Someone asked me a question over the weekend:
What if, under the anarchist system of protection insurance, all insurances find a particular person uninsurable? I.e., he is too high liability for the companies, because, for example, he lives in too dangerous a neighborhood (e.g., a Black person living in a White supremacist neighborhood). And the premium required to pay for his protection is too high for him to afford, while no charity organization in town is willing to pick up the bill.
My answer was: first, in the case when all these things pile up, the person has to move to a safer neighborhood or live with a reality of no protection. That sucks, and his rights to live in peace should not be violated, but such is the reality. Also, what's the alternative? Forcing all the citizens of the town to pay for his insurance or, worse yet, accept some sort of monopoly of a protection agency that will cover him too?
Second, under the government, the situation may not be any better. When Blacks moved in to many communities in Brooklyn, NY or Roxbury, MA, many Jews had a choice whether to move or continue living there despite the increasing crime rates. Most moved to Boroughpark, NY or Brookline, MA, but some communities stayed. They made a decision to live in a place of greater crime, and there is a lot of crime (lots of assaults, robberies, rapes, etc.). So, a) it was their decision to stay, and they must pay the price in terms of reality of things, b) though they are supposedly protected by state police, it's almost as if they were not.
I was wondering if anyone has anything to add to my answer. (The other part of the question was: what if he is too rich and too prone to being robbed? My answer was that he has to pay more for protection.)
FlyingAxe: What if, under the anarchist system of protection insurance, all insurances find a particular person uninsurable? I.e., he is too high liability for the companies, because, for example, he lives in too dangerous a neighborhood (e.g., a Black person living in a White supremacist neighborhood). And the premium required to pay for his protection is too high for him to afford, while no charity organization in town is willing to pick up the bill.
Let me pose a slightly different question:
A man lives in an area prone to dangerous forest fires. Naturally, the insurance is incredibly high, too high for him to afford paying. Think about the questions you were asked but with this scenario instead. Why would it be okay for this man to force other people to pay for his reckless decisions?
The whole essence of the question is that under anarchy, some citizens will remain unprotected because they are too poor and/or because they live in unfavorable conditions. That is why, the argument goes, a minirchist system is better: it will not leave any citizens unprotected in principle. (That, by the way, also includes children, old people, and the homeless, whose protection scheme under anarchy is also not entirely clear to me.)
It will not be able to protect everyone. Even so, do we really want to subsidize risky behavior? Look at the quote in my tag. Is that really what we want? To fill the world with reckless people? At the expense of those who don't take unnecessary risks?
I think the entire insurance scheme that some an-caps favor is unlikely - there are other more practical ways of organizing a stateless legal/security industry IMO. As for your uninsurable man...well, if he's uninsurable he won't be insured? What else is there to say...
Do you have a better business model for private protection/legislature service?
The high insurance would inform him of the risks he was taking with his life and encourage him to GTFO of dodge.
... just as the State has no money of its own, so it has no power of its own - Albert Jay Nock
Right. That makes sense to me.
Here's another question, though. Can we think of any other reasons why a person would be uninsurable? Also, can we be sure that in every situation in which a poor person can't afford insurance, a charity will take care of it (or the insurance companies will protect him pro bono)? Under minirchism, the only protection agency is forced to protect pro bono (or, rather, the society is forced to pay for this protection). I understand the morality issues involved in this, but some may argue that this is worth it to make sure that the powerless are protected.
Is there an economic way to answer them? Is there an economic reason why in most cases, those who absolutely cannot afford a protection premium will be taken care of by charities?
We cannot be sure that charity will solve everything. But neither does the government now. See here for some info about Welfare before the Welfare State.
Sure. Prices. Only the free market can truly allow for efficiency of charity. The government can never know if what it is doing is most effective.
Would these really be 'protection agencies'? I mean it's not like you get bodyguards. Or would they be 'retribution and restitution agencies'? You can't really prevent crimes, without a near omnipotent team. DRO's or w/e would have an incentive to handle the uncovered because the perp would have to be exiled or w/e in order to protect paying customers. and it would be good advertising for them to say 'we caught x people in the last month'. plus their detectives would probably be cooling their heels a lot of the time anyway. i think a lot of the charity would be directly from the professionals themselves... doctors / dentists / dros / whatever
Why do the an-caps believe that "security providing" organizations would offer anything like protection against force? Wouldn't they as much provide aggressive force as a service to their members? NSDAP is a historical example of a non-governmental "security provider", with hundereds of thousands of members in uniforms and military style hierarchy, much stronger than the governments army, before it formally became the government itself in 1933. I don't see how they competed with the protection of peoples negative rights as their selling point.
I'm a minarchist because I demand monopoly on the protection of every individual from the force of others. I do not want to see any competition with that, i.e. that some people "compete" by using force against others. And just as I fight to eliminate all such competition, for sure they fight to eliminate me. There cannot exist a market for force. The concept is an oxymoron. It's strange and funny that an-caps, who are normally very intelligent, suffer from this simple fallacy.
Absent the ability to coercively tax or debase the money supply one cannot profitably wage war (either in the retail or wholesale sense). War is a racket, highly unprofitable to the many, highly profitable to the few.
@Helloween
Since when was the Nazi party anything other than a political party? I have never heard such a claim before. Could you please provide a source for this claim?
I suggest you read What Law Is and A Praxeological Account of Law by forum member Clayton. Those should give you some idea of how disputes are settled, which should give you an idea why it would be unlikely that Private Defense Agencies would be in the business of initiating force (mainly because it's so damn expensive!).
Meistro: Absent the ability to coercively tax or debase the money supply one cannot profitably wage war (either in the retail or wholesale sense). War is a racket, highly unprofitable to the many, highly profitable to the few.
QFT.
I must say I am rather bemused that someone would invoke the memory of the Nazi Party as a justifcation for the existence of government. What's next - we should eat chicken because we might get samonella?
NSDAP had its internal courts, it was somewhat of a state in the state. But why do an-cap want to see nazi parties compete against libertarian security providers? Why do you not want monopoly on peoples right to be left alone from the force of others?
You have not provided any sources whatsoever for your claims. But many organizations have internal courts. What does that have to do with PDAs? From your response here I can tell you have not read the links I provided.