How would you respond to someone who says "If you do not like government regulations and taxes, move to the above places"?
Is what they say accurate? Are there no government regulations and taxes in the above places?
It does not matter whether there is government or not in those places - that is not the point this person is trying to make. It is a form of love it or leave it argument, which is in essence blaming the victim.
Tunisia and Haiti most certainly have taxes and all kinds of government interventions. Somalia it depends.
Of course, you could give plenty of reasons why you wouldn't move to Somalia - low capital accumulation, you don't belong to a clan, you don't speak the language etc. But you don't even need to - the statists are the ones that must somehow legitimise their interventions.
The point is not that we simply don't want government aggression. We don't want any aggression. We also want to live in a society where people are nice to each other. Hence, we are taking America, where people are generally nice, and teaching them about non-aggression (same thing for those of us elsewhere). Ultimately, it comes down to convenience - it's more convenient to teach Americans to be non-aggressive than to teach Somalians to be both non-aggressive and nice to their neighbors.
"Tunisia and Haiti most certainly have taxes and all kinds of government interventions."
Is there a place where i can find out more details about their new taxes?
http://www.tunisia.com/tunisia/business/taxation-system
http://www.doingbusiness.org/data/exploreeconomies/haiti/paying-taxes/
Tunisia is referred to here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_rates_around_the_world
Haiti: http://www.state.gov/e/eeb/rls/othr/ics/2009/117840.htm
"A progressive tax system applies to income, profits, and capital gains earned by individuals. The tax rates on individuals are as follows (40.5 HTG/USD):
The tax rate on corporate income is 30 percent."
In Haiti, the government can generally take over any business by force - hence the lack of investment.
Also, this might help:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/47697.html
All good points so far. Also:
Is the question "if you want anarchy" or "if you don't like government regulations and taxes"? I'm sure government regulations and taxes impact those places, as well as government intervention and maybe so called "aid", therefore moving to those places wouldn't be a solution for someone who "doesn't like regulations and taxes". So that question is a red herring from the other fallacy: "if you want anarchy".
Anarchy is a system of free markets. This implies property rights, the homestead principle, self-ownership, and the non-aggression principle. Surely those places aren't respectful of these ideas.
That's my contribution. "Anarchy" for our purposes isn't "no government", it's "respect for libertarian principles".
I agree that anarchy is a mindset of non-aggression, hashem.
However, I disagree that "Anarchy is a system of free markets." I know where you're coming from: all rights are property rights. But I am hesitant to embrace that (I have heard no argument for where these property rights come form in the first place). Because of your fundamental property assumption, you are saying all other flavors of anarchy are actually not anarchy. Which might or might not be true (if you are right, then it certainly would be true).
I currently assume property rights. I'd like a more solid foundation, though. Your idea that all rights are property rights is nice because it easily explains self-ownership, yet I have not yet seen arguments for these initial property rights.
I don't like government regulations and taxes, but I do like a liberal civil society.
Much of Somalia may satisfy the former, but certainly not the latter. No one that I know of argues that the absence of government is all that is necessary for a functioning laissez-faire society.
Are you the same hash from the c4l forums?
It's not only "love it or leave it" argument, it's also a form of shifting the burden of proof to the victim (victim has to justify his complains and not the agressor).
So that's more pathetic.
(english is not my native language, sorry for grammar.)
limitgov:How would you respond to someone who says "If you do not like government regulations and taxes, move to the above places"? Is what they say accurate? Are there no government regulations and taxes in the above places?
Nonsense, all of these are extremely repressive statist regimes with very extensive government, weak property rights and massive state expropriation (="socialism"). None of them to the least qualify as "anarchist" in our sense of the term. Rather, all of them, in fact all poor countries, are not capitalist at all and attempted some form of socialism in their recent history.
To act as if Somalia is the anarchist equivalent of the Soviet union - the example that shows that too much laissez-fair doesn't work either - is so wrong that it's funny. Somalia is a failed communist state, not a voluntarist experiment. Sure, if you start your analysis in 1991, then Somalia can act as an example of a country that is "anarchist". But Somalia has no functioning government because communism was so dysfunctional that the central government broke down, not because they consciously attempted anarchism. Interestingly, standards of living actually went up for most people after the fall of big government "services" in Somalia. Life expectancy went up (during a civil war!) after the end of universal health care in Somalia. Mention that one next time someone says universal health care can work because it works in Norway, which ironically is extremely capitalist.
