In praise of anarchy
I think all forms of government are unjust. Governments claim a monopoly on certain uses of violence and threats. I take that to be definitive. Government policies are backed by the threat of prison.
I take it to be morally self-evident that might does not make right. If I am more powerful than you, that doesn't mean I'm entitled to trample on your rights. I am simply more able to do so, but not more entitled to do so. So if it would be wrong for me to use force against you, then it is also wrong for a person with more power than I have to use force against you. And that now applies to the state and politicians. They have more power than the rest of us, but they are not more entitled to force us to do things than the rest of us.
If that is correct, then one can use what we are entitled to do to one another as a guide to what the government is justified in doing. If it would be wrong for me to make you do something, then it is wrong for the government to as well (other things being equal).
It is barely ever justifiable to threaten or use violence against another. It's normally only in extreme circumstances - where one's own life is in immediate danger - that it can be justified. If, for instance, you are living an unhealthy lifestyle, it is not justifiable for me to threaten you with violence unless you alter your ways. It is unjust for the government to do such things, then.
What about protecting each other's rights - aren't we entitled to do that for each other? Yes, we are. If someone is attacking you, I am entitled to protect you from that attack. So doesn't this justify some kind of libertarianism? The state is justified in protecting our basic rights, because that's something we're entitled to do for each other as well.
But though it is correct that the state is entitled to protect our basic rights, it is not entitled to force us to pay it to do so. If, for example, someone is attacking you, then I am entitled to help you out and even to use violence against your attacker if need be. But I am not then entitled to bill you for my efforts and use violence against you if you refuse to pay. I can ask you to pay - and it may be that you ought to pay me something for my efforts - but I cannot extract payment with menaces. That would be immoral.
Yet that is what the state does. So yes, the state can protect our basic rights, but it cannot use force and the threat of force to fund such an enterprise.
I think this same logic can be applied across the board: government policies - all of them - will either turn out to be directly unjust (in that the government is imposing on us something we would not be entitled to impose on each other - such as healthy lifestyles or something similar), or indirectly unjust in that it pays for what it is justly doing by unjust means: by taxation.
If the government stopped doing both of these things, then it would - to all intents and purposes - cease to be a government at all. It would just be another business competing in an open market. And that's anarchy.
I want to head-off a misguided criticism at the outset. I think many will be tempted to object that if all government agencies just disappeared overnight, then disaster would ensue. Regardless of whether or for how long this would be the case, the objection seems wrongheaded. This is because you are not entitled to use violence to prevent people from misbehaving in advance of them doing so. You can only use violence when others are actually using violence against oneself or clearly about to. But one can't justifiably use it in anticipation of people forming an intention to use violence against a person. That's too early. So, I think this kind of 'scare tactic' defence of government doesn't meet the point.
Plus, imagine that tomorrow everyone just decides not to pay their taxes and so everyone employed in a government position has no salary from tomorrow on. Are we entitled to force them to keep doing their jobs in order to avert the mayhem that would otherwise (temporarily) result? I don't think so. This shows, then, that we cannot use force to avert anticipated disasters, at least when those disasters are predicated upon others making free decisions to engage in the disaster-causing behaviour.
I take it to be morally self-evident that might does not make right. If I am more powerful than you, that doesn't mean I'm entitled to trample on your rights. I am simply more able to do so, but not more entitled to do so. So if it would be wrong for me to use force against you, then it is also wrong for a person with more power than I have to use force against you. And that now applies to the state and politicians. They have more power than the rest of us, but they are not more entitled to force us to do things than the rest of us.
If that is correct, then one can use what we are entitled to do to one another as a guide to what the government is justified in doing. If it would be wrong for me to make you do something, then it is wrong for the government to as well (other things being equal).
It is barely ever justifiable to threaten or use violence against another. It's normally only in extreme circumstances - where one's own life is in immediate danger - that it can be justified. If, for instance, you are living an unhealthy lifestyle, it is not justifiable for me to threaten you with violence unless you alter your ways. It is unjust for the government to do such things, then.
What about protecting each other's rights - aren't we entitled to do that for each other? Yes, we are. If someone is attacking you, I am entitled to protect you from that attack. So doesn't this justify some kind of libertarianism? The state is justified in protecting our basic rights, because that's something we're entitled to do for each other as well.
But though it is correct that the state is entitled to protect our basic rights, it is not entitled to force us to pay it to do so. If, for example, someone is attacking you, then I am entitled to help you out and even to use violence against your attacker if need be. But I am not then entitled to bill you for my efforts and use violence against you if you refuse to pay. I can ask you to pay - and it may be that you ought to pay me something for my efforts - but I cannot extract payment with menaces. That would be immoral.
Yet that is what the state does. So yes, the state can protect our basic rights, but it cannot use force and the threat of force to fund such an enterprise.
I think this same logic can be applied across the board: government policies - all of them - will either turn out to be directly unjust (in that the government is imposing on us something we would not be entitled to impose on each other - such as healthy lifestyles or something similar), or indirectly unjust in that it pays for what it is justly doing by unjust means: by taxation.
If the government stopped doing both of these things, then it would - to all intents and purposes - cease to be a government at all. It would just be another business competing in an open market. And that's anarchy.
I want to head-off a misguided criticism at the outset. I think many will be tempted to object that if all government agencies just disappeared overnight, then disaster would ensue. Regardless of whether or for how long this would be the case, the objection seems wrongheaded. This is because you are not entitled to use violence to prevent people from misbehaving in advance of them doing so. You can only use violence when others are actually using violence against oneself or clearly about to. But one can't justifiably use it in anticipation of people forming an intention to use violence against a person. That's too early. So, I think this kind of 'scare tactic' defence of government doesn't meet the point.
Plus, imagine that tomorrow everyone just decides not to pay their taxes and so everyone employed in a government position has no salary from tomorrow on. Are we entitled to force them to keep doing their jobs in order to avert the mayhem that would otherwise (temporarily) result? I don't think so. This shows, then, that we cannot use force to avert anticipated disasters, at least when those disasters are predicated upon others making free decisions to engage in the disaster-causing behaviour.
Comments (177)
You seem to be confusing "the state" with "a person". So your example ("If I am more powerful than you, that doesn't mean I'm entitled to trample on your rights. I am simply more able to do so, but not more entitled to do so.") is not relevant. The example compares the power of two persons, but then you go on to talk about the power of "the state". The state is not a person. So if you want to compare the power of the state to the power of a person, and the justifiability of the use of force by each one of these distinct entities, you need to start with a good definition, or conception, of what each one of these is. Otherwise it's a pointless exercise.
Putting aside moral factors for a minute, do you believe it is possible for groups of humans to effectively and humanely organize themselves without coercive rules assuming no change in human nature, whatever that means? Answer that question in the context of modern society in a world of 8 billion people. Also describe how such a society could be established in an ideal situation where you can specify starting conditions, i.e. go back 200,000 (or 2 million) years? If you can't give a positive answer to those questions, your moral complaints are meaningless.
Quoting Clearbury
Do you really believe this? I would not be justified in using violence to stop someone from stealing resources - money, shelter, food, clothing - that I need? Or to stop someone from doing that to my family and neighbors? What if someone is dumping human, animal, or industrial waste in the river upstream from where I get my water? Or what if they dam the river and cut off my water supply?
Quoting Clearbury
Would it be acceptable for a group of people to get together and agree to give up some of their freedoms in order to ensure security and protection? Then, if someone didn't want to participate, they could do so, but they couldn't use any of the resources provided by the community - roads, police, fire departments, schools. This sort of approach was much more feasible back when there was a frontier where non-conformists could migrate. They actually do something like this in some communities. Fire protection is provided by non-government fire departments staffed by volunteers and funded by subscription. If someone refuses to subscribe, when there's a fire, the fire fighters will come to their house and make sure everyone gets out safely and protect nearby property owned by subscribers, but otherwise will not fight the fire.
Quoting Clearbury
Do you really think that would happen? That it could happen? That it ever has happened? Ever in 200,000 years of human existence? My answer is "of course not," which means it's not anarchy, it's fantasy.
Quoting Clearbury
As I noted previously, today we would have to live with the consequences based on conditions found in the modern world. Of course a disaster would ensue. Billions would die. Can you describe a mechanism by which society could transition from current conditions to your capitalist paradise?
Quoting Clearbury
Temporary? That's pie-in-the-sky. If it happened people would die, the most vulnerable first. Then order would reestablish itself following the path followed historically and 200 years later we'd end up right where we are now.
So. Maybe I'm wrong. Tell me how you would make it work out the way you want it to.
The state has been conceived as a person for quite some time, for example in Hobbes, but at least as far back as Ancient Rome.
Will it be by organized thugs, or a (transparent) democratic majority where all have a say?
There's no such thing as a perfect social system; the more individuals, the more unhappy about something or other, that's just history, statistics, and (only part-time rational) homo sapiens.
Genuine anarchy inherently remains as unstable as one against two, tending away therefrom, like the one anarchist being overcome/outdone by many cooperators.
Running with the least bad is rational enough, regardless of some personal sacrifices.
By and large, reasonably civilized societies tend to be democracies, but run with the anarchist idea, see where it goes.
, you'll have to weigh whatever personal grievances against this stuff.
I don't see how you're addressing the argument I presented. I am defending anarchy. Anarchy does not involve anyone 'organizing' us. It's the opposite of that.
If your point is that without some bosses there will be mayhem, then I explicitly addressed this point. I pointed out that, whether true or not, it misses my point, which is about what's just, not about what would minimize mayhem.
What do you mean by 'work' though? I am arguing that governments are 'unjust' (not that they don't work - whether they 'work' or not depends on what goals they're supposed to be achieving....if they're supposed to be creating a just world, then they don't work at all and it is question begging to say otherwise....if you conceive of them as having some other purpose, then maybe they work, maybe they don't...but it's irrelevant to the topic).
Incidentally, you could minimize deaths by means of a brave new world-style government that didn't respect any individual's freedom whatsoever. But it wouldn't be just.
No one in charge escapes the moral responsibilities of an individual to other individuals. The responsibility of us as individuals is not to prevent one another dying. For example, if I plan on engaging in a dangerous hobby, you are not entitled to stop me. That doesn't magically stop applying if you acquire the power to stop me. And that's the point. Sometimes it is right to stop someone from dying, sometimes not. When it is right to stop someone dying, then you're entitled to do that. But you're not entitled to bill the person whom you prevented from dying.
