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Re: Anarcho-capitalism and the need to Defend freedom and Liberty via National Defense Force

Stranger — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 16:43:45 GMT

laminustacitus:

The ironic part is that the barbarian lords invaded the "chaos" of the Roman empire in order to enjoy the fruits of being in the Roman Empire! Furthermore, you do not see such chaos in the Eastern Mediterranean, in which the Eastern Roman Empire was still firmly in control. That is not to deny that the corruption of the Western empire has no influence on the chaos of that era, but to deny that the barbarian invasions had a decisive role is a foolish analysis.

It's not clear whether the Barbarian "invasions" were invasions in the modern sense of a military invasion. Many of the Barbarians were on the Roman Empire's payroll as it was collapsing and its population draining away. When the money ran out to pay them, they had to find a way to pay themselves. However, it's probably more accurate to call it a migration than an invasion, much like Latin Americans are migrating in the USA, serving in the military, and so on.

The Battle of Vienna occured in an era in which the European nations more resembled states than the medieval fiefdoms of centuries past. Really, the Battles of Lepanato, and Vienna were fought by more or less a contemporary version of the modern NATO that was designed in order to unify European states against the Turkish threat just as NATO united the states of the Eastern Atlantic against the Warsaw Pact.

The states may have been united but they were not centralized through a single taxing agency. The same principle applied during the medieval era. It was in everyone's self-interest to cooperate in the destruction of the invader.

Re: Anarcho-capitalism and the need to Defend freedom and Liberty via National Defense Force

liberty student — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 10:20:24 GMT

Mansoor H. Khan:
I still don't really get it!

But I have a lot of respect for you trying. Honestly, it is refreshing to see someone make an honest attempt as you have. Thank you.

Mansoor H. Khan:
Are you guys saying that un-state-ness itself can provide a good creative un-predictable yet effective defense without a formal large well funded ready standing army?

Statelessness. Yes, look at Iraq, Afghanistan vs. Britain, Afghanistan vs. USSR, Afghanistan vs USA, Vietnam...

Mansoor H. Khan:
Austrian-ism (or least Libertarianism) is like a religion with no central nervous system (no official central church, no official pope, no official clergy, no official hierarchy).

Not a church. A school of ideas.

Mansoor H. Khan:
It is free for all environment yet it is not at same time and is not chaos or at least people know how to deal with the chaos effectively. Un-official consensus driven standards do develop and are followed but there is no need or the desire to enforce/force anything on anyone. It is self-evolving, self-organizing, self-adjusting, self-disciplining, with rules which adjust quickly to the weather.

You get it.

Re: Anarcho-capitalism and the need to Defend freedom and Liberty via National Defense Force

nirgrahamUK — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 09:59:00 GMT

laminustacitus:
States did not exist during the period in which the Mongols invaded Eastern Europe.

The Kingdom of Hungary was not a state?

Re: Anarcho-capitalism and the need to Defend freedom and Liberty via National Defense Force

Mansoor H. Khan — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 08:38:10 GMT

I still don't really get it!

Are you guys saying that un-state-ness itself can provide a good creative un-predictable yet effective defense without a formal large well funded ready standing army?

Austrian-ism (or least Libertarianism) is like a religion with no central nervous system (no official central church, no official pope, no official clergy, no official hierarchy).

It is like the Linux or the Open Source world in software. It is there, it is useful, it works, people use its products to do real work and get real benefits cheaper and faster. It is free for all environment yet it is not at same time and is not chaos or at least people know how to deal with the chaos effectively. Un-official consensus driven standards do develop and are followed but there is no need or the desire to enforce/force anything on anyone. It is self-evolving, self-organizing, self-adjusting, self-disciplining, with rules which adjust quickly to the weather.

Re: Anarcho-capitalism and the need to Defend freedom and Liberty via National Defense Force

laminustacitus — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 06:50:52 GMT

nirgrahamUK:

Mansoor H. Khan:
How about the mongol invasions? Europe, Middle East and India were absolutely no threat to them. Yet they invaded and enslaved and taxed!

on the other hand, having states for military defence against external invasion was not effective for those countries invaded and occupied by the mongols.

