Little Blackfly posted:

Of course, otherwise they'd get scammer tags.

Little Blackfly posted:

Of course, otherwise they'd get scammer tags.

CrazyTolradi posted:

And we can totally trust the company issuing those tags, right? Because they could never, ever have an agenda or conflict of interest. No, that'd be immoral and against the libertarian code.

jrodefeld posted:

I'm not going to respond to the stuff you said about Molyneux right now. I don't want to get sucked into that diversion.

quote:

Many have asked about the feasibility of competing defense agencies and private dispute resolution agencies. You seem to think that we need a centralized monopolistic authority to provide "the law". I think this is a very dangerous concept that, as history has proven, is rife with abuse. I know some of you hate when I do this, but I am going to quote from Stefan Molyneux on this subject. I don't always agree with Molyneux but in this instance I think his insights are valuable. This isn't the final word, but I think it offers plenty of food for thought:

quote:

I'll say that I do know about Reason Magazine. They are not my favorites to say the least. I am not particularly a fan of any of the Koch funded libertarian outlets. Some of the Reason people do good work but I don't read them usually. It was a "weird bit of grammer failure". I know Reason Magazine. I don't know about the "Pro apartheid" or holocaust denial articles that were published in the 1970s. That is what I meant to say. I wasn't born when these articles were published. It may be true that they gave a platform to some hateful people. I don't think its fair to judge Reason magazine today for some stupid article they published forty years ago though.

quote:

I already wrote two posts about criminal justice but I'd rather talk about Gary Chartier for a minute. Yes, I think he could be considered a "left" libertarian, but I've read his work and our views are not that far apart. He calls himself an anarchist and he wrote a recent book called "The Conscience of an Anarchist". He did indeed abandon libertarianism to join the left proper for a decade or so but he is one of us again and he does use that experience to sell libertarian ideas to those on the left.

Consider this recent article on Mises.org about Gary Chartier:

http://mises.org/daily/5355/the-anarchist-conscience

Quite complimentary. Gary Chartier has been interviewed on Tom Wood's show and he contributes to the Mises Institute website and I've even seen his articles on LewRockwell.com. He certainly is more left-leaning than someone like Hoppe, but the substance of his ideas are quite close to what I believe. He's not the only one either. There is an entire tradition of libertarians, even libertarian anarchists who make arguments that appeal to the left.

Consider this article that Sheldon Richman wrote:

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/libertarian-left/

quote:

After Lew was kind enough to publish The Stateless Society, I received many emails asking the same question: how can violent criminals be dealt with in the absence of a centralized government?

This is a challenging question, which can be answered in three parts. The first is to examine how such criminals are dealt with at present; the second is to divide violent crimes into crimes of motive and crimes of passion, and the third is to show how a stateless society would deal with both categories of crime far better than any existing system.

Thus the first question is: how are violent criminals dealt with at present? The honest answer, to any unbiased observer is surely: they are encouraged.

A basic fact of life is that people respond to incentives. The better that crime pays, the more people will become criminals. Certain well-known habits — drugs, gambling, prostitution in particular — are non-violent in nature, but highly desired by certain segments of the population. If these non-violent behaviours are criminalized, the profit gained by providing these services rises. Illegality destroys all stabilizing social forces (contracts, open activity, knowledge sharing and mediation), and so violence becomes the norm for dispute resolution.

Furthermore, wherever a legal situation exists where most criminals make more money than the police, the police are simply bribed into compliance. Thus by increasing the profits of non-violent activities, the State ensures the corruption of the police and judicial system — thus making it both safer and more profitable to operate outside the law! It can take dozens of arrests to actually face trial — and many trials to gain convictions. Policemen now spend about a third of their time filling out paperwork — and 90% of their time chasing non-violent criminals. Entire sections of certain cities are run by gangs of thugs, and the jails are overflowing with harmless low-level peons sent to jail as make-work for the judicial system — thus constantly increasing law-enforcement budgets. Peaceful citizens are legally disarmed through gun control laws. In this manner, the modern State literally creates, protects and profits from violent criminals.

Thus the standard to compare the stateless society's response to violent crime is not some perfect world where thugs are effectively dealt with, but rather the current mess where violence is both encouraged and protected.

