What is the best case for a state that you've heard in regards to the economy?
I've been told that the state is needed in order to:
1) Protect private property
2) Protect basic rights so the mob doesn't rule you
3) Public goods (like paying for defense since if everyone thinks everyone else is paying for everything no one else will bother paying for it)
4) Protect one group from another
5) If there's no state a new state will just emerge
I could debunk all of these but that's four new threads.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2WUOVQrYAI
No. 5 cannot be debunked. We'll have to test it.
Number 5 does not make sense - it's like saying that if pests appear again and again, even if we keep destroying them, then they are needed.
At most, it means that they are inevitable evil, if even that (there may be less of them if we exterminate them regularly).
Best or the funniest and most retarded? :D Because in my mind is the only such case for a state: people are bad therefore we need state :D
(english is not my native language, sorry for grammar.)
I could try my hand at making a short de-bunking:
1) This is a Marxist talking point for some odd reason. Property delineations are just a function of society, probably as Hoppe suggests, to maintain peaceful transactions in a given area. Obviously feudalism isn't capitalism, but people recognized a modicum of private property even then with the king's taxes merely being a nuisance. In de facto anarchy in the Western U.S. and in Pennsylvania and with the Pilgrims before that, private property was an accepted norm without state intervention. It's all about ideology; if most people support private property and are willing to defend it, it will be the norm in society. Therefore, without the State you can still have (and legitimately protect) private property.
2) This is kind of the Madison argument. Democracy is the closest thing to a mob rush, but I've always thought that republicanism kicks the can one step down the road and fundamentally doesn't change much. You can't have things in the Constitution that 80% of the people find egregious or else they'll just ignore it. You can't impose Constitutional rules on people unless they already accept most of the premises (freedom of speech, due process, etc.).
3) Now this is the closest thing to an argument that doesn't amount to a scare tactic. I'd say this is the toughest thing to refute since we don't have a practical, modern example of anarchy in an industrial capitalist society we can point to. My guess is that the legitimate defense agencies will have some "national" defense due built-in to their fees and most people will see how this is necessary. If you don't pay the defense due and are able to, perhaps they will negatively enforce this due by not providing you police protection? You could argue that one agency will try to undercut the competition and let people slide for not paying, but it should be in their vested interest to have funding for a quasi-standing army because if they aren't, there's a good chance they'll go out of business (by being taken over).
4) You mean like minorities? The State is the biggest enabler of solidifying majority opinion that I've ever seen. Anybody in the minority always has an uphill battle. This is like telling me that the Hutus couldn't have slaughtered the Tutsis if only they had a republican government. Again, this slaughter could have happened no matter the form of social organization; a democracy probably would have sped up the process since it centralizes decision making. Jim Crow would be another example of how the State imposed itself on the market. A free market would have integrated blacks into an "underground" economy. Of course the South was deeply racist so I'm sure companies would have still excluded blacks from participating, but the State fueled much of the racism. Also, harking back to my point about ideology, how did the State protect minorities in the south when it was popular to mistreat them? They looked the other way constantly and the State had no interest in protecting blacks at that time.
5) This is like saying that if a dictatorship will eventually emerge, then in the meantine it's useless to try and stave off a dictatorship. It's all about the here and now and you'll never know if you never try!
Social cost. Mainly that is the best way to impede environmental pollution. Of course it is a dangerous power to give the state and it can be carried to extremes. It also relies on proper valuation of these costs, but that doesn't seem like such a huge problem. What are the anarchist arguments against this particular justification?
"I know that it is a hopeless undertaking to debate about fundamental value judgments."-Albert Einstein
Eric080: 5) This is like saying that if a dictatorship will eventually emerge, then in the meantine it's useless to try and stave off a dictatorship. It's all about the here and now and you'll never know if you never try!
You forget that, in order to topple that initial dictatorship, many, many will have to die, and the economy will go back to the stone age. And for what? For an other thug to emerge in a few years, by which time you won’t even have gone back to the level of production you had achieved prior to the revolt? Man, if (very big ‘if’) the state is inevitable, revolution is a prescription for extinction. Other ways would work in that world which may or may not be ours.
If there had to be a state, I would like the state to only have the power to designate specific land as protected land or for park use. I know this goes against austrian property theory. But there is nothing within austrian property theory that would prevent parks from being used. I think that green spaces within towns and cities is important. A town or region with no parks would not be a very nice place, so there is the possibility that within a free market parks would be designated but If i owned a park region within a town or city, think central park in ny, I would want to develop the land.
Jack Roberts: A town or region with no parks would not be a very nice place, so there is the possibility that within a free market parks would be designated but If i owned a park region within a town or city, think central park in ny, I would want to develop the land. No, you’d just like money, and since developing pays more than letting a park be, we can see that people value homes more highly than trees. Central Park is just a mean of cartelizing the construction business in NY. The Regression theorem is a memetic equivalent of the Theory of Evolution. To say that the former precludes the free emergence of fiat currencies makes no more sense that to hold that the latter precludes the natural emergence of multicellular organisms. | Post Points: 20
A town or region with no parks would not be a very nice place, so there is the possibility that within a free market parks would be designated but If i owned a park region within a town or city, think central park in ny, I would want to develop the land.
No, you’d just like money, and since developing pays more than letting a park be, we can see that people value homes more highly than trees. Central Park is just a mean of cartelizing the construction business in NY.
Merlin: ...we can see that people value homes more highly than trees. Central Park is just a mean of cartelizing the construction business in NY.
...we can see that people value homes more highly than trees. Central Park is just a mean of cartelizing the construction business in NY.
But the people around the park value the park more than other peoples homes. The green spaces add value to the properties around it. That is why property prices around central park and hyde park in london are higher than the roads not a long the park. How does central park cartelize the construction industry in ny?
Jack Roberts: But the people around the park value the park more than other peoples homes.
But the people around the park value the park more than other peoples homes.
Then they'd form a corporation and outbid everyone for the park's ownership. Problem solved.
Merlin: No. 5 cannot be debunked. We'll have to test it.
Just funny that there are so few people that value the absense of the state that much that they would go out and do that.
Torsten: Merlin: No. 5 cannot be debunked. We'll have to test it. Just funny that there are so few people that value the absense of the state that much that they would go out and do that.
No need for some bloody revolution. There are other ways to test statelesness.
Merlin: No need for some bloody revolution. There are other ways to test statelesness.
Our armchair anarchist won't try that neither.
Torsten, there are other things I value other than potential statelessness. There is a commonality between neighbors (a shared culture), wealth in the society (a capitalistic country), as well as friendships and relationships. A stateless society is not the only thing worth valuing. Your comment doesn't deal with the point of whether or not society would be better off compared to its current state, which is the main point of contention after all.