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?
Meistro wrote: Would these really be 'protection agencies'? I mean it's not like you get bodyguards.
It is also conceivable that there will be bona fide protection agencies, whom you'd pay for protection, not insurance. The competition on the markets will determine which ones will be more effective.
Helloween wrote: 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.
American Airlines is a contemporary example of non-governmental "air flight provider" whose service sucks worse than that of Aeroflot, back in the good old Soviet times. (I happen to have flown on Aeroflot planes a few times, even though I was born in mid-80s.) Ergo, airlines should be government-controlled?
Even if there is no logical flaw in your using NSDAP as an example, they were one organization. Were there other private organizations that they competed with? Nobody is saying that once you make industry X free, all its members will be saints and prophets. Some will be evil and stupid. But that's the point of competition — the public will be able to choose. Which brings me to the next part:
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.
Who says that the markets will choose those companies that compete using violence, as opposed to using the same methods that all the other businesses use nowadays? It's analogous to saying that we want all taxi companies to be government-controlled, because, in its effort to compete with other companies, each taxi company will urge its members to drive extra-extra fast, which will result in a greater number of fatalities. Therefore, the government needs to eliminate the competition between taxi companies and have one government-controlled taxi company. Furthermore, competition between individual taxi drivers should also be illegal... thus, no tipping. (Both these things existed in the Soviet Union.)
But who says that customers won't recognize that Swift Taxi is a bunch of maniacs, and if you treasure your life, you shouldn't go with them to the airport? And if you live in Israel, Cyprus, China, Russia, or one of Latin American countries, where getting to the airport asap is treasured more than safety, then such is vox populi...
Equal protection under law sounds nice and is very attractive to me as well. The problem is the same as with all monopolies. With no need to compete, a monopoly suffers from calculation problems, low ability or incentive to innovate or solve existing problems, etc. Just compare any governmental service to a private service. If TSA were a private company that had competitors, would they have survived for long?
I don't understand why you call a monopolist libertarian security provider "government". It could be confused with its opposite, non-libertarian organizations which are also called "government".
You are free to ignore an airline you don't like. But you cannot say no to the force which necessarily must be used by a justice system. Thus, per definition, there cannot exist a market for justice systems. The criminal is not a customer, he may not choose his punishment.
Theft and fraud can be highly profitable. For sure, thieves have a demand for protection against those who insist that they should be punished for their crimes. What surprises me is that anarcho capitalists say that it is good that thieves compete against honest people, by establishing their own security providers, i.e. violent organizations, which have their own anti-libertarian laws. Groups of people would create violent organization in order to fight against the jews or the rich, because they would profit from doing so. That's anarcho capitalistic, but it certainly is not libertarian.
Basic criminal law in many modern societies is quite libertarian already, and the court procedures apply very sound principles. That little part of the government actually works very well and does protect peoples rights. It is the rest of the government, often 100 times bigger, which is wrong, basically because it has made itself immune against the very criminal law which prohibits theft and use of force.
Helloween: I don't understand why you call a monopolist libertarian security provider "government". It could be confused with its opposite, non-libertarian organizations which are also called "government".
From wiktionary on government:
government (countable and uncountable; plural governments)
Looks to me like FlyingAxe is using the term properly.
Helloween: You are free to ignore an airline you don't like. But you cannot say no to the force which necessarily must be used by a justice system. Thus, per definition, there cannot exist a market for justice systems. The criminal is not a customer, he may not choose his punishment.
I will quote myself from this post earlier in the thread:
gotlucky: 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!).
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!).
Helloween: Theft and fraud can be highly profitable. For sure, thieves have a demand for protection against those who insist that they should be punished for their crimes. What surprises me is that anarcho capitalists say that it is good that thieves compete against honest people, by establishing their own security providers, i.e. violent organizations, which have their own anti-libertarian laws. Groups of people would create violent organization in order to fight against the jews or the rich, because they would profit from doing so. That's anarcho capitalistic, but it certainly is not libertarian.
Source? I have yet to see any anarcho-capitalist say such a thing.
Helloween: Basic criminal law in many modern societies is quite libertarian already, and the court procedures apply very sound principles. That little part of the government actually works very well and does protect peoples rights. It is the rest of the government, often 100 times bigger, which is wrong, basically because it has made itself immune against the very criminal law which prohibits theft and use of force.
No. Unsubstantiated assertions.
Do you have a better business model for private protection/legislature service?
I just realized that I misread the OP. I thought you were talking about the kind of insurance that covers one's own act of aggression against someone else, which somebody (Robert Murphy?) has proposed as a scheme for stateless dispute resolution. The idea being that, in order for anyone to want to do business with you, you'd have to have such insurance. It is this scheme which I find unlikely. But I have no problem with what you've actually said, now I that I've read it properly: you're just talking about plain old insurance for damages that others cause you, and no doubt that would still exist and play some role in the dispute resolution business.
Because if you grant an organization a monopoly on decision making and violence there is no way to prevent that organization from establishing the sort of totalitarian control over society that was exemplified in Nazi Germany.
... just as the State has no money of its own, so it has no power of its own - Albert Jay Nock
But how would it be easier to prevent it if several such organizations were granted to use violence? The governments of the world today are competing violent organizations "security providers", anarcho capitalism in practice, and it's safe to say that the concept didn't work very well with respect to freedom!
The only way for libertarian rights of the individual to be upheld, is if enough fraction of all humans (in a certain area at least) understand and appreciate libertarian rights and join to uphold them. If it's done in a market similiar way or by democratic referendum or even a coup d'etat, is not important.