Before we turn to how a stateless society deals with crime, however, it is essential to remember that the stateless society automatically eliminates the greatest violence faced by almost all of us — the State that threatens us with guns if we don't hand over our money — and our lives, should it decide to declare war. Thus it cannot be said that the existing system is one which minimizes violence. Quite the contrary — the honest population is violently enslaved by the State, and the dishonest provided with cash incentives and protection.

State violence — in its many forms — has been growing in Western societies over the past fifty years, as regulation, tariffs and taxation have risen exponentially. National debts are an obvious form of intergenerational theft. Support of foreign governments also increases violence, since these governments use subsidies to buy arms and further terrorize their own populations. The arms market is also funded and controlled by governments. The list of State crimes can go on and on, but one last gulag is worth mentioning — all the millions of poor souls kidnapped and held hostage in prisons for non-violent 'crimes'.

Since existing States terrorize, enslave and incarcerate literally billions of citizens, it is hard to understand how they can be seen as effectively working u2018against' violence in any form.

So, how does the stateless society deal with violence? First, it is important to differentiate the use of force into crimes of motive and crimes of passion. Crimes of motive are open to correction through changing incentives; any system which reduces the profits of property crimes — while increasing the profits of honest labor — will reduce these crimes. In the last part of this essay, we will see how the stateless society achieves this better than any other option.

Crimes of motive can be diminished by making crime a low-profit activity relative to working for a living. Crime entails labour, and if most people could make more money working honestly for the same amount of labour, there will be far fewer criminals.

Those who have read my explanation of dispute resolution organizations (DROs) know that stateless societies flourish through the creation of voluntary contracts between interested parties, and that all property is private. How does this affect violent crime?

Well, let's look at u2018break and enter'. If I own a house, I will probably take out insurance against theft. Obviously, my insurance company benefits most from preventing theft, and so will encourage me to get an alarm system and so on, just as occurs now.

This situation is more or less analogous to what happens now — with the not-inconsequential adjustment that, since DROs handle policing as well as restitution, their motive for preventing theft or rendering stolen property useless is higher than it is now. As such, much more investment in prevention would be worthwhile, such as creating u2018voice activated' appliances which only work for their owners.

However, the stateless society goes much, much further in preventing crime — specifically, by identifying those who are going to become criminals. In this situation, the stateless society is far more effective than any State system.

In a stateless society, contracts with DROs are required to maintain any sort of economic life — without DRO representation, citizens are unable to get a job, hire employees, rent a car, buy a house or send their children to school. Any DRO will naturally ensure that its contracts include penalties for violent crimes — so if you steal a car, your DRO has the right to use force against you to get the car back — and probably retrieve financial penalties to boot.

How does this work in practice? Let's take a test case. Say that you wake up one morning and decide to become a thief. Well, the first thing you have to do is cancel your coverage with your DRO, so that your DRO cannot act against you when you steal. DROs would have clauses allowing you to cancel your coverage, just as insurance companies have now. Thus you would have to notify your DRO that you were dropping coverage. No problem, you're off their list.

However, DROs as a whole really need to keep track of people who have opted out of the entire DRO system, since those people have clearly signaled their intention to go rogue, to live off the grid, and commit crimes. Thus if you cancel your DRO insurance, your name goes into a database available to all DROs. If you sign up with another DRO, no problem, your name is taken out. However, if you do not sign up with any other DRO, red flags pop up all over the system.

What happens then? Remember — there is no public property in the stateless society. If you've gone rogue, where are you going to go? You can't take a bus — bus companies won't take rogues, because their DRO will require that they take only DRO-covered passengers, in case of injury or altercation. Want to fill up on gas? No luck, for the same reason. You can try hitchhiking, of course, which might work, but what happens when you get to your destination and try and rent a hotel room? No DRO card, no luck. Want to sleep in the park? Parks are privately owned, so keep moving. Getting hungry? No groceries, no restaurants — no food! What are you going to do?

Obviously, those without DRO representation are going to find it very hard to get around or find anything to eat. But let's go even further and imagine that, as a rogue, you are somehow able to survive long enough to start trying to steal from people's houses.

