allow each clan to create their own jurisdiction and opt out of controlling ones ... separation of economy and state... tweak a few key variable ...
tweak a few key variable ...
What rubbish. The Somali clan system is very complex and its complexities are not just idiosyncrasies. Clan membership is not determined by blood; a person can switch from one clan to another if the new clan will have him (i.e. reputation matters!). The clan itself does not comprise a jurisdiction (a contiguous land area with a well-defined border) but its land-holdings cannot be transferred outside of itself, that is, clan members may only make land sales to other members of the same clan.
The idea of "tweaking a few key variables" is arrogant in the extreme. The British and the Italians have each tried tweaking Somalia's variables. Then the Siad Barre dictatorship tried tweaking Somalia's variables. The US tried it. Now the "African Union" (aka the UN aka the CIA) is trying to tweak Somalia's variables with foreign mercenary troops and Predator drones. Long live liberty!
Clayton -
Just imagine every government employee going on strike without pay, you have no cops, courts, fire department, schools, and any other tax funded services.
Erm...I don't really see that as the case. Taxation would certainly be abolished by pressing the button, as well as the coercive activity of the State to send childrent to indoctrination camps, but I see no reason why teachers would not find a way to...get students voluntarily? Are you saying that, in the absence of the State, the agents would all just starve and die, instead of many turning to market activities?
That hypothetical would only cleanse the State of crimes, different than getting rid of the apparatus itself.
I also disagree with this idea. The button would get rid of the State itself. The teachers and public education buildings ≠ the State. They'd still exist, without the institution of Coercion. So they'd be left to sink or swim in The Market.
Somalia is better off than it was before the government collapsed.
As for Mexico... It's all due to the drug war. The drugs are grown by American soldiers in Afghanistan, the Mexican cartels are provided with weapons by the ATF, and the whole reason for the violence is because the drugs are illegal.
I suppose the gang violence associated with alcohol prohibition wasn't caused by it either? Lol.
You expect government employees to turn to free-market means in an instant? The button gets rid of the apparatus, it says nothing about changing the minds and views of stubborn Statists. I never said they'd starve and die, but they'd put up a fight to rebuild the apparatus quickly as possible to maintain their income feed.
Again, they would be quick to maintain the status quo. If you are differentiating between what the State has and does not, then what does the State own if government buildings and tax paid employees are not part of the State? Either all tax funded employees, projects, and property are part of the State, or you are going to pick and choose to your liking. You can't have it both ways, of which the teachers and school buildings are an extension of the State.
Clayton: allow each clan to create their own jurisdiction and opt out of controlling ones ... separation of economy and state... tweak a few key variable ... What rubbish. The Somali clan system is very complex and its complexities are not just idiosyncrasies. Clan membership is not determined by blood; a person can switch from one clan to another if the new clan will have him (i.e. reputation matters!). The clan itself does not comprise a jurisdiction (a contiguous land area with a well-defined border) but its land-holdings cannot be transferred outside of itself, that is, clan members may only make land sales to other members of the same clan. The idea of "tweaking a few key variables" is arrogant in the extreme. The British and the Italians have each tried tweaking Somalia's variables. Then the Siad Barre dictatorship tried tweaking Somalia's variables. The US tried it. Now the "African Union" (aka the UN aka the CIA) is trying to tweak Somalia's variables with foreign mercenary troops and Predator drones. Long live liberty! Clayton -
I suggest a government could be built in accordance with the existing Somali system. Those other efforts were trying to impose from without.
I don't think you mean that no government could be instituted at all there.
And the OP stopped responding. What a surprise, we've never seen this before....
Well, of course ey did. They had a nonsense post and got nonsense responses.
The question that was probably underlying the op (at least, what it got me thinking about) was the fact that its obviously not very profitable to go by AnCap principals. If it were the most profitable thing for people to do, then hell, we'd be living it.
So maybe it's the most reasonable thing to do. Well, then we're confronted with the problem that people aren't very reasonable, or at least they are reasonable as well as other things.
"Well, of course ey did. They had a nonsense post and got nonsense responses."