States did not exist during the period in which the Mongols invaded Eastern Europe.

Stranger:

Mansoor H. Khan:
Have you guys (Austrians) ever read what happened after the Roman empire collapsed? Historians consistently say that much chaos followed.

Actually the Barbarian lords established kingdoms that lasted for centuries. You must be talking of the chaos caused by the Roman Empire itself.

The ironic part is that the barbarian lords invaded the "chaos" of the Roman empire in order to enjoy the fruits of being in the Roman Empire! Furthermore, you do not see such chaos in the Eastern Mediterranean, in which the Eastern Roman Empire was still firmly in control. That is not to deny that the corruption of the Western empire has no influence on the chaos of that era, but to deny that the barbarian invasions had a decisive role is a foolish analysis.

Stranger:

Mansoor H. Khan:
But lets go back in history a little more. How about the mongol invasions? Europe, Middle East and India were absolutely no threat to them. Yet they invaded and enslaved and taxed!

European civilization did not have any difficulty destroying foreign invaders before the creation of the modern state, through systems of mutual protection.

The Battle of Vienna occured in an era in which the European nations more resembled states than the medieval fiefdoms of centuries past. Really, the Battles of Lepanato, and Vienna were fought by more or less a contemporary version of the modern NATO that was designed in order to unify European states against the Turkish threat just as NATO united the states of the Eastern Atlantic against the Warsaw Pact.

Re: Anarcho-capitalism and the need to Defend freedom and Liberty via National Defense Force

liberty student — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 06:36:17 GMT

Mansoor H. Khan:
It seems to me that An-Cap-ness leads to un-sheathing of the sword. No one's in charge? Who is in charge? Do thugs rule? Do people do what they can get away with? What are the rules? the ten commandments? Are there no courts? No judges? No jails? Is everybody trying to enforce their own personal law?

A popular misconception is that the state provides order. The state provides AN ORDER, but the state does not exclusively provide ALL ORDER.

Order emerges in the marketplace. Think about how many interactions you have with other people in a week, that do not require the intervention of the state, or any licensing. Everything from simple greetings to complex commercial exchanges to the use and maintenance of sophisticated capital goods and software (knowledge).

Ancap is not the absence of order, it is order from the market. Order which satisfies the people living within it.

If you want an example of multiple orders, look no further than the 200 some odd countries of the world. Those are all different orders, with different politics, people and laws. Within them are thousands of states, provinces and prefectures. Within them hundreds of thousands of towns, cities, shires and villages.

Re: Anarcho-capitalism and the need to Defend freedom and Liberty via National Defense Force

demosthenes — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 06:33:28 GMT

Have you guys (Austrians) ever read what happened after the Roman empire collapsed? Historians consistently say that much chaos followed. Pax Romana was lost.

Statism itself is the embodiment of chaos. How many people were murdered in the twentieth century as a result of rampant statism? The numbers range from 167 to 203 million, according to this website: http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat8.htm

It seems to me that An-Cap-ness leads to un-sheathing of the sword.

Quite the contrary. Power (statism) leads to the un-sheathing of the proverbial sword, not freedom ("an-cap-ness").

No one's in charge? Who is in charge?

Not in an ancap society. Our history is full of the atrocities that result from the idea that someone must be "in charge." You might also take note that the desire to be subordinate to power is the desire to be enslaved.

Do thugs rule? Do people do what they can get away with?

In a statist world, most definitely. Can't you see it all around you? Some guy drops a bomb and kill nearly one hundred thousand people, and he's called a hero. This is the proverbial personification of statism. In an ancap society, there would still be crime, but criminals would not have the state to use to their advantage like they do today.

What are the rules? the ten commandments? Are there no courts? No judges? No jails?

The market will fulfill these needs, just like it does every other need.

Is everybody trying to enforce their own personal law?

Isn't that what's occurring already? The power behind statism is that it provides a platform for criminals to impose their own personal law on the rest of us far more effectively than would be possible in an ancap society.

