. We have come to accept this as normal, when in fact it is, historically speaking, an anomaly.

It was once common to conceive of law as something discovered rather than made. In other words, the principles that constitute justice and by which people live harmoniously together are derived from a combination of reflection on eternal principles and the practical application of those principles to particular cases. The idea that a legislative body could overturn the laws of contract and declare that, say, a landlord had to limit rents to amounts deemed acceptable by the State, would have seemed incredible.

The English common law, for example, was a bottom-up system. In the Middle Ages, merchant law developed without the State at all. And in the US today, private arbitration services have exploded as people and firms seek out alternatives to a government court system, staffed in many cases by political appointees, that everyone knows to be inefficient, time-consuming, and frequently unjust.

PayPal is an excellent example of how the private, entrepreneurial sector devises creative ways around the State’s incompetence in guaranteeing the inviolability of property and contract. For a long time, PayPal had to deal with anonymous perpetrators of fraud all over the world. The company would track down the wrongdoers and report them to the FBI. And nothing ever happened.

Despairing of any government solution, PayPal came up with an ingenious approach: it devised a system for preemptively determining whether a given transaction was likely to be fraudulent. This way, there would be no bad guys to be tracked down, since their criminal activity would be prevented before it could do any harm.

Small miracles like this take place all the time in the free sector of society, not that we’re encouraged to learn much about them. Recall that as the Centers for Disease Control issued false statements and inadequate protocols for dealing with Ebola, it was a Firestone company town in Liberia that did more than any public authority in Africa to provide safety and health for the local population.

There is a great deal more to be said about law and defense provision in a free society, and I discuss some of this literature at the end of Against the State. But the reason we focus on these issues in the first place is that we realize the State cannot be reformed. The State is a monopolist of aggressive violence and a massive wealth-transfer mechanism, and it is doing precisely what is in its nature to do. The utopian dream of “limited government” cannot be realized, since government has no interest in remaining limited. A smaller version of what we have now, while preferable, cannot be a stable, long-term solution. So we need to conceive of how we could live without the State or its parasitism at all.

 

- advertisements -

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.
Sun, 11/16/2014 - 23:19 | 5456025 Publicus
Publicus's picture

Peer to peer currencies is the key.

Sun, 11/16/2014 - 23:28 | 5456043 junction
junction's picture

Jumbo Yacht Capitalism/Cronyism has worked fine for the last 35 years.  The more 300 foot yachts, the better the world economy is for the 0.01%.  And they are all who matter, you peasants out there..

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 00:04 | 5456135 Bumbu Sauce
Bumbu Sauce's picture

Do 300ft yacht owners build and service 300ft yatchs?

Do 300ft yacht owners mine, fabricate, or transport components and materials for 300 ft yachts?

Do 300 ft yacht owners mine and machine materials for manufacturing 300 ft yacht parts?

Do 300 ft yacht owners drill, refine, and transport the fuel for 300 ft yachs?

Do 300 ft yacht owners cook, clean, maintain, and operate their own 300 ft yachs?

Do 300 ft yacht owners maintain and operate 300 ft yacht marinas?

Do 300 ft yacht owners manufacture and maintain transport and infrastructure to and from 300 ft yacht marinas?

etc..etc..

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 00:24 | 5456159 stacking12321
stacking12321's picture

publicus is right - bitcoin, et al, is a shining beacon of hope for anarchy working.

if we can move outside the captured system, and stop supporting the criminals in control of the gov and banks with our money and labor, anarchy will work.

if enough people starve them of taxes, they won't be able to support their NSA spying, their unjustified wars, their flase flags, their terrorism abroad, etc, etc

they will put up a fight, but cryptocurrency has many iterations, and gov stooges aren't exactly cutting edge in innovation.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 00:47 | 5456196 Anusocracy
Anusocracy's picture

Iceland went for three centuries without government.

What did it use for money?

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 00:51 | 5456203 Bumbu Sauce
Bumbu Sauce's picture

Geothermal asswarming?

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 00:55 | 5456210 Anusocracy
Anusocracy's picture

That was back during the Medieval Warm Period in Iceland.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 22:22 | 5459809 mumbo.jumbo
mumbo.jumbo's picture

i'd suggest throwing in this thought before the article:

“I do not think that it is possible to give any meaningful definition of anarchy by which it could exist but currently does not. Anarchists are not those who wish that there be anarchy, but those who reason along anarchist lines about what there currently is, what there was and what could there possibly be.”

— Zsolt Felföldi

IOW, it's anarchy today with the inevitable criminal organizations (read: the state) trying hard to milk off productive human cooperation. so then the question becomes much more practical: what can we do about them here and now?

i also suggest these two articles, reasoning this line in more details:

 

DO WE EVER REALLY GET OUT OF ANARCHY? (#anarchy #great)

by Alfred G . Cuzan (anarchy, a concept, is an internal perspective on objective reality, an interpretation of it. the ruling elite will always operate in manifested anarchy. the key difference in societies is the ratio of the size of the subjugated/elite subsets.)

https://mises.org/document/1695/Do-We-Ever-Really-Get-Out-of-Anarchy

https://mises.org/journals/jls/3_2/3_2_3.pdf

REVISITING “DO WE EVER REALLY GET OUT OF ANARCHY?”

http://mises.org/journals/jls/22_1/22_1_1.pdf

 

Tue, 11/18/2014 - 11:46 | 5461257 Anusocracy
Anusocracy's picture

I'm a voluntaryist which is why I support panarchism.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 01:04 | 5456229 Bumbu Sauce
Bumbu Sauce's picture

Iceland has the population of metropolitan St. Louis, MO.  It is also a monoculture and has the benefit of being quasi-remote as it is an island nation.  

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 01:30 | 5456260 Anusocracy
Anusocracy's picture

Not sure what that has to do with money.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 02:37 | 5456335 effendi
effendi's picture

Yep, anarcho-capitalism can work in certain insular societies,even then I'll bet there where people whose views were suppressed. It would never work in a big multicultural city as there are hundreds of competing moral codes that often take 180 degree views on what is moral.

The whole paper is about the third point, but that is overlooking the problem that is the second point. We don't have a single moral code binding us all and without a moral code that all can abide by then anarcho-capitalism will not work.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 03:21 | 5456369 PT
PT's picture

We have anarcho-capitalism right now.  What?  You mean you don't just buy and sell legislation, politicians, governments, military might as you see fit?  Can't afford it?  You need to work harder / smarter / take more risks!  JC, JD, LB and others laugh at you (and us).

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 03:32 | 5456375 TeethVillage88s
TeethVillage88s's picture

.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 03:31 | 5456381 TeethVillage88s
TeethVillage88s's picture

I have said this in a similar way for years. We have no common culture to bind us together.

You can posit that it is the US Constitution, but... we know the constitution is no longer used by GWB or Barack.

- So where does that leave us
- Cultureless
- No Binding Culture
- No Prime Law of the Land, No Prime Morality of the land, No common Ethic of the Land

Apologies to MSNBC. S/

Tue, 11/18/2014 - 12:05 | 5461322 Anusocracy
Anusocracy's picture

Morality defines the culture and if the culture is successful, the culture enables the morality to endure.

Harm, fairness, community, authority, purity, and liberty.

Different emphases on these define different cultures which tend to be incompatible, resulting in a struggle for control.

Viola, the current state of mankind.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 04:18 | 5456421 yepyep
yepyep's picture

ancap does not presume the morals of anyone, if anything it presumes everyone has the worst intentions and nothing else. peoples moral codes are irrelevant. either you violate someone elses property rights or you dont.

 

stop talking bs.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 04:42 | 5456433 stacking12321
stacking12321's picture

this.

+1000

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 07:02 | 5456517 BruntFCA
BruntFCA's picture

Your post makes no sense, you state AC does not presume the morals of everyone, how about the 'non agression principle'? You go on to state that moral codes are irrelevant even, and that you either violate property rights or don't. Well if you do violate property rights AC cannot work; the whole foundation of AC is property rights!

