Political Theory

Re: Emergence Anarcho-Capitalism

Anenome — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 05:22:51 GMT

Thanks, I will check it out.

Re: Emergence Anarcho-Capitalism

Wheylous — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 14:54:01 GMT

Anenome, I just saw this in one of your posts:

Tell me more about your / ancap's vision of how a society would run then. Because I don't see how criminal law is being handled. Who's passing it, who's enforcing it, is it even necessary to pass criminal law and enforce it in your view.

I recommend the book Chaos Theory . I do not like its shallow level of depth, but it does provide an idea on how a voluntary society might work. It's not a long book, I read the law section in about 2-3 hours.

Re: Emergence Anarcho-Capitalism

Anenome — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 04:42:11 GMT

Autolykos:
you agree that "the helpless" are also ultimately responsible for their own defense. No one has a prima facie obligation to help them - or anyone else.

Certainly. But that does not invalidate the prerogative of any outsider to help them, that is to stop initiation of aggression against them. I'm sure you'll agree with that as well.

Autolykos:
In dealing with contract law you are talking about using force. As I mentioned before, if I contract with someone to build me a house, then I pay him up front, and then he reneges on his end of the deal, he has effectively stolen my money from me. How is that not (potentially) an matter of coercion against him?

I agree, which is why I said I'm not sure that even civil courts which deal with contractual issues can be made private. I actually thing now that they cannot be. But I don't think they need a monopoly generally, they only need a monopoly on force. That is, there's plenty of room for private arbitration allowing the parties to come to a mutual resolution of their dispute, just as happens now with arbitration in the US. But if no voluntary solution can be found, there must be recourse to a court capable of using coercion in a legal context to resolve the dispute and ensure reasonable justice, ensure the contracts are lived up to.

Autolykos:
Regarding conferral of authority, do you not think that such can be essentially provided by people "voting with their dollars"?

What do you mean by this, exactly. What would that constitue, paying for... what? You cannot create a quid pro quo between judges and legal outcomes and expect impartiality. Authority can only come from the consent of the governed, thus most suits should be settled by (binding?) arbitration. Could all of them be settled this way? That's an interesting question--as such would eliminate the need for a government court. It might be possible in terms of civil law, but certainly not for criminal law.

My understand on binding arbitration is that the judge in such a case is chosen for their impartiality, by agreement between two parties, and that the binding part comes in the form of placing the property in question into the hands of the judge, that is it is held in escrow by the judge, and then the judge rules and hands the property over in line with his ruling.

That may be doable. But sometimes a civil suit is about performance and not about property. In such a case you need a coercive power, a legal power, or else nothing can be done, since a legal remedy which takes the form of an injunction against particular actions requires the use of legal coercion within society and could not be done without violating the NAP, thus the legal system of a government, which has a legal monopoly on force within society, must become involved.

Autolykos:
Oh, you're talking about restrictive covenants then.

Yes! Those.

Autolykos:
Although many anarcho-capitalists (including Rothbard himself) have written in favor of restrictive covenants, I consider them to violate the non-aggression principle. Essentially, I consider jurisdiction to begin and end with ownership.

I tend to agree.

Autolykos:
To impose a higher jurisdiction over someone's property is de facto enforcing a higher claim of ownership over his property. The closest things I see to a modern-day HOA existing in an anarcho-capitalist society would be 1) renters' associations and 2) communes. In the case of the latter, all members of a commune would be considered joint owners of the land and other property in question.

Right, right. I think it would be reasonable for the citizens in a region to setup a legal system they agreed to and to ask those entering the premises to agree to the law in that jurisdiction, corporately owned by all of them, or else leave. Such would create a legal and perfectly NAP and free jurisdiction without coercion of any sort, using property laws themselves to establish legal force and jurisdiction.

Autolykos:
Yes, they end up being backed by the state's (or, if you prefer, the aggressive state's) court. In a society that I'd call "anarcho-capitalist", I could indeed tell an HOA to go away because it's my land.

Agreed. But what recourse then if a society finds a person polluting on their land and affecting others by the pollution. Surely there must be something like cosmic jurisdiction in such a case. For one could not simply drop out of the legal order, declaring themselves independent, as a way of escaping making restitution for their actions which are impacting other negatively.

I tend to support the doctrine of coming to the nuisance in such cases.

Autolykos:
Then as far as I'm concerned, what you call "owning it free and clear" is a misnomer at best and fraud at worst. What you say above means that voluntary perpetual slavery contracts are valid and enforceable in your ideal society/state. Do you really believe in the idea of self-ownership?

But let's back up a bit. If I offer you sale of land only on the condition that you agree to X in perpetuity, I have not harmed you. I have not enslaved you either, for I have not made you buy land and I have not forced you to agree to X. I think using restrictive covenants to achieve such things is certainly the wrong way to go about it, but selling land conditioned on the acceptance of X contract provisions should be perfectly reasonable. If the buyer finds them unreasonable they need only buy elsewhere.

Suppose an owner wants to split up their land, but doesn't want to live next to dogs. They offer the parcel for sale but on condition of agreeing not to own dogs, contractually. I don't see a problem with that, assuming the contract provisions are legitimate and reasonable.

Autolykos:
Indeed, such a contract would be unenforceable even on your (apparent) terms. However, I don't consider a simple promise to do something to be legitimately enforceable by coercion when no property has been transferred.

No, it would be enforceable, as there is consideration involved. Obviously you would have no recourse if you contract for someone to wear green for the rest of their life and gave them nothing and they broke the contract. But if you contract for the same and then transfer to them a title that is conditional on performance of the contract, your recourse is the rescinding of that agreement.

Autolykos:
The right to wear whatever he wants has nothing to do with the land. Just because people reside, work, and otherwise exist on land doesn't mean they're part of the land.

Sure, but I'm not sure that matters. A contract is a contract, and what's agreed to need not be part of the domain of the thing being transferred. For instance, when you become an employee you agree to all sorts of things that have nothing to do with working there, such as certain moral clauses and the like. Not a great example, but pertinent.

If you make transfer or title conditional on wearing green permanently, then the fool is the one that agrees to such a thing. It should still be enforceable. It's not a reasonable clause tho, and its purposes here have been distorted from example to actual case, so let's remove it.

I always intended the "green shirt" thing to serve as a variable for a contract condition. What was actually supposed to go in that contract was the agreement to abide by the legal jurisdiction of the city--which DOES have a great deal to do with land title being transferred. So, we can start over with a more realistic depiction of the idea and go from there.

Autolykos:

Anemone:
The contract would essentially list the set of criminal laws and protections of basic rights the city-state intends to enforce, and by signing you agree to abide by the laws and punishments for breaking them.

That's not an outline of the content of the contract, which is what I'm asking for here. Can you please provide an outline of the content?

The content is not important tho, what's important is that you agree to the jurisdiction of that city. Whether the content is any good is outside the question of how we legally gain jurisdiction over landholders in a region while abiding by the NAP. Asking buyers to agree to abide by the jurisdiction of the existing legal order upon purchasing land in the jurisdiction--does that sound reasonable to your or not?

Autolykos:

If it would allow other militias to form, what distinguishes it from those other militias?

The locus of control and accountability. Say control of the army was invested in a president, a civilian authority, and that this force is tasked with primary military protection of the society generally. Accountability would be vested in a Congress, and the voters themselves naturally; impeachment, et al.

Autolykos:

And actually, other militias don't need its permission to form in the first place - what I was really asking (sorry if my wording was ambiguous) was whether you think it would be okay for the "fed" to use force against the other militias.

Only to stop them from initiating aggression against the innocent, as anyone would of any criminal.

Autolykos:

Apparently you don't think it's okay for the "fed" to do that, provided the other militias don't initiate coercion (= commit aggression). On the other hand, the other militias can take the exact same position with regard to the "fed". This means they and the "fed" are on an equal footing, and therefore the "fed" is just one militia out of possibly multiple. So again, what is so special about this "fed"?

I agree, and answer this previously. The fed military is the default military tasked specifically with protecting the society from large-scale war and controlled by the elected representatives of that society.

Autolykos:

Are you talking about the modern-day FBI and CIA - you know, two of the most systematically aggressive organizations within the US federal government? Seriously? Please explain yourself here.

No, I only mean that it would serve as an authority within society to stop aggressors within society, especially if a city was aggressing against its citizens. But it wouldn't go as far as being a local police-force, leaving that to the locals to organize. Except in cases of total break-down emergency situations :shrug:

Autolykos:

How do you see contractual dispute resolution as not potentially requiring coercion?

Suppose two parties engage in binding arbitration outside the government courts over the ownership of a car. In such a case, the condition of arbitration is that the court take the car into escrow and can shift title according to its judgement. If both parties agree to this, it's not coercion. A judgment then gives the car to either or. However, as I outlined earlier, not all civil disputes can be solved in this way, as they may involve performance and not mere property.

Autolykos:

Excuse me, but I don't see where you get off claiming straightaway that a thief who refuses to come to a private court cannot be tried in absentia or that the court can't compel him to come. If the theft was "big enough", at the very least, I think he'd be declared an outlaw if he refused to appear in court.

Declared an outlaw by who? And how would that force them to come to court? It wouldn't. If we agree that the civil courts cannot coerce within society, then they simply cannot compel a thief to come and cannot compel a property exchange to right the theft.

Autolykos:

How many people are required to "live together" (what do you even mean by this?) in order for them to be collectively considered a "city", in your view?

Contiguous boundaries separate from and outside other jurisdictions. Could be as few as two people (though I'd lean towards 'town' at that point, 'village' even. The name is not important, the recognition of a jurisdiction is.)

Autolykos:

The above suggests that you're indeed envisioning the possibility of multiple "feds" that essentially compete with one another. I think that's a step in the right direction. Another step to take would be to realize that such competing "feds" are not prima facie bound to any geographic area that they don't already own themselves.

I am assuming multiple feds, yes. In fact I think it would be dangerous initially to have only one, as that would set a bad precedent or limit people's imaginations of what is possible from the outset. So I intend to start at least two, maybe three to begin with, probably one in the pacific and one in the Atlantic with others to follow both within oceans and in other major regional oceans, and then ultimately into space itself :P

And yes, the feds would need to own the territory they juridict, or at least be composed as a society of owners of that space. And naturally, I want other cities to be able to opt in or out and add themselves to a fed or remove themselves from one. All voluntary association, that must be maintained at all levels. This ensures competition for governance among the feds while maintaining a monopoly on coercion within an individual society as law demands.

As for the constitution itself, there's various ways to bring down earthquake-sized hammers with simple provisions. Not much has been done yet for instance with asynchronous voting. What if it took 2/3 +1 vote of a congressional body to raise a tax but only a 1/3 independent vote to lower a tax (meaning the 1/3 does not need the permission of the majority to pass a tax lower, effectively splitting the body procedurally, allowing the minority to pass its own bill).

There's a lot of creativity and possibility left that the founders of the US did not employ.

Autolykos:

Again, regarding elected judges, have you given any thought to whether "free-market" mechanisms (e.g. the buying and selling of judicial services) could count as elections?

Only some. Give me your concept. I can see some room for it; let's begin the conversation. Would it be something like, the parties get to choose a judge and that judge by that is given coercive authority, and those judges whom no one chooses to oversee a case also don't get paid, since the courts are paid by those whom use them?

Autolykos:

The US Constitution does no such thing. There are three clauses in it which, when combined, can be interpreted in no less than a totalitarian way - the General Welfare Clause, the Necessary and Proper Clause, and the Supremacy Clause.

I agree, I said as much myself, that the consitution is full of loopholes. But it's far less totalitarian than, say, a kingship or USSR's communism. And a document without those clauses can be imagined and written.

The other provisions were great for slowing down the statist growth of government and have had to be overcome by the statists. Specifically the separation of powers and checks and balances. A stronger system of controls is desireable, but doesn't mean it's impossible.

Autolykos:

That's not what I was referring to. I meant that, in first saying that I've convinced you, but then saying "perhaps", you seem to be contradicting yourself. If I had actually convinced you, then you wouldn't have said "perhaps" there.

I am not too quick to accept immediately even that which I've come to think may be correct. Thus I said perhaps, as I would still need time to integrate the concept fully and ensure there's no internal contradictions or problems. Don't take offense. It's only reasonable to be sober-minded like that.

Autolykos:

Anemone:
Contradiction because so-called "public law" is supposed to apply to everyone within a jurisdiction. A contract creates something like private law, but it's only between the contractees.

Having thought about this some more today, I see a more accurate division between "public law" and "private law" as being between ownership and exchange. While an exchange concerns only those who are party to it, ownership is akin to a contract with everyone.

Interesting. I'll think on that. Perhaps public law deals with that which is always ethical, and contract law is more like a specific applied instance within a specific context.

Autolykos:

What in the world do you mean by "the lifespan of a nation"? Why are you even using this term when it's clear that there would be no nation(s) in your ideal society?

Lifepsan of a nation: hundreds to thousands of years; thus there will be outside threats even if you can't see any right now.

In my ideal society, it is a nation and there are outside nations which do nto share its social order from which it must protect itself--the non-ideal nations. I'm not building a society in an impractical context where it faces no outside threat, but building one conceptually designed to work in actual fact.

Autolykos:

I just wanted to make sure you weren't implicitly asserting that the world is necessarily broken up into certain regions (likely corresponding to modern-day political boundaries).

What would be the difference? Those boundaries are a reality right now and must be taken into account. They represent juridictional claims of a nation. They aren't nearly as important in a floating sea-society or space-based society. And they should not be used as an excuse that all internal affairs are outside the purview of outsiders, as some politicanshave claimed.

Autolykos:

Anemone:
The sins of the state eventually hit the citizens too. You know this.

I know nothing of the sort. I'm sorry, but this is another argument from ignorance.

An argument about the future is not always an argument from ignorance, as you seem to imply. There are certain things that must happen and cannot be otherwise, even in the future. 2+2 will still equal 4 tomorrow and into all foreseeable future. So too, I can say that if a mouse does not receive nourishment for a year, it will be dead at the end of that year. Principle can be used to objectively present a given fact of the future. Thus, we know that a statist, centrally controlled state will not be as well off as the same nation in a state of freedom.

Autolykos:

Are you planning on spying on people within their own homes? Or what?

I want a society that is entirely location aware of everyone outside their own home and other specifically private spaces. I want to GPS track everyone. I think this would make proving a crime happened much easier, for instance. We're already halfway there with smartphones now.

Autolykos:

Anemone:
Autolykos:
I don't think there would be police forces in anarchist societies in the modern-day sense of the term. Instead, I think people would hire others to help protect their property.

The already overpowered still concerns me.

Okay, but what I wrote above wasn't in answer to any question you had about the already overpowered. In this context, you asked about what a police force would know to enforce and what the legal procedure of arresting someone would be in an anarcho-capitalist society. If you have questions about the already overpowered in the context of anarcho-capitalism, feel free to ask me and I'll answer to the best of my ability.