Re: Anarcho-capitalism and the need to Defend freedom and Liberty via National Defense Force

Stranger — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 06:16:59 GMT

Mansoor H. Khan:
Have you guys (Austrians) ever read what happened after the Roman empire collapsed? Historians consistently say that much chaos followed.

Actually the Barbarian lords established kingdoms that lasted for centuries. You must be talking of the chaos caused by the Roman Empire itself.

Re: Anarcho-capitalism and the need to Defend freedom and Liberty via National Defense Force

Mansoor H. Khan — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 06:14:38 GMT

demosthenes:

The ongoing occupation of the An-Caps would cause a severe drain on the empire's finances. The An-Caps simply will not submit. Just as we cannot anticipate free market solutions to problems currently handled by government, we can't anticipate how the An-Caps would fight this war. Perhaps they would infiltrate the empire's economic system, covertly converting the empire's own citizens into An-Caps. The empire would be fighting on two fronts. Perhaps the empire would look at this "zone" and decide not to invade. We simply cannot know how an An-Cap zone would defend itself. When it comes to free-market vs. statist, I think we know who wins every time. Why would it be different in dealing with a statist (by definition) invader?

Have you considered the possibility that there would be no invasion? Think about it.. what would the conditions be for a large ancap zone to be viable? If this zone has already successfully sustained itself, this already implies that the state failed to prevent this development. If it was not able to prevent this blatant undercutting of its dominance, what makes you think that it would be able to invade? If you think about world statism as an occupation, like the American occupation of the Middle East, then the rise of an ancap zone is itself a battle in this ongoing war, and an indication that freedom is finally beating slavery. The emergence of an ancap zone would imply the decline of statism worldwide. I'm an optimist when it comes to the decline of statism, so I think that once an ancap zone is established, it will go viral. Especially with cyberspace undercutting violence at every turn.

http://faculty.msb.edu/hasnasj/GTWebSite/MythWeb.htm:

However, if I must engage in such speculation, I will try to avoid what might be called "static thinking" in doing so. Static thinking occurs when we imagine changing one feature of a dynamic system without appreciating how doing so will alter the character of all other features of the system.

...meaning, to me at least, that once an ancap zone is established, the idea that an invasion is inevitable is largely a non-sequitor.

Have you guys (Austrians) ever read what happened after the Roman empire collapsed? Historians consistently say that much chaos followed. Pax Romana was lost. It seems to me that An-Cap-ness leads to un-sheathing of the sword. No one's in charge? Who is in charge? Do thugs rule? Do people do what they can get away with? What are the rules? the ten commandments? Are there no courts? No judges? No jails? Is everybody trying to enforce their own personal law?

Re: Anarcho-capitalism and the need to Defend freedom and Liberty via National Defense Force

demosthenes — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 05:59:39 GMT

The ongoing occupation of the An-Caps would cause a severe drain on the empire's finances. The An-Caps simply will not submit. Just as we cannot anticipate free market solutions to problems currently handled by government, we can't anticipate how the An-Caps would fight this war. Perhaps they would infiltrate the empire's economic system, covertly converting the empire's own citizens into An-Caps. The empire would be fighting on two fronts. Perhaps the empire would look at this "zone" and decide not to invade. We simply cannot know how an An-Cap zone would defend itself. When it comes to free-market vs. statist, I think we know who wins every time. Why would it be different in dealing with a statist (by definition) invader?

Have you considered the possibility that there would be no invasion? Think about it.. what would the conditions be for a large ancap zone to be viable? If this zone has already successfully sustained itself, this already implies that the state failed to prevent this development. If it was not able to prevent this blatant undercutting of its dominance, what makes you think that it would be able to invade? If you think about world statism as an occupation, like the American occupation of the Middle East, then the rise of an ancap zone is itself a battle in this ongoing war, and an indication that freedom is finally beating slavery. The emergence of an ancap zone would imply the decline of statism worldwide. I'm an optimist when it comes to the decline of statism, so I think that once an ancap zone is established, it will go viral. Especially with cyberspace undercutting violence at every turn.

http://faculty.msb.edu/hasnasj/GTWebSite/MythWeb.htm:

However, if I must engage in such speculation, I will try to avoid what might be called "static thinking" in doing so. Static thinking occurs when we imagine changing one feature of a dynamic system without appreciating how doing so will alter the character of all other features of the system.