Read up on radical Islam. You submit to become part of an umah, the moral code is defined via Sharia, and comes from god, any other system is *haram*. How are you going to make AC work when AC itself is defined as haram by a large part of the population? By definition many moral codes especialy religious ones claim ownership of your property.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 08:17 | 5456610 NidStyles
NidStyles's picture

Apparently you missed the indicator of self-defense within property right's. I have the right to protect my property, and that includes my body.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 11:25 | 5457150 yepyep
yepyep's picture

i will read up on islam if you read up on polycentric law.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 08:56 | 5456667 fallout11
fallout11's picture

True anarchy can only exist as a transient, temporary state, nature abhors a vacuum and immediately works to fill it. Some form of 'governance' has always existed from the beginning of recorded history, be it the village elder or the local strongman or the neighboring gang/army/empire. Someone is always trying to "rule" over us, and always will be. Overthrow one, and lo, here comes another trying to fill the void. Even Ann Rand eventually figured that out.
As much as anarchists dream otherwise, anarchy doesn't work - it never can, not unless there is a world so filled with enlightened people willing to take actual rational and just action (and not just rational and just in their own biased mind) that almost any form of government would work nearly as well.  That ain't the world we live in, not even close, and not any time in the next several generations (especially if we keep breeding for stupidity).  I challenge you to name a single example outside of a closed, contained ecosystem (such as within an extended family or clan) where coercion or deception was not in effect and such a purely voluntary free association existed. Do you tell your children or spouse what to do? Do you have rules at home? Congratulations, you have governance.

In addition, the “prisoner’s dilemma” (please look it up) will always prevent effective cooperation, even for mutual benefit, in a world where rational self-interest is the overwhelming prerogative. 

For capitalism not to become crony, there must at least be a set of truly constant rules. If that is not the case then "free market capitalism" (assuming a "free market" is possible) will always be like a strategy game where the most successful players can change the rules ingame, basically rigging the market to their own advantage and corrupting the entire system with their greed.  Free market economics requires transparency, price discovery, and stability to operate. Can't have these in a law of the jungle scenario. Adam Smith didn't advocate overthrowing the British crown.
And as long as there's government, even small government limited to defending individual liberty (maximizing individual liberty -- only decreasing liberty through taxation to the extent that it increases remaining liberty even more), there will need to be taxes to pay for what that government does.

The non-aggression principle is flawed.  Sometimes there are no good choices, and the only choice is between one aggression against one group and another aggression against another group.  Not aggressing can be an immoral act in real life, and NAP simply ignores that case.  If someone's tie is stuck in a machine and it's choking them to death but you do nothing because cutting their tie would be (per NAP) an act of aggression against their property (and they can't give you permission because they're in the process of choking to death), you just (effectively) killed them through inaction.  Congratulations - you've held to your (flawed) principles.  If on the other hand you would violate NAP in this case because letting someone die would be immoral, then congratulations - you too have determined that NAP is flawed.  If you try to reason it out, you may determine that the aggression against their liberty (destroying their property) was justified because it preserved a greater part of their liberty (their life in this case) - if so, welcome to minarchy.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 10:31 | 5456945 Sean7k
Sean7k's picture

Nature abhors a vacuum, so tyranny must be natural? Care to offer a proof of that? 

Homo Habilis functioned as anarchal societies without governance, without war and traveled the entire globe, establishing colonies on every continent. Xeer societies, which are clan based, maintained an efficient system of moral code, land sharing and common property ownership. The "wild west" was never wild, but a anarchal society based on private contracts whose enforcement was dependent on a peson's word and repudiated through the loss of trust. 

It is easy to tear down that which has never been given the opportunity to flower. Especially when you are ignorant of the basic tenets of capitalism. Free markets have no rules, that is why they are free. It is self interest that polices them. If you are going to refer to Adam Smith, at least do the homework.

What you conveniently ignore in the tyranny which surrounds us and pervades our every thought and action. How is this preferable? We are no different than  the man with a tie in the machine, except the state is the machine and the only option is to be slowly consumed. I'm willing to consider cutting the tie and even paying for or replacing it (all actions consistent with AC) if it results in saving the person's life. 

In order to have a perfect system, you require perfect participants. We do not have these. However, you can remove the machinery which makes tyranny possible: law, the state and taxation via coercion. When you require the voluntary approval of people, you restrain the oppression of those whom seek to rule us to their advanage. You also ensure compliance. 

People will seek security through community and each other. You are much more tolerant of the neighbor you depend on for security.

Tearing down an idea is easy, ignoring the state of tyranny we find ourselves in is deplorable.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 10:50 | 5457021 fallout11
fallout11's picture

Homo Habilis functioned as TRIBAL (dunbar number) societies, which is a form of governance. Don't agree with the tribal leader(s), wise men, and/or council? Then you were forced out, to find another group to try and join...unless they threw rocks at you as a dangerous outsider/other. You can find this in a cursory study of primate societies to this very day. It is also the means by which such societies spread genertic diversity and prevented rampant inbreeding.
When tribes came in contact with one another, fight or flight responses were the norm. Warfare was extremely hazardous to the participants (it was personal and absent any real medical treatment methods), but remained the norm for group to group interaction (hence the prevalance of the warrior and warfare in tribal societies), as the anthropological and archeological record clearly shows.

You need to go re-read The Wealth of Nations. Adam Smith talks about markets being free of economic rents, not free of the rule of law. Contracts, the very basis of economic activity in a market, cannot exist without a means to enforce them. 

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 11:49 | 5457243 Sean7k
Sean7k's picture

Homo habilis societies had zero stratification and zero weapons. Having wise people is not a government, government requires law. I have studied the archeological evidence. To think some people would not get along is a poor argument. No societies have this trait, thus we move. 

Yet, contracts did exist in the early American west without a means to enforce them other than your word. Do your homework.

More importantly, how is the present situation an improvement? I see you do not want to try having this conversation. The Constitution has been ransacked, markets are manipulated at will, yet have the greatest degree of regulation in history. Citizens are killed regularly: ie 9/11, army testing, eugenics in the early 1900's, Pearl Harbor, etc. The list is endless. Never heard of gladio, papercllp, monarch mind control, and more than can be named?

We live in society run by monsters. Yet, you would not entertain the possibility of trying something new? The chance of actually owning property has no appeal? You enjoy debt notes and the knowledge all you have purchased with them belong to the banks? No understanding of collateral?

Adam Smith was a tool of the monarchy. Most of his good ideas were stolen from Cotillon and Say. The Monarchs were afraid of the French branch of economics and where it was going. Research his comfy position after writing his tome. Free markets require no law. It does not mean there will not be abuses, but they will be self correcting (see Mises and Rothbard).  This is a far cry from the rampant manipulation of all markets being exposed today, but practiced since the beginning of regulaed markets. The regulation is a tool to control who wins and who loses. 

We are taught and, in fact, brainwashed to believe in the righteousness of law, but it is lie. Law is written by the Eltes, for the Elites, to protect the Elites. If you take the time to study the structure of government set out in the Constitution, you would realize this. It leaves the common man in awe and in his confusion he accepts what he cannot argue against. 

Some truths are self evident: we have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. You are denied these rights today and tommorrow as long as we accept the tyranny of the present State.

 

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 14:19 | 5457823 Hugh_Jorgan
Hugh_Jorgan's picture

I think you're neglecting the not-so-small matter that Homo Habilis lived in small family groups eating fruit and bugs.

Anarchy is a noble concept. The problem is that human beings are not all noble creatures at heart. Some are, but only if they grow up and are taught to be so with a correct-thinking, self-sacrificing moral code by parents who act the same way. Most just want to abdicate their thinking and simply follow someone who seems to have it all figured out. Sadly there is another small group of people that are happy to be just that. Those who want to lead and control others, by their nature will deceive, obfuscate, violate any moral code, and even kill in an effort to keep that control position. This leaves us with a pervasive, sick symbiotic relationship that always creeps in and makes it nearly impossible to establish and maintain the #2 requirement listed by the author; a common moral code, for more than a couple hundred years, at least.

Lack of common moral code was, is and will always be the biggest fly in the ointment for man's self-governance. That is, unless we want to live as small stone-age clans in trees or caves with our families eating bugs and fruit.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 14:52 | 5458004 Sean7k
Sean7k's picture

I guess you just aren't up to date on paleo-archeology. Homo-Habilis built villages with houses, sailed the world's oceans and were constructors of stone monoliths. Not exactly fruit and bugs. They made and used tools. Of course, you probably just believe what you learned in school- how quaint.

Anarchy is not a noble concept. It is a concept fraught with difficulties and problems. It requires NO MORAL CODE, either shared or otherwise. It requires nothing but the absence of a State and Law. It doesn't attempt to create a false sense of security like the State, it doesn't kill and murder at will like the State, it doesn't steal and destroy the environment like the State. It merely allows for liberty and creativity in the development of management systems for people of like minds. 