"The question that was probably underlying the op (at least, what it got me thinking about) was the fact that its obviously notvery profitable to go by AnCap principals. If it were the most profitable thing for people to do, then hell, we'd be living it."
what this got to do about profit??? Well, for psychopaths (running the governments and etc), who only live in short term, statism is much more profitable, that's one thing for sure. But for all the normal people? Not so much. Actually, even if they believe, that statism brings more profit, they are clueless about alternatives and how much they would earn in free market economy.
And these normal people are the majority. If you change their thinking, the minority of psychopaths would be ostracized quickly.
(english is not my native language, sorry for grammar.)
All I am saying, and both the posters above me have much more nuanced views and I recognize that, is that if your main argument is going to be that your philosophy is based on simple truths and axioms about how the world works, then they better actually describe how the world works.
I realize this is a Mises thing that Rothbardians mix in, which is why AnCaps are hard to deal with. What the OP, really ridiculous as it was, got me thinking about is that even if an example of AnCap showed up, it would just become a No True Scotsman if it didn't look how AnCaps wanted it to, especially the ones that think human action is reasonable and determinable.
Pony, IMO, these couple of posts of yours have been the most reasonable and thoughtful since you've joined this forum. Just didn't want to let this go unnoticed.
"even if an example of AnCap showed up, it would just become a No True Scotsman if it didn't look how AnCaps wanted it to, especially the ones that think human action is reasonable and determinable."
I think that in a way this has already been disproven by the examples of areas which have cited as anarchistic by anarcho-capitalists.
1. Medevil Iceland
When you think of paradise do you think of medevil Iceland? No, it sucked there. It was also dissolved voluntarily by the an-cap agencies themselves
2. Medevil Ireland
When you think of paradise do you think of medevil Ireland? No, it sucked there and statist (although vaguely libertarian) Arabia was probably a better place for people to live, and anarcho-capitalists accept this. It was also dissolved in the most brutal way that one can imagine.
3. The Old American West
When you think of paradise, do you think of the 'wild west'? No, there were many better places to live at the time and it dissolved itself voluntarily. Anarcho-capitalists accept this.
4. Aspects of Somolia about a decade ago
This isn't a good example just because anyone with half a brain can see exactly what terrible conditions it developed under. It's like democracy appearing in the middle of tzarist Russia and Imperial Germany without an ideology to back it up. Still, same general principle
I do see the potential for what you're talking about though. Indeed it could be similar to the Marxists instane criteria for a true communist revolution.
Just when methoughts stupid thread was dead, stupid thread comes back. At least the quality of anarchist opposition has been raised... But not as much as could be hoped.
I contest all of those examples I'm familiar with (can't say I know much about Iceland or Somalia frankly), especially the American west. When I get the line that Native Americans were actually Capitalist (there's my first thread here, for one. a video someone posted with someone talking about property schemes amongst different tribes, etc.), but then the cowboys hunting them down were also acting on NAP and self-ownership, the contradiction is too much to handle.
Now, were there settlers that lived peacefully with neighboring tribes? I'm quite positive there were. Are there probably some examples of people living lives free of what AnCaps consider aggression? It would be silly of me to say no. But do a few examples make up the history of the American West? Hell no.
I'm interested in what you think its history is, because there's a whole hell of a lot of conflicting property claims going on in that story.
"I do see the potential for what you're talking about though. Indeed it could be similar to the Marxists instane criteria for a true communist revolution."
Now that I can agree with. No true communism has been the party line. That's why I just like to say, "okay! The USSR was communist and it sucked! Where do we go from here?"
"especially the American west"
Between the settlers the fact is that there was a well instituted system of anarchistic law. You help to rienforce my eyes (in my view) in that you are exactly right that it wasn't a pure example of an anarcho-capitalist society and yet an-caps point to it as an example of such a society. Your point is well taken, however.
As for the view about communism (I'm having trouble quoting) I disagree in a sense. It's inaccurate to refer to the USSR as a communist country in the Marxian vein in the same way that it's technically proper but inaccurate to refer to both the United States during the Industrial revolution and Nazi Germany as 'capitalist' societies. You could argue that they were, but the fact is that they can't be expected to function the way that the various theorists would expect them to. The position that I take is that, for instance, the Russian Revolution and the lack of revolution where Marxian theories say that they must occur, displays the difficulty in instituting 'the right kind of communism' and the horrors that can happen when the 'wrong kind of communism' sets in which happens very easily.