In Haiti most people do not own their houses officially and it takes two decades (!) to register ownership of a piece of land that your family has been on for generations, because there is so much red tape and regulation. Does that sound very anarchistic to you? People who think that miserable countries are lawless and anarchistic are just ill-informed. The problem is that we (public school, left-wing media) never mention stuff like regulation in these places, so people naturally assume that there is none. The opposite is the case: These countries are poor and violent because they have such extensive government meddling, overregulation and decades of ill-advised social engineering, not because they lack proper governance.
And didn't they just have huge a revolt against big government in Tunisia? Why would they do that if the country is anarchistic? These Arab revolts are always portrayed as a rebellion "for democracy" in the media, but of course they are more about immediate statism in peoples lives.
MaikU:It's not only "love it or leave it" argument, it's also a form of shifting the burden of proof to the victim (victim has to justify his complains and not the agressor). So that's more pathetic.
Not only this - it's also a confusion of correlation and causation. That is, those people making this (implicit) argument believe that laissez-faire necessarily leads to conditions such as those seen in Somalia, Haiti, or Tunisia (although I fail to see how the latter two parts of the world could be seen to have laissez-faire economies). By their argument, the Soviet Union, which had far more state economic regulation than e.g. the US, should have had much higher standards of living than countries which were less economically regulated by the state.
Yet another aspect of this (implicit) argument is that it's seen as a challenge to the opponent to "put his money where his mouth is". That's essentially the love-it-or-leave-it argument, but I think this view of it is instructive. The person who makes the love-it-or-leave-it argument apparently either hopes to "out" his opponent as some kind of hypocrite, at which point his opponent will shut up, or his opponent will actually leave and stop "complaining" (i.e. he'll shut up). Either way, the person making the argument ultimately hopes to shut his opponent up - which is the whole point for him.
It seems to be a sad fact that most so-called "arguments", especially on the internet, are just elaborate ways of screaming "SHUT UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
The keyboard is mightier than the gun.
Non parit potestas ipsius auctoritatem.
Voluntaryism Forum
Anarchy in Somalia
Stateless in Somalia , and Loving It
The Rule of Law without the State
Somalia: Libertarian Paradise
Are the Salad Days for Somalia Over?
Somalia Celebrates 20 Years of Prospering Anarchy
Somalia: Society vs. the State?
Wibee,
Ya same hash3m from c4l forums. I wish I could log back on there but their system is broken. I don't get any emails if I try to start a new account, and the "password recovery" system doesn't work either...
Wheylous,
I don't mean that the definition of anarchy is "free markets". I mean that a system of anarchy will necessarily imply free markets.
I currently assume property rights. I'd like a more solid foundation, though. Your idea that all rights are property rights is nice because it easily explains self-ownership, yet I have not yet seen arguments for these initial property rights. Here's a pretty concise answer.
There is no alternative to anarchy. Monarchy is anarchy for the king. Democracy is anarchy for the majority. Complaining about anarchy is complaining about existential freedom. You can't choose no choice. Sorry. The relevant question is why we should only have anarchy for some people (i.e. the state). In particular, why an innocent person shouldn't be included in anarchy.
Thanks for the link, which I shall read when I have free time (apparently concise to a libertarian is pretty long, but hey, I guess it's thorough).
I mean that a system of anarchy will necessarily imply free markets.
If you have property rights. If you have AnSoc, for example, you don't have free markets.
Autolykos: at which point his opponent will shut up, or his opponent will actually leave and stop "complaining" (i.e. he'll shut up). Either way, the person making the argument ultimately hopes to shut his opponent up - which is the whole point for him.
at which point his opponent will shut up, or his opponent will actually leave and stop "complaining" (i.e. he'll shut up). Either way, the person making the argument ultimately hopes to shut his opponent up - which is the whole point for him.
brilliant, well put.