Beware people who seek to define liberty, whether they be anarchists, Statists or otherwise. Beware people who want systems of coercion rather than voluntaryism. All rulers are tyrants by definition as are the systems which create them. 

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 12:45 | 5457482 ShortBusDoorGunner
ShortBusDoorGunner's picture

And why is a State the only means of enforcement?

 

(What is the difference between a Libertarian and an Anarchist? About six months.)

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 22:13 | 5459785 mumbo.jumbo
mumbo.jumbo's picture

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/is-it-natural-for-humans-to-make-war-new-study-of-tribal-societies-reveals-conflict-is-an-alien-concept-8718069.html

"Is it natural for humans to make war? New study of tribal societies reveals conflict is an alien concept"

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 12:36 | 5457441 Matt
Matt's picture

"In addition, the “prisoner’s dilemma” (please look it up) will always prevent effective cooperation, even for mutual benefit, in a world where rational self-interest is the overwhelming prerogative. "

If you use real prisoners instead of college students, you'll find they tend to co-operate a lot more frequently. What people do with no experience in a simulation is different than how people with real life experience handle the same situation, live or simulation.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 11:27 | 5457158 Bumbu Sauce
Bumbu Sauce's picture

Assuming every individual adopts your arbitrary trancendent moral code of not violating someone else's property rights, natch.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 06:51 | 5456512 BruntFCA
BruntFCA's picture

THis is the point most people don't get. IMO multiculturalism is a deliberate system to keep the plebs attacking each other rather than waking up to state abuse. Many studies show that homogenous cultures have lower crime and better outcomes.

Switzerland is a good example; I think citizens are required by law to keep a fully automatic rifle in their house, now try that in multicultural London.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 13:54 | 5457744 fallout11
fallout11's picture

Largely homogenous societies are more trusting of each other, as there are fewer obviously different "others" in their midst. The Soviet Union collapsed without widescale internal violence and tragedy because it was largely culturally and ethnically homogenous.....compare with multicultural Yugoslavia (a contemporary).
Really, it all comes down to trust.  Governments came to be partially because people could not trust the 'strangers' outside their dunbar number.  Instead, they placed their trust in these artificial constructs. 

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 08:18 | 5456599 HardAssets
HardAssets's picture

What's really hilarious is that "The State" doesn't really exist. It is nothing more than an illusion, a bit of propaganda conditioning in the minds of people.

But young fools go off to war to kill and be killed for such notions. They think they 'are defending their country'. They may be no more than part of a scheme for some NY banker to steal the resources of some remote place overseas that the soldier fools couldn't previously find on a map.

'The state' didn't kick down the doors and cart people away in Nazi Germany and the USSR. Believers that these notions are real did that.

Think about it.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 12:37 | 5457445 Matt
Matt's picture

You can choose not to believe in the State, the same as you can choose to not believe in gravity. It can still kill you.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 20:00 | 5459305 TheRedScourge
TheRedScourge's picture

The state is an effect of the family. Most people will irrationally defend it to the death as though it were their father (or in the case of the Democrats, their mother). Start raising children without the constant threat of force hanging around them, should they choose to question or disobey you on matters on little consequence, replace that with peaceful negotiation, and the state will make no sense to the next generation.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 19:58 | 5459297 TheRedScourge
TheRedScourge's picture

It doesn't have to work; it just has to work better than the fucked up shit we have right now.

 

Given how the closest (and not coincidentially most successful) modern day approximations of anarchy are working today, which are the Internet, Linux, PayPal, Ebay, Uber, Twitter, etc, and given how the most successful modern day bif-state behemoths like national governments and mega-corporations like Microsoft are slowly crumbling to shit, I'd say we're going to find out how well it's going to work, whether we want to or not.

Changing it all overnight would be like switching from Windows 8 to Ubuntu, but you'd be surprised at how quickly people can adapt when suddenly they must.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 09:45 | 5456806 roddy6667
roddy6667's picture

Iceland did not have a vast criminal underclass that did not contribute its share toward society.
In other words, no Diversity.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 00:48 | 5456197 TheAnalOG
TheAnalOG's picture

We can work the anarcho capitalism!  We know we can because we do now.  We have the P2P.  We have the .torrent.  We have the Bitcoin and we have the Human Action.  We are unstoppable!

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 01:34 | 5456267 Paveway IV
Paveway IV's picture

Just another ism to be corrupted. 

Swapping one ism for another fixes nothing when psychopaths are in charge.

How about an experiment? De-cronyfy U.S. capitalism, restoring impartial voting and ensuring an adequate supply of simple labor?

1. Ban anyone in government from moving to related businesses in the private sector if there is any possibility of conflict of interest - for life. Vice versa. That extends to immediate family.

2. Anyone who works for the government, contracts with the government or recieves any form of aid from the government or is othewise dependent on the government temporarily gives up their right to vote until that conflict of interest no longer exists. 

3. Get rid of all minimum wage laws. Instead, identify a minimum wage level (like $10/hr) beneath which any form of taxes, social security, union dues or any other form of payroll deduction (employee AND employer) are prohibited by law for the federal, state and local level. Employer pays 100% directly to the employee. Employing an illegal immigrant is punishable by death.

Fuck 'Well, what about...'  - we'll get by. Most rational adults understand the trade-off between elimination of conflict of interest and employment/voting 'rights'. Minimum wage jobs should be so plentiful that employers can't find enough workers. Then they would have to compete by making their jobs not suck.

See? No anarchy necessary.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 02:44 | 5456327 Harry Balzak
Harry Balzak's picture

I wouldn't stop there.  How about:

Any elected positions have a two term limit.  After two terms, no government service may be performed in any capacity (as an elected official or contractor).

Elected positions get no benefits or retirement; only an hourly wage.  They must punch on and off the clock.  

The elected and all direct family members  (siblings, parents, spouse(s), children, etc) are ineligible for any government job in any capacity (elected or contract), ever, for life.  Nor can they work for any organization or corporation providing any services to government.  

Once an individual is elected, any family member working for an entity associated with the gov must quit.  

Once someone is elected, they and their family give up their right to vote for life.  

All non-elected govt positions are performed by contractors, and the contracts must be renewed each year.  Contract rates are all-inclusive; no benefits included. No contract can exceed five consecutive years, and contractors and their direct families give up voting rights.  

All govt entities are subject to full audits by private auditors and are subject to private accounting standards.  All audit results are open to the public.  

No law can pass without an expiration date not exceeding five years.  At the end of five years, it can be renewed with a 5/7 majority of both houses and signed by prez.  

If a law is renewed three times, it can only be reconsidered again as part of a constitutional amendment, meeting the same 5/7 majority criteria plus ratification by states and a 3/5 popular vote.  

Any law under consideration for constitutional amendment must be written one a single 8.5x11 page, single spaced, 10 pt font, with a 3" header and 1" borders.  If it can't be summarized in a page, odds are it's a bunch of bullshit and should be discarded.  

The whole business of passing laws should be laborious, tedious, and as interesting as drying paint.  These sociopathic assholes shouldn't become self-made fascist rock stars on prime-time TV for doing what should be DMV clerk-level work.  Cut them down to a couple laws a year and keep them from growing power.  

Finally, bring back the duel.  

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 07:10 | 5456523 BruntFCA
BruntFCA's picture

Trouble is, this is how it used to be in the UK. It was the working class that lobbied for salaries for members of Parliament. Before this only millionaires could effectively become MPs since only they could afford to do it.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 14:26 | 5457870 Hugh_Jorgan
Hugh_Jorgan's picture

I would be suggest standardizing on a single 4 year term rather than than allowing any re-elections whatsoever. Re-election takes work, money, lies, and political "churn" which takes one away from the job he should be doing in service to their fellow citizen. Get 'er done in 4 or don't get 'er at all.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 02:48 | 5456342 Voluntary Exchange
Voluntary Exchange's picture

@Paveway:

The only way not to have phychopaths in power is to have no one in power. For it is power the physchopath seeks. 

Governments can not be counted on to obey their own laws, so what makes you think such government restriction would be obeyed?

The only purpose of government is involuntary transactions. Voluntary transactions are called something else but not government. The most theft, fraud and murder is commited by government, so why would someone want to vote for it? What is there to vote about? How to split up the booty from the theft, fruad, and murder? Sorry I don't want to be an accomplis in crime. So why do you think the right people voting will make any difference?