I believe that each individual has the right to not be forced by others. Regardless of what insurance he has or hasn't. I say that it's right to use violence against those who violate that right, no matter what laws they claim that they live by or what organizationprotects them.
And if anarcho capitalists claim that it would be more practical to compete with violence, then why don't they indeed start competing with the government here and now? The concept is so stupid and obviously failed, that I can't believe it's seriously intended. It's just an academic excercise based on unreal assupmtions.
That's the whole point of Robert Murphy's article "Won't the Warlords Take Over?" If you have a bunch of people who are willing to agree to disagree and form a democratic society, why will these people suddenly turn violent when given opportunity to co-exist in a society where people have different views? Or, why would they support violent micro-governments if they have so far supported a necessarilly non-violent macro-government?
Just because some people believe that abortion is murder doesn't mean they will attack abortion clinics with bombs. Some do, and the majority of anti-abortion crowd condemns them, which is why there is no call to legalize such bombings.
So, the same peace-loving folks — why would they send their checks to organization that solve differences and compete on the market through violence as opposed to peaceful arbitration and peaceful competition?
You can re-iterate this point by saying: the same reason you don't support bening tyranny and think benign democracy is better, anarchists do not support benign democracy and think that benign anarchy is better.
I don't think people would be less benign in anarchy, rather the opposite. But some people have no intention of respecting the rights of other people. And as i understand it, anarcho capitalists say that it is right for them to buy protection from being punished for their crimes, because it wouldn't be criminal to steal from non-members according to their law. I refuse to tolerate that! I would not refrain from using violence against thieves. I have no repsect for their "comeptition", I demand freedom for everyone, i.e. monopoly.
Basic criminal law in many modern societies is quite libertarian already, and the court procedures apply very sound principles
I disagree. The prupose of a legal system in a libertarian society is restitution for the victim. This is not the case in our current society. The modern legal system is an abomination. Little to no restitution for the victim, outrageously bureacratic organizations, all of it paid for via extortion, the proliferation of lawyers, people punished for moral or non immoral activities... the failure of this state monopoly is evident and everywhere
e. But some people have no intention of respecting the rights of other people. And as i understand it, anarcho capitalists say that it is right for them to buy protection from being punished for their crimes,
DROs / security firms would view those who aggress against others as a huge liability. There could be something like a credit report but with regard to your conduct towards others. Companies would have agreements in place to go through mediation in the case of disputes. Those who can be proven to have harmed others or their property would most definitely pay through the nose, and no one would defend them.
Yes, I agree that restitution would be the way to go. And paing fines to the government, that is just madness!
But at least basic criminal law describes the rights of every individual to his property and body. And the bureaucracy of the criminal courts is well motivated by important justice principles, like following a predetermined procedure, being very transparent, making sure that both parties are well informed and have their say. I live in a country where about 0.2% of GDP is spent on legal courts. That includes legal aid to suspects and the entire court system for government's internal administration. So there are no important money to be saved on criminal courts. They are controlled by academic developments, praxis being established and the transparency of it all. Criminal courts are not the problem with todays states, quite the opposite, they are the only institution who actually act to uphold individual property rights! (Anarcho capitalists don't do much in that way, they just talk about competition being a good thing, without actually competing)
@Helloween
One of my posts had to be approved by a moderator because it had too many links. Here is the link to it above.
Helloween: Criminal courts are not the problem with todays states, quite the opposite, they are the only institution who actually act to uphold individual property rights! (Anarcho capitalists don't do much in that way, they just talk about competition being a good thing, without actually competing)
Criminal courts are not the problem with todays states, quite the opposite, they are the only institution who actually act to uphold individual property rights! (Anarcho capitalists don't do much in that way, they just talk about competition being a good thing, without actually competing)
And exactly how would you suggest people compete against the state?
Meistro: DROs / security firms would view those who aggress against others as a huge liability. There could be something like a credit report but with regard to your conduct towards others. Companies would have agreements in place to go through mediation in the case of disputes. Those who can be proven to have harmed others or their property would most definitely pay through the nose, and no one would defend them.
Meistro:
The organization for protection of thieves could compensate higher costs with higher premiums, utlimately financed by thievery from non-members. They wouldn't care if non-members are hurt. Or they try to run their protection business based on their idealistic values of the purity of some races over other races, or whatever. Why would you want such competition to exist?
gotlucky:
government (countable and uncountable; plural governments) The body with the power to make and/or enforce laws to control a country, land area, people or organization.
That seems to fit so called "private" security providers too. They make and enforce their own laws. So an-caps want many competing governments? Well congratulation, there a world with over 100 of your beloved "competitors" out there!
What surprises me is that anarcho capitalists say that it is good that thieves compete against honest people, by establishing their own security providers, i.e. violent organizations, which have their own anti-libertarian laws. Source? I have yet to see any anarcho-capitalist say such a thing.
What surprises me is that anarcho capitalists say that it is good that thieves compete against honest people, by establishing their own security providers, i.e. violent organizations, which have their own anti-libertarian laws.
What else is meant with competing laws, and being against a monopoly on libertarian laws? Obviously, anarcho capitalists advocate anti-liberatrian laws for those who so chooses to make and enforce such laws.
And exactly how would you suggest people compete against the state
Just like an-caps would compete against "private" law makers. It's your concept, you should be able to describe how it is possible to "compete" with force against force!