Sure, but the point of your statement seemed to me to be an attempt to show that a society can exist without a police force at all. Looking at your statement above, you say that nearly explicitly, an anarchist society would not have a police force, instead people would hire others. Okay, but what about those without the ability to hire?

Autolykos:

Again, with all due respect, you really can't tell me anything certainly about the future. You can assume that there will be orphan children behing held as slaves in the future, but you cannot know that there will be.

You're being far too rigid here on the issue of the future again. Do you know anything about inductive reasoning? If I argue that it's extremely likely that one day in the future, an orphan child will be held as a slave. You must agree that that is exceptionally likely, since the future is very long, and orphan children quite often end up in slavery around the world today. So, let's proceed not as if I'm claiming special knowledge of the future, but dealing with a case that is quite likely for the purposes of the discussion.

Autolykos:

I don't see how this really answers my question about your ideas for enforcement. As far as I can tell, none of the above even constitutes enforcement - i.e. incentives for people to follow the rules laid out for them. But regardless, in the example you bring up, what if the cop's daughter's boyfriend is about to attack her?

I'm not sure what you mean about enforcement--I thought I was answering a question about recusing onesself and law being enforced dispassionately. Judges involved in the case somehow should recuse themselves. Of course it's reasonable for a cop intimately involved to still stop an attack.

Incentive-wise you have law and legally proscribed punishment, enforced by cops. What's the issue?

Autolykos:

Why do you continue to paint anarchist society in such straw-man terms? How would an anarchist society necessarily prevent a greater division of labor?

I don't think it's a straw-man at all to be honest. In a society without an mechanism for prohibiting the intra-societal use of force, where each person is tasked with their own protection and no police force tasked generally with doing so, all people will attempt to secure themselves and their property, and this causes an opportunity cost.

The oportunity cost of providing for your own defense and your own property's defense, is the lowered ability to do other things with that capital or time. Thus, if you must learn to use a gun to a level sufficient to protect yourself in an anarchist society, you cannot spend as much time learning accounting as the guy in a law-abiding society where coercion has been banished from society as a method of dispute resolution by giving the law and police a legal monopoly on force within society. Seems clear to me.

Autolykos:

But on the other hand, isn't everyone in every society responsible for providing his own food - in the sense of obtaining it for himself? Likewise, isn't everyone in every society then responsible for providing his own protection, in that sense?

In a police-protected society you have individuals who don't know how to protect themselves, who may be masters of accounting, let's say. The same person an in anarchist society must have learned to protect themselves explicitly--they don't yet have the skills to hire others. And it will take them longer to do so, having to also provide for their own protection growing up and as a young adult. That problem is inescapable in an anarchist society without a legal structure.

Autolykos:

However, there's no reason to assume that the population of individuals in a territory is static. I guess what I'm getting at is that this whole notion of "jurisdiction" is actually a higher claim of ownership.

I just don't see it. The law would need to confer property control, not merely enforce rights, for that to be true. If the law is merely enforcing rights, then no control over property is being exercised, and thus no issue of assumption of control/ownership is being made. Just as you're not implictly controlling or owning the person you save from an initiation of aggression by stopping a robbery in progress.

Autolykos:
Let me present a hypothetical example that will hopefully help illustrate what I mean. A group of neighboring individuals, each owning his own tract of land adjacent to one or more of the others, decides to agree to the following laws: 1) each member of the group is obligated to help protect the other members, and 2) should a member of the group decide to leave the group, he thereby forefeits all of his property that is under the territorial jurisdiction of the group. Now, what does this mean in practice? It means that, in fact, the individual members no longer own anything individually. They have actually surrendered their individual ownership in favor of a joint (or collective) ownership. Here we see that this is no semantic trick at all - rather, it's the notion that group members still individually own things until they leave the group that's the semantic trick.

Sure... but that's not all the kind of law I'm proposing--I propose law whose sole function is the protection and enforcement of rights within society. The law in your example is already an abrogation of rights, and thus unethical law.

Autolykos:
But again, you seem to have already allowed for multiple competing feds operating within the same overall area.

No, not within the same area. Adjacent perhaps, but not in the same jurisdiction. Rather the jurisdiction of the fed is MADE UP by the jurisdiction of its member cities. It has no jurisdiction of its own but only in those regions which choose to be a part of that fed. Thus, a city-state can enter or leave at any time and the fed cannot stop them from leaving. But if they join they agree to subsume jurisdiction under the fed. Law cannot abide two laws in the same jurisdiction, one must always be superior. In my Fed, its strictly limitd powers allow a lot of room for the city-states to fill in the gaps, limiting the fed to overarching rights protection on a mass basis.

Autolykos:
Furthermore, if you don't want the set of "basic rights" to change, what's the point of elected representatives or direct democracy? What you call "law at the city-state level", I call "rules that the owner(s) of property set over it".

Simple. One person cannot oversee millions. But one federal official could oversee several city-states, which themselves are overseeing multiple counties, full of officials overseeing individually dozens to hundreds. By such a process, rights can be protected at all levels.

Autolykos:
What about Shay's Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion?

Good point, good point. But I propose a ban on taxation, which would've prevented the whiskey rebellion. And Shay's appears to be an aggression on the part of the rebels themselves.

Autolykos:
I have no idea what laws you think would need passed by elected representatives. This seems to contradict your notion of an unchangeable set of "basic rights".

Admittedly it would be hopefully rare, part-time legislatures. I'm still thinking this out, as well as alternative roles for legislatures, such as proposing and administering voluntary charities of a sort... like, rather than pass a law for universal healthcare, an elected official could setup a voluntary fund they administer to do a similar thing, but voluntarily... I dunno yet :P It might come down to issuing legal tests to take the whim out of applications of the law, something I call "legal algorithms." Still thinking.

Autolykos:
A monopoly on the (ultimate) legitimate exercise of coercion, by definition, must be held by a single organization. Otherwise, no monopoly can be said to exist there at all. Now for such a single organization to hold this monopoly, it must not allow, and therefore must prevent and fight, competitors in the (ultimate) legitimate exercise of coercion from arising. I, for one, can only see this as aggression.

Agreed. But it need not fight those outside its jurisdiction. Democracy exist peacefully next to each other, as do individuals.

Autolykos:
...platonic forms, etc...

I'm choosing to drop this topic as another of our needless digressions.

Autolykos:
The good news is, we seem to be moving away from the realm of mere words and into the realm of concepts. But here there are no "correct" vs. "incorrect" concepts - save for concepts that are inherently contradictory, such as (using common semantics) "a square circle". This means that "a piece of furniture with a flat surface supported by four legs" is no more "incorrect" a concept than "a piece of furniture with a flat surface supported by one or more legs" is a "correct" concept.

What you're talking about and failing to make a distinction between is percepts vs concepts. Your perception of a table with three legs and perception of a table with four legs--those cannot be denied. But to form a concept of "table" you form a mental image of what's necessarily intrinsic to a table--and that is defined by reality, not by convention. A table must have one leg or more. And its purpose is normally to hold everyday items, thus the flat-top, but almost any sort will do.

You're arguing percepts and confusing them with concepts. The concept of a table subsumes all forms of the table. It is an abstraction of all the tables that exist into a definition of what a table is, that is its function, which really is just to hold things off the floor.

But I digress.

Autolykos:
Even an amendment simply saying, "The right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed," can be open to interpretation. For example, what's exactly meant by "arms"? Rifles? Handguns? Bazookas? Tanks? Nukes?

A well written document should define its own terms, and nothing about such a document prevents it from doing so. Again, you've only attacked what exists, not how it could be (easily) improved.

Autolykos:
The law itself doesn't provide for or allow whim, but that wasn't my point. The fact that it was passed at all is where the whim lies. On the other hand, a law that says, "No radio station shall be allowed to operate without the permission of the FCC" is also a very hard rule written into law. It can be verified with yes/no simply by verifying whether a radio station has received permission to operate from the FCC.

My concern is about the making of law being subject to whim. Indeed, I don't see how making law can be otherwise.

I'd like to see algorithmic law put into place, which would be one possible way, I think. Such a law builds concrete tests into itself, and each law would need be logically justified by the founding principles of the constitution. Ie: the right to bear arms would contain procedures and rules of how such a law is to be implemented, and another founding provision would prevent "bureacrat discretion" from entering consideration. THis is actually pretty important, and also still vague in my mind. Needs more fleshing out ;) Not much could be worse than the present system tho, and perhaps it's intractable, in which case it needs controls added.

Autolykos:
The question is, does one even know whether something is merely difficult vs. impossible? Or merely problematic vs. unsolvable? Furthermore, even if you do know that something is merely difficult or problematic, does that guarantee you to ever surmount it, let alone within a certain span of time?

It's not worth worrying about such things. Not to me anyway. If you think a problem intractable, you will not work on it, and are guaranteed then not to solve it :P And if it's intractable, you have lost nothing.

Autolykos:
You said it would start with one ship, and you apparently invited me to invest in the effort of procuring and developing it. Presumably you would be the owner of this ship, so you'd have (final) control over it. That's why I asked you my question. I thought it was a very simple question, and to be quite honest, I'm disturbed that you seem to be avoiding answering it directly.

The only problem here is the misunderstanding of what I originally meant and my failure of communicating it then. Because, I originally linked you to that lillypad concept. It has no ability to store boats "on board." I assumed you knew I was building a free society from all we've discussed here, so stopping you from doing anything non-aggressive would be a violation of the NAP and not something I'd support. What on earth gave you the idea that I might stop such a thing? I assume that people would be coming and going from this central city all the time, and the idea of stopping anyone is so far outside my imagination that I had no idea what you meant by that remark. This first ship is to become something like floating land, divvied up property-wise, not necessarily owned by me except perhaps initially. And a whole society of them would mean there'd be quite a few. A city would need many many.

Autolykos:
I don't consider difficulty in leaving to be an intrinsic characteristic of a state. My wording wasn't intended to imply otherwise. In retrospect, I think I should've used wording like "your state seems so voluntary in nature that I wouldn't consider it a state at all".

All it needs is law, a jurisdiction, and people, and it's a state.

Autolykos:

Anemone:
Autolykos:
Would you call someone entering a restaurant to be a "citizen" of that restaurant? Why or why not?

They'd be a patron. In this context a citizen of my state is a patron of it as well. But I'm consciously trying to import the vocabulary of a state in order to redefine it. When you're part of a large-scale society and subject to its laws, you're a citizen. A restaurant doesn't rise to that level of grandeur and seriousness. Nor does it have written laws, but [mere] rules. A restaurant is never going to be able to lock up patrons who violate its laws. It doesn't have that mechanism of coercion.

Wait a minute. Up to this point, you've been insistent that you've been talking about the intrinsic/essential characteristics of a state. But now you say that you're "consciously trying to import the vocabulary of a state in order to redefine it"? Can you please explain yourself here?

Because a citizen of my state is voluntarily a citizen, thus it's closer to patronage than the current definition of a (captive) citizen. It is citizenship in every form of the name, but without the sociali requirement of the state to provide anything for you such as we have now. I would want people to be able to change states at whim, and join a state at will. It's nothing so radical as you make it sound.

Autolykos:
I'll repeat my question from much earlier: what exactly, in your opinion, distinguishes a large-scale society from a non-large-scale society?

Mainly size, lol. But apart from that it's the subdivision of society. A city-state has law, a restaurant does not, for its already agreed to abide within a jurisdiction.

Autolykos:

Anemone:
[The point in calling it a state is b]ecause that owner has divested himself of certain rights over his property and vested them in a communal organization that becomes the state, one that allows all citizens to vote, etc. It becomes a legal structure outside of him. He retains title, much lie in our renting example, but the state takes up his rights of protection and invitation of all thereupon. A large scale society is only possible by this means, lest we return to dictatorship.

Has the owner divested himself of those rights permanently? Because if so, he's essentially sold them outright to an organization that now has a higher claim over his land than he does - if he has any left at all. Retaining title makes no difference - if the management isn't serving at the mercy and pleasure of the owner, then the management is the de facto owner.

You're right, I wrote something I don't agree with now here. I wouldn't say the owner is giving up any rights. You see, here I was imagining how the owner of a lillypad could turn his private ownership of property into a state for others to join--how one person becomes a city-state when that 2nd person buys land within his domain. But I don't think it's necessary as I wrote there. They just need to agree to setup a legal jurisdiction and contract with new buyers to join the same jurisdiction as a condition of buying.

Autolykos:
Then he no longer really owns his land. An important point here is that, when you talk about "[divesting] himself of certain rights", I assume you mean, at the very least, protective rights. Those rights are pretty fundamental to ownership in general. If you're not allowed to protect what you own, how can you be said to truly own it? So in divesting himself of protective rights over his land, his remaining title to the land becomes moot. All he can be said to own in the land, if anything, are certain use-rights.

You're right. I think the only thing he's divesting himself of is the ability to start a new jurisdiction of his own within the bounds of another. Or perhaps that's better handled as a law than as a divesture, a law that new jurisdictions cannot be begun within the existing one. That makes some sense, and would be equally fine. It doesn't stop anyone from starting one, just don't start one here, and thus doesn't abrogate rights. Thus the only thing I'd ask someone buying property in the jurisdiction to agree to is to abide by that one rule. Does that gel? Otheriwse how do we square tha nature of law, that being its inherently monopolistic nature, with those who want to start their own jurisdiction. They must needs move out of the current jurisdiction first.

Autolykos:

Anemone:
Autolykos:
Furthermore, you say that he vests control rights in a legal system, but he can theoretically abolish that legal system whenever he wants.

Not necessarily. He can contract for perpetuity without recourse.

Contracting for perpetuity without recourse is also known as selling.

Since he contracted upon buying the house in that jurisdiction, yeah. He sold his right to that as an exchange when buying. It was all up-front and voluntary. His recourse is to leave the jurisdiction and take his property with him. Since this is on the ocean / in space, that's easy.

Autolykos:
See above. Additionally, since you're apparently familiar with the concept of self-ownership, how exactly can a person actually sell all or part of his self-ownership?

Here we've confused the issue between the first guy who owned the city and future buyers, so... I don't know how to answer. But I'll consider it more. Again, I'm trying to find a way to turn private property under no jurisdiction into private property under a jurisdiction, in effect founding a city-state. After that, how do you induct new buyers into that jurisdiction. Is it strictly voluntary among neighboring buyers?

I hadn't considerd that, but it's possible.

Autolykos:
Again, how are leases in perpetuity different from ownership? How can you logically treat them as full ownership and partial ownership at the same time? It seems to me that such an arrangement is inherently fraudulent, and is akin to the situation that alleged "property owners" find themselves in under the state.

So, what if joining the jurisidction is strictly voluntary, does that resolve all conflicts here?