My take is that the "right kind" and "wrong kind" of anything don't really matter, and what happens matters. This is probably a difference in our general methodologies as well. I'm more of a fan of observation or empiricism, whereas (I'm going to guess) you're more into theoretical or axiomatic deduction.
That's all fine and dandy, but it doesn't do much for describing what's happening--or what should happen-- right now, right here in the City of Townsville.
Well, ancap versus your-cap (whatever it is, BP), is merely a difference in culture of the society practicing it.
For example, say that the West was in a state of anarchy. Then we would describe it as AnCap if private property nearly always respected, and not AnCap if it weren't. Hence, the conditions and culture in which the anarchy exists defines the type of anarchy.
Then the question becomes "can an anarchic society become AnCap?"
Do I make sense?
...no.
If a society respects property rights, it is AnCap. If not, then not. AnCap is a culture (repsect of property).
I'll soon address Centinel's concern in a thread about the state and how it proves the viability of anarchy.
What does this have to do with the Old West?
I'm saying that you can't point to something and say "AnCap" if property rights weren't being respected, because they must be by definition.
The question of state v. anarchy is "can either prevent what happened to the natives?" Well, given that the state did terrible things to Indians, I am not ready to side with the state here. Imo societal progress and awareness are what would have solved the problem. State or not, people back then were not open-minded about other races. Perhaps this was caused in their minds because of the state oppressing them for so long, but the presence of a state appears to have exacerbated the Indian problem.
"My take is that the "right kind" and "wrong kind" of anything don't really matter, and what happens matters."
I disagree with this on the grounds that without a theoretical model of what is to happen, what can happen, or what should happen, one cannot aim towards anything other than either the status quo or unrepeatable conditions which have been proven to work in that instance. I also find that such a method misses the most important point of why did X fail or Y suceed and so on. Once again however, I do partially agree with you in that pragmatism is certainly necessary.
"That's all fine and dandy, but it doesn't do much for describing what's happening--or what should happen-- right now, right here in the City of Townsville."
Empiricism cannot tell us what is happening in the city of townsville and it certainly cannot tell us what should happen.
the ones that think human action is reasonable and determinable
There is no absolute constraint on human action because human action is really a synonym for human choice. However, we can know both from internal factors (being a human actor) and from external observations about our origins (namely, that we evolved) that human choice is self-interested, specifically, that it aims at all times to avoid pain and to seek pleasure. These terms are used in their formal sense meaning that there is no simple correlation between physiological states and the formal sense of pain (want) and pleasure (satisfaction). An ascetic who walks across hot coals in order to teach himself about god is seeking pleasure as much as the drunkard who is gulping down alcohol - in the formal sense.
Human action is not determinable but its effects are. If you pass a law making it illegal to smoke marijuana, the consequences are absolutely predictable: the law will not succeed in reforming the human proclivity for getting high so demand for marijuana will not be decreased and a black market of buyers and sellers willing to risk arrest will arise. This is praxeological reasoning in action.
"I disagree with this on the grounds that without a theoretical model of what is to happen, what can happen, or what should happen, one cannot aim towards anything other than either the status quo or unrepeatable conditions which have been proven to work in that instance. I also find that such a method misses the most important point of why did X fail or Y suceed and so on. Once again however, I do partially agree with you in that pragmatism is certainly necessary."
I don't see our disagreement here as very substantial. I'm pretty willing to just say that's kind of my view.
"Empiricism cannot tell us what is happening in the city of townsville and it certainly cannot tell us what should happen."
The best example I can think up is this whole Graeber controversey. People flipped their shit when some fuckin guy (who happens to have a PhD in Anthropology, and did an Anthropological study) suggested that, based on the evidence (of which there was a whole lot) that debt predates money and barter. And that the "barter" that occurred wasn't a system of equivilancies. Libertarians just could not accept that all the historical evidence points to their logically deduced idea being wrong. Yeah, there should be a mix of the two, but there comes a point when the theory is nothing more than an abstract concept that can't be realized. Marxian communism probably falls within that category. Before the USSR went on a bloody rampage, Marx was already expelling Anarchists from the international.
@Clayton, no offense, but I've had that debate. Yes, I realize we can define things into meaninglessness. That whatever I do is what I do, and what I do is always self-interested, so therefore whatever I do is self-interested, doesn't give me much insight into my own psychology. Go ahead an contimplate self-sacrifice for a mindfuck right there. My "self" doesn't benefit much if it ceases to exist after my action.