So Sarah is holding onto the edge of the cliff and unless someone saves her she''ll fall to her death. You're close at hand and can easily help her. You're obliged to do that. And I think Sarah has a right to your assistance. But after helping her, you can't then demand payment for your time and effort with menaces.
Nothing alters if you're in government. The president or prime minister would also be obliged to help Sarah and not demand payment with menaces afterwards. Yet presidents don't do this - they make others help Sarah and then they bill Sarah and others for doing so and extract the payment with menaces. That is not just. We would recognize this on a small scale. Nothing changes if the scale increases.
Those are not opposites. You have thugs in charge so long as people think there need to be people in charge. You think in a democracy you get decent, good people in charge?!? You get thugs. Sophisticated thugs. You get in charge those who want to be. Good people don't want to be in charge.
You think governments aren't mafias? They're the most successful mafia in any given region.
Governments are monopolies. Do you think monopolies are a good idea?
:up:
I would argue that these are faulty political theories. The problem being that anyone can produce a political theory designed for one's own special purposes. That's the approach of the tyrant. As dedicated philosophers, we scrutinize such theories for soundness.
Quoting Clearbury
Still, "people" is different from "a person". The former implies a multitude unified by some principle. The latter is an individual. The question is what unifies some, such that you refer to them as "people", yet others in your discussion are individuals, "a person". Obviously, the unified "people" have far more power than an individual person. You seem to think that there is something wrong with this, but it's just a simple fact of nature, that unified people as an entity, have far more power than distinct individuals as entities. If you want to negate this natural fact, or show it to be wrong, then you have some work to do.
Quoting Clearbury
You have not provided the premises required to validly make this conclusion. Look at the difference between the relations, and consequent activities, required between individuals, to produce a unified whole, and the actions required to maintain an already established unified whole. The former involves principles of internal relations, designated as "good", conducive to unity. The latter must include principles to deal with external relations which are destructive to the unity, designated as "bad".
Anything conducive to unity can be understood as an internal relation, good, and anything destructive is external, bad. Under these principles any activities which are bad, are not understood as internal person to person relations, but are understood as external forces destructive to the unity. The destructive forces must be dealt with in ways other than as person to person relations which are conducive to the unity. Therefore they cannot be classed as the same.
It seems to me, like you want to deny the principle of "unity", and put every individual on equal standing. If so, then you cannot us terms like "the state". And if you speak about a special class of "people" who are "in charge", then you have to clearly identify what they are in charge of. So if you say that they are in charge of maintaining some type of unity, then this necessarily gives them special status to determine things which are destructive to that unity, and corresponding special powers to prevent these destructive things.
1. There is no such thing as entitlement, the universe does not have an inherent karmic system. No one is entitled to anything.
2. The concept of "rights" only makes sense in the context of a governing body which can establish and protect those rights against negative actors. Otherwise its simply a value you hold, which has no bearing on anyone else but yourself.
The state exists to act as a mediator between people and their values. It protects people against the threat of a "might makes right" system. Any power vaccum without a state will inevitably be filled by some ruling system, and typically the rulers are under no obligation to care for such cultural concepts as "liberty", "property", "rights" etc. The state is justified in its monopoly on violence because of the reality that would ensue if the state did not have such a monopoly.
Imagine that someone constructs a bomb that will explode unless someone dismantles it. If a person dismantles their bomb, they have damaged the property of the bomb creator. The creator might respond with "How dare you destroy my property, it hasnt caused any harm!", and under your argument against state collapse as a valid rejection of anarchism, this is a justifed reason to allow the bomb to tick down. It should be self-evident that the right to own property does not exceed the right for innocents to live, and that pre-emptive action is justified in the protection of higher rights, even when it may override lesser rights.
The absence of unjust forms of government won't prevent forms of unjust governance from emerging out of the relationships between individuals. Some gangs thrive on being embedded within a population where they can avoid scrutiny and terrorize individuals, neighborhoods, and entire regions as a long as there's no government acting on behalf of the common good. Perhaps that's why all modern countries are ruled by forms of governments, and why anarchy has remained a half-baked idea for adolescents who don't like being told what to do.
This is a common political superstition. It doesnt make sense that we have to create a governing body so as to establish and confer rights upon ourselves. What you are really proposing is that you want to give a minority the right to create rights while refusing to keep that right for everyone else.
There are plenty of gangs in modern countries, terrorizing individuals, neighborhoods, and entire regions, all while there are governments acting on behalf of the common good. So perhaps that isnt why modern countries are ruled by forms of government, or at least theyre not doing a good job at it.
Imagine you're a Mexican avocado farmer and all of a sudden one day a gang of armed men show up and blackmail you to pay protectionist tax. This cartel "government" will always inevitably appear and you'll wish you'd had recourse to be protected by the services of a more enlightened/fair system. Of course there is the option of collaborative defense but that might take a commitment to share resources, to risk defending others so they will risk defending you.
Or, as T Clark mentioned, you have a nice piece of land with a river you rely on for subsistence, and one day it turns a mineral red and stinks to high heaven. You can't drink or fish anymore. Maybe you can't even stomach the smell. Too bad for you, if whoever is contaminating the river has a self-determined right to do so. Better break out the guns again and take back the purity of your river, if you can. Maybe your family is large enough and subservient enough to want to help you go to war.
Statists love their made up scenarios and hypotheticals. The irony, though, is that your cartel government acts just like your enlightened one, with slight variation. At least with collaborative defense and other avenues of voluntary cooperation you dont need to be exploited in order to keep their racket going.
Yes and you continue to desire what you'll never have. You're stuck with the government your stuck with.
So long as you know your condition is that of a willing slave it is fine with me.
Right, when the government is corrupt or incompetent it is like an absent government, and instead of a ruling government open to scrutiny, you'll have the arbitrary rule of several competing gangs, and never ending wars like in the medieval cities in what later became Italy.
It is their presence, not their absence, that breeds their corruption and incompetence. The arbitrary rule of competing gangs and never-ending wars are fixtures of government rule and statism.
Quoting Clearbury
As I wrote previously, if what you propose hasn't ever happened, won't ever happen, can't ever happen, then your idea is a fantasy. Meaningless. If you can't see that or show me how anarchy might work, then we'll never come to any resolution. That's my best shot.
I would say that anarchy is the state of no rules, and it is the universal social condition. There are not, nor can there be, any rules that forbid the setting up of any government, and you do not have to obey any governments that set themselves up.
A slightly more interesting question Is "what is the difference between a government and a mafia?"
The answer is sometimes, 'little or nothing', but to the extent that there is a difference, it is that in governments, power itself is limited and tempered by justice, by bureaucratic tradition, by honour and moral fibre, and by democratic limitations. And possibly there can be other features - you tell me...
I was with you up to this point.
@Clearbury thinks this is irrelevant.
For me, this is the fundamental truth of political philosophy.
This is true and would be meaningful if there were some way for people to choose not to be part of society. There are hardly any remaining frontiers on Earth. That's probably why Elon Musk wants to go to Mars. That's not an option for most of us.
There's no rule that says you get a choice, either. In fact you don't get a choice; you live in an anarchy and people set up governments and mafias everywhere. And they will do it on Mars too as soon as two or three are gathered together there, because that's just the kind of arseholes we are.
And if you think Musk is something other than a wannabe Mafia Godfather and divine emperor of Mars, you must be already living on the dark side of the moon.
Defining a value as a right does not suddenly imbue it with some objective foundation by which you can force or convince others to recognise your claim. If I can simply deny your "right" then it's nothing but a value, an idea you hold within your mind. However, if I cant deny your right without some threat of material consequence to myself, then its not just a value anymore, its been instantiated through physical force. Of course you could privatise such force, but you'd still be requiring an external organisation to protect your rights by giving them money (recreating a government, albeit smaller and with an elite in-group).
An idea which has no basis in the physical is fated to fade, for regardless of how elegant it may appear to you, it holds no bearing on anyone who doesn't percieve it the same. To put it another way, a thief does not care for words.
How is that possible before there was a government to rule those medieval gangs and city-states?
Quoting Wikipedia on Italy
Alas, tis true.
Quoting unenlightened
I dont think Musk wants anything in particular. He just wants. And its the far side of the moon, not the dark side.
We've clearly taken this as far as it makes sense to go.
Those seem like indefensible claims.
First, to think people are entitled to things is not equivalent to thinking the universe operates karmically. A person can be entitled to something and never receive it.
Second, the claim that people are not entitled to anything is obviously false.
As for the concept of a right, what you say there is again just plainly false. By your logic, the Nazis did not violate the rights of Jews, but instead made it the case that they had none. And thus by your logic the Nazis - and indeed, any and all governments that are in power - are incapable of violating the rights of those whom they govern, as they are the arbiters of rights.
These are indefensible views.
In your conception, what does it mean to be entitled to something? and why should anyone care for if your entitled to certain "rights"? Also, how do you differentiate rights from values?
Quoting Clearbury
They didn't have rights, hence the violence against them. A rights violation occurs in comparison to a legal code. A state or individual can violate anothers rights when an act is illegal under the laws of that nation. However, it seemingly makes no sense outside of that definition. If you wished to say that someone *should* have rights, then why not just say that?
It just isnt clear why youd give this group the right to create and defend rights while denying it of everyone else. After all its just a value in your mind. Perhaps they have different values in their minds.
History shows there is no right that governments have not violated, so it is odd that youd choose this group and not any other to help protect them. If they should choose to violate your rights, you are left with no one else to fight for them.
In physical reality, all you have done is granted power and authority to some men, while diminishing your own and others.
City-states had governments. Many of them were republics, modelled on the Roman one, much like the governments of today. So of course they warred with each other. That is also true of the Italian republic which set about warring with other nations.
OK, let's say you're granted a wish and you wish all the governments away. It's anarchy. You're living on your own in your cabin in the woods and Humungus and his road warriors discover you living your idyllic life and want to kill you and steal all your stuff. Now what?
Similarly, there are many decisions I have made that, looking back, were rather silly and didn't maximally benefit me. I could now be much richer and healthier if I hadn't made them, and so would prefer that someone had overridden my freedom of choice on those occasions. But that too would be unjust.