Re: Emergence Anarcho-Capitalism

Autolykos — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 03:22:33 GMT

Note: I haven't responded to every single part of your last post, because I think some parts of our exchange have been tangential and digressive, and I'd like to stick to the main subject. I hope there are no hard feelings here. At least part of it is my fault, which is why I'm doing what I can to amend it on my end.

Anemone:
Autolykos:
Would you agree that, whether a person is capable of his own defense all the time, he is ultimately responsible for his own defense?

Absolutely.

So then you agree that "the helpless" are also ultimately responsible for their own defense. No one has a prima facie obligation to help them - or anyone else.

Anemone:
Autolykos:
If a person wants to go into business as a judge (or arbiter, or whatever you want to call it), why should he be stopped?

As an arbiter, sure, but I'm not at all sure about criminal courts of law. In dealing with contract law you aren't talking about using force, but in criminal law you are. And that requires some accountability and perhaps conferral of authority by popular vote. Surely lifetime appointments are right out.

In dealing with contract law you are talking about using force. As I mentioned before, if I contract with someone to build me a house, then I pay him up front, and then he reneges on his end of the deal, he has effectively stolen my money from me. How is that not (potentially) an matter of coercion against him?

Regarding conferral of authority, do you not think that such can be essentially provided by people "voting with their dollars"?

Anemone:
There's easements, yes, but there's also sets of requirements such as for instance that you agree to abide by the decisions of a local homeowner's association, and that sort of requirement has a different name, just can't recall it. There's troubles with this sort of requirement because it has historically been used for racial discrimination as well.

Oh, you're talking about restrictive covenants then. Although many anarcho-capitalists (including Rothbard himself) have written in favor of restrictive covenants, I consider them to violate the non-aggression principle. Essentially, I consider jurisdiction to begin and end with ownership. To impose a higher jurisdiction over someone's property is de facto enforcing a higher claim of ownership over his property. The closest things I see to a modern-day HOA existing in an anarcho-capitalist society would be 1) renters' associations and 2) communes. In the case of the latter, all members of a commune would be considered joint owners of the land and other property in question.

Anemone:
It's a good question. You can't really say Jones's ownership is conditional, since that wouldn't be full ownership. But that's also the weird thing about those property deed restrictions above. You can't tell a homeowner's association to go away it's your land, they end up being backed by the court.

Yes, they end up being backed by the state's (or, if you prefer, the aggressive state's) court. In a society that I'd call "anarcho-capitalist", I could indeed tell an HOA to go away because it's my land.

Anemone:
I think if you contract that you will wear a green shirt on your land, even owning it free and clear, then you can be compelled to abide by it. You should never have agreed to it. You agreed to a restriction--in essence you gave up a right as a condition of purchase. How absolute are contracts anyway.

Then as far as I'm concerned, what you call "owning it free and clear" is a misnomer at best and fraud at worst. What you say above means that voluntary perpetual slavery contracts are valid and enforceable in your ideal society/state. Do you really believe in the idea of self-ownership?

Anemone:
The relief would likely be something like rescinding the sale and giving you back your purchase price as the previous owner's discretion. I think if you agree to it you should abide by it or deal with the consequences. In actual practice that would be a pretty poor contract that didn't list an agreed to consequence for not wearing green.

Indeed, such a contract would be unenforceable even on your (apparent) terms. However, I don't consider a simple promise to do something to be legitimately enforceable by coercion when no property has been transferred.

Anemone:
It's also possible to buy only parts of a land. Like you can buy the air above, the ground below. In this case he was buying everything except the right to wear whatever he wants.

The right to wear whatever he wants has nothing to do with the land. Just because people reside, work, and otherwise exist on land doesn't mean they're part of the land.

Anemone:
The contract would essentially list the set of criminal laws and protections of basic rights the city-state intends to enforce, and by signing you agree to abide by the laws and punishments for breaking them.

That's not an outline of the content of the contract, which is what I'm asking for here. Can you please provide an outline of the content?

Anemone:
Nah, it was an offhand comment, and a bit of irony I think ;)

I don't see any irony in it, because I neither agree with it nor consider it to be true.

Anemone:
The fed is quite crucial actually, to, as I'd said, allow citizens of an oppressed city to appeal for protection, at which point the fed can step in and make that city a protected city-state in whole or in part. If a city thinks it's fine on its own, great. I think of the fed here as a middle-step between a pure society of freedom and the current statist ones, like an incubator for a free society, the guiding hands that help a city transition from statism to freedom. And yes it's going to need a world-class scale volunteer military to do so without facing massive reprisal, especially if foreign land-based cities under existing governmental jurisdiction sue for membership in the free-states.

Would it allow other militias to form? Yes. In fact I consider that crucial as well. Smaller armies to take on more focused concerns could be formed, as long as they aren't aggressing against others, feel free. I would expect the city-states to have small forces as well for their own protection from pirates and other external aggressors. They'll need to protect shipping lanes as well.

If it would allow other militias to form, what distinguishes it from those other militias? And actually, other militias don't need its permission to form in the first place - what I was really asking (sorry if my wording was ambiguous) was whether you think it would be okay for the "fed" to use force against the other militias. Apparently you don't think it's okay for the "fed" to do that, provided the other militias don't initiate coercion (= commit aggression). On the other hand, the other militias can take the exact same position with regard to the "fed". This means they and the "fed" are on an equal footing, and therefore the "fed" is just one militia out of possibly multiple. So again, what is so special about this "fed"?

Anemone:
It would have something similar to an FBI/CIA role. It wouldn't be an active police force within a territory, unless it found that the city-state government itself was aggressing, in which case it would have to be dismantled and rebuilt and the people freed back to self-determination.

Are you talking about the modern-day FBI and CIA - you know, two of the most systematically aggressive organizations within the US federal government? Seriously? Please explain yourself here.

Anemone:
Like I said, some problems have a criminal and civil component. Outright fraud, as you mention, is certainly criminal. But in a robust economy the greater need is contractual dispute resolution. Maybe I'm wrong and that's not as much a need but I doubt it.

How do you see contractual dispute resolution as not potentially requiring coercion?

Anemone:
Again, I see a need for a court-of-last-resort which has the power to coerce. If you don't see that, explain how you can see a private court using coercion within society? I'm certainly open to ideas here. I don't think any court should be using coercion unless it's following the law, such that any court empowered with coercion should be state sponsored and responsible to the larger electorate. But again, open to ideas. When the thief refuses to come to your private court and cannot be tried in absentia, and the court cannot compel him to come, now you have checkmate and injustice rules the day.

Excuse me, but I don't see where you get off claiming straightaway that a thief who refuses to come to a private court cannot be tried in absentia or that the court can't compel him to come. If the theft was "big enough", at the very least, I think he'd be declared an outlaw if he refused to appear in court. On the other hand, being arrested and then required to post bail may on its own provide enough incentive for the thief to appear. I'd imagine that actual physical arrests, with handcuffs etc., would be at least rather rare - the accusation alone would motivate most people to show up in court, because either they know or believe it's false, or they think they can "beat the rap".

Anemone:
Autolykos:
That's right. So what's the point in calling it a "city" as opposed to simply calling it what it is - an area of privately-owned land that has been divided up into many rental units?

Because a city is a very large number of people living together :P

How many people are required to "live together" (what do you even mean by this?) in order for them to be collectively considered a "city", in your view?

Anemone:
Autolykos:
Why do you feel the need to have elected representatives, when presumably judges can establish legal precedents? I see no reason that such a "quite basic" document would per se "prevent the fed authority from overstepping [its] bounds in time and growing in power as we've seen lately". So far you have failed to demonstrate to me how such must be the case.

Perhaps. Perhaps the judges are the elected. Though your only challenge has been that the entire society could simply agree to disobey the founding document. I submit that that has happened in part to the US, but was greatly helped along by the loopholes and poorly written controls within the document, and think this power-creep towards statism could be easily checked.

Beyond that, the institutional ability of city-states to freely opt in or out of the fed would mean that a law-breaking fed would likely find itself cityless in no time, with a new fed setup by a confederation of city-states with more trustworthy stewards.

But I'll think on it.

The above suggests that you're indeed envisioning the possibility of multiple "feds" that essentially compete with one another. I think that's a step in the right direction. Another step to take would be to realize that such competing "feds" are not prima facie bound to any geographic area that they don't already own themselves.

Again, regarding elected judges, have you given any thought to whether "free-market" mechanisms (e.g. the buying and selling of judicial services) could count as elections?

Anemone:
Autolykos:
I fail to see how any of this per se prevents future power-grabbing by the federal government.

No more so than currently. But certainly the US constitution makes it much harder than other documents around the world. And it's not hard to imagine a much tighter document than the constitution. Much would depend on the culture of the people, naturally.

The US Constitution does no such thing. There are three clauses in it which, when combined, can be interpreted in no less than a totalitarian way - the General Welfare Clause, the Necessary and Proper Clause, and the Supremacy Clause.

Anemone:
Autolykos:
If you say "perhaps it's permissible", then how did I convince you of anything?

By 'permissible' I mean perhaps it's philosophically consistent.

That's not what I was referring to. I meant that, in first saying that I've convinced you, but then saying "perhaps", you seem to be contradicting yourself. If I had actually convinced you, then you wouldn't have said "perhaps" there.

Anemone:
Contradiction because so-called "public law" is supposed to apply to everyone within a jurisdiction. A contract creates something like private law, but it's only between the contractees.

Having thought about this some more today, I see a more accurate division between "public law" and "private law" as being between ownership and exchange. While an exchange concerns only those who are party to it, ownership is akin to a contract with everyone.

Anemone:
Autolykos:
[...] do you seriously think that there are all these "damn furriners" out there just chomping at the bit to "take us over"?

To borrow a line from you, it's likelihood isn't at issue here :P It's principle. Long term? In the lifespan of a nation? Yeah, it's a concern. The US is almost impossible to invade, doesn't mean many would like to do it if they thought they could win. To accept your rationale would be to believe that no country should ever be invaded by outsiders. Besides which, I'm talking a much smaller and more freeform state outside US protection which very well may be attacked being outside the legal and philosophical framework of the entire world.

What in the world do you mean by "the lifespan of a nation"? Why are you even using this term when it's clear that there would be no nation(s) in your ideal society? And finally, I have no idea what principle you're implicitly referring to in the above, sorry.

Anemone:
A region, a jurisdiction, what's the difference--a place where one law holds. For outsiders to use aggression to stop those initiating aggression, you do need a written law to appeal to as the source of your authority to stop, arrest, try, and convict aggressors in a court of law, by the book so to speak. There's really not going to be any way to get away from that, as we've already discussed in the example of those already overpowered.

I just wanted to make sure you weren't implicitly asserting that the world is necessarily broken up into certain regions (likely corresponding to modern-day political boundaries).

Anemone:
I still consider freeing someone in a state of being aggressed as help on an objective basis.

Sure it is. But that's beside my point, which was entirely about whether there is ever any certainty about the future (there never is).

Anemone:
The sins of the state eventually hit the citizens too. You know this.

I know nothing of the sort. I'm sorry, but this is another argument from ignorance.

Anemone:
Autolykos:
Why a (i.e. necessarily single) police force? How will this police force know when someone is wrongfully imprisoned? Will it always be patrolling everywhere looking for trouble? Won't that infringe upon people's privacy?

FFS. It isn't necessarily SINGULAR. I've already agreed to multiple enforcement organizations so can you stop questioning me on it! However THERE WILL BE AT LEAST ONE. Besides, the city-state will set up the first one while also allowing anyone else to start one, so there's always at least one.

With all due respect, I'll stop questioning you on it when you stop using language that implies otherwise. Using "one or more" instead of "a" is a step in the right direction here, IMO.

Anemone:
As for privacy, it's an intersting. I don't think people have a right to privacy outside their domicile and property. And I have other plans for how to track crime such as this but won't go into that now.

Are you planning on spying on people within their own homes? Or what?

Anemone:
Autolykos:
It depends on what you mean by "body of law". I personally think there will be something very much like the common laws of various parts of the world.

Will it be written down?

I think it would likely be codified from time to time, yes. Historical common-law systems were originally passed down orally, then later on in written form. Some, like the Somali Xeer, are still passed down orally IIRC.

Anemone:
Sure, sure, but all those were established within coercive courts. You've been talking about free market courts without coercive powers and suggesting this could exist entirely without any coercive courts--which I think may not be possible, since many legal remedies require coercion to effect them.

I don't understand why you think free-market courts would necessarily be without any coercive powers. Nor did I ever suggest that a common-law legal system could exist entirely without any coercive courts. I thought I already made it clear that I see some amount of coercion as being necessary even in an anarcho-capitalist society. Did you forget about that or something?

Anemone:
Autolykos:
I don't think there would be police forces in anarchist societies in the modern-day sense of the term. Instead, I think people would hire others to help protect their property.

The already overpowered still concerns me.

Okay, but what I wrote above wasn't in answer to any question you had about the already overpowered. In this context, you asked about what a police force would know to enforce and what the legal procedure of arresting someone would be in an anarcho-capitalist society. If you have questions about the already overpowered in the context of anarcho-capitalism, feel free to ask me and I'll answer to the best of my ability.

Anemone:
I don't see how. I want at least a theory, a suggestion, an idea. I can tell you this certainly about the future: there will be orphan children being held as slaves. Someone within society must be able to rescue them, legally, when discovered, or it is not a just society, and not one I would want to live in.

Again, with all due respect, you really can't tell me anything certainly about the future. You can assume that there will be orphan children behing held as slaves in the future, but you cannot know that there will be. That aside, I see no reason why there would not be some sort of legal standards for rescuing children - and people in general - who are being wrongfully imprisoned, let alone tortured or enslaved. At the very least, since I consider children to own themselves, keeping a child where he doesn't want to be is wrongful imprisonment and a violation of his self-ownership.

Anemone:
Come on. An orphan child is going to have a guardian of some sort. Private orgs / charities will spring up to take care of orphans. Suppose the mother sold the child to the slave owner. There you have a former guardian.

I consider it highly or extremely likely that some legal doctrine of guardianship will exist in an anarcho-capitalist society, as well as private organizations and charities. But I'm not going to claim knowledge of certainty about the future. I'm just not. No amount of telling me to "come on" is going to make me do otherwise.

Anemone:
Autolykos:
Simply declaring it to be a crime is one thing. Enforcement is quite another, isn't it? What are your ideas for enforcement here?

It's just as easy to prove personal involvement as any other thing. Evidence based testimony, etc. If the cop is faced with arresting his daughter's boyfriend, he should call another cop to do it. That's just a simple example.

I don't see how this really answers my question about your ideas for enforcement. As far as I can tell, none of the above even constitutes enforcement - i.e. incentives for people to follow the rules laid out for them. But regardless, in the example you bring up, what if the cop's daughter's boyfriend is about to attack her?

Anemone:
Autolykos:
You're talking about the division of labor here. Do you really think a division of labor cannot exist without a federalgovernment? Why or why not?