You want to kill people who wish to enter into voluntary exchanges with other people that you label as "illegal immigrant".  How does that create human well-being? I hope you are never voted into power! We have scarcity because governments interfere with people's freedom to create wealth, not because some people are willing to work for lower wages than you think they should! 

 

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 14:07 | 5457773 Paveway IV
Paveway IV's picture

"...The only way not to have phychopaths in power is to have no one in power..."

I agree. So did the framers of the U.S. constitution. 

"...For it is power the physchopath seeks..."

Which is why they tried to psychopath-proof the government by limiting its power. They just didn't use the word 'psychopath'. 

"...Governments can not be counted on to obey their own laws..."

The laws in a constitutional, democratic republic are by the people, not the governments. Government, properly limited, isn't given a damn choice of what laws they will or will not obey - they have no say in the matter. 

"...The only purpose of government is involuntary transactions..."

I see your point, but this is where we start arguing different things. The authors of the constitution saw the government as glorified clerks that carried out certain necessary tasks that needed to be performed at the national level. Although they frequently used the word 'powers', they specifically limited the role of the government to eliminate the ideas of 'power' and 'rule' - the very things they were rebelling against. In a true democratic republic (as originally envisioned), the people would have decided that certain transactions are necessary for a nation and self-imposed. In the bastardized version of government we have today, I agree - damn near every transaction they are involved in is involuntary. That's tyranny, not democracy.

I appreciate many of the ideas of the Anarchists. It wasn't until I was much older that I saw a lot of that in the framing of the U.S. Constitution. I would hardly call the founding fathers anarchists, but I would like to think they would have tipped a few pints together discussing what was wrong with Crown rule. They would have been more alike than different.

"...You want to kill people who wish to enter into voluntary exchanges with other people that you label as "illegal immigrant".  How does that create human well-being?..."

People who create their own wealth by gaming the law and exploiting human beings from other fucked-up nations are psychopaths. If I killed them, I would become them - that part was sarcastic. In the absence of any restrictions, psychopaths will be psychopaths and exploit the less powerful. That's my problem with absence of any government or law. It only works when you have a population of healthy, decent people that value those qualities. Once you get 5% or 10% as psychopaths - even if they're not in the government - then you force me to tolerate exploitation and inhumanity in the name of their 'freedom to create wealth'. Fuck that.

I'm not confusing that with  good, honest, healthy people creating wealth because I woudn't expect them to depend on exploitation or be blind to injustice. But human nature says we'll always have to deal with a certain number of 'wealth creators' who are psychopaths and need to be put in a cage. I don't have the answers for that.

"...I hope you are never voted into power!..."

Wish granted - you have two wishes left.

"...We have scarcity because governments interfere with people's freedom to create wealth, not because some people are willing to work for lower wages than you think they should!..."

I agree. Minimum wage laws are crap - there are far better answers out there. Given that we are absolutely guaranteed to have some percentage of psychopaths trying to 'create wealth' and will always exploit other human beings to do so, we have to do something. That's where 'pure' anarachy (and socialism and capitalism for that matter) falls flat. Got any ideas?

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 20:02 | 5459321 TheRedScourge
TheRedScourge's picture

Don't forget:

 

- Almost the entire tech sector, particularly the Internet, Linux, and social media

- PayPal+eBay

- Uber

- The entire pizza delivery industry

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 05:37 | 5456453 PT
PT's picture

The majority currently borrow 25 - 40 years of fiat money and spend 25-40 years paying fiat money and fiat interest on small pieces of land.  First step to anarcho-anything is ownership of land WITH NO FIAT PRINCIPAL / INTEREST STRINGS ATTACHED.

How many businesses exist with no fiat loans, no fiat interest repayments and no fiat overdrafts???  That is your first step.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 12:40 | 5457465 Matt
Matt's picture

Are you saying people have to pay full cash price for land? Or how would you choose who is allowed to own land and who is not?

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 21:42 | 5459653 PT
PT's picture

I don't know how to handle the distribution of land, but I DO know that when you need 25 - 40 years worth of fiat money to pay principal AND INTEREST on a piece of land, you ain't free.  Maybe you could agree to supply your fellow anarchist with a small gold coin every week for the next 20 years in order to pay for a piece of land, instead of paying fiat cash to a bankster for the next 25 years.  Is it gonna happen any time soon?  On any large scale?

How many businesses have fiat debt that needs to be repaid with fiat interest?  If you can't find a way around that then your Anarchist Utopia will never get off the ground before it starts.

The fiat / debt / interest / land angle is not my argument against Anarcho-Capitalism.  It is just pointing out a problem that NEEDS to be solved before AC has any chance of occurring.

Anarchy works fine when EVERYONE has access to fertile land.  Not enough fertile land to go round?  You're gonna have problems.  A major problem in today's world is no viable options to opt out.

Sorry, I'm wrong.  There is an alternative:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bogucki

(Not the best link.  Try learning more about him.)

Anarchy is freely available to anyone who has the balls to do what he did!

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 07:40 | 5456557 luckylongshot
luckylongshot's picture

In terms of anarchy working a nice example that has been hushed up is Belgium. Belgium went for around 2 years without a functioning central government and it worked out brilliantly. Not only did Belgium perform better economically than every other country in the EU during the period but it performed the best in all of Belgian history. 

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 08:50 | 5456666 CH1
CH1's picture

A part of Belgium (Morriset) went 100 years (1815-1915) with no government, and did quite nicely!

Ancap is forbidden with violence. Guess why.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 20:07 | 5459325 TheRedScourge
TheRedScourge's picture

They only allow it in the form of the Internet because of the good information gathering (and wiretapping) tools that industry provides them with. When they discover the speed at which it can be weaponized against them, things will change. Most of them will not learn what they're dealing with until their own policies bring their respective nations to a state of chaos, whereupon they find themselves trying to shut down the Internet as a last resort. Didn't work well for them in Egypt.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 02:54 | 5456350 Zero Point
Zero Point's picture

Trickle down economics bitches. You just need to compete with the Chinese for the pennies they toss from their mega yaughts.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 05:28 | 5456452 Canoe Driver
Canoe Driver's picture

Bumbu, the problem with that line of reasoning (re: 300ft yachts) is that those sufficiently wealthy to employ many others in the maintenance of their personal lifestyle may have obtained their wealth by taking it more or less directly fromt the pockets of the laboring classes (as Wall Street does through a variety of obfuscations). If this is so, then is it right, or even constructive, for us to concentrate wealth unnecessarily in the hands of a few, and be grateful that a tiny scrap of this money is given back to us, in exchange for our labor?

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 10:04 | 5456851 StandardDeviant
StandardDeviant's picture

That "more or less directly" is quite the leap.

There's a big difference between taking wealth directly from someone's pockets by force (as the State does, through taxes, deficits, and inflation), and exchanging something of value for it.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 12:44 | 5457475 Matt
Matt's picture

What is the value I am recieving from them?

Fractional reserve lending does contribute to inflation, so all banks are taking wealth from everyone all the time.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 10:17 | 5456901 Bumbu Sauce
Bumbu Sauce's picture

Way to take the whiner route holmes.  I am 100% against people using government to obtain wealth.  I do not begrudge, AT ALL, people who have become wealthy by hard work and ingenuity.  They employ people.  Quit whining.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 22:05 | 5459757 TheRedScourge
TheRedScourge's picture

Wealth would not accumulate as freely as it does in the hands of the top few who hire the most lobbyists and pay off the most politicians if there were no politicians for them to curry favor with. It is clear to anyone who looks at where the bulk of presidential campaign contribution dollars come from why nobody was prosecuted after the 2008 crash. It is also clear to anyone who saw the meagre penalty pushed onto BP and how much of the cleanup effort the government paid for that without government to take away limited liability, there wouldn't be such perceived a need for tight environmental regulations (less unowned property also helps, as property owners could normally sue a polluter for damages). In the absense of such a system, the evil fucks would actually have to do what the lightly regulated and thus highly innovative tech sector does, and that is, innovate and serve the customer well while affording to hire the top talent to keep the competitive advantage, or die.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 11:03 | 5457084 Baa baa
Baa baa's picture

I am appalled that went over your head!

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 00:52 | 5456207 Anusocracy
Anusocracy's picture

Government is a tool for theft.