In arguing that anarchism is the only form of just government (or, which is the same thing, arguing that no government is a just government), I am not describing what I think will maximally benefit me or you or anyone else, or expressing any desire of mine.
I would love to live in anarchy if I could maintain my current lifestyle and not have to worry about people murdering me and taking my stuff, but that's not an option, so now what?
Try demonstrating, or showing with logic, that what you believe is actually true. It's called justifying your belief. If you strongly belief that "a right" is more than just something which a community of human beings bestows upon you, then you ought to be able to provide support for this belief. Otherwise your belief is nothing other than a desire, you believe it because you want it to be true. And if that's the case you need to consider what RogueAI is saying, perhaps you want something which is impossible.
The Nazis violated the rights of the millions of Jews they exterminated
Therefore, governments do not determine what rights people have.
That is a case. It is an argument and its conclusion follows from its premises and its premises are obviously true.
When it comes to making a case what one must do is appeal to premises that have some degree of self-evidence to them, otherwise one is merely reporting one's own views and not giving others any reason to think your views may be true.
I think someone who just blankly states that governments confer rights on people is the person who is making no case and is just expressing a patently false view of theirs.
Governments can and regularly do - and if I am right, are doing so all the time by just existing - violate people's rights.
Insofar as one can justify a government, one needs to show how the existence of a government respects - or does not disrespect, if that is different - people's rights.
Note, I am talking about moral rights here, not legal ones.
Sure, but those were states and governments on a different level of description. You can call a family-home a state, and the parents its government. All the same, there's nothing magic in the words 'state' and 'government' that makes arbitrary rule and never-ending wars become fixtures of governments and statism.
The proto-italian population had to endure centuries of wars until a more powerful alliance could unite the different special interests that fought each other. Partly by being more powerful than any of them, partly by offering a more stable society in which trade between the cities and elsewhere could thrive. The stability enabled long-term planning, and the united diversity enabled cultural growth, accumulation of knowledge etc.
When governments fight each other, multinational alliances emerge for the same or similar reasons, because societies plagued by constant rivalry and wars are not good societies.
What's the point of being on a philosophy forum if you're just going to deny positions which disagree with you? It seems completely irrational.
Rights *arent* just values. It seems you havent understood my post. Rights are values instantiated in the world through physical force. I can value anything I wish, but I do not have the power to enforce my own values in the world.
Why do they need to be instantiated by force? Why do you need to enforce your values on the world? They only need to be instantiated by your own thoughts, speech, and actions. You can confer anyone else any number of negative or positive rights you wish. You can confer someone the right to free speech, for example, and simply refuse to censor him. You can confer someone the right to housing and give him a place to live. Its a superstition that only man in his official form can confer rights. Rather, like any man, you can confer anyone else any rights you wish.
Quoting Nov 3, 2024
Show implications/consequences. (Footwork missing. It's everyone's lives.)
Also, you'd have to prove that removing the justice system of any (transparent) democratic majority, i.e. no justice system, increases justice. (Universal statements like "all politicians / people in charge bad" also need proof.)
If youre only going to argue with people who agree with you, you probably dont belong on the forum. I think youll find that many, perhaps most, people understand that rights dont really have any meaning except in the context of someone or something that can protect them.
Good post. Welcome to the forum.
Anyone can value whatever they want, but if one lives inside a system which cannot provide that value to them, then having the value is meaningless. I can act to maximise my own values, but unfortunately I can do less when I only have access to myself, and this is the case for most humans.
Collaboration within society allows an individual to maximise their values more, with specialisation and collective advancement of technology. Rights are meaningful because they provide certain values as a baseline for members of a society, where humans who wish to go against the established law are punished so that the system can be maintained. Without a governing body to instantiate rights with force, they will be left unfufilled.
For example, the right to own property is a prerequisite for a successful capitalist system. Without a governing body to enforce rules, people would have to provide their own protection (this would inevitably increase costs to run a business, and would provide a massive drain on the economy as a whole).
Regardless, the biggest issue with anarchy is that it inevitably collapses into another type of state, as power vaccums are ripe with opportunistic and violent actors who strive for control.
I'm a consequentalist. I don't think anarchy is just. It's one of the worst states of affairs, which is why it never lasts long.
Willful misunderstanding. Did I say I can't argue with people I disagree with? No. I said I can't argue with someone who thinks the Nazis didn't violate the rights of the Jews they exterminated. Why? Because that person isn't worth arguing with.
I also can't be bothered arguing with people like you, who misrepresent positions. Life's too short.
When most people entertain the idea of anarchy they think of the first weeks. But as a consequentialist you must think of the longer-term consequences.
Governments are terrible at everything they do (apart from waging wars - they're extremely good at doing that).
Imagine shoes were government issued. Everyone needs shoes....so it's too important to let individuals sort the matter out for themselves....no, some people who like being in charge and spending other pepole's money on things to make themselves feel good need to take charge of shoe production.
What would shoes be like? Would there be lots of choice of cheap shoes? Er, no. The government would produce shoes very inefficiently (contracts given to friends, no free market to drive down costs or improve the product). And the shoes would be terrible.
That's going to be the same for everything else. It's going to be the same for security and justice systems, for example. You think the police do a good job anywhere? I don't. Why would they?
So, as a consequentialist I think you need radically to rethink what things would be like with anarchy.
Long term, virtually everyone would be better off under an anarchy. Apart from criminals and power-hungry war mongers.
It is also obvious that having more power than someone else doesn't make one more entitled to use violence against another. I am much stronger than Susan - does that mean I can use violence against her? No, obviously not. Might does not make right.
From those simple and uncontroversial moral axioms, we can derive the verdict that no one in power is entitled to use their power - their ability to use violence and the threat of it - against others in ways that we ourselves would not be entitled to.
And in one fell swoop, that reveals the injustice of the vast bulk of what the government does.
But that leaves those exceptions - the cases where we are entitled to use violence against another, such as self-defence or the defence of another's life. If someone is attacking you, I am entitled to defend you against that attack, with violence if necessary. So, aren't those in power entitled to do the same?
Yes, of course, for that is just an application of the same basic 'might does not make right' principle. If I am entitled to protect you from attack, then so too is someone else.
The problem is that though I am entitled to protect you from attack, I am not entitled subsequently extract some payment from you for having done so and use violence against you if you fail to pay. And I am certainly not morally permitted to announce that I will defend you from attacks (whether you wish me to or not) and then insist you start paying me for that service (and threaten you with violence if you do not pay me).
I take that to be obvious. Yet that is what the government does. So, if we imagine - for the sake of illustration - that government to be a person, then it is behaving immorally, for though some of what it undertakes to do it is perfectly entitled to do - as is any person - its insistence that we pay for its services or face violent consequences is clearly unjust.
And now we have arrived at anarchy. Nothing the government does is just. For if the government sticks only to interfering in our lives in ways that we would be entitled to interfere with each other, and sticks as well to inviting payment for such justified interference rather than extracting it with menaces, then it ceases to be a government at all and is just a bunch of individuals touting for business.
As for 'proving' things - I don't have to 'prove' anything. That's a ludicrous standard. In my opening post I made an 'case' for anarchism - I showed how it is implied by some moral claims that are not seriously in dispute. What you need to do is show that my conclusion is not implied by those premises, or that those premises are false.
There are tyrants in this world who feel entitled to take from others what they want. They seek to rule by fear and intimidation. You could argue that the worst of government does precisely this in certain parts of the world - history also shows this to be true. However, imagine a world of totally unrestrained anarchy in all of it's diverse anarchistic interpretation, all of these anarchists competing for the same wealth and resources - surely the nicer and more liberal anarchists are going to be the poorer and the more selfish and brutal anarchists would be the stronger and the wealthier. As we see in nature, there is a tendency for the stronger to dominate and to exploit the weaker - the hunter and the hunted! This itself is a moral argument, but it is only with agreed restraint and government authority that the weak stand any chance at all, when threatened by tyranny.
The virtue of anarchy is a very difficult topic to debate. It's exciting, fresh and full of unknown potential, but I think it's possibly too idealistic to work in practice. There is a lack of consensus on what anarchy actually is and how it would/should be applied. This problem is compounded by human nature; human need and greed, would certainly create enormous problems and I'm not sure anyone would really know how to find a solution - it would be a period of trial and error. A sort of wild west!!
There is no such thing as long term anarchy in this world. If something depopulated 99% of the world, maybe, but not in the world we live in. If government disappeared people would start organizing immediately. Surely you must realize that.
Quoting Clearbury
I don't follow your argument. Those people had no rights under Nazi rule, that's why they were exterminated. If they had rights they would not have been abused. This seems pretty clear, just like the slaves in the US had no rights. The second premise, that their rights were violated, is from the perspective of a different community, one other than the Nazi community who denied them of rights. This community has a different conception of what rights Jewish people have. Therefore, your argument seems to actually prove the opposite of what you claim. The rights that people have is something determined by the community.
Quoting Clearbury
Morality deals with good and bad, "rights" is not the subject of moral philosophy. Rights consist of rules, and although they are usually consistent with ethical rules, they are more properly understood as legal rules. This misconception of "moral rights" could be the root of your confusion.
Quoting Clearbury
I think this is a very faulty principle Clearbury. It is based in what "every reasonable person is going to agree" to. The problem is that there are very many unreasonable people in the world. And, those unreasonable people will not agree "It is almost always wrong to use violence". Being unreasonable, they perceive many instances when violence is called for. Because of this use of violence by unreasonable people, the reasonable people have reason to return that violence with defensive violence. Therefore your claim that "it is almost always wrong to use violence" is proven to be false by the fact that many people are unreasonable. Violence is a fact of life which needs to be reckoned with.
A NatGeo documentary, even. People like stability, and to a lesser extent predictability. Makes much more sense to pay a predictable set amount (in taxes/insurance/etc) than for everything one owns including one's life, spouse, and offspring to be on the chopping block/proverbial table each day. No one fights a war with the intent of perpetuating conflict in the event of victory. Classic case of "the grass is always greener". "Far removed from conflict, the closer one gets to his treasures, the less they shimmer." But by all means, I hear flights to remote regions of African jungle are reasonable. You're welcome to try it out, if you'd like.