Yes, division of labor--specifically I'm saying that people can specialize in work instead of their own personal protection in a society that has an actual police force. That makes people more specialized than in any anarchist society where each person must reasonably provide for their own defense in an essentially lawless society. It's not that there wouldn't be division of labor without a fed, but when you realize that self-protection too is labor, I think you see my point. It would not be unlike saying everyone in X society must provide their own food. That's going to limit division of labor while people invest time into gardening, etc., because they can't buy food from others.

Why do you continue to paint anarchist society in such straw-man terms? How would an anarchist society necessarily prevent a greater division of labor? But on the other hand, isn't everyone in every society responsible for providing his own food - in the sense of obtaining it for himself? Likewise, isn't everyone in every society then responsible for providing his own protection, in that sense?

So again, can you please explain to me whether you think a (greater) division of labor cannot exist without a federal government, and why or why not?

Anemone:
Autolykos:
I'm sorry but you're wrong about renting a house. The owner retains title to the house.

You read too fast, because I said... "If you rent it, you're maintaining title..." Of course the owner of a rental maintains title but sells the rights that title entitles him to, for a set period. If it wasn't for a set period there'd be no point to retaining title and then we'd call it a sale in whole :P

I assumed you were referring to the lessee/rentee in the phrase "if you rent it". My mistake.

Anemone:
Autolykos:
My point was that the word ["harblegarble"] doesn't correspond to any known physical phenomenon.

You said it refers to pink unicorns I think. That's a thought, an image, which is a physical phenomena, just not one that corresponds to a real animal.

Then we're using different definitions of "physical phenomenon", because my definition of it involves the notion of "coming from the external world (i.e. outside of the mind)". In other words, I'm not using the phrase "physical phenomenon" to refer to everything physical in this context.

Anemone:
Autolykos:
You've agreed that law concerns people, not territory, first and foremost. Hence there can only be "law of the land" if the land is considered, however implicitly or even deceptively, owned by a single person or joint group.

That just seems like a semantic trick. If all the individuals in a territory have agree[d] to a set of laws, it's the law of the land. The concept doesn't go both ways and confer individual ownership by the state on land it has jurisdiction over.

However, there's no reason to assume that the population of individuals in a territory is static. I guess what I'm getting at is that this whole notion of "jurisdiction" is actually a higher claim of ownership.

Let me present a hypothetical example that will hopefully help illustrate what I mean. A group of neighboring individuals, each owning his own tract of land adjacent to one or more of the others, decides to agree to the following laws: 1) each member of the group is obligated to help protect the other members, and 2) should a member of the group decide to leave the group, he thereby forefeits all of his property that is under the territorial jurisdiction of the group. Now, what does this mean in practice? It means that, in fact, the individual members no longer own anything individually. They have actually surrendered their individual ownership in favor of a joint (or collective) ownership. Here we see that this is no semantic trick at all - rather, it's the notion that group members still individually own things until they leave the group that's the semantic trick.

Anemone:
I still see need for law, and a state mechanism to make law, embodied in elected representatives or perhaps direct democracy, and obviously my concept of a fed which ties disparate city-states together and allows for expansion of the overarching legal framework while also serving as a general protection of rights.

But again, you seem to have already allowed for multiple competing feds operating within the same overall area. Furthermore, if you don't want the set of "basic rights" to change, what's the point of elected representatives or direct democracy? What you call "law at the city-state level", I call "rules that the owner(s) of property set over it".

Anemone:
Early US the state did not aggress and worked as we would've like it. Early capitalism did not face state aggression either for a period of time. I agree it's an awfully short list, and still problematic, but unlike the anarchists dreams of a stateless state I think it's actually achievable. And god help us if it isn't.

What about Shay's Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion?

Anemone:
Again, the law itself must be a monopoly by nature--not the enforcement of it. The state then is build around that law, elected representatives to pass law--within strictly defined powers as we've talked about.

I have no idea what laws you think would need passed by elected representatives. This seems to contradict your notion of an unchangeable set of "basic rights".

Anemone:
I'll just offer you the phrase "government is force." We have observed this, we know it to be true. And we know there's only one legitimate kind of governmental use of force and that is to coerce aggressors to stop aggressing. Obviously the state can do that or can be an aggressor itself. However there's nothing about a monopoly on force that compels it to do either one of the two. Therefore, saying the state is an aggressor it criticizing the state for a nonessential quality. It could just as easily be established as a non-aggressor only entity were it built with such principles in mind from the beginning. I'm afraid the American founders weren't there yet, with far too many statists amongst them. (well, the articles of confederation were a strictly limited document, and probably close to what my fed would look like and be limited to).

A monopoly on the (ultimate) legitimate exercise of coercion, by definition, must be held by a single organization. Otherwise, no monopoly can be said to exist there at all. Now for such a single organization to hold this monopoly, it must not allow, and therefore must prevent and fight, competitors in the (ultimate) legitimate exercise of coercion from arising. I, for one, can only see this as aggression.

Anemone:
No, I'm only saying that the definition which both tries to capture all manifestations of the concept being referred to AND tries to strip out all nonessentialy qualities is a BETTER definition, meaning more precise, more correct, than your limited definition. I'm not denying that your definition works for particualr tables, but it doesn't capture the function and form of all tables, of 'tableness'. The better, dictionary definition does capture 'tableness' to a much better extent.

But that again presumes a particular concept - one that is different from mine! I'm referring to the concept of "a piece of furniture with a flat surface supported by four and only four legs", whereas you're referring to the concept of "a piece of furniture with a flat surface supported by one or more legs". So in essence, you're arguing above that my concept doesn't capture all manifestations of your concept. Well of course it doesn't! Because they're different concepts! Earlier you said you weren't entering into the realm of Platonic Forms, but here you really are doing so. You talk about "tableness" as if it could only refer to your concept of "table"! Once again, this is entirely circular reasoning - you're assuming the exact same thing that you then set out to prove.

Anemone:
Back to this again. 'Table' may be just a word, but it refers to a concept which has a basis in reality. Your definition captures only a subset of all tables, and thus is poorer than a definition that subsumes most or all 'tables'. That is why.

In terms of how useful a definition is, the one that subsumes the totality of the concept while leaving out nonessential characteristics should be preferred, especially when it comes to reasoning and argumentation, and especially in political philosophy.

Same with the concept of the state. Attacking nonessentials should be a fallacy if it isn't one already.

If you attacked the table for having four legs, and I (rightly) point out that tables can exist with three or one or 4+ legs, then it stands to reason that you're being silly for trying to banish all tables on the basis of them having four legs, a nonessential characteristic.

Back to this again, indeed! You admit that "table" is just a word (why do you use "may be"?), but then you say that it refers - i.e. necessarily, as far as I can tell - to a particular concept. How in the world does this follow?

Maybe a classical syllogism can help here:

1. I define "table" as "a piece of furniture with a flat surface supported by four legs".

2. I see a piece of furniture with a flat surface supported by three legs.

3. Therefore, I do not see a table.

The good news is, we seem to be moving away from the realm of mere words and into the realm of concepts. But here there are no "correct" vs. "incorrect" concepts - save for concepts that are inherently contradictory, such as (using common semantics) "a square circle". This means that "a piece of furniture with a flat surface supported by four legs" is no more "incorrect" a concept than "a piece of furniture with a flat surface supported by one or more legs" is a "correct" concept. Sure, you can say that the latter necessarily contains the former, but so what? There's no reason why I can't logically distinguish between "a piece of furniture with a flat surface supported by four legs" and "a piece of furniture with a flat surface supported by fewer or greater than four legs". That's no more an "incorrect" distinction between concepts than to not distinguish between them is a "correct" (lack of) distinction. I hope you see my point.

Anemone:
Right, except the 2nd amendment was poorly written, leaving room to imply that militia has something to do with the right.

Even an amendment simply saying, "The right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed," can be open to interpretation. For example, what's exactly meant by "arms"? Rifles? Handguns? Bazookas? Tanks? Nukes?

Anemone:
Autolykos:
How would such laws be barred? How would a separation between economy and state (I'm not even sure what this is supposed to mean, to be honest) be ensured? Etc.

By law. What else. That's your only means to shape a state-system anyway. I'm surprised you don't know what separation of economy and state would mean. I mean the state would have no right to regulate in any way business or free trade. Same as a separation of church and state--which is what I was obviously referencing by that. The state would be limited to criminal law enforcement and rights protection.

I meant "barred" in a physical sense, of course - since that's the only way any action is ever really barred. So I don't think you've answered my question here either.

Anemone:
Autolykos:
There certainly is room for whim in criminal law. As a trivial example, people aren't allowed (bycriminal statute) to purchase or consume alcohol in the US until they've reached 21 years of age. You don't think that criminal law has been a matter of whim?

That's not what I mean. That would not be an example of law allowing whim, because that is a very hard rule written into law that can be verified with yes/no simply by verifying a purchaser's age. If a city-state wanted to pass that law, they should be able. What I mean is a law that empowered a bureaucrat to make decisions on an individual case basis such as happens in a lot of regulated industries like the FCC and SEC. Companies must beg [of] the FCC to renew their license and there's rather vague rules about how they should decide whether to do so which puts power of whim into the office-holder's hands.

The law itself doesn't provide for or allow whim, but that wasn't my point. The fact that it was passed at all is where the whim lies. On the other hand, a law that says, "No radio station shall be allowed to operate without the permission of the FCC" is also a very hard rule written into law. It can be verified with yes/no simply by verifying whether a radio station has received permission to operate from the FCC.

My concern is about the making of law being subject to whim. Indeed, I don't see how making law can be otherwise.

Anemone:
True but I don't think that problem is insurmountable, though it cannot really be avoided--yet there's also no better alternative. Existing law has a heavy advantage over proposed law. Just look at the healthcare law being sued as unconstitutional now. An even tighter document would be much harder to surmount legally. There's other protections you can build in as well.

On the one hand, I think existing law has a heavy advantage over proposed law because, once it's been established and most people start following it (either per se or due to sufficiently heavy penalties for breaking it), it becomes the "new normal". For better or worse, people get used to it and thus resist change to it, even if they originally resisted it itself. I think this is due in large part to many/most people today considering the matter "settled" when (in the US) Congress passes it, the President signs it, and/or the Supreme Court rules in favor of it. However, I personally see no reason to consider any matter "settled" when such things happen.

Now on the other hand, if the problem can never really be avoided, how exactly is it surmountable - at least in general/abstract? And how do you know whether there's no better alternative?

Anemone:
With all of this its clear you're driving towards a stateless anarchist solution, but again it really just sounds to me like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. That which is difficult is not impossible. That which is problematic is not unsolvable.

The question is, does one even know whether something is merely difficult vs. impossible? Or merely problematic vs. unsolvable? Furthermore, even if you do know that something is merely difficult or problematic, does that guarantee you to ever surmount it, let alone within a certain span of time?

Anemone:
Autolykos:
That doesn't answer my question. Would you or would you not store my boat on board in case I decide I've had enough?

On board what. You seem to be assuming there's one ship? o_O Your comment was vague in meaning originally, seemed like you were joking or something. You should know my answer by now. If this is a society of traders, of individual owners, how would I or anyone be storing your boat. If you're asking would I prevent you from leaving, of course not. And if a city-state tried you'd have the Fed to back you up.

You said it would start with one ship, and you apparently invited me to invest in the effort of procuring and developing it. Presumably you would be the owner of this ship, so you'd have (final) control over it. That's why I asked you my question. I thought it was a very simple question, and to be quite honest, I'm disturbed that you seem to be avoiding answering it directly.

Anemone:
Why is difficulty in leaving a state an intrinsic characteristic of a state. Only a state that is leeching off its citizens requires a wall to keep them bound into a captive position.

I don't consider difficulty in leaving to be an intrinsic characteristic of a state. My wording wasn't intended to imply otherwise. In retrospect, I think I should've used wording like "your state seems so voluntary in nature that I wouldn't consider it a state at all".

Anemone:
Autolykos:
Would you call someone entering a restaurant to be a "citizen" of that restaurant? Why or why not?

They'd be a patron. In this context a citizen of my state is a patron of it as well. But I'm consciously trying to import the vocabulary of a state in order to redefine it. When you're part of a large-scale society and subject to its laws, you're a citizen. A restaurant doesn't rise to that level of grandeur and seriousness. Nor does it have written laws, but [mere] rules. A restaurant is never going to be able to lock up patrons who violate its laws. It doesn't have that mechanism of coercion.

Wait a minute. Up to this point, you've been insistent that you've been talking about the intrinsic/essential characteristics of a state. But now you say that you're "consciously trying to import the vocabulary of a state in order to redefine it"? Can you please explain yourself here?

I'll repeat my question from much earlier: what exactly, in your opinion, distinguishes a large-scale society from a non-large-scale society? I see no formal difference between a privately owned restaurant which serves up to several dozen patrons at a time and a million-acre privately owned tract of land that has up to millions of people living on it at a time.

Anemone:
[The point in calling it a state is b]ecause that owner has divested himself of certain rights over his property and vested them in a communal organization that becomes the state, one that allows all citizens to vote, etc. It becomes a legal structure outside of him. He retains title, much lie in our renting example, but the state takes up his rights of protection and invitation of all thereupon. A large scale society is only possible by this means, lest we return to dictatorship.

Has the owner divested himself of those rights permanently? Because if so, he's essentially sold them outright to an organization that now has a higher claim over his land than he does - if he has any left at all. Retaining title makes no difference - if the management isn't serving at the mercy and pleasure of the owner, then the management is the de facto owner.

Anemone:
It's because I doubt a city of millions can be ruled by one guy. He's certainly free to try i tho. I wouldn't restrict experimentation, again. But the city I would found would have a voting mechanism and a lawmaking body.

What do you mean by "ruled", exactly? Why would the city that you'd found have a voting mechanism and a lawmaking body?

Anemone:
Autolykos:
In any case, by your reasoning, the citizen owning the property is indeed the state first and foremost. Even if he delegates enforcement of his laws to other people, that doesn't mean those other people become a power unto themselves (at least not intentionally).

With powers vested in them by free election, I think they do.

Then he no longer really owns his land. An important point here is that, when you talk about "[divesting] himself of certain rights", I assume you mean, at the very least, protective rights. Those rights are pretty fundamental to ownership in general. If you're not allowed to protect what you own, how can you be said to truly own it? So in divesting himself of protective rights over his land, his remaining title to the land becomes moot. All he can be said to own in the land, if anything, are certain use-rights.

Anemone:
Autolykos:
Furthermore, you say that he vests control rights in a legal system, but he can theoretically abolish that legal system whenever he wants.

Not necessarily. He can contract for perpetuity without recourse.

Contracting for perpetuity without recourse is also known as selling.

Anemone:
Autolykos:
So he's actually reserving the control rights and simply delegating exercise of control to other people. Besides, the ownership rights are the control rights. There's no difference there, as far as I can see.