To someone whose only tool is government, everything looks like it needs to be stolen.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 05:41 | 5456457 PT
PT's picture

Some theft is due to greed.
Some theft is due to laziness.
Some theft is due to hunger.

With or without govt, theft remains.  Until such time that :

Farming is easier than stealing
Mining is easier than stealing
Manufacturing is easier than stealing
Working is easier than stealing

Fertile land is accessible

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 08:54 | 5456671 CH1
CH1's picture

Stealing is damned hard when the parties are equally armed.

That's why government steals massively and why petty theft is really hard, even though the populace is mostly forbidden from defending themselves.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 12:38 | 5457450 PT
PT's picture

It's that damn word, "equally".  Some gets more practise than others.  But never mind, as they grow older they seek other means of maintaining their, errr, competitive advantage (??????)

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 07:43 | 5456560 samcontrol
samcontrol's picture

I have always wanted to know...

How much money do you need to be in the .1% ?

How much money do you need to be in the 1% ?

Facts or link?

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 10:25 | 5456937 StandardDeviant
StandardDeviant's picture

Here are some (unsubstantiated, and year-old, but hopefully fact-checked) numbers from Forbes:

1% = USD 394K/year (gross)

0.1% = USD 1.9M/year

0.01% = USD 10.2M/year

 

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 04:13 | 5456416 Kirk2NCC1701
Kirk2NCC1701's picture

As I've already stated well over a year ago, when Bitcoin articles first became popular on ZH, insofar the sum total of economic activities and currencies create a PARALLEL ECONOMY, they are all "good" in Austrian/libertarian terms.

This Includes: Barter, PM, Crypto-Currencies, Cash and Hawala.

It would be a disservice and strategic mistake for fans of one form of the Parallel Economy to attack or undermine another. That would be a case of succumbing to the old Divide & Conquer strategy of TPTB, and diminishes the whole libertarian Community.

IOW: We need to help build up the Community, not tear it down -- for the sake of feeding our egos. E.g. Even though I don't own much in the way of Cryptos and do not expect to "get rich quick", I say: "Go Crypto-Currencies!"

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 08:55 | 5456673 CH1
CH1's picture

Well said, Jim.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 09:34 | 5456775 ymom11
ymom11's picture

Gold is a peer to peer currency because each peer has an equal chance to create new currency.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 14:31 | 5457894 Hugh_Jorgan
Hugh_Jorgan's picture

"Peer to peer currencies is the key."

 

No. A common moral code is the key, but man's history has proven it nearly impossible to establish and maintain except through force which violates the basic tenets of Anarchy.

Sun, 11/16/2014 - 23:23 | 5456035 infinity8
infinity8's picture

Barter, Bitchez.. just gotta know the right people.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 01:44 | 5456277 hmmtellmemore
hmmtellmemore's picture

Barter is really inefficient.  Currencies don't require the State.

Sun, 11/16/2014 - 23:25 | 5456039 Bumbu Sauce
Bumbu Sauce's picture

Most gunz winz.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 03:16 | 5456366 PT
PT's picture

... or a good story:

http://www.dilbert.com/1989-10-20/

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 15:25 | 5458154 Pseudonymous
Pseudonymous's picture

That's why the author mentioned the phrase "aggressive violence", meaning initiation of force or threats of force, not just any use of force.

Sun, 11/16/2014 - 23:26 | 5456040 IronShield
IronShield's picture

Hey, I never anarcho nobody, got it?

Snitches get stitches Bitchez!

Sun, 11/16/2014 - 23:29 | 5456044 KnuckleDragger-X
KnuckleDragger-X's picture

It can work if a super-majority (60%+) are mentally adult which isn't likely to happen any time soon.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 00:11 | 5456150 GeoffreyT
GeoffreyT's picture

You've got cause and effect switched: the thing that helps the present system keep its hold, is the fact that an IQ of 100 (+/- 1s.d.) does not entail sufficient cognitive horsepower to see through the inconsistencies of the existing system.

It is not dummies that would make anarchy 'not work' - in fact under anarchy, society would be insulated from wide-scale effects that arise from the gullibility of dummies.

Dummies get a vote; dummies think that shit they get from .gov is 'free'; dummies empower the current system. But so do people who are not objectively 'dumb' - people with IQs in the 100+/-1s.d.

They don't prevent an alternative from working - they prevent transition to the alternative.

The things that guarantee that anarcho-capitalism would work (and make Hobbes bullshit irrelevant) are simple: Game Theory (especially tit-for-tat and 'trigger' strategies in repeated games) + Network-learning/influence (a simple model - deGroot - suffices).

 

 

I'm not Robinson Crusoe on the 'IQ100 ne suffit pas" idea: the OECD's PIAAC survey has found - repeatedly - that the median adult in Western industrial society is incapable of literacy, numeracy or problem-solving to a level that the OECD boffins considered the "minimum required to cope with the demands of everyday life".

In fact, less than 1% of adults (and less than 0.25% of folks aged 16-24) are capable of assessing the truth value of a piece of complex text when the text contains subtle rhetorical clues and requires the synthesis of a range of sources.

In other words (assuming that IQ and PIAAC test performance are correlated), it takes an IQ of >135 to be able to properly evaluate the pronouncements of the political class.

Similarly, a vanishingly small slice of our herd possesses the numeracy required to properly analyse the effects of government policy (as a whole) on one's personal budget.

And let's be clear: the 'numeracy layer' of the OECD PIAAC survey is literally a joke - the equivalent of solid 10-grade mathematics... and yet over 99% of people can't score less than 80%.

 

 

As to the IQ/PIAAC score correlation: it seems to me that anyone with an IQ solidly above 120, should pretty much ace the PIAAC. I did the test half-drunk and got over 95% (putting me in the top ~0.1% - above where my tested IQ would predict: I ought to have been on the edge of the top 0.25%).

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 01:00 | 5456222 KnuckleDragger-X
KnuckleDragger-X's picture

Being mentally an adult does not have to do with IQ, it has to do with the ability to think through a problem and understand outcomes. An adult won't piss on an electric fence because they know there will be a negative outcome. Whereas your average watcher of MTV will pee on the fence, bitch because nobody warned him then pee on it again. Ignorance is when someody doesn't know and stupidy is when they refuse to learn.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 01:44 | 5456282 hmmtellmemore
hmmtellmemore's picture

How does an idiot peeing on a fence hurt my life, liberty, or property?  How do people that don't respect/understand risk negate the idea of Statelessness?

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 12:57 | 5457535 Matt
Matt's picture

How do you get those people to support abolishing the State in the first place?

As a previous poster mentioned, the masses do not prevent the Stateless society from working, they prevent transition to a Stateless society. Maybe they are smart enough to know they would not be as able to compete in such a system?

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 01:26 | 5456253 Anusocracy
Anusocracy's picture

Good post.

I would throw in abstract logical thinking and moral make-up as protective against the siren call of government.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 07:41 | 5456558 BruntFCA
BruntFCA's picture

I guess this is a good argument for Eugenics (good creation) or transhumanism.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 14:57 | 5458034 Hugh_Jorgan
Hugh_Jorgan's picture

I would say it is a good argument for a common law that doesn't come from the pernicious mind of man. We built the world economy we see today from just that. But, the very success in doing so has rendered man so arrogant as to deny the existence his very creator in order to justify his constant breaking of these laws.

Sun, 11/16/2014 - 23:32 | 5456047 Hail Spode
Hail Spode's picture

No it cannot.  Just one example of why: it has no mechanism to protect the society from the corrosive effects of the fiat currency of other societies.   Pretty soon the pressmasters of another government would own everything in a place where ownership equals dictatorship.   Localism is the only philosophy of government which can sustain freedom, because it has a defense against fiat and all the other mechanisms through which freedom is lost to the individual. http://www.amazon.com/Localism-Philosophy-Government-Mark-Moore/dp/06922...