Well, the first thing that DROs are going to do is give a reward to anyone who spots you and reports your position (in fact, there will be companies which specialize in just this sort of service). As you walk down a street on your way to rob a house, someone sees you and calls you in. The DRO immediately notifies the street owner (remember, no public property!) who boots you off his street. Are you going to resist the street owner? His DRO will fully support his right to use force to protect his property or life.

So you have to get off the street. Where do you go? All the local street owners have been notified of your presence, and refuse you entrance. You can't go anywhere without trespassing. You are a pariah. No one will help you, or give you food, or shelter you — because if they do, their DRO will boot them or raise their rates, and their name will be entered into a database of people who help rogues. There is literally no place to turn.

So, really, what incentive is there to turn to a life of crime? Working for a living — and being protected by a DRO — pays really well. Going off the grid and becoming a rogue pits the entire weight of the combined DRO system against you — and, even if you do manage to survive their scrutiny and steal something, it has probably been voice-encoded or protected in some other manner against unauthorized re-use. But let's suppose that you somehow bypass all of that, and do manage to steal, where are you going to sell your stolen goods? You're not protected by a DRO, so who will buy from you, knowing they have no recourse if something goes wrong? And besides, anyone who interacts with you will get a substantial reward for reporting your location — and, if they deal with you, will be dropped from the DRO system.

Will there be underground markets? No — where would they operate? People need a place to live, cars to rent, clothes to buy, groceries to eat. No DRO means no participation in economic life.

Thus it is fair to say that any stateless society will do a far better job of protecting its citizens against crimes of motive — what, then, about crimes of passion?

Crimes of passion are harder to prevent — but also present far less of a threat to those outside of the circle in which they occur.

So, let's say a man kills his wife. They are both covered by DROs, of course, and their DRO contracts would include specific prohibitions against murder. Thus the man would be subject to all the sanctions involved in his contract — probably forced labour until a certain financial penalty was paid off, since DROs would be responsible for paying financial penalties to any next of kin.

Fine, you say, but what if either the man or woman was not covered by a DRO? Well, where would they live? No one would rent them an apartment. If they own their house free and clear, who would sell them food? Or gas? Who would employ them? What bank would accept their money? The penalties for opting out of the DRO system are almost infinite, and it is safe to say that it would be next to impossible to survive without a DRO.

But let's say that only the murderous husband — planning to kill his wife — opted out of his DRO system without telling her. Well, the first thing that his wife's DRO system would do is inform her of her husband's action — and the ill intent it may represent — and help relocate her if desired. If she decided against relocation, her DRO would promptly drop her, since by deciding to live in close proximity with a rogue man, she was exposing herself to an untenable amount of danger (and so the DRO to a high risk for financial loss!). Now both the husband and wife have chosen to live without DROs, in a state of nature, and thus face all the insurmountable problems of getting food, shelter, money and so on.

Now let's look at something slightly more complicated — stalking. A woman becomes obsessed with a man, and starts calling him at all hours and following him around. Perhaps boils a bunny or two. Well, if the man has bought insurance against stalking, his DRO leaps into action. It calls the woman's DRO, which says: stop stalking this man or we'll drop you. And how does her DRO know whether she has really given up her stalking? The man stops reporting it. And if there is a dispute, she just wears an ankle bracelet for a while to make sure. And remember — since there is no public property, she can be ordered off any property such as sidewalks, streets and parks.

(And if the man has not bought insurance against stalking, no problem — it will just be more expensive to buy with a u2018pre-existing condition'!)

Although they may seem unfamiliar to you, DROs are not a new concept — they are as ancient as civilization itself, but have been shouldered aside by the constant escalation of State power over the last century or so. In the past, desired social behaviour was punished through ostracism, and risks ameliorated through voluntary u2018friendly societies'. A man who left his wife and children — or a woman who got pregnant out of wedlock — was no longer welcome in decent society. DROs take these concepts one step further, by making all the information formerly known by the local community available to the world as whole, just as credit reports do. There are really no limits to the benefits that DROs can confer upon a free society — insurance could be created for such things as:

a man's wife giving birth to a child that is not his own
a daughter getting pregnant out of wedlock
fertility problems for a married couple
…and much more.
All of the above insurance policies would require DROs to take active steps to prevent such behaviours — the mind boggles at all the preventative steps that could be taken! The important thing to remember is that all such contracts are voluntary, and so do not violate the moral absolute of non-violence.