Again, it's possible to give away those rights in perpetuity if so desired. Many would probably not want to participate long term in a city where the owner has vested those legal rights only for a time. Thus such a city would have a greatly diminished chance of becoming a long term large society.

See above. Additionally, since you're apparently familiar with the concept of self-ownership, how exactly can a person actually sell all or part of his self-ownership?

Anemone:
Autolykos:
There can be no legitimate (i.e. non-aggressive) precondition of remaining part of "the legal backbone" in order to purchase land "within the city". You're limited to never actually selling any land to anyone.

I tend to agree. What could be purchased however are leases in perpetuity, which would ultimately act the same as ownership of property but would actually be only part ownership, containing provisions which require the purchaser of the lease-property to agree to and abide by the city laws before purchasing.

That property issue's a bit dicey, but thanks for bringing it to my attention fully.

(by the way, a lot of the thinking I've done on this is research for a future novel :)

Again, how are leases in perpetuity different from ownership? How can you logically treat them as full ownership and partial ownership at the same time? It seems to me that such an arrangement is inherently fraudulent, and is akin to the situation that alleged "property owners" find themselves in under the state.

Re: Emergence Anarcho-Capitalism

Anenome — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 08:29:46 GMT

Wheylous:

Also, to add to what you said:

D'oh! How could I not see it earlier:

Government makes laws and enforces them. Jesus, how could I be so blind my entire life? Leftists are in denial, man.

That'd be a great verbal gotcha in an argument with a lib :P

"So the government makes laws and then it enforce them? Is that right?"

"Yeah"

"It enforces the law?"

"Correct."

"Enforce?"

"Yes."

"En..., what is it, en...?"

"Force... oh."

haha

Re: Emergence Anarcho-Capitalism

Wheylous — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 21:21:54 GMT

Also, to add to what you said:

D'oh! How could I not see it earlier:

Government makes laws and enforces them. Jesus, how could I be so blind my entire life? Leftists are in denial, man.

Re: Emergence Anarcho-Capitalism

Wheylous — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 21:14:43 GMT

Haha nice.

I guess my general thesis was:

1) the state is institutionalized violation of NAP. Voluntaryism is simply the understanding that we have institutionalized this and working to end it

2) Minarchy is generally an illusion. The monopolized court system only exists because we believe in it (and are willing to use force to defend its monopoly). Private courts (that is, letting private courts exist and not aggressing against them) would likely lead to better justice. The only part of minarchy which is not an illusion is the tax collection, which again relies on force to create a monopoly.

Re: Emergence Anarcho-Capitalism

Anenome — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 19:45:57 GMT

Wheylous:

Sorry to triple-post, but

uuuuultimately ultimately

it seems like personal ethics are the only way to keep a sane world, with the NAP as the principle everyone should have. Thus, AnCap wins as the most practical way to maintain the NAP, though the concept of the state is illusory anyway. Since the "state" is a derivative of AnCap, the best bet would be to educate people about aggression. Truly, the state is evil because of aggression. So the current institutions of the state which rely on aggression should be removed. Because they rely on aggression.

It does seem to me awfully amazing that the modern left believes itself so morally upright and superior, yet has not accepted or even come to grips with the non-aggression principle. That may be an excellent rhetorical wedge against them. I remember reading something about a guy telling Michael Moore that government is force and he had no clue what the guy was talking about...

WE ALL KNOW, or at least we’d better know by now, that Michael Moore thinks that government health care, as practiced in Canada, Britain, and Cuba is hunky-dory.

(I know. Have you asked a Brit about her wonderful NHS lately?)

Libertarian John Stossel got to ask him about this on ABC’s 20/20 TV show. How come he could be so relaxed about government health care, Stossel asked?

"But government is force," I said to him. He was incredulous.

Michael Moore: Why do you see it as force?

Me: Because government takes money with force from people and gives it to others.

Moore: No, it doesn’t, actually. The government is of, by, and for the people. The people elect the government, and the people determine whether or not they’ll allow the government to collect taxes from them.

So now you know why liberals wax enthusiastic about the wonderful things that government does for us.

They have talked themselves out of believing that government is the agent of force and compulsion. Don’t look at the tax collector, they say; look at the good results: a wonderful program to increase minority home ownership.

But it’s force, says the conservative.

No it’s not; it’s compassion, says the liberal.

Says Stossel:

Michael Moore may not have thought about it, but there are only two ways to get people to do things: force or persuasion. Government is all about force.

There’s a lesson here for conservatives. We don’t spend enough time asking our liberal friends: But why do we have to do this by force?

Oh no we’re not, they’ll say.

OK. So the American people voted Bush into office to fight the war on terror and he spends a hundred billion dollars a year on the war in Iraq. That’s not force. It can’t be. Liberals say so.

No doubt that has nothing to do with reports that people are refusing to pay their taxes because of the war.

There you have it ;)

Re: Emergence Anarcho-Capitalism

Anenome — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 19:39:56 GMT

Autolykos:
Would you agree that, whether a person is capable of his own defense all the time, he is ultimately responsible for his own defense?

Absolutely.

Autolykos:
If a person wants to go into business as a judge (or arbiter, or whatever you want to call it), why should he be stopped?

As an arbiter, sure, but I'm not at all sure about criminal courts of law. In dealing with contract law you aren't talking about using force, but in criminal law you are. And that requires some accountability and perhaps conferral of authority by popular vote. Surely lifetime appointments are right out.

Autolykos:

I think you're talking about easements. Those concern rights of access to property. They don't dictate what a person can or cannot do on his own property otherwise.

There's easements, yes, but there's also sets of requirements such as for instance that you agree to abide by the decisions of a local homeowner's association, and that sort of requirement has a different name, just can't recall it. There's troubles with this sort of requirement because it has historically been used for racial discrimination as well.

Autolykos:

If I may extend my example, let's say that Smith requires everyone who enters his land to always wear a green shirt on his land. After Jones buys some of Smith's land, Smith comes to his door and sees that Jones is wearing a blue shirt. Smith accuses Jones of violating his contract, but Jones counters that he can wear whatever he wants on his own land. Who do you side with?

It's a good question. You can't really say Jones's ownership is conditional, since that wouldn't be full ownership. But that's also the weird thing about those property deed restrictions above. You can't tell a homeowner's association to go away it's your land, they end up being backed by the court.

I think if you contract that you will wear a green shirt on your land, even owning it free and clear, then you can be compelled to abide by it. You should never have agreed to it. You agreed to a restriction--in essence you gave up a right as a condition of purchase. How absolute are contracts anyway.

The relief would likely be something like rescinding the sale and giving you back your purchase price as the previous owner's discretion. I think if you agree to it you should abide by it or deal with the consequences. In actual practice that would be a pretty poor contract that didn't list an agreed to consequence for not wearing green.

It's also possible to buy only parts of a land. Like you can buy the air above, the ground below. In this case he was buying everything except the right to wear whatever he wants.

Autolykos:

Regardless, can you give me an outline of the kind of contract you see being set up in your hypothetical city?

The contract would essentially list the set of criminal laws and protections of basic rights the city-state intends to enforce, and by signing you agree to abide by the laws and punishments for breaking them.

Autolykos:
Anemone:
I agree it's a weird state of being, but it's also the only way an anarchist state is likely to come into being :P

I don't know who you're trying to convince with that bare assertion. Certainly not me.

Nah, it was an offhand comment, and a bit of irony I think ;)

Autolykos:

On the other hand, you did say that any "city-state" could secede from the "federal government" any time it wanted to. So I don't really see the point of this "federal government" aside from being basically a militia. Would it allow other militias to form under "its jurisdiction"?

The fed is quite crucial actually, to, as I'd said, allow citizens of an oppressed city to appeal for protection, at which point the fed can step in and make that city a protected city-state in whole or in part. If a city thinks it's fine on its own, great. I think of the fed here as a middle-step between a pure society of freedom and the current statist ones, like an incubator for a free society, the guiding hands that help a city transition from statism to freedom. And yes it's going to need a world-class scale volunteer military to do so without facing massive reprisal, especially if foreign land-based cities under existing governmental jurisdiction sue for membership in the free-states.

Would it allow other militias to form? Yes. In fact I consider that crucial as well. Smaller armies to take on more focused concerns could be formed, as long as they aren't aggressing against others, feel free. I would expect the city-states to have small forces as well for their own protection from pirates and other external aggressors. They'll need to protect shipping lanes as well.

Autolykos:

So would this "federal government" have one or more organizations that actively patrol everywhere looking for trouble? Or would it only prosecute when someone pressed charges? Keep in mind that the latter has been the historical norm, in fact.

It would have something similar to an FBI/CIA role. It wouldn't be an active police force within a territory, unless it found that the city-state government itself was aggressing, in which case it would have to be dismantled and rebuilt and the people freed back to self-determination.

Autolykos:

Many, if not most or all, contract disputes can be interpreted as thefts. I contract with you to build a house, but you pocket the money and never show anything for it. Essentially, then, you've stolen my money. By your reasoning, then, contract disputes are part of criminal law, not civil law.

Like I said, some problems have a criminal and civil component. Outright fraud, as you mention, is certainly criminal. But in a robust economy the greater need is contractual dispute resolution. Maybe I'm wrong and that's not as much a need but I doubt it.

Autolykos:

Anemone:
It may be that any civil dispute which requires the use of force within society should go to a gov civil court which exists alongside the private courts of dispute (which would be primarily used by businesses). Thus, any dispute where one party is refusing to come to court or where you require things like attaching a bank account, etc., would need to move up to the public civil court. Even the private arbitration courts might eventually need to move up to a coercive institution. But I don't think it should have a monopoly on anything but coercion. Obviously a private and coercive court is a contradiction in terms. But since it is necessary within a functioning society it has to come from somewhere, somehow.

Why must there be a monopoly over the (ultimate) use of legitimate coercion for a given area of land or group of people - as the above seems to imply? Note that I consider this a different question than the one about a monopoly in law itself.

Again, I see a need for a court-of-last-resort which has the power to coerce. If you don't see that, explain how you can see a private court using coercion within society? I'm certainly open to ideas here. I don't think any court should be using coercion unless it's following the law, such that any court empowered with coercion should be state sponsored and responsible to the larger electorate. But again, open to ideas. When the thief refuses to come to your private court and cannot be tried in absentia, and the court cannot compel him to come, now you have checkmate and injustice rules the day.

Autolykos:

That's right. So what's the point in calling it a "city" as opposed to simply calling it what it is - an area of privately-owned land that has been divided up into many rental units?

Because a city is a very large number of people living together :P

Autolykos:

Why do you feel the need to have elected representatives, when presumably judges can establish legal precedents? I see no reason that such a "quite basic" document would per se "prevent the fed authority from overstepping [its] bounds in time and growing in power as we've seen lately". So far you have failed to demonstrate to me how such must be the case.

Perhaps. Perhaps the judges are the elected. Though your only challenge has been that the entire society could simply agree to disobey the founding document. I submit that that has happened in part to the US, but was greatly helped along by the loopholes and poorly written controls within the document, and think this power-creep towards statism could be easily checked.

Beyond that, the institutional ability of city-states to freely opt in or out of the fed would mean that a law-breaking fed would likely find itself cityless in no time, with a new fed setup by a confederation of city-states with more trustworthy stewards.

But I'll think on it.

Autolykos:

I fail to see how any of this per se prevents future power-grabbing by the federal government.

No more so than currently. But certainly the US constitution makes it much harder than other documents around the world. And it's not hard to imagine a much tighter document than the constitution. Much would depend on the culture of the people, naturally.

Autolykos:

Anemone:
The eventual goal being to allow cities in other countries to do the same, such that this way of life, that is Freedom, can be spread.

How in the world is freedom a way of life?

The life lead within a free society is freedom as a way of life, describing the absence of coercion within the everyday activity of all people in that state. Capitalism too is a product of freedom and a way of life.

Autolykos:

Besides, if all the city-states are privately-owned tracts of land held by single individuals or multiple individuals jointly, isn't this the same as simply contracting with a private militia? And again, for this militia to be non-aggressive, it would necessarily allow (i.e. not prevent by force) other people to form militias within "its jurisdiction" if they so choose. Hence it really has no territorial jurisdiction at all.

The city-state itself could corporately contract with a single militia, making it a city militia of sorts.

Autolykos:

If you say "perhaps it's permissible", then how did I convince you of anything?

By 'permissible' I mean perhaps it's philosophically consistent.

Autolykos:

How is it a contradiction in terms, exactly? But also, see above about how contractual agreements can also be seen as part of public law, inasmuch as they often (or typically) constitute thefts when broken.

Contradiction because so-called "public law" is supposed to apply to everyone within a jurisdiction. A contract creates something like private law, but it's only between the contractees.

Autolykos:

I wasn't talking about that at all. But if you really want to change the context here, then let me ask you: do you seriously think that there are all these "damn furriners" out there just chomping at the bit to "take us over"?

To borrow a line from you, it's likelihood isn't at issue here :P It's principle. Long term? In the lifespan of a nation? Yeah, it's a concern. The US is almost impossible to invade, doesn't mean many would like to do it if they thought they could win. To accept your rationale would be to believe that no country should ever be invaded by outsiders. Besides which, I'm talking a much smaller and more freeform state outside US protection which very well may be attacked being outside the legal and philosophical framework of the entire world.

Autolykos:

What in the world are you calling a "region"? If there's already an initial prevailing legal order based on our instinctive morality, why does one need to be set up from scratch? Obviously a person doesn't need a prevailing legal order to be willing to defend what he sees as his from those who he sees as trying to take it from him.

A region, a jurisdiction, what's the difference--a place where one law holds. For outsiders to use aggression to stop those initiating aggression, you do need a written law to appeal to as the source of your authority to stop, arrest, try, and convict aggressors in a court of law, by the book so to speak. There's really not going to be any way to get away from that, as we've already discussed in the example of those already overpowered.

Autolykos:

That doesn't answer my question. I asked you how they will be helped. That is, I was asking you the same form of (logically fallacious) question that you asked me before. The correct answer is "I don't know", because you don't. Neither do I. We're all in the same boat on this, no matter what normative theory each of us might subscribe to. No normative theory has the power to impose certainty on the future.

I still consider freeing someone in a state of being aggressed as help on an objective basis.

Autolykos:

Excuse me, but I have not backed myself into a financial corner, thank you very much. I doubt that you have either. So please don't commit the collectivist fallacy of conflating individual US citizens with the US federal government.

The sins of the state eventually hit the citizens too. You know this.

Autolykos:

Why a (i.e. necessarily single) police force? How will this police force know when someone is wrongfully imprisoned? Will it always be patrolling everywhere looking for trouble? Won't that infringe upon people's privacy?

FFS. It isn't necessarily SINGULAR. I've already agreed to multiple enforcement organizations so can you stop questioning me on it! However THERE WILL BE AT LEAST ONE. Besides, the city-state will set up the first one while also allowing anyone else to start one, so there's always at least one.