Quoting Clearbury
The problem here is the complete omission of those who would not only defy your basic rights, but use -- not only threat of force -- but force, willfully and in many cases gleefully. Often times for the sheer joy of it absent of anything to gain or rectify ie. "for fun". This is the dynamic of the world we live in. So, your options are a structured society where disputes can be solved in a court of law and grievances can be made known socially enacting real social change, or you can have the same threats of force and use of force, with no accountability or avenue for recourse on your part whatsoever. Any sort of attempt to reframe this unchangeable dynamic is simply dishonest.
It just doesnt follow from any of this that we require a master. If anything, the fear of others suggests we ought not to have one.
When I think about everyone Ive ever met, and pick the individuals who I believe might run amok if government disappeared tomorrow, the number is very close to zero. And just dealing with people in my day-to-day leads me to believe that people arent as anti-social as statists make them out to be. Anarchism, in my opinion, has a more accurate view of human nature, one where people typically work together rather than at constant war with one another.
But when has a man with any worth ever not had a master? From birth, from walking, from basic reading and writing, to basic mathematics and scientific formulation, from learning to operate modes of transportation to being taught how to operate basic job equipment, to learning advanced skills. None of this could be possible without a greater more experienced person, whether that person is in the flesh or in the form of words in a book. I suppose one could take the trial and error route, at the expense of one's own safety and more egregiously that of those around him.
People don't like being constantly supervised as it feels restrictive, even if said supervision and apparent restriction prevents severe consequences. As well, people with great life experience and wisdom don't like having to spend their time babysitting every person who tumbles into existence. So it's a mutual dynamic that a man should become self-sufficient and able to govern his own household and immediate affairs. While there is no "master" in free and open societies, I feel it could be argued that biologically or by evolution, humanity has an ingrained "spot" in the brain for a figure of guidance and administration, be it a parent as a child, a teacher as an adolescent, or a supervisor as a young employee. Whether this spot is filled by the primal "bigger and stronger" person simply for the fact they happened to have been born bigger and stronger, or the wiser more experienced person for the fact society values virtue, wisdom, and effort over static physicality. We have a choice who we follow in structured society. It's a beautiful thing, wouldn't you agree?
Consider whether or not you, or the average person, is capable of vengeance. Can a single violent crime (ex. the rape of a loved one) initiate a feedback cycle of violence in a community due to the natural need/impulse for retributive justice (tit for tat). If violence is by some measure socially contagious, or escalates new conflicts, then it may only take one bad apple to ruin the batch.
[quote=Wikipedia:Feud]Blood feuds were common in societies with a weak rule of law (or where the state did not consider itself responsible for mediating this kind of dispute), where family and kinship ties were the main source of authority.[/quote]
Feud
Also to add, you can make a person or group of people believe anything with the right preconditions. A simple example would be framing a person for murder by placing an intimate item or lock of hair (if for some reason the person had unusual hair) at the scene of the misdoing. Oldest trick in the book. And in the heat of passion, fueled by a combination of horror, sorrow, and rage, even the mildest of men won't hesitate to ask questions second. Imagine being the framed, quietly minding your own business and some psychotic loon, or several, tries breaking down your door. You will also likely not hesitate to ask questions second, for there would be no time for any other course of action.
This stuff happens often. Not to mention flat-out lying. Some people thrive on chaos. It goes back to their upbringing. I've seen all kinds. Some for the attention, some for the sense of power/control, some for the "freedom" found only when all guardians are occupied, some for the sheer entertainment of it all. The list goes on.
Civil enforcers play many roles, but a major one is separating the belligerent parties until everyone is calm and no longer operating on pure emotion, their wits return to them, and facts can be made known.
If I argue that killing someone is wrong, it is no reply to point out that people will kill people.
You're just confusing violating someone's rights with them not having any. Look, if you think the Jews had no moral rights under the Nazis then it follows that the Nazis did nothing wrong in exterminating them. I can't argue with someone who thinks that way.
I'm afraid I don't follow your point. Are you just observing that there are people who enjoy violating the rights of others? I don't deny this. I am pointing out that those in power are among them!
What governments do is allow some of those who enjoy violating the rights of others the opportunity to do so on an industrial scale.
Takethe police. They're rubbish. Everywhere they are rubbish. They're incredibly ineffective at solving crimes. And why wouldn't they be? There's no competition. How's that good? The most vulnerable are worse off for there being a government monopolized police force, not better off. A wholly unregulated private sector would provide much better policing than the state ever would. Or at least, I can see no good argument for thinking otherwise.
Everyone is different! I think I could be happy being a law unto myself, perhaps living in a nice self sufficient wilderness environment, but would I be happy taking orders, or complying through fear with stronger neighbours? My ideal then, stems from idealism - wouldn't it be nice - but reality has a nasty habit of cropping up and spoiling things. Robinson Crusoe was famously terrified, after his years of isolation, when he discovered human footprints in the sand!! Humans mean trouble! Humans often kill other humans or they commit other crimes. Civilisation has sought to bring order and security, but often things fall into decline. That is where we are today - in decline. That makes people fearful and it makes people question whether some other way would be better. Perhaps another way would be better, but it needs consensus and it can't just rely on presumption and good will. Anarchy can work for the individual and I think any belief system can work for an individual and their preference of lifestyle (Freedom of choice is important), but things get much more complicated when other people are involved!
Ought implies can. The idea that all forms of government are unjust must be rejected until it can be shown (against all available evidence) that the alternative is possible in a society larger than a modern-day commune. Even then it would likely come down to choosing one injustice over another, because there is no rule that rejecting one form of injustice leaves you with a (more) just state of affairs.
Quoting Clearbury
I am not sure you can, either - at least you have not demonstrated such an ability. Saying that your opponent is obviously wrong and leaving it at that is a conversation-ender.
But whatever the consequences, we can, I think, see that a government - even one set up by those who think they know best how to look after the weakest - is unjust. For if all government employees ceased to be paid tomorrow, would they be obliged to continue doing their jobs? And obliged to such an extent that the rest of us could force them to do so? I think the answer to that is a clear no. And that shows, I think, that the obligation to look out for the weakest (which I do not deny we have), is not such as to permit others to use force to make us fulfil it. And so therefore the government is not allowed to use force either
Yes, that was my goal. I don't wish to have a conversation with someone who thinks the Nazis didn't violate the rights of those whom they exterminated, or who can't see that this is what the view that rights are created by society implies. I wouldn't discuss mathematics with someone who thought 2 + 3 = 95 or 'an elephant', for what would be the point in that?
Just about everyone who has responded in this discussion has made an argument similar to yours. The OP has made it very clear that he doesnt buy it. By his standards, I think the law of gravity is unjust also.
And yet you keep talking.
In a democratic society they can be removed. In a structure-less society, there is no process for doing this, at least not one that would last for very long as, devoid of morals, such is the default state of human will unrestrained. If the majority of people wish to target a minority group in an anarchy, they can do so much more easily and without any form of overarching legal repercussion than in a structured society with codified human rights.
Quoting Clearbury
They also facilitate justice and due process to those who do, something not possible in an anarchy. Sure a rogue totalitarian state would not. That is a real concern, the concentration of power to a single individual or office. That is a bad form of government. There are good forms of government where law and order and justice for all is manifested, imperfectly, but more so than a system where it's not even entertained. I find your above quote similar to saying "Food poisons people" simply because some types of food product are bad or improperly prepared therefore "all food is bad". Not so, friend. Not so.
In an anarchy there's no one there to be removed! Elections are a wholly inadequate solution to a problem that governments create: concentration of power.
Elections do no moral work when they have not been agreed to by all of those involved. For example, if you and your friends vote to put me in prison, doesn't magically justify you putting me in prison. Why? Because I didn't agree to the vote.
Clearbury, you are jumping to conclusion without the required premises, therefore your argument is illogical. That's why I've bee telling you that you need to justify your principles. In the argument stated here, you have only one premise, "the Jews had no moral rights under the Nazis". Then from this one premise you jump to the conclusion: therefore "the Nazis did nothing wrong in exterminating them". You need a premise which provides the link between "moral rights" and "wrong" behaviour.
To assume that "wrong" is opposed to "rights" is to confuse different meanings of "right", and this is known as the fallacy of equivocation. So you need to clear up the obvious equivocation implied when you say that if a person thinks that the Jews had no moral rights under the Nazis, then the person thinks that the Nazis did nothing wrong in exterminating them. In reality, the one is just evidence of the other. The exterminations are evidence that a lack of rights is the truth.
Please allow me to guide you in rephrasing your argument so as to escape the obvious fallacy you have committed. You need a second premise. The premise needs to state that the code of rules called "moral rights" dictates exclusively, what is morally right and what is morally wrong, in human actions. Then you might conclude that if a person does not have the moral right to live it is not wrong to kill that person.
Do you understand this requirement? If not, I think you would be just demonstrating yourself to be an irrational fool. So please reformulate your argument, with the premises required to avoid the obvious equivocation which is implied by it, in its current state.
I agree. One principle of the anarchist tradition is to assume all authority is illegitimate until it proves itself to be legitimate. A parent or teacher can proves its legitimacy, for the most part, even if it is a heavy burden to prove. Any voluntary choice of whom to follow eliminates the need to seek this proof entirely.
But when a politician or agent of the state is an authority through appointment or dictate, their legitimacy cannot be proven.
This topic, note, is not about how best to argue and with whom. It is about the defensibility of anarchy. I have argued - and I really have made a case, whether you like it or not - that all governments are unjust.
My case, incidentally, is not original. It is a case made recently by professional philosopher Michael Huemer. So, if you think I have made no case, then you think that the argument of a well-respected professional philosopher is not, in fact, a case at all, but just a series of arbitrary assertions. How likely is that to be true? That doesn't mean the argument is sound, of course, but it does underline the absurdity of supposing it to be no case at all. It is a case. And it's a strong one.
It is clear to reason that it is unjust for individuals to use violence or the threat of violence against others apart from in rare cases where this is needed to protect a person's rights. And it is equally clear to reason that if a person decides to protect another person's rights, they are not entitled then to bill that person for having done so and extract payment with menaces. From those claims - claims that seem intuitively clear to the reason of most and that it would be intuitively highly costly to reject - anarchy follows.
It's awful. I live in a first world country. And in my country, the police only 'solve' (and I put this in scare quotes because it reflects arrests, not convictions) 38% of reported crime (and note, they reckon most crimes aren't reported).
I just read an article on American conviction rates for serious crimes involving violence...the author concludes that approx. 2% result in conviction. 2% of the worst crimes are properly solved and result in the punishment of their perpetrator.