...meaning, to me at least, that once an ancap zone is established, the idea that an invasion is inevitable is largely a non-sequitor.

Re: Anarcho-capitalism and the need to Defend freedom and Liberty via National Defense Force

Mansoor H. Khan — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 05:57:39 GMT

chloe732:

Mansoor H. Khan / LibertyStudent:
There is no easier target than a nationalistic and socialistic electorate.

I think this reply by LS sheds some light on how an An-Cap "zone" (as I call it) would defend itself. If the people were NOT nationalistic and socialistic, the invader would have problems after the initial military "victory". The ongoing occupation of the An-Caps would cause a severe drain on the empire's finances. The An-Caps simply will not submit. Just as we cannot anticipate free market solutions to problems currently handled by government, we can't anticipate how the An-Caps would fight this war. Perhaps they would infiltrate the empire's economic system, covertly converting the empire's own citizens into An-Caps. The empire would be fighting on two fronts. Perhaps the empire would look at this "zone" and decide not to invade. We simply cannot know how an An-Cap zone would defend itself. When it comes to free-market vs. statist, I think we know who wins every time. Why would it be different in dealing with a statist (by definition) invader?

Very interesting answer. What you are describing is pre-Islamic Arabia (before 600 CE). This has actually happened in history. Both the Roman Empire (to the west of Arabia) and the Persion Empire (to the east of Arabia) did not invade Arabia because they were very An-Cap-ish. Very difficult to subdue and simply would not submit (little bit like current day Afghans). They were tribal and de-centralized and higly skilled traders. But they did not make much economic progress (it seems) compared to the Romans and the Persians. Does An-Cap-ish behavior lead to less material progress, less material comforts, less material security, less time perhaps to devout to advancing scientific and other knowledge?

Re: Anarcho-capitalism and the need to Defend freedom and Liberty via National Defense Force

liberty student — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 05:53:36 GMT

chloe732:
we can't anticipate how the An-Caps would fight this war.

They might do something the American military state can't even imagine. They might negotiate for peace.

Re: Anarcho-capitalism and the need to Defend freedom and Liberty via National Defense Force

Stranger — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 05:47:44 GMT

Mansoor H. Khan:
But lets go back in history a little more. How about the mongol invasions? Europe, Middle East and India were absolutely no threat to them. Yet they invaded and enslaved and taxed!

European civilization did not have any difficulty destroying foreign invaders before the creation of the modern state, through systems of mutual protection.

Re: Anarcho-capitalism and the need to Defend freedom and Liberty via National Defense Force

chloe732 — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 05:36:32 GMT

Mansoor H. Khan / LibertyStudent:
There is no easier target than a nationalistic and socialistic electorate.

I think this reply by LS sheds some light on how an An-Cap "zone" (as I call it) would defend itself. If the people were NOT nationalistic and socialistic, the invader would have problems after the initial military "victory". The ongoing occupation of the An-Caps would cause a severe drain on the empire's finances. The An-Caps simply will not submit. Just as we cannot anticipate free market solutions to problems currently handled by government, we can't anticipate how the An-Caps would fight this war. Perhaps they would infiltrate the empire's economic system, covertly converting the empire's own citizens into An-Caps. The empire would be fighting on two fronts. Perhaps the empire would look at this "zone" and decide not to invade. We simply cannot know how an An-Cap zone would defend itself. When it comes to free-market vs. statist, I think we know who wins every time. Why would it be different in dealing with a statist (by definition) invader?

Re: Anarcho-capitalism and the need to Defend freedom and Liberty via National Defense Force

nirgrahamUK — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 02:05:44 GMT

Mansoor H. Khan:
How about the mongol invasions? Europe, Middle East and India were absolutely no threat to them. Yet they invaded and enslaved and taxed!

on the other hand, having states for military defence against external invasion was not effective for those countries invaded and occupied by the mongols.