As for privacy, it's an intersting. I don't think people have a right to privacy outside their domicile and property. And I have other plans for how to track crime such as this but won't go into that now.

Autolykos:

It depends on what you mean by "body of law". I personally think there will be something very much like the common laws of various parts of the world.

Will it be written down?

Autolykos:

Those common-law systems were essentially built upon precedents in settling disputes. Even legal systems that aren't typically regarded as common-law systems, such as Roman law, had their basis in common law. For a couple of examples, check out the English common law and the Somali Xeer.

Sure, sure, but all those were established within coercive courts. You've been talking about free market courts without coercive powers and suggesting this could exist entirely without any coercive courts--which I think may not be possible, since many legal remedies require coercion to effect them.

Autolykos:

I don't think there would be police forces in anarchist societies in the modern-day sense of the term. Instead, I think people would hire others to help protect their property.

The already overpowered still concerns me.

Autolykos:

Anemone:
Right, but I still don't see in there a place where the defenseless are being protected after being overpowered. An orphan child being held as a slave, who protects him?

Again, the way you're asking the question implies that you believe there is, or can be, certainty in the future.

I don't see how. I want at least a theory, a suggestion, an idea. I can tell you this certainly about the future: there will be orphan children being held as slaves. Someone within society must be able to rescue them, legally, when discovered, or it is not a just society, and not one I would want to live in.

Autolykos:

There isn't. The question is nonsense. It's also inherently contradictory, since an orphan child being held as a slave has obviously not been protected by anyone.

Come on. An orphan child is going to have a guardian of some sort. Private orgs / charities will spring up to take care of orphans. Suppose the mother sold the child to the slave owner. There you have a former guardian.

Autolykos:

Simply declaring it to be a crime is one thing. Enforcement is quite another, isn't it? What are your ideas for enforcement here?

It's just as easy to prove personal involvement as any other thing. Evidence based testimony, etc. If the cop is faced with arresting his daughter's boyfriend, he should call another cop to do it. That's just a simple example.

Autolykos:
You're talking about the division of labor here. Do you really think a division of labor cannot exist without a federal government? Why or why not?

Yes, division of labor--specifically I'm saying that people can specialize in work instead of their own personal protection in a society that has an actual police force. That makes people more specialized than in any anarchist society where each person must reasonably provide for their own defense in an essentially lawless society. It's not that there wouldn't be division of labor without a fed, but when you realize that self-protection too is labor, I think you see my point. It would not be unlike saying everyone in X society must provide their own food. That's going to limit division of labor while people invest time into gardening, etc., because they can't buy food from others.

Autolykos:

Anemone:
No, I don't mean only direct physical control, I mean control in every sense possible. You don't only control your arm, you also control how it may be disposed of, destroyed, sold, or given away, etc. Same with the house. If you rent it, you're maintaining title and certain rights over it. To rent it you're selling those rights to another for a set period, but you've not given them up completely. You could, in theory, rent an arm to someone else--allowing doctors to cut it off, attach it to someone else, and then reverse the procedure at some later date. We don't do that for obvious reasons but the analogy to control of the house is applicable. You own it both physically and in terms of title, but I'm glad you made me clarify that concept.

I'm sorry but you're wrong about renting a house. The owner retains title to the house.

You read too fast, because I said... "If you rent it, you're maintaining title..." Of course the owner of a rental maintains title but sells the rights that title entitles him to, for a set period. If it wasn't for a set period there'd be no point to retaining title and then we'd call it a sale in whole :P

Autolykos:
My point was that the word doesn't correspond to any known physical phenomenon.

You said it refers to pink unicorns I think. That's a thought, an image, which is a physical phenomena, just not one that corresponds to a real animal.

Autolykos:
You've agreed that law concerns people, not territory, first and foremost. Hence there can only be "law of the land" if the land is considered, however implicitly or even deceptively, owned by a single person or joint group.

That just seems like a semantic trick. If all the individuals in a territory have agree to a set of laws, it's the law of the land. The concept doesn't go both ways and confer individual ownership by the state on land it has jurisdiction over.

Autolykos:
You also seem to agree with the concept of "natural law", which means that the vast majority of people don't need to be explicitly told the vast majority of the time what they're absolutely not allowed to do. Furthermore, you've come to allow for competitors in the enforcement of law. It would then seem that you allow for a plurality, not a monopoly, of institutions to be considered to legitimately use coercion. So where is there any room for a state in all of this? You seem to be essentially an anarcho-capitalist already. :)

I still see need for law, and a state mechanism to make law, embodied in elected representatives or perhaps direct democracy, and obviously my concept of a fed which ties disparate city-states together and allows for expansion of the overarching legal framework while also serving as a general protection of rights.

Autolykos:
Okay, which states in history have not intentionally aggressed against citizens? And what again are the essential characteristics of the state, in your opinion? Because it sounds to me like what you're advocating isn't really a state at all - by the anarcho-capitalist definition of "state".

Early US the state did not aggress and worked as we would've like it. Early capitalism did not face state aggression either for a period of time. I agree it's an awfully short list, and still problematic, but unlike the anarchists dreams of a stateless state I think it's actually achievable. And god help us if it isn't.

Autolykos:
If a body of law is enforced by a plurality of institutions, as opposed to a monopoly institution, where is there a state at all? Or would you then consider that plurality of institutions to form a "collective state"?

Again, the law itself must be a monopoly by nature--not the enforcement of it. The state then is build around that law, elected representatives to pass law--within strictly defined powers as we've talked about.

Autolykos:
Again, this is the same to me as you claiming that your concept of "state" is somehow the correct concept of it. Please back this up with reasoning and/or evidence.

I'll just offer you the phrase "government is force." We have observed this, we know it to be true. And we know there's only one legitimate kind of governmental use of force and that is to coerce aggressors to stop aggressing. Obviously the state can do that or can be an aggressor itself. However there's nothing about a monopoly on force that compels it to do either one of the two. Therefore, saying the state is an aggressor it criticizing the state for a nonessential quality. It could just as easily be established as a non-aggressor only entity were it built with such principles in mind from the beginning. I'm afraid the American founders weren't there yet, with far too many statists amongst them. (well, the articles of confederation were a strictly limited document, and probably close to what my fed would look like and be limited to).

Autolykos:
You're implicitly redefining the word "table" to prove your point - that that's the proper definition of "table" to use. This is known as circular reasoning. For clarity here, I'll paraphrase your argument as it appears to me, without using the word "table":

You can't define a piece of furniture with a flat surface supported by one or more legs as a piece of furniture with a flat surface supported by four and only four legs, because an essential characteristic of a piece of furniture with a flat surface supported by one or more legs is that at least one leg supports the flat surface.

I hope that helps.

No, I'm only saying that the definition which both tries to capture all manifestations of the concept being referred to AND tries to strip out all nonessentialy qualities is a BETTER definition, meaning more precise, more correct, than your limited definition. I'm not denying that your definition works for particualr tables, but it doesn't capture the function and form of all tables, of 'tableness'. The better, dictionary definition does capture 'tableness' to a much better extent.

Autolykos:
How is it any less real to define "table" as "a piece of furniture supported by four and only four legs"? The reality is that "table" is just a word.

Back to this again. 'Table' may be just a word, but it refers to a concept which has a basis in reality. Your definition captures only a subset of all tables, and thus is poorer than a definition that subsumes most or all 'tables'. That is why.

In terms of how useful a definition is, the one that subsumes the totality of the concept while leaving out nonessential characteristics should be preferred, especially when it comes to reasoning and argumentation, and especially in political philosophy.

Same with the concept of the state. Attacking nonessentials should be a fallacy if it isn't one already.

If you attacked the table for having four legs, and I (rightly) point out that tables can exist with three or one or 4+ legs, then it stands to reason that you're being silly for trying to banish all tables on the basis of them having four legs, a nonessential characteristic.

Autolykos:
The certainly could be removed even if the founding document says they cannot be removed. Furthermore, since we're talking about a small group of the total population presumably having the power to "ultimately" enforce and interpret this founding document, we don't have to worry about the entire society. Look at the Second Amendment of the US Constitution, for example. What was undoubtedly meant to be clear and unambiguous language has been nevertheless re-interpreted over and over to mean almost the exact opposite of its original meaning! And that's been done without even removing it outright!

Right, except the 2nd amendment was poorly written, leaving room to imply that militia has something to do with the right.

Autolykos:
How would such laws be barred? How would a separation between economy and state (I'm not even sure what this is supposed to mean, to be honest) be ensured? Etc.

By law. What else. That's your only means to shape a state-system anyway. I'm surprised you don't know what separation of economy and state would mean. I mean the state would have no right to regulate in any way business or free trade. Same as a separation of church and state--which is what I was obviously referencing by that. The state would be limited to criminal law enforcement and rights protection.

Autolykos:
There certainly is room for whim in criminal law. As a trivial example, people aren't allowed (by criminal statute) to purchase or consume alcohol in the US until they've reached 21 years of age. You don't think that criminal law has been a matter of whim?

That's not what I mean. That would not be an example of law allowing whim, because that is a very hard rule written into law that can be verified with yes/no simply by verifying a purchaser's age. If a city-state wanted to pass that law, they should be able. What I mean is a law that empowered a bureaucrat to make decisions on an individual case basis such as happens in a lot of regulated industries like the FCC and SEC. Companies must beg off the FCC to renew their license and there's rather vague rules about how they should decide whether to do so which puts power of whim into the office-holder's hands.

Autolykos:
Sure, but that doesn't mean it couldn't nevertheless be also enshrined in the constitution at a later date. Look at the Universal Declaration of Human Rights for some heavy logical contradictions in a legal(istic) document. By allowing for any legislature at all, you open up Pandora's Box for this kind of shenaningans.

True but I don't think that problem is insurmountable, though it cannot really be avoided--yet there's also no better alternative. Existing law has a heavy advantage over proposed law. Just look at the healthcare law being sued as unconstitutional now. An even tighter document would be much harder to surmount legally. There's other protections you can build in as well.

With all of this its clear you're driving towards a stateless anarchist solution, but again it really just sounds to me like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. That which is difficult is not impossible. That which is problematic is not unsolvable.

Autolykos:
That doesn't answer my question. Would you or would you not store my boat on board in case I decide I've had enough?

On board what. You seem to be assuming there's one ship? o_O Your comment was vague in meaning originally, seemed like you were joking or something. You should know my answer by now. If this is a society of traders, of individual owners, how would I or anyone be storing your boat. If you're asking would I prevent you from leaving, of course not. And if a city-state tried you'd have the Fed to back you up.

Autolykos:
No, what's been proven is that, under some regimes that have called themselves "communist", populations have starved. Was there rampant famine in e.g. East Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, or (North) Vietnam?

While true there's no evidence to think otherwise. The other state you listed have not applied communism to all facets of its economic life. The ones I listed tried to apply communism specifically to food production and suffered the consequences. There's no philosophical reason to think any future society would come to any other outcome, so unless you can offer such a reason we can learn from history that this is the likely outcome. Attacking it as only a possible otucome because we can't know the future is a minor point compared to what we know will likely happen because of what has historically happened. Read Sowell's "Knowledge and Decisions" for a philosophical micro-examination of why communism cannot be more efficient than capitalism especially when it comes to farming.

Autolykos:
I think a more accurate statement is that, given the historical evidence, it's very (if not extremely) likely that abolishing private property in the means of production and instituting central planning will be less economically efficient than private property in the means of production and the lack of central planning.

It's so unlikely that I feel comfortable saying it cannot happen.

Autolykos:
The best safeguard, of course, is an educated populace devoted to the principles of NAP and free exchange. That's everyone'se goal here at least, I hope.

Of course.

Autolykos:
I believe it is. But as far as I can tell, it's so easy to leave your hypothetical state that I wouldn't consider it a state at all, except that you seem to be vacillating somewhat on its characteristics.

Why is difficulty in leaving a state an intrinsic characteristic of a state. Only a state that is leeching off its citizens requires a wall to keep them bound into a captive position.

Autolykos:
Would you call someone entering a restaurant to be a "citizen" of that restaurant? Why or why not?

They'd be a patron. In this context a citizen of my state is a patron of it as well. But I'm consciously trying to import the vocabulary of a state in order to redefine it. When you're part of a large-scale society and subject to its laws, you're a citizen. A restaurant doesn't rise to that level of grandeur and seriousness. Nor does it have written laws, but more rules. A restaurant is never going to be able to lock up patrons who violate its laws. It doesn't have that mechanism of coercion.

Autolykos:

Anemone:
In my scenario, one owner does own it all, because the state is being setup by a property owner of a large region intent on building a private city in its place. At which point he vests his control rights in a legal system while maintaining his ownership rights. But the state does not own, the citizen who set it up does. The state has only authority to check aggression within its bounds, and the citizen owning the city simply contracts with those wishing to enter seeking their agreement to be bound by the city-state's law system. It's all up front.

So what's the point in calling it a state?

Because that owner has divested himself of certain rights over his property and vested them in a communal organization that becomes the state, one that allows all citizens to vote, etc. It becomes a legal structure outside of him. He retains title, much lie in our renting example, but the state takes up his rights of protection and invitation of all thereupon. A large scale society is only possible by this means, lest we return to dictatorship.

Autolykos:
Just because it's not under the jurisdiction of any pre-existing state? I don't see the point in doing that unless your real goal here is to gain legitimacy for your flotilla among the states of the world.

It's because I doubt a city of millions can be ruled by one guy. He's certainly free to try i tho. I wouldn't restrict experimentation, again. But the city I would found would have a voting mechanism and a lawmaking body.

Autolykos:
In any case, by your reasoning, the citizen owning the property is indeed the state first and foremost. Even if he delegates enforcement of his laws to other people, that doesn't mean those other people become a power unto themselves (at least not intentionally).

With powers vested in them by free election, I think they do.

Autolykos:
Furthermore, you say that he vests control rights in a legal system, but he can theoretically abolish that legal system whenever he wants.

Not necessarily. He can contract for perpetuity without recourse.

Autolykos:
So he's actually reserving the control rights and simply delegating exercise of control to other people. Besides, the ownership rights are the control rights. There's no difference there, as far as I can see.

Again, it's possible to give away those rights in perpetuity if so desired. Many would probably not want to participate long term in a city where the owner has vested those legal rights only for a time. Thus such a city would have a greatly diminished chance of becoming a long term large society.

Autolykos:

Anemone:
Unless he's agreed to join the legal backbone as a precondition of purchasing / leasing there. Such preserves both his choice and the overarching legal structure and legitimacy.

There can be no legitimate (i.e. non-aggressive) precondition of remaining part of "the legal backbone" in order to purchase land "within the city". You're limited to never actually selling any land to anyone.