So in conclusion — how does the stateless society deal with violent criminals? Brilliantly! In a stateless society, there are fewer criminals, more prevention, greater sanctions — and instant forewarning of those aiming at a life of crime by their withdrawal from the DRO system. More incentives to work, fewer incentives for a life of crime, no place to hide for rogues, and general social rejection of those who decide to operate outside of the civilized worlds of contract, mutual protection and general security. And remember — States in the 20th century caused more than 170 million deaths — are we really that worried about hold-ups and jewelry thefts in the face of those kinds of numbers?

There is no system that will replace faulty men with perfect angels, but the stateless society, by rewarding goodness and punishing evil, will at least ensure that all devils are visible — instead of cloaking them in the current deadly fog of power, politics and propaganda.[quote]

I've bolded the uncomfortably facist parts for you. Do you still agree that this would be a good mold for society? I'm going to touch on a few of them again however.

[quote]In a stateless society, contracts with DROs are required to maintain any sort of economic life — without DRO representation, citizens are unable to get a job, hire employees, rent a car, buy a house or send their children to school.

quote:

However, DROs as a whole really need to keep track of people who have opted out of the entire DRO system, since those people have clearly signaled their intention to go rogue, to live off the grid, and commit crimes.

quote:

What happens then? Remember — there is no public property in the stateless society. If you've gone rogue, where are you going to go? You can't take a bus — bus companies won't take rogues, because their DRO will require that they take only DRO-covered passengers, in case of injury or altercation.

quote:

So you have to get off the street. Where do you go? All the local street owners have been notified of your presence, and refuse you entrance. You can't go anywhere without trespassing. You are a pariah. No one will help you, or give you food, or shelter you — because if they do, their DRO will boot them or raise their rates, and their name will be entered into a database of people who help rogues. There is literally no place to turn.

quote:

it has probably been voice-encoded or protected in some other manner against unauthorized re-use

quote:

Will there be underground markets? No — where would they operate? People need a place to live, cars to rent, clothes to buy, groceries to eat. No DRO means no participation in economic life.

quote:

But let's say that only the murderous husband — planning to kill his wife — opted out of his DRO system without telling her. Well, the first thing that his wife's DRO system would do is inform her of her husband's action — and the ill intent it may represent — and help relocate her if desired. If she decided against relocation, her DRO would promptly drop her, since by deciding to live in close proximity with a rogue man, she was exposing herself to an untenable amount of danger (and so the DRO to a high risk for financial loss!).

isildur posted:

You know, I've never actually read much ancap stuff, on the basis that the whole idea sounded even more awful and absurd than the Objectivism I'd already rejected.

This Molyneux guy is pretty much the best thing I've read in a while. It's someone seriously advocating a brutal nightmare dystopia. He doesn't even hide it; he's proud of it.

I never thought I'd find a group for whom this was true, but: anarcho-capitalists are even dumber and more naive than objectivists. That's impressive.

Caros posted:

The bizzare thing to me is that they don't see it. I guarantee you that Jrodefeld is going to come back and if he says anything on the topic at all its going to be that I'm totally wrong, and that the essay there is not a full throated suggestion of a totalitarian nightmare, because people 'voluntarily' choose to do business with these companies.

Caros posted:

The bizzare thing to me is that they don't see it. I guarantee you that Jrodefeld is going to come back and if he says anything on the topic at all its going to be that I'm totally wrong, and that the essay there is not a full throated suggestion of a totalitarian nightmare, because people 'voluntarily' choose to do business with these companies.

Caros posted:

The bizzare thing to me is that they don't see it.

Ayn Rand posted:

Instead of a single, monopolistic government, they declare, there should be a number of different governments in the same geographical area, competing for the allegiance of individual citizens, with every citizen free to “shop” and to patronize whatever government he chooses.

