I'm usually self-flagellating. I'm going to take a short vacation from that and feign obnoxiously toxic buffoonery. Please indulge me...
Congratulations. I'm now a full-fledged anarchist. Why? Because I've created an alternative governance ideology that's based upon the convergence of antitheses - government and free market. I've successfully extracted coercion and political process from statism, 'de-nutting' it's territorial instinct. This would be accomplished by what I refer to as 'Entre-premier-ships'. This word is created by telescoping 'entrepreneurship and 'premiership'. 'Premier' refers to a head of government - Entrepreneur as premier. On Entrepremiership (my word and concept): I don't think there's a better way to produce successful societies than thru the manafacture and distribution of them via the free market. Once again, who best provides valuables? It's not governments. It's not co-ops. It's the profit-seeking entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs peddling their wares are the reason we have our current standard of living. If you apply that transforming power and ingenuity to the management of people, to the construction of fully sovereign societies, I can only imagine to what great heights such a society would climb. If there could ever exist a utopia on Earth, this would be the surest way to get there. On the motivating factors that led me to this panacean concept: 'Government' fully extracted from it's cancerous nature - idle philosophical fare or the zenith of man's liberation? This problem of government vexed America's founders. They debated this very thing. The mitigating effects of technology luxuriates this generation's cornucopia of alternatives to our aging foundings. I think we can have a 'government' or a management of peoples/societies that is in and of itself a free market commodity, thus excising the tumor of coercion. It would allow for the ideal, 'consent of the governed', but the goverened would be less subjugated (used loosely) because the governing body, the entrepremiership, would be subject to the free market and not just subject to an unweildy, unresponsive, covercive political process.
Think about the humble pencil. You've all heard it's use as an example of what the free market is capable of doing. Imagine thissame 'invisible hand' working upon the entirety of our subsistence, moving beyond narrowly defined goods and services and into the realmof societal faciliation. The market can arrange an incomprehsible variety of factors, a variety no man can singly effect, so that the pencil emerges. Think about that very same mechanism arranging far more valuable commodities - societies. It's a wedding between the great economy and the great society (NOT in a (Lyndon Baines) Johnsonian sense), all within the anarchist paradigm. When I say, 'within the anarchist paradigm', I mean that theentrepremiership exists w/i or alongside other anarchist arrangements, including other entrepremierships.
less buffoonery...
You know all the issues of trying to make a society work from scratch. With an Entrepremiership all these complexities are fleshedout, shrink-wrapped and placed on store shelves.
It's a sort of privately run government, society management firm or possibly a 'bundler of said services'. It'd either provide services itself or contract w/ other service providers. Is a liberal 'immigration'/visitation policy important to you? Then you can live in that type society or in that type district w/i a particularsociety. Entrepremierships could have differently managed areas, according to the wishes and desires of it's members/citizens.
In many of the anarchist situations discussed, it's in terms of already homesteaded peoples. So from that there arises the various complexities of such a society. I'm NOT judging that arrangement due to the supposed 'difficulties'. I'm just mentioning something that would be a negative to many people. Issues such as the vacillating ideologies of others, can leave some people feeling vulnerable to the whims of man's nature. With homesteaded masses, its difficult to gather even a modicum of consensus. The logistics of various parties w/ diverse ideologies swirling around, might not appeal to SOME (and I believe many) people. Maybe you could think of them as moderate or conservative anarchists. You might even wish to use the derogatory term - pop anarchists.
To get around this homestead issue and the immorality in not repsecting others' property rights, private property owners could offer more controlled conditions upon their own lands. Each Entrepremiership would have it's own ideas, but I'm sure there would be larger entrepremierships that would allow things like buying and selling land w/i it's domain. The main service or value would be the management of these lands and societies. It's allows members a level of security and expectancy.
I can imagine many of these Entrepremierships coming about by buying land areas in piece meal from those wishing to form a community but without the hard work and uncertainty of forging them from the ground up. That's why I'm sometimes refer to them as, pre-fab societies, i.e., pre-fabricated societies. Those selling their lands to these entrepremierships, might in some way continue to own their land in a practical sense. There may be a portion of the entrepremierships contract which addresses land ownership. I tend to think the most successful model would be based on a clearly defined eminent domain policy. The Entrepremiership's most likely main appeal would be it's societal management services and these services would be more rational if the land were contiguous. If the Entrepremiership didn't own the land, in an eminent domain sense, and simply knocked on doors trying to sell society management services, you'd constantly have large swaths of differently managed people, including the self-managed anarchy purists.
I posted this idea at a Yahoo newsgroup. A few cited other instances in history similar to my so-called entrepremiership. I want to make it clear that these are NOT mere clubs, neighborhood associations or town-like communities. These are fully functioning societies, encompassing all that entails, e.g., crime and punishment. This is the strictest definition of the term. It can be muddled with endless modifications, possibly including a federation of entrepremierships, for instance.
"The best way to bail out the economy is with liberty, not with federal reserve notes." - pairunoyd
"The vision of the Austrian must be greater than the blindness of the sheeple." - pairunoyd
If you consider today's issues thru the eyes of an entrepremiership, thru the eyes of a business in the business of selling government-like goods and services, ie facilitation/commoditization of socieites or society sets, could this inform your positions?
Example: How would immigration affect an entrepremier's costs? How would it affect it's market value? Do you think an entrepremiership that contained a liberal 'immigration'/visitation policy would be more costly to manage? Could this diversion of operating capital be considered an investment because a more liberal immigration policy might result in added value, especially as it relates to improvement w/i the entrepremiership's territory vs the entrepremiership being more marketable due to said visitation poilcies?
Could it better inform your political positions if you saw them thru the lens of private governance vs coercive governance? For most of you, you may already do so, but for those more statist, more mainstream people, it might be a worthy exercise. Of course, we live in a coercive government, so the hierarchy of free market policy values may be differently arranged in a coercive environment, i.e., state. I don't know...Would it be universally true if a policy is best for one society it's best for the other society, assuming they share the same goal? I'm discussing more abstract policy matters. I don't mean to say that a policy that says to build X miles of road would/might equally serve one geographic location that is a million sq miles and one that's 100 sq miles. Think more along the lines of immigration or intersocietal relations.
That's actually interesting. Is the best policy choice for an entrepremiership the best policy for a coercive government(for it's citizens), assuming the same customer in each instance. If you're a warhawk under the U.S. government and you think that's a good policy, do you think it'd be a good policy in an entrepremiership? If not, why the variance?
Hmmm....probably the closest we have today to an "entrepremiership" is the gated community. I can see it being offered, but I can't see it working very well. The main reason is that since society is so complex, no one person or small group is likely to have all the answers. Some people might indeed be attracted to the idea of a complete, pre-packaged community, but I think there would be complexities, changing circumstances, that would also require changes to those communities, and thus, upset their 'a priori' packaging. No such society can be completely isolated from the rest of the world without coercion or unusual circumstances.
I see an AC society as being more inter-woven, individual companies offering services in particular industries, and creating contractual relationships with companies in inter-related industries. Some companies might indeed try to offer cross-industry services (a la Wal-Mart?), but would still have to allow for adaptation to changing circumstances to make it workable.