I tend to agree. What could be purchased however are leases in perpetuity, which would ultimately act the same as ownership of property but would actually be only part ownership, containing provisions which require the purchaser of the lease-property to agree to and abide by the city laws before purchasing.

That property issue's a bit dicey, but thanks for bringing it to my attention fully.

(by the way, a lot of the thinking I've done on this is research for a future novel :)

Re: Emergence Anarcho-Capitalism

Wheylous — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 19:12:52 GMT

Yeah, that always sucks.

Can someone please address my posts (3)? :D

Re: Emergence Anarcho-Capitalism

Anenome — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 19:05:16 GMT

I had a (lengthy) post and the server ate it :<

***wait, I found it!***

Re: Emergence Anarcho-Capitalism

Autolykos — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 00:56:10 GMT

Anemone:
Never really considered it, but I would say law concerns exchanges, meaning action between two people. I wouldn't use action because that means a single person alone, and law has no place in regulating the individual, only keeping justice between them. In the same way, the idea of freedom or law would mean nothing to someone stranded on a desert island, as who could possibly restrain him or violate his rights :P

I'm surprised you never really considered it. But in any case, your qualification of the notion that law deals with actions is fair enough. So we're in agreement here that law deals with (interpersonal) actions.

Anemone:
Sure, sounds right to me. I'm not sure what regulating a state of being would even mean in practice or theory.

I submit that the statist notion of "the law of the land" is one possible meaning of regulating a state of being - the state of being in this case being the (arbitrarily defined) area of land itself.

Anemone:
Sure, that sounds appropriate, he's enforced law and he's privately enforced it. However, as I said, not everyone's capable of their own defense all the time.

That's true, but it wasn't my point. My point was simply to demonstrate that law enforcement is never actually monopolized, even in a society ruled by a state. Would you agree that, whether a person is capable of his own defense all the time, he is ultimately responsible for his own defense?

Anemone:
I'd allow private security. The real question is how trials are taking place. Should we have electable judges? Surely we can't have free market judges for criminal law, or can we (civil disputes it's fine, but criminal? doubt it).

If a person wants to go into business as a judge (or arbiter, or whatever you want to call it), why should he be stopped?

Anemone:
Right, but Smith still owns all public areas, such as streets, etc., which he may or may not sell, and would likely only sell if the buyers agree to continue with the city contract (or leave). I forget what this is called in terms of property but it's something like a legal attachment that comes with property. It's actually a current problem in contract theory, as if you buy a property with conditions already on it, how can those conditions ever be removed? In theory they cannot be, and that's too much power to give the sellers. Otoh, you can say if you don't like the provisions simply don't buy.

I think you're talking about easements. Those concern rights of access to property. They don't dictate what a person can or cannot do on his own property otherwise.

If I may extend my example, let's say that Smith requires everyone who enters his land to always wear a green shirt on his land. After Jones buys some of Smith's land, Smith comes to his door and sees that Jones is wearing a blue shirt. Smith accuses Jones of violating his contract, but Jones counters that he can wear whatever he wants on his own land. Who do you side with?

Regardless, can you give me an outline of the kind of contract you see being set up in your hypothetical city?

Anemone:
It might be more reasonable to simply require that if a person legally separates themselves from the city and continues to live within the city bounds that they must also then provide security on their property.

Well, if Smith has his own security business, he's not obliged to sell its services to anyone who doesn't live on his land. So yes, Jones may well have to either provide his own security or hire an "outside" security business. I don't see the big deal here.

Anemone:
I agree it's a weird state of being, but it's also the only way an anarchist state is likely to come into being :P

I don't know who you're trying to convince with that bare assertion. Certainly not me.

On the other hand, you did say that any "city-state" could secede from the "federal government" any time it wanted to. So I don't really see the point of this "federal government" aside from being basically a militia. Would it allow other militias to form under "its jurisdiction"?

Anemone:
In this case we'red building a society so limited that unless we're in a state of war the anarchists shouldn't have any contact with the federal authority at all. Well, the other cases would be if the anarchists are allowing gross injustices within their territory, in which case the fed should step in to stop aggressions--which is its sole function in my state.

So would this "federal government" have one or more organizations that actively patrol everywhere looking for trouble? Or would it only prosecute when someone pressed charges? Keep in mind that the latter has been the historical norm, in fact.

Anemone:
Criminal law involves the abrogation of basic rights, theft, murder, etc. Civil disputes are those surrounding contracts and agreements and other things that don't have an ethical component: marriage / divorce (which the state should not have any part in), business and contractual disputes, etc. As in current practice, some disputes have both a civil and criminal element, which are handled separately.

Many, if not most or all, contract disputes can be interpreted as thefts. I contract with you to build a house, but you pocket the money and never show anything for it. Essentially, then, you've stolen my money. By your reasoning, then, contract disputes are part of criminal law, not civil law.

Anemone:
It may be that any civil dispute which requires the use of force within society should go to a gov civil court which exists alongside the private courts of dispute (which would be primarily used by businesses). Thus, any dispute where one party is refusing to come to court or where you require things like attaching a bank account, etc., would need to move up to the public civil court. Even the private arbitration courts might eventually need to move up to a coercive institution. But I don't think it should have a monopoly on anything but coercion. Obviously a private and coercive court is a contradiction in terms. But since it is necessary within a functioning society it has to come from somewhere, somehow.

Why must there be a monopoly over the (ultimate) use of legitimate coercion for a given area of land or group of people - as the above seems to imply? Note that I consider this a different question than the one about a monopoly in law itself.

Anemone:
So essentially, through your questioning, it seems that my ideal city could really only be kept intact legally if everyone is leasing/renting property from the original large-scale owner. This more limited form of ownership would allow the original owner to contract leasees into a legal system while maintaining the ability to bar entry to offenders.

That's right. So what's the point in calling it a "city" as opposed to simply calling it what it is - an area of privately-owned land that has been divided up into many rental units?

Anemone:
:) two bodies: the founder(s) initially (one time try) and elected representatives concurrently. The founders by means of the statement of basic rights enshrined in a founding document which is essentially unchangeable. This document should be quite basic, only enshrining the most obvious and important rights. Such would prevent the fed authority from overstepping their bounds in time and growing in power as we've seen lately.

Why do you feel the need to have elected representatives, when presumably judges can establish legal precedents? I see no reason that such a "quite basic" document would per se "prevent the fed authority from overstepping [its] bounds in time and growing in power as we've seen lately". So far you have failed to demonstrate to me how such must be the case.

Anemone:
Any more fine-grained law making should be at the city-state level and made by elected representatives. But I have a number of ideas for things that could be tried. With a modern age, we could move back to direct democracy by using a web interface to allow all individuals in a society to vote on proposals.

I had another idea yesterday that perhaps elected representatives should be conflated with the law enforcement organization entirely, such that what we think of today as the equivalent of a congressman would also perform the work of a police-officer. Such would allow representatives to see the direct impact of any law that gets made/passed.

As to what kind of elected body, how, or even if, I would leave that up to each city-state. So, it's a society that allows for widescale experimentation, unlike the US-states and their silly blue sky laws and copycat constitutions.

I fail to see how any of this per se prevents future power-grabbing by the federal government.

Anemone:
I would think each city-state should apply for recognition as a city-state under the fed authority in order to be included under its protective umbrellas, in something like an appeal for protection from aggressors. The eventual goal being to allow cities in other countries to do the same, such that this way of life, that is Freedom, can be spread.

How in the world is freedom a way of life?

Besides, if all the city-states are privately-owned tracts of land held by single individuals or multiple individuals jointly, isn't this the same as simply contracting with a private militia? And again, for this militia to be non-aggressive, it would necessarily allow (i.e. not prevent by force) other people to form militias within "its jurisdiction" if they so choose. Hence it really has no territorial jurisdiction at all.

Anemone:
Such would put my society at odds with the dictatorships around the world. And that's just how I like it. It is morally permissible to invade any country aggressing against its occupants, with the intent to protect individuals against aggression. Properly constructed we could free the world.

With all due respect, I think you're getting ahead of yourself here. Let's keep our focus on the fundamentals.

Anemone:
You convinced me :P I don't think many would like to do it, but perhaps it's permissible.

If you say "perhaps it's permissible", then how did I convince you of anything? If I've actually convinced you (and you don't just want me to drop it), then you'll recognize that it's entirely permissible by the premises that you yourself (claim to) believe in. Furthermore, and once again, just how many people would do it is entirely irrelevant with regards to the principle of the thing - which is what I, for one, have been talking about this whole time.

Anemone:
Sounds good. Except, "private law"? Sounds like a contradiction in terms. "Contractual agreement" might substitute and be more apt.

How is it a contradiction in terms, exactly? But also, see above about how contractual agreements can also be seen as part of public law, inasmuch as they often (or typically) constitute thefts when broken.

Anemone:
Right, but that knowledge doesn't provide a protection against an organized enemy state.

I wasn't talking about that at all. But if you really want to change the context here, then let me ask you: do you seriously think that there are all these "damn furriners" out there just chomping at the bit to "take us over"?

Anemone:
I consider that most property owners within one region would want to form a prevailing legal order to deal with the problem in society, specifically crime. This has virtually always happened in the history of humanity. Fighting it isn't going to work. Directing it into something useful will. Informing it with principle will.

What in the world are you calling a "region"? If there's already an initial prevailing legal order based on our instinctive morality, why does one need to be set up from scratch? Obviously a person doesn't need a prevailing legal order to be willing to defend what he sees as his from those who he sees as trying to take it from him.

Anemone:
I answered this previously, that it's morally permissible to step into any situation where a human's rights are being aggressed by anyone and put a stop to it. This is the nature of the justice system and applies on an international basis as well.

That doesn't answer my question. I asked you how they will be helped. That is, I was asking you the same form of (logically fallacious) question that you asked me before. The correct answer is "I don't know", because you don't. Neither do I. We're all in the same boat on this, no matter what normative theory each of us might subscribe to. No normative theory has the power to impose certainty on the future.

Anemone:
One reason I like the idea of a state on the water is that you'd be able to float a city down to some troubled region and provide aid, support, even military-defense as needed with a base local to the problem. You'd be free to pick up those who want to leave the city for another land. This is something many around the world would love to do, to leave their situation and find a rational place to work and live in peace, but they currently have no options.

Uh, good luck with that? I don't know what else to say here.

Anemone:
The prerequisite for helping others is to get our own damn house in order. With America's statist ambitions, we've backed ourself into a financial corner. A free state such as I propose would have no such debt problems, and the people would be more wealthy and productive than americans. Beyond that, I intend to write the ability for regions to appeal for entry, allowing them to either be moved out by willing organizations within the society or institute our legal system within their borders. Should be both very rewarding and fun to see the result of all this. Dictatorships around the world would have their brains fried.

Excuse me, but I have not backed myself into a financial corner, thank you very much. I doubt that you have either. So please don't commit the collectivist fallacy of conflating individual US citizens with the US federal government.

As far as the rest of this paragraph goes, please see my earlier cautionary note about getting ahead of yourself.

Anemone:
My point is, in my society there's a professional police force (or private) able to walk into that situation and free the imprisoned, and no such ability within an anarchist society unless a citizen wants to stick his (lone) neck out. Any organized crime can prevent that from happening quite easily, but in a state which puts forth a statement of rights it must also back those rights with some enforcement.

Why a (i.e. necessarily single) police force? How will this police force know when someone is wrongfully imprisoned? Will it always be patrolling everywhere looking for trouble? Won't that infringe upon people's privacy?

Anemone:
What body of law is there in an anarchist society? Without that, what does a police force know to enforce? What's the legal procedure of arresting someone?

It depends on what you mean by "body of law". I personally think there will be something very much like the common laws of various parts of the world. Those common-law systems were essentially built upon precedents in settling disputes. Even legal systems that aren't typically regarded as common-law systems, such as Roman law, had their basis in common law. For a couple of examples, check out the English common law and the Somali Xeer.

I don't think there would be police forces in anarchist societies in the modern-day sense of the term. Instead, I think people would hire others to help protect their property. As far as arresting people goes, I'm not sure exactly what the legal procedure would be.

Anemone:
Right, but I still don't see in there a place where the defenseless are being protected after being overpowered. An orphan child being held as a slave, who protects him?

Again, the way you're asking the question implies that you believe there is, or can be, certainty in the future. There isn't. The question is nonsense. It's also inherently contradictory, since an orphan child being held as a slave has obviously not been protected by anyone.

Anemone:
Sure. It would likely be a crime to be personally involved in a conviction in some self-serving way, just as it is today.

Simply declaring it to be a crime is one thing. Enforcement is quite another, isn't it? What are your ideas for enforcement here?

Anemone:
No, I agree. That's why I want the fed to be as limited and basic as possible, doing only one thing--enforcing basic rights. The most difficult thing is to prevent people from adding fake rights onto the tail end of that.

Again, it seems to me that this "fed" of yours is really just a private militia. Otherwise, I don't see why any federation needs exactly two tiers. I also don't see the need for a federation at all, unless the police forces you're talking about operate at the "federal" level.

Anemone:
Of course. It's not that I think someone loses their personal jurisdiction by joining a legal federation, but that they think they will gain something by acting corporately. If a person doesn't need to provide for their own defense, they're free to specialize in a work area. That's a more important principle than we give it credit for.

You're talking about the division of labor here. Do you really think a division of labor cannot exist without a federal government? Why or why not?

Anemone:
No, I don't mean only direct physical control, I mean control in every sense possible. You don't only control your arm, you also control how it may be disposed of, destroyed, sold, or given away, etc. Same with the house. If you rent it, you're maintaining title and certain rights over it. To rent it you're selling those rights to another for a set period, but you've not given them up completely. You could, in theory, rent an arm to someone else--allowing doctors to cut it off, attach it to someone else, and then reverse the procedure at some later date. We don't do that for obvious reasons but the analogy to control of the house is applicable. You own it both physically and in terms of title, but I'm glad you made me clarify that concept.

I'm sorry but you're wrong about renting a house. The owner retains title to the house. Otherwise, thanks for the clarification. In that case, I think both control and legitimacy are the essential characteristics of ownership. After all, that's how I've defined "ownership" - "legitimate control".

Anemone:
Define legitimacy in this context.

Moral permissibility.

Anemone:
It shouldn't be. Total physical freedom is why it's possible to hurt others. True freedom is a middle concept and applies to an entire society, meaning you're free from political / economic / interpersonal coercion. Now, total freedom is why coercion is possible, because someone can still put a gun to your head. But the state of freedom means a society that is protecting the individuals within it from aggression and initiation of coercion, and it is doing this by means of coercing the aggressors to stop aggressing. This is political freedom.

If we look at a slave owner, we might say he's free. After all no one is coercing him. But in fact he's coercing others. So he is not living in a state of freedom, but of tyranny, tyranny over others. Freedom for a society means a lack of coercion on individuals.

Because of this, as I said, freedom is a middle concept meaning free to swing your arm until it meets the end of another's nose.