Remember that forcible restraint of men is the only service a government has to offer. Ask yourself what a competition in forcible restraint would have to mean.

jrodefeld posted:

I am a libertarian market anarchist. I believe in individual self ownership. What that means is that each of us have the right to determine the use of the scarce resource in our physical bodies. If we have a property right in our own bodies, then we should not have the right to use aggression against the physical body of another. For example, assault, rape and kidnapping are obviously illegitimate violations of self ownership. All civilized people accept the principle, I believe. In fact, I consider it an irrefutable axiom. The act of argumentation presupposes the right to exclusive control over ones body and mind.

quote:

If a person owns their own body and thus has the right to make decisions about how they use it, then how can they justly acquire property outside of their physical body? The libertarian argues that the only just way to acquire property is through homesteading of previously unowned or unused natural resources, otherwise known as original appropriation. If you own your physical body, then if you mix your labor with natural land then that which you transformed becomes in essence an extension of yourself and becomes your property. If you are a frontiersman and you come across previously unowned and unused natural land and you build a house, build a fence, graze cattle and plant crops, then that which you altered through your labor becomes your property. That is, no one has a better claim to maintain final decision making authority over that scarce resource than you.

Once property is first appropriated out of its natural state, the original owner maintains his right to exclusive control over the scarce resource until he either sells the land voluntarily to a second user, gives the property away as a gift or abandons it for someone else to claim. Any act of aggression against the property of the just property holder must be seen as illegitimate.

CrazyTolradi posted:

So, basically DRO's are more controlling over our freedoms than a State is? Good to know.

Lol jrodefeld, you literally posted an entire explanation of how you're not free at all, but totally under the mercy of the DRO system. Good work in destroying your own philosophy. Talk about an own goal.

QuarkJets posted:

And not just a little more controlling, but way more controlling. The idea is basically to have a state that can monitor everyone at all times in order to enforce free market principles, but of course the state won't be allowed to violate those principles (why not? Because). This is anarchy because the agencies that govern every aspect of your life aren't called governments

Axetrain posted:

It's been said before but I'm starting to be sure that when it boils down to it that Libertarians are fine with taxation/government force, they are just upset that said taxes aren't just going straight into their bank accounts.

gradenko_2000 posted:

D_I posted:

I love how the solution in every Libertarian fanfic scenario is to "start your own competing ______".

gradenko_2000 posted:

On Stefan Molyneux:

Verus posted:

But don't worry---there will be absolutely no criminal fraud or deception in Libertopia!


(Because it's only a crime if the local Freeman of the International Protection Agency declares it so.)

QuarkJets posted:

It turns out that people are lovely. People scam and cheat each other even if they gain nothing from doing so.

QuarkJets posted:

If a single person is lovely and doesn't act in perfect economic self-interest then the libertarian model has already failed. And it turns out that a lot of people are lovely

jrodefeld posted:

I am going to assume that you all agree with me that people should be free from aggression against their physical bodies. That people own themselves and that others cannot murder, rape or kidnap another. If you concede this point, and you also concede that desired resources are scarce, then you logically must defend some sort of property rights system. The reason to support private property rights is that we want to reduce conflict in society. If everyone has a clear understanding of who has the final say over the use of a scarce resource, conflict is minimized. Furthermore, being secure in the things that you homestead, i.e. having the right to defend that property that you have acquired, means that society can become more prosperous and produce more and more which benefits all members of society.

quote:

I cannot see any other rational principle by which a person can acquire property legitimately than the principle of original appropriation or homesteading.

QuarkJets posted:

Goonswarm decided to form a communist coalition just because it made all of the little libertarian try-hards mad. This was so successful that they're now the leading alliance in the game, owning more conquerable space than anyone else.

CrazyTolradi posted:

EVE itself is a great idea of what happens when people are thrown into an environment and have little to no restriction on interactions. Market manipulation and scamming are common place and you can't trust even your best friend. There is still some level of intervention from the game devs, however, and some restriction on market place (some good aren't player generated/made for instance) so it isn't a perfect example of a liberatarian utopia, but it does show a good degree of core human nature, which is to lie, cheat and steal.