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 00:03 | 5456131 Oldwood
Oldwood's picture

The key is for people to know what is truly in their interest for survival. If they refuse to act in their interests after being exposed to the knowledge, nature has a long standing plan in place for them. We should be able to act in a protectionist manner voluntarily without state intervention. If we cannot, then I believe we get what we deserve. The fact that ignorant and short sighted individuals acting in mass can damage everyone else only strengthens the need for knowledge, the accurate assessment of risk. Ignore this at our own risk but this does not excuse or enable tyranny. We have the natural right to defend ourselves but I do not believe that right extends to a precrime enforcement. Freedom has costs, risks, losses, but to eliminate them by punishing, manipulating or lying others is not the answer and is on direct opposition to ultimately acting in our own self interest as tyranny NEVER is.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 02:46 | 5456340 effendi
effendi's picture

Oldwood, I agree in principle with not having pre-crime laws but in practice you need some. If an ISIS whackjob is wearing a suicide vest in Times Square you cannot wait for him to commit a crime (blowing everybody up) so you have to arrest him (or shoot him) before he pushes the button in his hand. I'm sure there are other examples of pre crime that need laws to stop.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 10:11 | 5456879 Oldwood
Oldwood's picture

It is a slippery slope indeed. We are already experiencing the costs to our liberty of this "protection" from terrorists. As has always been the case, we should pick our battles wisely, but I still see that as an individual thing, the choice. If I see a bomb vest wearing madman coming my way I might well end him, but on the other hand if he turned out to be completely innocent...but now dead, I must take that responsibility. What we have instead is a deferral of those responsibilities to a "collective" wisdom that makes not incremental judgements but sweeping wholesale ones with massive implications and ZERO accountability. I guess my point is that while there are no absolutes in these blanket judgements, I feel safer with smaller decision makers working incrementally and causing less wreckage.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 07:58 | 5456577 Hail Spode
Hail Spode's picture

What is truly in my self-interest is to, at some price, take a fiat currency whose value to comes from its ability to buy the goods and services of 350 million people even while I hope others refuse to deal in fiat at any price.   The benefits are immediate and concentrated to my family.  The costs are spread over the whole of society and only become apparent over time.    In theory, people could still have the character to refuse the 1 million euro offer for their modest home but as a practical matter they won't.   The character and motives of each citizen would have to be as pure as an angel in heaven to make it work.  Heaven is probaly the only place any of us will see A/C in operation.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 00:14 | 5456152 stacking12321
stacking12321's picture

the correct answer is: yes, it can and it does.

i am an anarcho capitalist, and it works great for me.

the only question is, how big can it scale up?

anarcho capitalism doesn't need any mechanisms - it's up to us to protect ourselves.

you're right about corrosive effects of fiat currency, that's why i don't hold much of it; when too much of it piles up, i trade it in for something of lasting value, like gold or land.

localism is good, too.

 

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 01:36 | 5456270 Anusocracy
Anusocracy's picture

So you assume that everyone is like you and would accept a Zimbabwean $50 trillion bill for their house.

Gold, barter, even cryptos, hello.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 07:45 | 5456563 Hail Spode
Hail Spode's picture

Downvote all you want fishes, but it does not address the argument one bit.  An anarcho-capitalist society has no defense against the fiat of other nations.   Those bills are given value because the goods and services of 350 million people (in the case of the Euro) can be purchased with them.   That makes it in my rational self-interest to, at some price, take them in exchange for what I have.    What is good for me individually in the short run is doom for the society as a whole in the long run.  Ergo, to protect itself from the fraudsters, a society needs more rules than A/C allows for.  The logic is as simple as it is irrefutable, but just go ahead and keep downvoting like that means something...

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 07:58 | 5456583 Seize Mars
Seize Mars's picture

Ergo? What are you, that guy in the Matrix?
Anyways the only reason to desire a fiat currency is to pay a debt or pay a tax that is denominated in it. In Amerika, we are forced to accept fiat. But imagine if you had a choice!
If fiat is so powerful, why do they enact legal tender laws?

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 13:03 | 5457559 Matt
Matt's picture

"Anyways the only reason to desire a fiat currency is to pay a debt or pay a tax that is denominated in it. In Amerika, we are forced to accept fiat. But imagine if you had a choice!"

What if you want to buy goods from outside your geographical region? If you abolished government in USA, for example, but wanted to purchase an item manufactured in Germany that can only be bought with Euros? 

 

Tue, 11/18/2014 - 09:11 | 5460710 Seize Mars
Seize Mars's picture

No thanks, I prefer not to.

QED

Freedome to choose is a biotch, no?

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 10:08 | 5456866 franciscopendergrass
franciscopendergrass's picture

Competing currencies anyone?

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 11:55 | 5457270 goldsaver
goldsaver's picture

Under AC, why would I accept or deal in a poor or unstable currency? Look at colonial times. Different banks had different currencies. Merchants and customers where free to choose what script to accept and what they considered money. Southern states used Spanish silver coins (pesetas) while northern states used Austrian specie ( Thallers). Only when colonial government got involved by mandating the currency did things get out of control. To the point that some states forbade the exchange of their currency for other's or made the merchants pay stamp tax per note to certify it was theirs before exchange.

Sun, 11/16/2014 - 23:34 | 5456054 Bangalore Equit...
Bangalore Equity Trader's picture

Listen.

"The company would track down the wrongdoers and report them to the FBI. And nothing ever happened."

Peter principle runs rampant within.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 01:18 | 5456243 Yen Cross
Yen Cross's picture

 Can you hear me now?  Based on your comment you're H-1-B in USA? 

  You're not even in India.

Sun, 11/16/2014 - 23:46 | 5456083 Statetheist
Statetheist's picture

Fuck, who cares.

Sun, 11/16/2014 - 23:47 | 5456089 fibonacci's claus
fibonacci's claus's picture

didn't law start with religion?  the ruler was restrained by the religious leader.  now that religion is dead its the economist who is supposed to restrain the ruler?!?  that's funny.

who is left to restrain the ruler?

nancy pelosi denied jonathan gruber like peter denied christ.  barak hussein obama denied purposely lying/deceiving america like peter denied christ.  greenspan denied gold like peter denied christ. 

why not just call it anarchy?  instead of the pseudo-intellectual "anarcho-capitalism"

capitalism has alway had a quality of anarchy, that's what makes it capitalism. 

on the other hand there is nothing capitalistic about this crisis.  and even before the crisis with all the massive govt intervention and price fixing was it really capitalism at all? 

govt sponsored criminal racketeering.  that's what it is.  jonathan gruber made millions and obama and his criminal buddys in the govt helped him do it because the ends justified their means. 

 

Sun, 11/16/2014 - 23:58 | 5456117 NoDebt
NoDebt's picture

Good stuff, Claus.  Once you realize that capital/money is but one projection of the REAL global commodity, which is POWER/CONTROL, you're right on top of it.

 

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 01:41 | 5456275 Anusocracy
Anusocracy's picture

Early religions worked hand in hand with rulers to control the masses.

That's why there was a personal god for just about every city-state.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 01:46 | 5456283 Bumbu Sauce
Bumbu Sauce's picture

Enough criticism of zoroastronism.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 17:25 | 5458646 MortimerDuke
MortimerDuke's picture

Actually no.  Law did not start with religion.  Law started at the same time people began to live in tribes.  Tribal worship of gods necessarily came after the formation of tribes and tribal living.  At best "religion" was used to justify and confirm tribal laws already in place, which were usually adopted and enforced for fairly commonsensical reasons.  BTW, the difference between anarchy and anarcho-capitalism is that the former is the absence of law, or complete disregard for it.  The latter is rule by law, in the absence a sizeable government.  Rockwell is a libertarian and I wish he'd have made points more clear.  Libertarians sometimes use the two terms interchangeably and, judging from the comments to this article, it doesn't work very well without careful articulation.  Nobody wants riotous anarchy, so they see the word attached to capitalism and freak out.  We certainly know nobody will take the time to look them up or do a little research on their own. 

Tue, 11/18/2014 - 12:21 | 5461351 Anusocracy
Anusocracy's picture

Law began as acceptable behavior in tribes which is why alphas/governments have different "laws" than the ruled.

Which lends support to panarchism and assortative based societies.

Sun, 11/16/2014 - 23:58 | 5456114 Tasty Sandwich
Tasty Sandwich's picture

there ought to be a single moral code binding all people

But, there isn't and never will be.  Morality is subjective.  You might feel that something is right or wrong, but you can't prove it like a mathematical theorem.

History just repeats over and over.  Empires and civilizations rise and fall, rise and fall.

This model would be more sustainable because it would ultimately limit population, but few consider social Darwinism to be moral.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 00:47 | 5456195 Voluntary Exchange
Voluntary Exchange's picture

@Tasty:

 

Actually there already is such a code. Which is just another way of saying that certain types of actions consistently cause harm and can be predicted to do so in such a concisitent manner that most resonable people would describe them as "laws".  