You misunderstood. I meant that "freedom" in a political context can be defined in an all-or-nothing way. I wasn't talking about "total physical freedom".

Anemone:
But you first created a new word before defining it. In this instance, the existing phenomena is the word which has no correlation to reality, but it still exists. As a word, or a thought, or a nonsense word.

My point was that the word doesn't correspond to any known physical phenomenon.

Anemone:
However in terms of communication, the idea is to get meaning into the head of another, and words must be precisely defined for that to work. And then when we get to reasoning, logic, and political theory it is even more important.

I agree wholeheartedly with semantic precision and rigor. But that doesn't mean there are only so many concepts to be used as definitions for words.

Anemone:
What else? That's its only ethical reason to exist. It's the only thing that I can't imagine stripping away from government due to the nature of law. Well, the state would be a law creator, a holder of jurisdiction, the enforcement could be privatized, or more likely would have a state apparatus but allow for private competitors.

You've agreed that law concerns people, not territory, first and foremost. Hence there can only be "law of the land" if the land is considered, however implicitly or even deceptively, owned by a single person or joint group. You also seem to agree with the concept of "natural law", which means that the vast majority of people don't need to be explicitly told the vast majority of the time what they're absolutely not allowed to do. Furthermore, you've come to allow for competitors in the enforcement of law. It would then seem that you allow for a plurality, not a monopoly, of institutions to be considered to legitimately use coercion. So where is there any room for a state in all of this? You seem to be essentially an anarcho-capitalist already. :)

Anemone:
You don't, but that has nothing to do with the definition... color me confused.

Yes it does. Either the definition of "rose" points to a certain beautiful flower, or it doesn't.

Anemone:
Ah. I think the definition tries to capture a concept, to capture meaning of a phenomena, thought, emotion, thing, etc. And if successful it delineates this thing from all other things. And the primary process in doing that is both stripping out nonessentials (like number of legs in a table) and building a definition which encompasses the variety of the thing or concept (such as the definition of a table as 1 or more legs).

Eskimos apparently have over 30 words for different kinds of snow. Does the English word "snow" successfully delineate its common meaning from all other things? No, I don't think it does, because things can be contained by other things. Furthermore, there are an infinite number of distinctions that can be made between one thing and another. I still see no reason why I can't define "table" as "a piece of furniture with a flat surface supported by four and only four legs". It seems perfectly intelligible to me, as long as I explicitly indicate the definition I'm using to avoid confusion.

Anemone:
No, I'm really asserting that what the state's been attacked for by anarchs has, so far, been for nonessential characteristics of the state. It's like if you attack a fat guy for being fat then condemn all people. Okay? But not all people are fat. Not all states are aggressors against citizens.

Okay, which states in history have not intentionally aggressed against citizens? And what again are the essential characteristics of the state, in your opinion? Because it sounds to me like what you're advocating isn't really a state at all - by the anarcho-capitalist definition of "state".

Anemone:
Haha, well that's probably my fault then. However, I really think that this is not merely my concept of a state, but rather the irreducible logical consequence of what the state must be in minimum form. At its minimum it forms a body of law which it enforces. That is, the irreducible quality of the state is the ability to use coercion legally within society. And if it's true that this coercive power can be used either for good purposes (stopping aggressors) or bad purposes (aggressing against citizens), as you've already agreed, then why do we reject the state as a concept for the latter when it can still perform the former?

If a body of law is enforced by a plurality of institutions, as opposed to a monopoly institution, where is there a state at all? Or would you then consider that plurality of institutions to form a "collective state"?

Once again, anarcho-capitalists are rejecting a concept of "state" that is at least slightly different from yours. Anarcho-capitalists consider an absence of a (claimed) monopoly over the legitimate use of coercion to be an absence of a state.

Anemone:
It really isn't just my concept of a state. The state is a fact in the real world and can be analyzed as such.

Again, this is the same to me as you claiming that your concept of "state" is somehow the correct concept of it. Please back this up with reasoning and/or evidence.

Anemone:
Yes, it does mean that four legs is nonessential. The essential is at least one leg to hold up a table, whatever form that leg takes, because--and now we meet up against the demands of reality--everything is affected by gravity. Without the one leg you don't have a table up off the floor, you have a board laying on the ground--and that's better described by a different word, 'board.'

You're implicitly redefining the word "table" to prove your point - that that's the proper definition of "table" to use. This is known as circular reasoning. For clarity here, I'll paraphrase your argument as it appears to me, without using the word "table":

You can't define a piece of furniture with a flat surface supported by one or more legs as a piece of furniture with a flat surface supported by four and only four legs, because an essential characteristic of a piece of furniture with a flat surface supported by one or more legs is that at least one leg supports the flat surface.

I hope that helps.

Anemone:
What I'm basically saying is that reality must be our epistemological reference point. It is the basis of reasoning, and of logic.

How is it any less real to define "table" as "a piece of furniture supported by four and only four legs"? The reality is that "table" is just a word.

Anemone:
That the citizens/law-enforcement would likely sue/arrest them. There's still room for checks and balances after all. They could be prosecuted for that as surely as any criminal, since that would make them law breakers. If your point is that a society needs to be generally law abiding to hold to law, I agree, yet you also said only a small minority are law breakers--thus every society tends to live by its laws generally.

"Likely" is not the same as "necessarily". So you haven't answered my question at all.

Anemone:
They could not be removed if the founding document states they cannot be removed. Come on man. As you said, people are generally law abiding. To propose an entire society would become law-breaking is to go beyond the bounds of reasonableness.

The certainly could be removed even if the founding document says they cannot be removed. Furthermore, since we're talking about a small group of the total population presumably having the power to "ultimately" enforce and interpret this founding document, we don't have to worry about the entire society. Look at the Second Amendment of the US Constitution, for example. What was undoubtedly meant to be clear and unambiguous language has been nevertheless re-interpreted over and over to mean almost the exact opposite of its original meaning! And that's been done without even removing it outright!

In any case, I was arguing a theoretical point - that people are not computers and therefore are not bound to follow written documents as if they're CPU instructions. Given that people have free will, that means they theoretically have the ability to disregard and violate any and all rules per se that have been set before them. Physical barriers and consequences are another thing entirely.

Anemone:
Laws allowing whim-based decisions in public officials should be barred. In any case, most of the problem is removed by separating economy and state. There's not much room for whim in criminal law.

How would such laws be barred? How would a separation between economy and state (I'm not even sure what this is supposed to mean, to be honest) be ensured? Etc.

There certainly is room for whim in criminal law. As a trivial example, people aren't allowed (by criminal statute) to purchase or consume alcohol in the US until they've reached 21 years of age. You don't think that criminal law has been a matter of whim?

Anemone:
Primarily that a right to healthcare would contradict a right to self-ownership, for one thing. Which would be one of the basic rights.

Sure, but that doesn't mean it couldn't nevertheless be also enshrined in the constitution at a later date. Look at the Universal Declaration of Human Rights for some heavy logical contradictions in a legal(istic) document. By allowing for any legislature at all, you open up Pandora's Box for this kind of shenaningans.

Anemone:
No, I consider a right only a legal aknowledgement of rights we already possess by nature of being human beings. The idea that the source of rights is government is an evil concept. They are rights by nature, intrinsic to us as people.

Strictly speaking, I don't think we possess any rights by nature of being human beings. To argue otherwise is to run into the is-ought problem. There are rights which the vast majority of us instinctively hold for ourselves and for others the vast majority of the time. But that's a different thing entirely and does not run into the is-ought problem.

Anemone:
Haha, you're free to leave any time.

That doesn't answer my question. Would you or would you not store my boat on board in case I decide I've had enough?

Anemone:
Under capitalism, a society can feed itself. Under communism, a population starves. This is historically proven and true. Hell, North Korea's starving right now. Russia has starved. Mao killed 20 million people during his "great leap forward" of communizing the farms. And Pol Pot murdered 25% of his country trying to do the same.

No, what's been proven is that, under some regimes that have called themselves "communist", populations have starved. Was there rampant famine in e.g. East Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, or (North) Vietnam?

Anemone:
The idea that communism is more efficient economically than capitalism is historically disproven and a failure as an economic/political system.

I suppose if your real goal was obtaining control over people, then communism would be a raging success :P But in terms of what communism itself predicted 'We will bury you (economically)' says Kruschev, he was utterly wrong.

As for whether it must always be a failure, addressing the qualifier 'always' specifically, yes it will always be a failure in comparison to a capitalist system for the basic reason that communism does not organize human energy in accordance with its nature. Just as water will always be a worse fuel for any engine than gasoline, so too freedom is a better fueld for human production than despotism and tyranny and central control.

I think a more accurate statement is that, given the historical evidence, it's very (if not extremely) likely that abolishing private property in the means of production and instituting central planning will be less economically efficient than private property in the means of production and the lack of central planning.

Anemone:
It's a good point. But I don't consider any state to need perpetual existence to be a success. And since it's easy to leave the state, that's a self-check on its own excesses. The rulers start being despots, start your own thing. It is the prerogative of humanity.

The best safeguard, of course, is an educated populace devoted to the principles of NAP and free exchange. That's everyone'se goal here at least, I hope.

I believe it is. But as far as I can tell, it's so easy to leave your hypothetical state that I wouldn't consider it a state at all, except that you seem to be vacillating somewhat on its characteristics.

Anemone:
For one thing you can't enter without becoming a citizen, since becoming a citizen means agreeing to the laws of that jurisdiction and little more. Beyond that, see my section above where I talk about allowing others to declare themselves citizens as pretext for invasion to free oppressed peoples. Declaring yourself a citizen of my floating state is one way to escape despotism wherever you are. That's a pretty huge despotism. To simply escape aggression and live free is a pretty massive benefit in my book, even if it is a wholly passive one.

Would you call someone entering a restaurant to be a "citizen" of that restaurant? Why or why not?

Anemone:
Correct. Would be no different than asking a guest to leave.

So then he wouldn't be at any legal disadvantage, now would he?

Anemone:
In my scenario, one owner does own it all, because the state is being setup by a property owner of a large region intent on building a private city in its place. At which point he vests his control rights in a legal system while maintaining his ownership rights. But the state does not own, the citizen who set it up does. The state has only authority to check aggression within its bounds, and the citizen owning the city simply contracts with those wishing to enter seeking their agreement to be bound by the city-state's law system. It's all up front.

So what's the point in calling it a state? Just because it's not under the jurisdiction of any pre-existing state? I don't see the point in doing that unless your real goal here is to gain legitimacy for your flotilla among the states of the world.

In any case, by your reasoning, the citizen owning the property is indeed the state first and foremost. Even if he delegates enforcement of his laws to other people, that doesn't mean those other people become a power unto themselves (at least not intentionally). Furthermore, you say that he vests control rights in a legal system, but he can theoretically abolish that legal system whenever he wants. So he's actually reserving the control rights and simply delegating exercise of control to other people. Besides, the ownership rights are the control rights. There's no difference there, as far as I can see.

Anemone:
Unless he's agreed to join the legal backbone as a precondition of purchasing / leasing there. Such preserves both his choice and the overarching legal structure and legitimacy.

There can be no legitimate (i.e. non-aggressive) precondition of remaining part of "the legal backbone" in order to purchase land "within the city". You're limited to never actually selling any land to anyone.

Re: Emergence Anarcho-Capitalism

Fool on the Hill — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 00:26:33 GMT

How do they do that, exactly. I don't think you know what that would actually mean in real terms. In the real world, it's not the workers ensuring that raw materials enter the factory, and the workers do not take possession of the items that have had value added to them on their way to be sold.

If the workers aren't ensuring that raw materials enter the factory, then who is? Does some sort of magical aura emanate from capitalists that makes things get done without any work? The Argentine factory occupations did away with capitalists, yet they seem to have figured out a way to get materials into the factory.

In fact, what's occurring in any factory is that workers are selling their labor to another at a set value. The workers do not own any part of what is happening in a factory. They did not purchase the tools they are using, they are using those tools because the owner(s) have lent them to them to work with. Title of ownership to those tools does not pass to them simply because they're using them, anymore than a rental car becomes property of the renter.

They're selling their labor to pay a ransom. Who cares whether they have a "title" to it? Are you going to force them to have a title? The owner can only lend tools because he uses force to prevent people from using them otherwise.

Coercion. Any forced exchange as opposed to free exchange. When you say you'd allow them to appropariate the factory you're endorsing a forced exchange of property and I call you a terrible person for advocating force.

Oh I see, violating any type of property rights constitutes a use of force. That doesn't square with AC's definition though because he believes that a force-free market can precede the creation of property rights.

Do you own yourself? If so, I have not recognized your right to your own body. Am I then guiltless if I deprive you of your (bodily) property (via murder)?

If we are using AC's definition of property, then you would indeed be guiltless of depriving me of property. I don't own my body in such a case. However, that doesn't exclude you from being guiltless of murdering me.

The fact is, you need not recognize another's property rights for them to legitimately own a thing. Such a rationale would not save you from being convicted of theft or murder.

Not according to AC's definition.

When one holds property and you want it, or another wants it, there can be only two kinds of exchange: willing and unwilling (forced / coerced). You say that you would help workers engage in a forced exchange of property with the owners of the factory. That makes you accessory to theft, and yes, it violates the NAP just as surely if someone killed you using the same rationale you so tritely referred to.

By holding property, you mean has a right to it by some sort of theoretical justification. My conversation with AC involved how such a theoretical justification could be selected in a free market. Without such a selection process, we can't determine what theft is. I respect AC's justification because it relies on mutual consent based on human desire. His argument is predictive, not normative. Your idea of property rights seems like it rests on either arbitrary normative premises or irrational conclusions.

Re: Emergence Anarcho-Capitalism

Wheylous — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 21:21:06 GMT

Sorry to triple-post, but

uuuuultimately ultimately

it seems like personal ethics are the only way to keep a sane world, with the NAP as the principle everyone should have. Thus, AnCap wins as the most practical way to maintain the NAP, though the concept of the state is illusory anyway. Since the "state" is a derivative of AnCap, the best bet would be to educate people about aggression. Truly, the state is evil because of aggression. So the current institutions of the state which rely on aggression should be removed. Because they rely on aggression.

EDIT: I swear I'm not drunk, guys.

Re: Emergence Anarcho-Capitalism

Wheylous — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 20:53:46 GMT

This whole contradiction stems from a belief in the absolute:

Minarchists believe in absolute natural rights, hence an absolute state which will protect these rights.

AnCaps believe in an absolute state with an absolute monopoly, which is an illusion and simply a whole bunch of people giving belief to centuries of violations of the NAP.

My proposed solution (tentatively)? Minarchy with everything privatized (everything which would exist under minarchy of course; I do not mean privatize all unowned land automatically).

This way you retain the perception of authority while keeping the efficiency of the free market.

To quote our favorite economist:

In the long run, we're all dead.