Reverend Catharsis posted:

I am again inclined to disagree that it demonstrates the "core human nature" very well- one must remember that in EVE you have no obligations outside of those to yourself. Like, tangibly so. Nobody gets married, has kids, raises actual civilizations, commits permanent murder, poo poo like that. Cheating and stealing pretty much always benefits you personally in the game. You are incentivized to do so at all times because the worst repercussions are "you get banned, you go buy a new account."

I might be quibbling I admit but I feel it necessary to point that out because otherwise I fear we would be encouraging the notion that people are just naturally selfish and bad, which.. Well outside of my personal beliefs, it encourages the sort of belief that those who worship at the altar of Ayn Rand espouse like so many broken records and noisy parrots.

Obdicut posted:

No, the fraud and deception will be taken care of by damaging the reputation of the person engaging in it. For example, now that Jrod knows that Molyneux fraudulently uses sockpuppets to support himself, he won't be trusted or used as a source anymore.

Oh dear me posted:

This is hopeless. Yes, it is good for everyone to have a clear understanding about who controls what. No, that doesn't imply anything about who should control what - let alone that all control over resources should belong to unelected people, upon whose land the rest of us have no right to tread. You have not even begun to justify private property rights here.


I do not think that that is a rational principle at all - it irrationally fetishizes 'firstness', as well as relying on terrible metaphors and vague definitions. If you and I are racing to grab a piece of unowned land, and just before you get there I manage to chuck some of my urine on it, so that a creation of mine has been 'mixed' with the soil - how on earth does that, rationally, make me a better person to decide what should happen to the land, and give me the right to order you off it?

And how does allocating property via your homesteading principle reduce conflict? Of course I may explain clearly to everyone that the land is mine, because I have laboured to mix my pee with it; and the vast non-libertarian majority will still dispute my claim, because it is barking mad. So all your claim about reducing conflict boils down to is this: that if we all agreed about how property should be allocated, we would all agree.

As for another 'rational' principle - wouldn't it be better to try to get the maximum possible benefit from our resources? This would probably allow total private control of some resources - staplers, for example - and forbid it for others (land, uranium mines, etc). We could even have some clearly understood system of elections to determine who has the final say over a resource!

Gantolandon posted:

Let me prove with praxeology how wrong you are.

The first sentence is true, as brilliantly proven by jrodefeld. If this is the case, it would be against Molyneux's rational self-interest to use sockpuppets. This is also what Molyneux believes, as he is a libertarian. Therefore he can't have used a sockpuppet. Your own eyes are conspiring with the statist vermin to deceive you.

Checkmate, statards!

Who What Now posted:

Actually, going by recent events it looks like Jrod took a page from Molybeux's playbook regarding sockpuppets in this very thread.

DoctorWhat posted:

I dunno, the other guy actually has an EARLIER regdate than Jrod, so that would take a LOT of planning going back two years.

Oh dear me posted:

As for another 'rational' principle - wouldn't it be better to try to get the maximum possible benefit from our resources? This would probably allow total private control of some resources - staplers, for example - and forbid it for others (land, uranium mines, etc). We could even have some clearly understood system of elections to determine who has the final say over a resource!

Lumpen posted:

When you say "our" resources, how do you define "us"? Only individuals are capable of acting. When you say "maximum possible benefit", how does one properly determine what is beneficial, and to whom, and when? All resources are scarce, and each individual has various wants to be satisfied and preferences of which desires are most important.

For example, individuals could disagree on which use of a forest would be considered "maximally beneficial". One might feel it should be immediately cut down and turned to lumber, another desires paper, another wants firewood more than lumber or paper. Someone else may want the trees cleared for farmland, while another may wish to see it left alone as a natural habitat, another would like it maintained as a tourist destination, and another would have it cultivated for use by a future generation. I feel that no individual or group can ever formulate an "objectively correct" answer as to what decision is the "greatest good for the greatest number". Individuals can act on their own limited information and their own ordinal economic preferences to strive for their own desired outcomes. This relates to the economic calculation problem.

My understanding is that the free market, with individual ownership of property and voluntary exchange, is the system that best facilitates the allocation of resources and factors of production to satisfy the various wants of individuals, respecting their individual choices. The economic calculation problem thwarts central planning, no matter how well-intentioned or noble the central planners may be. Electing central planners democratically doesn't resolve the economic calculation problem.