Feeling safe now?
The police are terrible - terrible - at their job. And of course they will be - why wouldn't they be? There's no competition.
As I pointed out to you, and you have still not replied, no logic allows you to move from the premise that it is only acceptable to use violence to protect rights, to the following conclusion, that it is almost always wrong to use violence, or that these are "rare cases".
This would require another premise, that it is not often that rights need to be protected. However, it is very obvious that such a premise would be false. Therefore the following conclusion of yours is not only invalid, because you have not provided the required premise, but if you did provide the required premise it would be false and the conclusion would be unsound..
Quoting Clearbury
The fact is, that the world is full of irrational people, who do not respect the principle that violence is only acceptable to protect one's rights. Therefore you need to consider the possibility that using violence is commonly the correct thing to do.
And, you know that the world is full of irrational people, you've met a number of them in this thread. However, you would prefer to ignore those irrational people, and hope that they go away.
Quoting Clearbury
It's becoming glaringly obvious that you have a deeply flawed approach. Ignore all the irrational people in the world who commonly use violence irrationally, hoping that they will go away. Then keep on insisting that it is almost always wrong to use violence.
That's a strawman version of my view. There are TWO premises that get one to the anarchist conclusion, not one.
First, a person is only entitled to use violence to protect rights (either their own or someone else's). Therefore that is all a government is entitled to do.
Now, if you had read carefully what I said in the beginning of this thread, or what I just said in the sentence above, you'll note that this means the government IS entitled to use violence to protect our rights. You've completely misrepresented my view, then, in supposing that I think the government is not entitled to protect our rights. It absolutely is entitled to do that, for that is something we're entitled to do.
The SECOND claim - that in conjunction with the first gets one to anarchy - is that though a person is entitled to use violence to protect another's rights, they are not entitled to use violence to extract payment for doing so (not from the person whose rights one has decided to protect, anyway).
As I stated very clearly, it is at this point that the government, if it sticks to what it is entitled to do, ceases to be a government at all, and is just a bunch of people touting for business in a free market.
Note, it does not matter how extensive or minimal our rights may be - that's not what my argument turns on - for all it requires is the truth of those two claims above.
I gave two quotes from you, concerning the conclusion I am talking about.. One, that it is unjust to use violence except in "rare cases", and the other, that it is "almost always wrong" to use violence. This is not a straw man, those are your words. And, I demonstrated that to be an unsound conclusion.
Quoting Clearbury
You don't think that a person has a right to get paid for their work? Is that what this claim is about? If you work for me, and I refuse to pay you, am I not violating your rights by not paying you?
Actually the Holocaust may not be the best example for your case.
Quoting NPR interview with Timothy Snyder
The Holocaust is actually a pretty complicated event.
That claim of mine is true, but - as I just explained - my case for anarchy does not depend on it, for it is sufficient for it to go through that the two premises I described are true.
If you think you're often morally permitted to use violence against others then that's fine - I simply disagree and so, I'd wager, does virtually everyone of moral sensibility.
But to get to anarchy, it is sufficient that we are not allowed to decide to protect someone's rights and then bill that person and extract payment with menaces.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I am getting impatient with this constant strawman you keep setting up. If I, without asking you and without you commissioning me to do so, decide to make it my business to protect your rights, can I send you a bill for doing so and use violence against you if you decide not to pay? The answer to that question is obvious to virtually everyone: no. That's all my case requires.
I think it's perfect. For every reasonable person - and it is only reasonable people who are worth discussing philosophical matters with, as philosophy essentially involves consulting reason - agrees that the Nazis violated the rights of those whom they exterminated. And so as there is such universal agreement on the matter - at least among those who are sensitive to reason and not indifferent to it - then it serves as a useful and powerful demonstrator of the fact that moral rights are not given by our communities, but are had already by persons and that the whole business of trying to justify governments is about trying to show how a government of this or that sort is a more effective way of respecting them than another.
But you are not paying respect to the reality (truth) of the situation. The truth is that there is significant multitude of individuals in the world who do not have "moral sensibility", by your standards. The truth of this is evidenced by what you say about the numerous people in this thread "whose views seem to me to be indefensible", and so you chose to "ignore" them. Each one of this significant multitude of people lacking in moral sensibility, will interact with a multitude of other individuals (who may or may not have moral sensibility), on a daily basis, and each one may arbitrarily choose to use violence against these other individuals on an ongoing basis.
In these cases, where those lacking in moral sensibility, arbitrarily chose to use violence, the use of violence to protect one's rights is justified. As indicated by the statistics which may be revealed in this thread, a significant percentage of the general population are lacking in moral sensibility by your judgement. And each one of these may interact with a huge number of other people.
Therefore your claim that it is almost always wrong to use violence, and that the use of violence is only justifiable in very rare cases is completely and utterly false.
Quoting Clearbury
You did not answer my question, so I will ask you again. When a person provides a service to another, does that person not have a right to get paid for that service?
Quoting Clearbury
Ha, ha, your logic (illogic) is laughable Clearbury. Again, you assume that "virtually everyone" will answer this question in the same way, "no", just like you assume "virtually everyone" with "moral sensibility" will not choose not to use violence. However, you neglect the reality and truth that there is significant multitude of individuals who do not agree with you. Are you familiar with John Locke's political philosophy, and the idea of "the social contract"?
Now, we have a large number of people who are not "morally sensible" by your standards, posing a threat of violence to you, and we have another group of people protecting your rights to be not violently treated by those with no moral sensibility. But these people are threatening to punish you if you do not pay for their service. And you believe that it is your right not to pay them because you did not personally commission them.
It looks to me, Clearbury, like you are in a situation where there is no alternative but to use violence to protect your rights. Violence is necessary. Your rights are being violated from the right and from the left, and you have no choice but to use violence to protect your own rights, because you refuse to pay those who have offered this service to you, and you need to protect your rights from their impending punishment, due to you exercising your right not to pay.
And here you are, saying things like ... it is unjust to use violence except in "rare cases", and the other, and it is "almost always wrong" to use violence. It's time for you to show your steel, demonstrate your temper, get out there and use some violence to protect your own rights, so we can all see what a hypocrite you are when you are freely choosing to use violence, while preaching that the use of violence is almost always unjustifiable.
I am just repeating myself, but if someone wants to resist my argument by doubling down on grossly implausible claims, then that's fine. It'd be one thing if you could show how an apparently implasuible claim was entailed by some very plausible ones, but that's not what you're doing. You're just asserting that violence is justified under most circumstances. Fine. I think that's obviously false, but I don't think it's going to be worth arguing with someone who thinks it's obviously true, for I could only argue for it by appealing to cases about which you will think violence is fine and I not. So what's the point? You're welcome to your view, but I don't think it has anything to be said for it and so I don't see it as providing the basis for a reasonable challenge to anything I have argued. I am simply relieved that we are discussing this remotely and not in person, otherwise you'd no doubt have used violence against me by now!
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You see? I can't argue with someone like you.
That's bullshit strawman and you know it. I just demonstrated why your claim that violence is rarely justified, and hardly ever justified is false. I never implied anything close to what you say I said, "that violence is justified under most circumstances".
Quoting Clearbury
I've noticed. Anytime anyone uses evidence and logic, to demonstrate how unsound your arguments are, you say "I can't argue with someone like you". That's obvious, you really can't, because you'll lose the battle. Run along now, Clearbury, and don't trip on the tail between your legs.
Yes, watch me. I can be just as immature as you are. You want to immaturely run away and ignore anyone who produces evidence and logic which proves your theory to be wrong. But we can run after you and hurl insults.
Please come out of your daydream and start to consider the way things are. In the real world irrationality runs rampant. And, you'll find that the real world full of evil is a safer place to live, than a fantasy world where everyone thinks the way you want them to.
This seems to imply that what makes governments unjust is primarily the monopoly on violence. However, the monopoly is not constitutive. In and of itself, the monopoly on violence does not grant government any permission to use violence, rather it limits the violence of all others.
Quoting Clearbury
Some of them are, not all of them. And mostly the threat of prison isn't really what motivates people, though ultimately it can come down to that.
Quoting Clearbury
The devil though will be in the details of the "other things being equal".
Quoting Clearbury
Is that what the state does? I don't receive an invoice from the police if they stop someone from attacking me. The attacker might be billed, but the protected person is not.
I pay the government for clean water I receive (something you presumably don't object to). I don't pay directly for the more abstract work that goes into ensuring a stable supply of drinking water.
So I think your metaphor here is not quite apt. Obligations to the state are not obligations to a single individual and are not contractual in nature. You need a concept of a communal obligation for the state to make sense.
Assuming you woke up one day in some unknown community, would you be obligated to follow their rules about, for example, producing and distributing food? Or could you just refuse to help, taking what you needed without contributing?
Quoting Clearbury
I don't think an open market could be described as anarchic. International relations are mostly anarchic. Do international relations follow a market model?
Quoting Clearbury
Why not? "You can force others to avoid causing overwhelmingly harmful results" seems like a pretty convincing moral rule.
Another way to formulate it is that the government has the monopoly on crime. It can do and get away with theft, murder, kidnapping, for example, which are incidences of violence and coercion.
But obviously the government does not actually have this monopoly, because other people commit plenty of crimes.
More to the point, this kind of argument just sidesteps the question of whether the state is moral by positing "crimes". But what's the moral significance of a "crime" here and how is it established?
The state shows no disposition to suppress crime, but only to safeguard its own monopoly of crime. They tend to only punish those who threaten their monopoly.
According to anarchism crimes are those acts by which one man harms the person or property of another. Unfortunately the state sustains itself through these activities. Thats why I can see no way to differentiate state agents from any criminal class.
As evidenced by what? Do small time drug dealers threaten the state's monopoly? I think not.
Quoting NOS4A2
And according to me they're not. Claims without arguments don't get us anywhere.
Does your government not deal in drugs?
You have neither claim nor argument. What is a crime to you, then?
No?
Quoting NOS4A2
A crime is committing an act defined as criminal by law.
If we'd like a less positivist definition, we could say a crime is a violation of social norms that's considered so severe that the community reacts with an explicit punishment.
Neither of those really works when applied to state power. As I have alluded to above this kind of anarcho-capitalist discourse suffers from ignoring social relations between people. It considers people self sufficient islands that are only engaged in contractual relationships.