Ah, but you gained utility from the thought that you would be honored afterwards for your great personal sacrifice! After all, by definition, you....
I'm with you, BP. I'm with you.
Go ahead an contimplate self-sacrifice for a mindfuck right there. My "self" doesn't benefit much if it ceases to exist after my action.
Actually, I don't think it poses much of a challenge at all. Willful self-destruction is of one of two possible types: suicide or self-sacrifice. In the former case, I think it is fair to say that this is simply a mental illness or aberration of the psyche... someone with suicidal tendencies is like someone who has contracted a dangerous infectious disease or has been born with a genetic disorder. In the latter case, there is an evolutionary logic to self-sacrifice which we perceive in other animals, namely, protection of the young.
At an African watering hole at night, when lions begin circling a group of elephants, the elephants will stand shoulder-to-shoulder in a circle with the young in the center. This is clearly an act of self-sacrifice on the part of the adult elephants. Individually, each adult elephant has a better chance of survival by shrinking back from the rest and hiding with the youths, but they do not do that. They stand their ground even as it often happens that some of their number are lost to the marauding lions.
I am a parent myself. If you walked up to me with a voting card with my name on it and one of my children's names on it and told me "one of the people named on this card will die in the next 24 hours, the choice is up to you" it would be a no-brainer, I'd happily choose to let my child live in my stead. There is certainly an inscrutable aspect to this fact which defies analysis and I think that's what you're getting at. However, such conditions are pathological, they are not representative of the ordinary human experience. Those are "out-of-band" conditions which can be neglected for the sake of reasoning about how people go about their ordinary, humdrum day-to-day activities which constitute 99.999% of the human experience. Property. Exchange. Prices. That is the stuff of the vast majority of human action, boring and pedestrian though it is.
Why is suicide a mark of mental illness? Well, so-and-so killed themselves because they were mentally ill. And how do we know they were mentally ill? Well, because they killed themself of course! Circular logic?
And then we have self-sacrifice with the example of doing it in the interest of the children, but actually it's self-interest... Just skimmed. Sorry.
I think such ideas are quite a bit more common than you expect. While actual self-sacrifice might be rare, if we're willing to say that isn't self-interest, why would we grant the same status to giving up food for someone else, or anything else most folks regard as selfless?
That you can define anything into self-interested action is great. I have no doubt that I can give you any example and you can make it work. Whether or not that tells me anything is another story, and whether or not that really makes "self-interest" mean anything is another.
And another note: ranking everything that doesn't fit your definition of human action as mental illness probably opens a whole lot of doors that you want closed.
Why is suicide a mark of mental illness?
For the same reason that having a viral infection is defined as physiological illness... it's an obvious aberration of the telic purpose of the diseased organism.
if we're willing to say that isn't self-interest, why would we grant the same status to giving up food for someone else, or anything else most folks regard as selfless?
Because giving up food (to the point of privation) is a lot like being suicidal. In particular, giving up food under conditions of crisis is propagating someone else's genes at the expense of your own - it can happen, but it's aberrant because every organism without exception is programmed to propagate its genes. Those organisms which were not thus programmed all died out 2 billion years ago and have never re-emerged.
ranking everything that doesn't fit your definition of human action as mental illness
No, not everything that doesn't easily fit into the pleasure-pain framework of human action is necessarily mental illness. As I noted above, I think that certain forms of self-sacrifice clearly fit the human action paradigm, even though they are boundary cases.
In fact, it is not the theory of human action that identifies humans as being plagued with mental illness, it is the mainstream tabula rasa view of human psychology which is guilty of this. The study of human action boils down to the attempt to answer the question "why the hell did he/she do that?" If you would have done the same thing, then there's no mystery since it is likely they did it for the same reason you would have so you do not bother asking the question.
But when people do things you would not do in the same circumstance, that's when the question arises. There are two broad categories of answers. The first category is "they did it because they are stupid/insane/deranged/evil/corrupt/etc. etc." The second category is "they did it because they thought through - consciously or otherwise - the benefits and costs of the courses of action available to them and thought this course of action had the best benefits at the lowest costs."