An individual's views on morality may be subjective, but the consequences of a person's actions are highly predictable in a moral sense according to principles that are almost universally recognized amoung human cultures. As a smart Jewish gal once said: you can ignore reality, but you can't ignore the consequences of reality.  And that is especially true in the moral sphere of human relations. 

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 01:15 | 5456238 Tasty Sandwich
Tasty Sandwich's picture

You assume that causing harm is wrong.

You can't prove that.

Most people might agree, but that doesn't prove anything.

The Milgram experiment is interesting in regards to that, too, and human civilization/societies in general.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 01:50 | 5456286 Anusocracy
Anusocracy's picture

Moral behavior promotes survival in the particular group that it develops.

It is an evolutionary adaptation based in culture and if you don't agree that it promotes your survival, leave.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 02:15 | 5456300 Tasty Sandwich
Tasty Sandwich's picture

"Moral behavior"

Morality is purely subjective.

Conforming, or at least appearing to conform, to the norms of your tribe or nationality or culture does, of course, contribute to survival or prospering of the individual within whatever tribe or nationality or gang or fraternity or whatever group you want to talk about.

Germans who objected to Hitler's policies were killed or otherwise punished.

A fraternity member who goes on and on about how unhealthy binge drinking is when all the other members love it won't be very popular.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 04:56 | 5456439 stacking12321
stacking12321's picture

morality is not subjective, there is a clear difference between right and wrong.

in the examples you gave above, the germans who objected to hitler's policies had a right to do so. anyone who killed or violated their freedoms is an aggressor and therefore immoral.

in example 2, a frat boy has a right to point out that drinking to excess is unhealthy, and his fellows have a right to shun him for not liking what he says, neither of those things is immoral.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 03:14 | 5456365 Voluntary Exchange
Voluntary Exchange's picture

I observe that those who cause "harm" tend to interfere with the well being of other who choose to live by cooperation. Right and wrong are relative concepts again, but the  well being of non-predatory humans is what I seek to enhance because I prefer happy people to miserable people.

It is not my assumption the causing harm is wrong, it is an observation based on my own preferences, which are of course subjective. There are those who enjoy watching people suffer. I am not one of them. If you are, then by all means argue for the "rightness" of causing harm. Do you think the world is overpopulated and that lots of people need to die so that others can have a good life?

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 04:00 | 5456397 spooz
spooz's picture

your annoying flashing picture makes it impossible to read your comment. wtf. reminds me of some of the worst of website ads.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 05:00 | 5456441 stacking12321
stacking12321's picture

agreed. animated gifs suck ass.

 

 

 

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 10:30 | 5456964 Citxmech
Citxmech's picture

Not all.  Just the ones that conspire to give you a siezure.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 07:49 | 5456574 BruntFCA
BruntFCA's picture

If people have a common culture, it's not as subjective as you think it is. Where I live people often lave their doors open, there's very little crime. If someone does commit a crime they are pretty much found out very fast, and their screwed. It's not a multicultural area.

If you adopt certain axioms you can have a try at creating a calculus of morals if you will. Stephan Molyneux made in attempt in his book Universally Preferable Behaviour; I think you can download the ebook from his website.

Sun, 11/16/2014 - 23:59 | 5456122 dirtyfiles
dirtyfiles's picture

take the Iphone away from one and bum...

no human

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 00:09 | 5456144 TrustbutVerify
TrustbutVerify's picture

Anarcho-capitalism?  Looks more like Crony Socialism to me. 

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 02:09 | 5456312 TeethVillage88s
TeethVillage88s's picture

We will disagree on if Democrats are different from Republicans who start Wars and don't want to Tax to pay for them. What No War Chest? Have to steal taxes or Inflate the Fiat to pay for Wars over 600 Miles away against people with no Navy, Air Force, Army or Missiles?

But If an Elite or a Political Cartel have control over the Laws... That is FASCISM. If people meet in the Town to vote on National, State, and Local Laws... maybe the Law is "for the people"? Maybe real Town Debates could get rowdy or have fights... but hell at least we are not Chattel, Bank Accounts, or Debt Slaves.

As for law, history affords an abundance of examples of what we might call trickle-up law, in which legal norms develop through the course of normal human interaction and the accumulation of a body of general principles.

The English common law, for example, was a bottom-up system. In the Middle Ages, merchant law developed without the State at all.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 00:27 | 5456164 teslaberry
teslaberry's picture

what a bunch of fucking BULLSHIT LEW ROCKWELL!?!!!? FUCK YOU TYLER. AND FUCK THE BULLSHIT ASS CONTRIBUTORS YOU ARE PUTTING ON ZH.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 00:33 | 5456170 Vidar
Vidar's picture

The truth hurts, I guess?

This article is the smartest thing I've seen on here today.

The state is the problem, and Rockwell sees that clearly. What line are you pushing that this particular truth raises such strong feelings?

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 00:53 | 5456209 disabledvet
disabledvet's picture

Who the hell votes for anarchy?  "Then freedom of your neighbor to blow your head off for no apparent reason is good!"

I mean seriously the only thing the whole world needs to know is fthe preamble to the US Constitution. Everything else is too big to fail and therefore just too.

This whole "Sisyphus' Rock" thing is really dumb.  Let all the other Lehman's out there fail too.  The fact is these institutions are just too big/too pig.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 02:02 | 5456297 goldsaver
goldsaver's picture

DV might I assume that you simultaneously own firearms and have neighbors? If so, how many of your neighbors heads have you blown off? Would you do so, for no reason at all, if you could get away with it?

My argument is that you don't restrain yourself from killing your neighbors solely based on your fears of the state but based on your own moral value. The state claims to offer this protection yet people blow each other's heads of in the inner city on a regular basis. Clearly the state cannot prevent the "blowing heads off" syndrome.

Look at Pioneer societies. Most thuggish behavior was short lived. Impolite behavior was met with a swift and violent response. Eventually those who remained were extremely polite to each other. One may say neighborly. Those pioneer societies were the best example of anarchy. Later in their development, smart thugs moved in and brought the violence of the state to protect them from the consequences of their thuggery.

Anarchy doesn't mean without rules, just without rulers.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 02:30 | 5456326 TeethVillage88s
TeethVillage88s's picture

Well it seems in the old west we had Cattle Wars, Sheep Wars, Farmers & Homesteaders attacked by Ranchers... Indians attacked by Ranchers & homesteaders & Traders with Diseased Blankets.

So... the old west was Tribalism, Groups against groups... or Hacienda/Ranches against farmers, homesteaders, stake holders.

Anarchy. Without Law there was Anarchy in a hard, cruel way. But the Law also has Eminent Domain, Rail Roads Rights of Way, Bail-Ins, Bail-Outs, taxes upon Taxes, Stratified Taxes, Zoning Laws, Rezoning, Building Permits, Limits on Livestock....

And you have no Mineral Rights. Would Anarchy take away Mineral, Water, and Livestock Rights???? Perhaps Mining & Livestock pollute the water ways...

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 12:05 | 5457321 goldsaver
goldsaver's picture

You really shouldn't believe Hollywood's version of the "Wild West".

Yes, in Indian nations areas where the whites settled they had to either seek peace by barter or face violence.

Cattle wars came about when cattle men refused to respect private property rights of the farmers by running their cattle thru settled farm land. In most cases a bit of barbed wire reduced the problems.

Are there going to be psychopathic assholes under AC, sure. The difference is that they won't be wearing police uniforms or judges robes.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 02:35 | 5456334 TeethVillage88s
TeethVillage88s's picture

Is it Lou Rockwell? I like some of his articles.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 00:35 | 5456175 Confundido
Confundido's picture

Here is where my views start being different than those of certain libertarians (not all are libertarians are for anarco-capitalism). Why is it that these guys think that exchange is a natural thing in human action, but the search for power is not? The search for power is as instinctive as trading, which leads to violence and therefore, the need to have a monopolistic use of force, to ensure peace. Surely, there are many ways to go around the implementation, but in the end, it will have to be monopolistic, at least, to prevent foreign aggression. 

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 01:58 | 5456295 Anusocracy
Anusocracy's picture

Stealing in a zero-sum game is how the animal world works. Producing and trading in a positive-sum game is how a human world works.