But humans are always born into social relationships that come with obligations. These obligations don't need to be justified by reference to some wholly fabricated state of absolute independence. They need to be justified by reference to other rules for social interaction and organisation.
Thats a common straw man. Anarchism does not consider people to be self-sufficient islands, and therefor does not suffer from it. Rather it considers people on an equal footing, and that one man is rarely fit to be another mans lord and master. Statism, like slavery and feudalism, believes to opposite: that some men are fit to be other mens lord and master.
There is little moral underpinnings to your definition of crime save that the act upsets some people. It lacks any clear principle and would treat any vice as a crime if enough people were against it.
Yes. Hence why people commonly differentiate between morality and legality, or in this case criminality.
Moral behavior versus an officials dictates. One prescribed by reason and the other by monopoly and power. I know which one I favor.
There are two issues here.
One is whether rights are better conceived as natural or positive. You believe natural, but you ought to at least look at the case for treating rights as positive. I don't know whom you should read to understand that view. Maybe someone here knows, or you could Google the usual sources.
The other issue is your central claim about the state. You're familiar with at least one case for anarchism. Another guy to look at would be David Graeber, but there are plenty of others.
And here too, you might consider looking at arguments for the state. There's obviously lots of writing there, but two I can recommend that I find interesting because they're not just theory are Timothy Snyder (whom I quoted on the Holocaust) and Acemoglu and Robinson, Why Nations Fail.
The best defense for legal positivism was arguably put forward by Herbert Hart.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Concept_of_Law
That's the only one I know, so I wasn't sure if he was central to the field. I read that long long ago. He was an OLP guy.
Same. Legal positivism is extremely boring, unfortunately. I remember much of it was drawn from John Austin but I cannot be bothered to read it.
Yes, that's fair, although it would also be the unjust use to which they put violence.
I take it to be obvious to reasonable people that it would be quite misguided of me to insist that I and I alone am the only one entitled to use violence to protect other people's rights, or indeed to protect some subset of people's rights. I am entitled to use violence to protect other people's rights (if those rights are directly under threat, that is). But I have no more entitlement to do so than anyone else, other things being equal. If I attempted to stop others from using violence to protect other people's rights, then I would be behaving unjustly.
Yet this is what the government does and it is partly what makes it a government rather than another thing. The government insists that it must be the one who polices our rights, or some of them. If my house is burgled, for instance, then I am not allowed to hunt down the burglars myself and conduct my own review into their guilt and the degree of punishment they deserve. All of this, the government insists, I must allow the government to do on my behalf, whether i want it to or not.
That is unjust. It'd be unjust if I tried to do that in respect of others, and so it is unjust of teh government to try and do it.
The other thing governments do - and that seems partly definitive of them - is extract payment for its services with menaces, regardless of whether anyone to whom the services are being provided has contracted them.
On its injustice: I take it that we can all agree that if the local mafia turn up at a business and say to the business owner "we are going to provide you with protection and you must pay us 30% of your profits or we'll smash your business up and imprison you" then this would be unjust behaviour on the mafia's part.
Yet that is exactly what the government does. It does not invite businesses to pay for its protection, but insists upon providing the protection and insists upon being paid. I take it to be obvious too that labelling a mafia a 'government' does no moral work and will not render justifiable what would otherwise have been unjust.
I accept that it may be that we can find no definition of a government that adequately distinguishes it from a mafia......but that, in effect, only operates to prove my point. For if we can recognize the injustice of a mafia, and if there is no relevant difference between a government and a mafia except in terms of how effective they have been at monopolizing the use of violence, then the injustice of one transfers to the other.
The injustice of the government is not a function of what motivates people to obey it, but the fact it claims a monopoly on the use of violence - and this is unjust - and that it will actually use violence against those who disobey its rulings. Maybe it will turn a blind eye to some, but the fact is it does imprison people (loads of people) because they disobeyed it.
To use the Mafia example: let's say I am running a small business and the local mafia turn up and tell me that I need to pay them protection money, or else. And I decide to pay them because I think they'll do a good job. That is, my motivation is entirely to do with how effective I think they'll be at protecting my business and has nothing to do with the threat of violence they made to me. Well, that doesn't affect the injustice of their behaviour on iota. So regardless of why people obey the governments rules, the government has no business producing any rules and making people obey them.
You're taxed to pay for the police whether you wish to be or not. And if you refuse to pay your taxes, the government will eventually imprison you.
That doesn't seem correct to me. I am assuming people have moral rights. But I am not assuming that they are natural (not that I am quite sure what that means) or that they are negative (I take it that the opposite of a positve right is a negative right, not a natural right, and the opposite of a natural right is a non-natural right).
I take the very notion of a right to have the justification of violence built into it. If I have a right to something, then that just means that violence can be used, if necessary, to provide me with it or, if it is a negative right, to prevent someone else from depriving me of what i have a right to.
My (or rather, Huemer's) case for anarchism doesn't depend on how many positive versus negative rights we have, for it is sufficient for the case to go through that we do not have a right to extract payment with menaces for deciding to police the rights or others. So long as it's clear - and I think it is - that a mafiosi is wrong in demanding protection money with menaces, then the case goes through, I think. For if we accept this, then it should be clear that the state is not entitled to claim for itself a monopoly on protecting our rights (some or any of them) and is not entitled to bill us for then doing so.
Well, haha, I suppose my point in presenting what I take to be a powerful case for anarchism is to extract from others arguments for the state that can overcome the one I presented.
Because Huemer's anarchist conclusion follows from his premises, then by hypothesis his case refutes all other cases. Someone who thinks there's a good case for the state would need to show how it challenges the assumptions that Huemer's argument makes.
I am familiar-ish with the sorts of case people make for the state. And to date I have been unimpressed by all of them.
For example, appeals to beneficial consequences have already been dealt with. A) such appeals are misguided given that rights operate to place constraints on the extent to which violence can be used against people to secure good consequences. Can violence be used against me to make me eat more healthily? No. I eat unhealthily. If you used violence against me to make me eat more greens, you'd definitely improve my health. That's irrelevant, though, isn't it? For I have a right to eat what I want and you have no right to prevent me, even for my own good. So those who appeal to beneficial or harmful consequences are missing the point. Their empirical claims are false - the state is terrible at everything (again, the police are absolutely rubbish - and rubbish the world over - at solving crimes). But it wouldn't matter if they were true, for again, rights constrain what can be done to an individual in the name of securing good consequences.
Others - Hobbes and Locke and Rousseau - appeal to the notion of a hypothetical contract. They point out, on different grounds, that we - or our ideal selves - 'would' have agreed to commission the state to do as it does, and so because of this that somehow justifies it in actually doing it.
That's a terrible argument though. Imagine your car has an engine problem. I decide to fix it for you (you did not ask me). Then I bill you. And my bill is low. So low, in fact, that you would have hired me to do it for that price. Ok - well, do I have a right to extract payment from you with violence if necessary? No. Perhaps you ought to pay me, but I don't have a right to the money for you didn't commission me. The fact you would have done so had I asked is neither here nor there.
I think that serves to undermine all those cases for the state that appeal to hypothetical contracts. It's actual contracts that count, at least when it comes to being entitled to extract payment with menaces for a job done.
What were your political views before you encountered Michael Huemer? Were you already interested in politics?
I've never read Rawls myself ? was never very interested in political theory.
So I suppose Rawls made certain arguments that you found persuasive until you read Michael Huemer ? is that right? And I expect Huemer addresses Rawls's arguments directly.
Could you give an example of something Rawls says ? especially if it's an argument you used to find persuasive ? that you believe Huemer presents a strong counter-argument to? Like I said, not a field I know much about, so I'm curious.
The problem is that this is a hypothetical contract and hypothetical contracts are worthless and do not justify treating others in the hypothetically agreed-to ways. You would have commissioned me to fix your car, but you didn't. The hypothetical contract you'd have entered into with me does nothing at all to justify me demanding payment with menaces. And with that, Rawls's view goes down the toilet, I think. It may provide us with a useful thought experiment to gain insight into what's fair, but it does nothing to justify the state.
Yes, he doesn't suppose us actually to have signed such a contract. It's just a thought experiment called 'the original position'. It's designed to provide us with insight into what fairness requires. And I think it does. But it doesn't do anything to show the state to be justified. The fact we 'would have' agreed to certain rules doesn't a) mean we have, b) entitle others to treat us as if we have agreed to them.
So, as a thought experiment designed to give us insight into fairness, it has something to be said for it. As an attempt at justifying the state, it's rubbish
Does he claim that it does show the state is justified?
You seem to be quite adept at ignoring all the aspects of reality which are not consistent with your argument.
A person does not choose to be born into the situation they are born into. That there is a (hypothetical) contract over your head when you are born, is just a brute fact, just like there is a sun over your head. The contract is signed at the time of birth, by the baby's parents and the doctor, it's called a birth certificate. The person is just a baby, so the parents need to make all the required signatures for the baby. Once the documents are signed, you cannot escape this reality, that the contract is signed, and the paper trail is created. You may run and hide though, perhaps in a different country or something like that.
You can argue against the right that your parents have to sign these documents which make you identifiable to the powers that be, as a legal subject just like you can argue against the right that your parents have to even provide you with a place in this cruel world, in the first place, but what's the point? It's already too late for that, just like it's already too late to preach anarchy as a means of getting out of the contract your parents signed for you. In reality, you have no right to live at any particular location on this earth, unless you have that signed document, because you have no right to any real estate.
Engage with the arguments I make and not strawmen.
The fundamental problem is where you start thinking of anarchism: you start from the individual, yet go for macrolevel solutions that effect communities and societies. Individual rights is a good starting point for a legal system, because the laws should be universal and equal. Yet in your example an individual interacts with another individual and that's your basis for anarchism. This is simply thinking that someone in an Ivory Tower purely thinking at a theoretical level can make.
First of all, people don't roam the land as individuals like siberian tigers or other large predators do. Humans live in groups and form families, groups, clans, societies. You can be all hyped up about the rights of the individual, think yourself as an individual, but you simply don't live alone and act alone. But this is just the start of the problems that this individualism has.
Think for a while of reality, of historical events on how people behave when there is de facto, no government or the government collapses.
When governments collapse, and there are dozens and dozens of examples of this, what is common in those situations?