The first broad category is logical nihilism with respect to understanding the decisions that others make which do not agree with the decisions you think you would have made in the same circumstances. It's throwing up the hands, shrugging the shoulders and saying "God, who knows why people do stupid shit... they're stupid, I guess." Such thinking is lazy and does not take seriously the reality of cause-and-effect, particularly as it relates to the human brain. Basically, it's the same as giving up on understanding why people do what they do and just concluding they're all mentally ill.
The second broad category of answer, however, is rigorous and unrelenting in the pursuit of reasonable answers for why people do things under the broadest possible range of circumstances. Perhaps thieves steal not because they are "evil" or "insane" or fill-in-the-blank but simply because they believe it is the best course of action available to them. Nothing crazy about them at all. So, you see that it is the theory of human action which seeks to actually give answers rather than just shrugging the shoulders and concluding that everyone we don't understand is "just nuts."
You're just hanging yourself with your own words. As if suicide isn't thought out and contemplated? Yes, it goes against what you think the telic purpose of existence is. No doubt.
And this is the part where the 'self' benefits without the body to justify suicide, and other cases are just extremes, and everything else is mental illness.
There's a whole lot of qualifiers for something that is supposed to just be axiomatic. Human action is self-interested, except when this happens, and sometimes that, and this thing is just crazy.
it goes against what you think the telic purpose of existence is. No doubt.
Not the telic purpose of existence (I assume you mean the Universe, which has no telic purpose that I know of), the telic purpose of the organism, that is, of a human being. The telic purpose of the eye is to focus an image from the visible light spectrum onto the retina. When the eye does not do this, it is recognized as a disorder and we use lenses mounted in spectacles to correct the disorder, if possible.
The human being has a digestive tract. If you stop eating and commit suicide through starvation, for example, this is a malfunction from the point-of-view of the telic purpose of your body. That doesn't mean I can tell you what your purpose in life is (what your values should be). Perhaps you're on hunger-strike to protest some intolerable humiliation and abuse. As a proponent of human action, I would then diganose the social disorder to be the intolerable humiliation and abuse, of which the hunger strike is merely a symptom. This is the sense in which I diagnose the State to be a social disorder of which wars, manmade famines, destruction of wealth and human productivity through financial schemes, and so on are merely symptoms.
There's a whole lot of qualifiers for something that is supposed to just be axiomatic.
Contrary to Hoppe and other Austrian theorists, I do not believe that human action is irrefutable. I don't even really know what it means for an axiom to be "irrefutable." Its status as an axiom (assumption) is merely as a starting point for deduction to hopefully arrive at useful conclusions.
Somalia is a pretty interesting example. I suppose that my feelings on it, is that since everyone I-find-authoritative says that Somalia should be "re-instated", that there should be a state (an argument from authority of course, but I don't claim it's a proof, just an argument) there. The Somalians were not ready for freedom, since they clearly lacked the morals for living it well; according to a view of morality whose truth I believe. But freedom is the necessary condition for anything, so it must be for morality. So does this mean that Somalia will one day need freedom? I don't know, but like in many things, I suspect things. And I suspect that freedom will probably be the right answer at some point.
On the telic purpose of the organism
From a biological point of view, maybe you're right. This isn't a biology forum, however, and I think we'd both like to believe there's more to it than raw biology.
Hi to all.
From the perspective of the actor, suicide is just a matter of time preference. The *origin of the urge* to end one's life may or may not be evolutionary, but that is irrelevant to praxeology.
Why anarchy fails
BP, in what way are self-sacrifice (and suicide) not self-interested (selfish) acts?
Oh, and I missed this exchange but I'm with Clayton and AJ about how yanking govt (monopoly) provided goods/services overnight would lead to unpredictable chaos and would prove nothing about the viability (posited superiority) of the same services being provided by the market. If govt food production had been closed down overnight in USSR, millions would have died from hunger and strife before a viable bread market would start to emerge.
"f govt food production had been closed down overnight in USSR, millions would have died from hunger and strife before a viable bread market would start to emerge."
good point.
The initial shock could surely be great (and I do not believe I am advocating it), yet consider why the heck all of the people who used to do things for payment would stop doing them. People can still carry on their jobs and then be picked up by entrepreneurs who spring in to get a piece of the action.