Go live with the animals.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 09:06 | 5456685 fallout11
fallout11's picture

Planet Earth is a lifeboat scenario in space, a closed system with a single input (solar energy). Pretty much everything on it is zero sum, whether or not you realize it, circles and cycles, steady state, finite resources. Early societies realized that and acted accordingly. Are we smarter than yeast?

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 11:04 | 5457092 BruntFCA
BruntFCA's picture

NIce post and to the point. However, think about this, an apple tree produces apples, you eat the apple to sustain yourself. You take a dump, providing fertilizer for the seeds of the apple, creating a new apple tree. Win win.

Put two cows in a field, get 4,8, 16 etc. Life on earth has been sustainable for 1000 million years. True all of these exchanges rely on a continuous supply of *solar energy*. The sun is likely to last at least another 1000 million years, and we've not started to talk about artificial fusion yet.....

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 13:18 | 5457619 Matt
Matt's picture

There will always be a limit to exponential growth, and abundance is a temporary phenomenon. Scarcity will always exist; therefore, conflict will always exist, except during rare moments of universal abundance.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 02:08 | 5456309 goldsaver
goldsaver's picture

So you find it acceptable, no, necessary, to give a monopoly of violence to a small percentage of society, a percentage that actively seeks that power, in order to be protected from the potential violence and theft from a small percentage of people in society?

 

Please explain and expand.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 02:12 | 5456314 Voluntary Exchange
Voluntary Exchange's picture

@Confundido: "Why is it that these guys think that exchange is a natural thing in human action, but the search for power is not? "

Those who refrain from living by voluntary exchange often seek "power" over others. And of course there are many kinds of power.  But as far as what's "natural":

Those who choose to live by voluntary exchange will tend towards a higher level of well being (all other things being equal) when compared to those who choose to force exchanges non-consensualy through "power" or other forms of cooercion upon other people.  The accumulation of a surplus or "savings" is what makes civilization and innovation possible in the first place. 

The first group uses productive innovation  enabled through "savings" as a basis for progressively enhancing both their own and their neighbor's lives. This is what is "natural" to them. It is a reflection of their "nature" as productive people.

The second group tends to destroy the formation of savings and thus the level of innovation, and the future level of that society's  productivity. The more authoritarian your society becomes, the more likely it is to regress. To a thief, a fruad, or a thug nothing seems more natural than the need for "power"over others. It is a reflection of their criminal predatory nature. So what is it you are trying to tell us about yourself in your quote above?

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 00:36 | 5456178 Voluntary Exchange
Voluntary Exchange's picture

From this great conspiratorial lie so much evil has evolved: 

"Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes..." (Art. 1, Sec. 8, US Constitution)

It is often the case that what is built upon falsehood over time results in ever greater folly.

A group of people (Congress) can not logicaly aquire that which it is unnatural for any single person to claim they posses: the "power" to take from others  via initiatory force, or other non-consensual means.

When this foundational consipiracy is finally undone,  watch our world change into something new and better.

A demand is not the same as asking. If you want  something your neighbor has, give your neighbor what he requires in exchange.  It is a simple rule of civilization. Those who demand instead of exchanging consensually are not your neighbors, they are criminals in a  state of war with those who would choose to live by cooperation.  Those who call themselves "Congress" are an organized crime syndidate, nothing more. 

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 00:38 | 5456179 Confundido
Confundido's picture

I totally disagree with this video (Liberalismo vs Anarcocapitalismo por Jesús Huerta de Soto), but at least, this dissertation is superior to fucking Rockwell's: http://youtu.be/CRef2_aRmII

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 00:52 | 5456204 q99x2
q99x2's picture

Bitcoin. But to beat the existing monster you may have to wait for the mushroom clouds to settle. Good to plan ahead. Sort of doesn't matter whether a government is the controlling factor, or a corporate monopoly is the controlling factor or a wealthy family is the controlling factor. May I recommend a cap of 10,000,000 for any entity and only through consensus and cooperation approved by referendum would a combining of lots of 10,000,000 or less be used to fund large projects. All the laws governing such endeavors would be part of the blockchain. Let open source software run the financial system. Who wants to bother with money anyhow.

Oh yeah, using gold and any other commodities as a medium of exchange would be made illegal and punishable by the death penalty.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 01:02 | 5456225 TeethVillage88s
TeethVillage88s's picture

We don't have Referendums in the USA.

But otherwise you always post intelligent stuff. Now I have to go back and read this article

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 00:59 | 5456214 williambanzai7
williambanzai7's picture

I will settle for simply taking every person serving time for a victimless crime with a bankster, lobbyist and/or a politician on the TBTF payroll.

Then watch and see how everything works.

Unfortunately the odds of that ever happening are almost as long as the odds that we will suddenly switch over to anarcho-capitalism.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 01:22 | 5456246 Yen Cross
Yen Cross's picture

 Billy, What I find most fascinating about you, is your abilty to stay detached and impartial. ;-D

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 03:00 | 5456264 TeethVillage88s
TeethVillage88s's picture

You know. I can feel creative doing physical labor.

I think the Article misses this since guys from Von Mises really are not Anarcho Capitalist.

Creativity. Capturing the Spirit of man.

I can work in Government or Corporate whatever... we know Factory work is not creative after you learn the task. There is only control in military, government or corporations.

IMHO of course. But I think other than the profit sharing problem... I think this is what Syndicated Anarchist are talking about. The article is a fraud.

Late ADD: Yeah, I missed it. Paypal & Bitcoin and other new kinds of currency are creative. But I drink, so what are you gonna do.

P.S. It sounds well researched, so I am wrong to attack without my own research. Sorry.

Late, Late ADD: Don't underestimate my intelligence, even when drinking.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-11-16/can-anarcho-capitalism-work#com...

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 01:00 | 5456223 livefreediefree
livefreediefree's picture

To answer the author’s question, of course anarcho-capitalism can work. After all, it worked in these films:

1. Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)/ Fail-Safe (1965)
2. Last Night
3. Take Shelter (2011)
4. Melancholia (2011)
5. Dawn of the Dead (1978)
6. 12 Monkeys (1995)
7. 28 Days Later (2002)/ 28 Weeks Later (2007)
8. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
9. The Last Wave (1977)
10. The Day After(1983)

For the curious, the above films are the first 10 in Paste Magazine’s The 20 Best End-of-the-World Movies. In fact, every post-apocalyptic or post-Armageddon film ever made features anarcho-capitalism as its backdrop.

Trying to visualize an anarcho-capitalistic world is like visualizing Italian pasta made from worms. While it may be an interesting intellectual exercise, the intersection between the real world and anarcho-capitalism is the null set.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 01:25 | 5456251 TeethVillage88s
TeethVillage88s's picture

Plus 1 for the question or investigation.

But in Art there is no Original Art. Therefore the ideas come from others who were artists before.

Spain had an Anarchy for a time. We have history then.

My vision does not include Zombies or Aliens taking over our bodies. It may be too late to try Syndicated Anarchy... but I would think that people treating other people with respect could form a new society, establish a common working concern or factory, common agriculture, common ranching, common water supply... that is probably why past societies were smaller.

Maybe we should look to older, smaller, cities in History for examples.

Etruscans for instance.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 01:51 | 5456287 hmmtellmemore
hmmtellmemore's picture

Don't confuse market anarchism with mayhem and destruction.  There is always a period of disorder caused by the "termination shock" of a failed system (States don't voluntarily give up power, they collapse), but after then turbulence subsides, the markets quickly brings about order.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 11:10 | 5457115 Baa baa
Baa baa's picture

Thank you! Anarchy does not by proper definition include violence, mayhem or destruction of physical property.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 01:39 | 5456274 DoubleTap
DoubleTap's picture

How much government theft of your property do you need to be free, comfy and secure in life?

 

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 07:25 | 5456534 PT
PT's picture

How many privately-owned toll roads do you need to travel through before ...

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 11:08 | 5457105 Baa baa
Baa baa's picture

Cowardly statements can be so ...Revealing. How many Americans actually ask themselves that question? Strange days indeed...

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 01:44 | 5456278 JuliaS
JuliaS's picture

Goddamn tapeworms are trying to convince the hosts that a full belly is the key to comfort. Fuck them! To them anything other than the established structure is "anarcy", well, it ain't.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 02:31 | 5456332 TeethVillage88s
TeethVillage88s's picture

Plus 1, statism.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 02:10 | 5456313 juujuuuujj
juujuuuujj's picture

Two words: Galt's gulch.
Failed utopia.

Do NOT follow this link or you will be banned from the site!