What is common that then people immediately form groups that basically carry out the role of the government. The first thing is that they understand there's no police to call, then they protect themselves, their families and their property. They can be neighborhood watchgroups, vigilante groups or simply gangs. And they every time face the problem of who pays for the costs if crisis isn't very short. Because simply a few volunteers armed with baseball bats looking out for thieves won't cut it. The "few volunteers" have to have weapons and training, and all that adds to the costs of maintaining this service. And then you're back to square one: the "anarchistic" system has to demand some payment for the costs, hence taxes, and then comes all the issues of who just has power then in the system, and so on.
It's something quite universal:
Quoting Clearbury
Here's my problem: are you willing to pay anything for services provided by others? If you need an electrician, is it OK for the electrician to ask for fee that basically feeds himself and his family? Or is that also unjust.
If you answered yes, you would pay for the electrician for his services, then where is the line where this payment becomes "injust", as the government does provide valuable institutions and services and the taxes go to the salaries of those that make them possible. It's again the problem above, something like "security" isn't cheap, it's far more costly especially when there isn't a large organization taking care of it... like a government.
The problem is that your arguments are based in premises which are far removed from reality, i.e. false. Therefore it is necessary to demonstrate the falsity of your premises, rather than engage with the logic of your arguments, in order to demonstrate that your arguments are unsound.
If replacing your false premises for true premises constitutes making a strawman, to you, then so be it. You can continue to live in your "hypothetical" world of "hypothetical" contracts, and ignore the abundance of signed documents which are all around you, (birth certificates, other forms of identification, title deeds, bank accounts, insurance, etc..) indicating that said contracts are very real, and not merely "hypothetical", if that is what you wish. But what is the point to ignoring reality, just because it is inconsistent with the premises of your favoured argument? Don't you see how such behaviour only misleads you?
Quoting ssu
Careful what you ask for. Clearbury is prone to designating anyone who asks for such as irrational, and then proceeding to ignore that person for engaging with the reality of the situation, rather than Clearbury's hypothetical situation.
Well, I haven't read him, so I can't fill in the argument, if there is one.
I suppose, though, if you're going to talk about rules at all, then the natural question is whether and how those rules are enforced.
Thanks for the "warning", but I'll see if Clearbury responds.
I think this is very typical for those that want to talk especially about anarchism. Anarchism sounds so interesting and refreshingly different from what they are used to in their own society. It's a wonderful blend of freedom and criticism of the societies of the present. However, even if daydreaming might be refreshing, any political ideology has to be rooted in actual reality and judged by what it's implementation really results in. Having premises like "actually we have to have a totally new kind of human being" should ring alarm bells for everyone.
What makes it unjust, specifically? What's the moral philosophy and what's the argument?
It seems like a perfectly fine policy to limit the ability of everyone to do violence to each other and hand it to some professional and accountable institution.
After all according to your own argument, violence ought to be something tightly restricted.
Quoting Clearbury
Us agreeing is all fine, but that doesn't replace an argument. The thing about extortion rackets is that they don't provide protection. That is what they say, but that's not actually what is happening. So this situation is actually not at all analogous to taxes or other dues.
Quoting Clearbury
But of course, this is not the case for many governments.
Quoting Clearbury
And being taxed is not the same as paying for the individual operation. As I pointed out, your relation with the government is not (only) contractual. Same as your relations with your friends and family.
Not all obligations need to be contractual.
Yes. I 'hire' electricians. If an electrician just decides to change a lightbulb - without asking me - and then bills me and threatens me with violence if I do not pay, then that's UNJUST. This isn't hard, you just have to read what I argued and not replace it with something silly.
If I say that it is wrong to kick to death a dog, don't respond "so, you think it is wrong to treat a dog well?!"
Does this site have anyone on it who can actually read what someone says rather than attack strawmen of their own invention?
It's not in dispute that we have rights and not dispute that we're entitled to use violence if necessary to protect them.
But the defender of the justice of any government needs to argue that, somehow, those in power are entitled not just to defend our rights (which isn't in dispute - they are entitled to do that, for we as individuals are entitled to do that and those in power are just individuals), but to extract payment with menaces for having decided to do so.
The point can be made another way: are the mafia in the wrong when they threaten others with violence in order to extract protection money? I think the answer is clear to all reasonable people: yes.
Well, a government is no different from them apart from being more successful at it. So, if the mafia are wrong in behaving in taht way, then so too are those in government.
Ironically most of those who think governments are not unjust think this because they think without them they'll be in the hands of mafias. So they confusedly think that the best way to protect against the injustice of being subject to mafias, is to have a mega-mafia!
Well, the solution lies with individuals recognizing that government is not needed - recognizing that government is unjust and unjustified - and withdrawing their support from it. That could be achieved overnight if just everyone had this realization all at once, for then no one would pay their taxes or see any special reason to obey the state or enforce the state's policies - and in one fell swoop all governments would just disappear, as they have no magical source of power beyond individuals deciding to obey them.
That's not going to happen all at once though. So the alternative is that it happens gradually as libertarian-esque governments pare back what the government is involved in and everyone starts to see that where government involvement stops, things improve.
For instance, food production and distribution is almost entirely conducted by the private sector, at least in first world countries (and that's partly what makes them first world). And everyone in countries where that is the case, recognizes - one hopes - that the diversity, quality and cheapness of food, and its efficient distribution, would all be considerably worse if the government decided to take over those matters. Nobody here who lives in a 'free' country surely thinks government should own all the supermarkets and produce all the food - you'd recognize that the instant it did that, the food quality and range would reduce and costs would go up.
All it requires is for people to recognize that exactly the same would happen in every other area. For all one is doing is removing an obstacle to efficiency: bossy do-gooding individuals who think they know better how to distribute things than individuals.
Privatizing the police and army would be the last step....
So the solution is to elect libertarian anti-regulation governments in the hope that the more that is taken out of the public sector and shown to improve in every way when subject more directly to the will of individuals improves exponentially. And the more that happens, the more it will dawn on people that the dwindling government is doing nothing - or nothing but issuing threats. It'll die a natural death
The reliance upon privatization sort of undermines this as an anarchist project -- private property requires rights to be enforced. Once you "privatize" the army the warlords move in and take what is theirs and enforce what they want thereby reinventing the state.
This is what I think of as one of the fundamental philosophical problems for anarchy: the problem of warlords is such that no matter what path to abolishing the state that you take the "bad" kind of anarchy will arise. It's not like gangs and cartels are going to vanish when all the citizens decide to stop supporting the government. And when the army can be bought then we're pretty much back to having warlords fighting over resources because they can pay troops to enforce their will.
The warlord in this scenario may be named "Chrysler", but it's not fundamentally different -- and it basically just recreates the state, but now there aren't many civic institutions to direct the necessity of violence.
But since privatizing the army does not remove coercion this plan will simply reinvent the state in the process of trying to dismantle it, and for the worse.
So this is the motivation for your anarchism, you dislike taxation?
Quoting Clearbury
Who is going to maintain the roads and all the infrastructure?
Quoting Clearbury
But of course, distribution is done through the use of roads maintained by the government. Sure, you might claim that the private sector could build roads, but who is going to collect funds for this, and what force will they use to collect money from those who do not wish to pay, claiming that they will not use the roads? And who will be in charge of expropriating the required land for such infrastructure?
Speaking of land, without the government and its keeping of official records like title deeds, how are we going to know who owns what land? I guess we just fight it out? Oh no, no one would ever resort to violence over a property dispute, that would be irrational.
Quoting Moliere
Clearbury seems to have no grasp of the concept of land ownership.
So having one mega-warlord is better than lots?
Food's really important. We die without it. There are loads and loads of food providers. Would it be better if there was just one mega food provider? No, that'd be terrible.
Private security companies would be a much better job - and do do a much better job - than the state. Try and steal something in a supermarket and see who stops you first - a private security guard or the police.
How would the private security companies operate given your notions of government here?:
Quoting Clearbury
How would the private security companies' policies be backed? Would they not imprison people?
The logic is very simple. If it's bad on a small scale, it's worse at a large scale. Note, there's no starry-eyed idealism at work here. There's just common sense and a keen sense of justice. It's not healthy or right to concentrate power in one individual or some tiny group.
You don't solve the problem of mafias by having one mega mafia. That's like solving the fact you've got a cold by giving yourself cancer.
Incidentally, you know how mafias really survive? State corruption. The most successful mafia in the world is THE MAFIA. And how are they so successful? (They're the most successful organisation in Italy accounting for 7% of GDP) Corrupt government officials.
I don't think that private companies and the state are easily separable. I'm more or less saying that as soon as you abolish the state someone will re-invent the state. That's sort of the whole revolutionary thing.
Further, it seems your programme must reinvent the state because military and police details will be contractable through private firms, themselves needing firms to enforce their contracts. How would they do that unless they send people to prison?
In which case:
Quoting Clearbury
Your own definition of government would apply.
If one privatized the police, then the police would simply become a private company bidding for business.
Let's say I am a private security firm and my people are rubbish - they're all weak and meek. Well, I'd go out of business in no time for someone else would do a better job and they'd get my business.
If I didn't have to worry about that - if I had a state mandate to be hte exclusive provider of security in a region - then I could continue being rubbish and taking payment for doing so, as no one has any other option and are not even invited to pay.
What if, as a private security company in an anarchy, I decide to extract payment with menaces? That is, I operate like a mafia? Well, those whom I threaten would hire another security company to protect them - to protect them from such menaces.
Consider, supermarkets do not force people into them to buy their food. And no supermarket boss thinks that'd be a good idea. If someone set up a supermarket that operated like that, everyone would avoid going near it and would go to the ones where force is not involved. And the supermarkets that do not use force would employ people to protect their customers from the agents of the other supermarkets. And so on.
It'd all sort itself out in no time.
Nobody is lobbying for there to be one mega supermarket that has a monopoly on selling us food.
The state's power rests in the hands of individuals and in the misguided idea that we 'need' it. To overcome that, people need to see that the government is a) unjust by its nature and b) does an appalling job at everything.
Let's suppose we're all in agreement here.
What then?
It doesn't need to happen all at once, but gradually - and anarchy would evolve. Nobody now thinks serfdom is a good idea. But they used to. Now we have democratic governments and virtually nobody under one wants to go back.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating. Where government butts out, things improve. We don't have state issued shoes. If we did, they'd be awful and the contract would go to cronies and a pair of shoes would cost tens of thousands despite being awful. And they'd all be the same.
So nobody now lobbies for state issued shoes. nobody argues that the poorest need shoes and therefore to protect the vulnerable all shoes should be state produced.
The more the government is pulled-back, the more apparent it will become that it is unnecessary and actually counter-productive: that it facilitates the very things we - the people - think it's needed to prevent.
Nice people will even pay a bit of a premium if they think they're supporting niceness. Moral virtue is itself a selling point. In an anarchy virtue will be much better rewarded than it ever is with a government.
If it's a gradual process then I think the 2008 financial crises is a hard event for you to reckon with. The 2008 financial crises occurred because of a gradual pulling-back of the government on financial regulation.
That's usually how this goes, in my experience.
And, regardless, you've ignored the point I've made about firms enforcing rights -- even if we "gradually" get there your reliance upon private property and contracts makes it such that the state will be reinvented. How else do you enforce contracts other than threatening jailtime?
I am not really sure I understand the question. The private sector will provide all of those things. Anything a government provides, the private sector can provide. There is no invisible obstacle preventing private companies from building prisons. If enough people want to pay a company to imprison some people, a private company - private companies - will emerge that will bid for their business. Or, chances are, some much more efficient way of dealing with rights transgressors will be developed.
It's people who come up with solutions, not governments. And violence is something people are capable of using. The point is that it will be used more sparingly and justly in an anarchy than it will be if we all decide instead that just one tiny group of people get to determine when and where to use it.
Such crises are caused by, or at least amplified by governments. If I own a bank I am going to gamble much more recklessly if I know that if I'm reckless enough the government will bail me out.
You're ignoring what I said to point out a bad thing governments did. I'm fully on board with governments being bad. They suck.
I'm not fully on board with companies providing state services -- sounds like another state.
That's totally reasonable. But not all things are so easy to buy as the service when your lightbulb has gone out. Safety and the perception of safety in a community is one. This is why it's not anymore just a service that an individual can decide to have or disregard. For example, you can go on a trip without travel insurance, but what about your car insurance? That's also for when you drive lousily and wreck somebody else's car. Of course, you can opt not to have a car.
But when it comes the issue of public safety, it isn't just a service you buy. And you cannot opt out like not having a car (and thus not paying the car insurance).
It's the government that allows monopolies to develop by being one itself and then delegating monopoly status to others.
Yes, I'll hire my private security company, you hire yours, Moliere will hire another, ssu another, etc.. Then these companies will each be operating for different private interests and a street battle will be inevitable.
Quoting Clearbury
Have you ever seen army boots? These are top quality, as is the case with most stuff issued by the military. Why do you think that products issued by the government are necessarily "awful"?
Quoting Clearbury
Are you saying that the government pays poorly, and treats their employees badly? Which government behaves like this?
Quoting Clearbury
I am still waiting for you to address the issue of building roads, expropriating property, and land ownership in general. How is the private sector going to provide for ownership of land? Is each person just going to claim a section, and hire their own private security company to defend it? What happens when I want the same section you want, and there's no deeds? Would we each have to hire our own private company to provide us with a deed?
Quoting Clearbury
You must be joking. There would be no prisons, why go through the trouble of trying to organize and maintain prisons, when it's so much easier to shoot first and not have to worry about answering questions later? Your naivety is overwhelming.
Look at what you are saying. You are saying that if every person gets to decide when and where to use violence, there will be much less violence then if only a few people get to decide this. And, I'll add, the government hired "tiny group" have special training.
So, you think that if 100,000,000 people are free to use violence, whenever and wherever they determine it's needed, this will result in less violence overall, than if only 100 people are free to use violence wherever and whenever they determine it's needed. I assume you have some evidence or statistics to back this claim up?
I think there's an argument similar to this which promotes the right to own firearms for defense. The proponents say, that if more people own firearms then there will be less incidences of firearms being used for crime. You should check the statistics on this:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/more-guns-do-not-stop-more-crimes-evidence-shows/
yes, because those street battles between competing supermarket chains and banks are really common
For me to read your argument, you would have to actually write it down first. All I have are your conclusions that this or that is unjust. But what is the reasoning that got you there?
Did you read my post? I didn't say anything about competing supermarket chains, or banks. I said something about individuals who hire competing private security companies for private interests.
Quoting Clearbury
You just spout random ideas with no grounds in reality, Clearbury. Why don't you actually think about some of these things for a while? How could banks or supermarket chains even exist without governance? These entities are features of the type of state that we live in.
What you seem to be doing, is taking all the aspects of our type of state which you dislike, taxes, violence by police, etc., and separating them from the aspects of our type of state which you do like. Then you claim that if we get rid of the governance, "the state" itself, we will rid ourselves of all the negative aspects, and be left with the positive.
Sorry to have to burst your bubble, shatter your illusion, but reality just is not like this. Many "things" have both desirable and undesirable aspects. Annihilating "the thing" which supports these properties does not leave you with the desirable properties, while ridding you of the undesirable. You need to provide for yourself, a more sophisticated approach to this problem, if you want to address it seriously. Have you read Plato's "Republic"? It's very educational, concerning different types of states, different types of people, and justice in general.
This has been said maybe a dozen times in this thread already. The heart wants what the heart wants: justice without the tyrannies of justice, free market solutions for every problem, infinite resources, zero pollution, the perpetual health of the commons, a future of biological/social evolution without violence, a Jinn that grants 14 wishes in good faith...
Omg! Apply it to them. As I said, I can't really discuss things with someone like you.
Sounds like the final nail in the coffin that is this thread.
Yes, the state's existence depends on fear and people's misguided assumption that there are some things - protecting our basic rights - that the state does best. Upon recognizing that this is simply false - that the state police are really awful at their job (due to lack of competition) - as well as unjust is the first step.
Most people have no idea just how bad the police are at solving crimes, for we rarely if ever need them. When was the last time you phoned the police? I've phoned the police once - once - in my entire life thus far. That's not thanks to the police doing a good job. It's due to the fact most people freely respect one another's rights. (How many times have you had the opportunity to get away with stealing something and been tempted to steal it? Personally, virtually never.....and even when I have, I've typically resisted it).
They're appalling at their job and there's no one else to go to, because the state - by virtue of being one - prevents anyone competing to do what they do. Even as individuals we are not allowed to protect our own rights if we so wish. I have a right to punish those who violate my rights, but the state prevents me from exercising that right. It insists that it will do that on my behalf. It does that without asking me, and it does it appallingly badly, and it insists I pay for it.
I've noticed that. I want to focus on reality, talk about the way things are, and allow that to have due bearing on the propositions we make. But you want to keep your mind within your fantasy, and not allow reality to impose itself in any way. Of course that leaves you in no position to discuss anything with someone like me.
Quoting Clearbury
If you are not here to educate us on why anarchy is praiseworthy, then why are you here? I mean simply praising anarchy is rather pointless, unless you can show why it ought to be praised.
In being an educator you need to assume that the person to be educated has no knowledge of the subject which you profess. Therefore you need to start from the basics, make them very clear, and then move on to the specifics. You are doing the opposite, starting form some very specific assumptions, but then you cannot show any general principles which would support these specific assumptions. So you appear to be lost.
Quoting Clearbury
The assumptions you make are glaringly false, often to the point of being ridiculous. There is no "lack of competition" in the work of solving crimes. Have you not heard of "private investigators"? Anyone can take of the task of solving crimes, there is no monopoly here. So if the police are terribly bad at this task, it is not the result of no competition.
Lack of competition of what? The legality of the laws and legal system?
I think Max Weber understood correctly what is at stake with a state and with it's legality. For Weber the state is defined as a community that successfully claims a monopoly over violence within a geographical area and this state is then required to have legitimate and legal authority that is accepted by the people.
That isn't a transactional issue you simply can choose to buy. It isn't a situation that could be modeled as an oligopoly. And this is where it comes down to the aspect that humans don't act in a society as individuals thinking of just themselves, but as groups that have bonds. If you don't accept that authority of your state, but the vast majority of the people do, tough luck. If nobody accepts the authority of the state, well, the state collapses more quickly than the Soviet Union did. And you will quickly have to reinstate something before it becomes a fight.
When that legality or the legal system simply doesn't exist anymore, people are right to fear.
Even a brief collapse of the states authority makes people different. Just look how people behave when governments collapse or in many countries when a hurricane or earthquake hits the country. It really comes down to the social cohesion in the society. If there isn't that cohesion or it is low, then it's OK to steal from the supermarket. Then it's OK to take from "the rich people". And on the other side, then it's OK shoot a looter.
In order for there to be some kind of transactional service you buy or sell, you simply have to have firm institutions at place. And this is the problem here with the idea of competition of security: you really understand this isn't similar to hiring that electrician. And it really isn't simply the same thing as buying a security firm to watch over you. Security firms providing a service means that there has to exist institutions that uphold the contracts and overall laws. Yet when those institutions don't exist, the "security firms" are quite different: if they have the weapons, they have the power. Will they create and uphold institutions that basically weaken their current position? Likely no. This is the major problem.
Quoting Clearbury
Well, in my country they write books and make documentaries about unsolved murders. That's how rare unsolved murders are in my country. I guess last Century there was about ten-twelve or something like that in my country of 5 million. Less than 20 murders were done last year, to give you a comparison. But when my car was broken into, they didn't do anything. Something for the insurance company. Hence the severity of the crime is where police focus.
The effectiveness of the police emerges from the whole society itself. Do people respect the police or are they criminals themselves. As my wife is Mexican and I've been in Mexico many times, I can assure you that police and the societies are very different from Finland, even if the friends and family of my wife are as honest and hardworking as Finns are. It all comes down to those institutions, social cohesion, customs of the land. These all make theoretical micro level ideas of safety as a service very remote from reality.
Quoting Clearbury
Punishment is far different from defense. Defending your life or home is legal. Giving punishment is really another thing. That's really not a right for you to become the judge and make your own laws.
Well, I view anarcho-capitalist libertarianism as a prime example how once a successful ideology (that is liberalism here in question) has achieved it's logical and most justifiable goals, the next "waves" in the thinking that want to go further, simply in the end make it all very silly. Just look at where modern feminism is now after second, third and fourth waves after the Suffragettes. Not many women support the objectives of the fourth wave.
A monopoly over the *legitimate* use of violence, I believe.