: : The idea that we can replace government with some kind of competing business in the use of force, is the idea of competing businesses in force, it's government by mafiosi: What makes you think that governments around the world arent competing 'defense agencies' - competing for 'customers' to keep them going (and holding them in or out with border controls) - that 'representative' democracy is any more (or indeed, more) effective in the US agency than the voices of one of these private agencies customers and shareholders would be in a 'free archy'?
SDF: Because representative democracy gives everyone (not just those with money) a vote and thus a LIMITED say in the affairs of government, and because government-as-it-is is sworn to protect everybody, again not just those with money. Again, the regressive move of "Free-archy" is that democracy is lost, along with any residual notion we might have that government is more than a commodity.
: 'Free archy' sounds like a form of massively devolved 'government' to me, but one mediated by effective demand rather that 'born here? ok your ours'
SDF: The key phrase is effective demand. With democracy, effective demand is at least partially spread to the voting public as a whole. Free-archy proposes limiting effective demand to cash up front.
: : and what determines that you do is not your ethical objection to the "State," but rather your will to make profit as a business.
: And you do this by 'pleasing customers' so unless a vast amount of people would support viciousness and injustice the idea of it all collapsing into chaotic gang fights seems far fetched.
SDF: One need not patronize a "vast amount of people" to run a business. In fact, one person with enough money need be your only employer. Having a job often works that way. Did you know that? It's really amusing when anarcho-capitalists pretend to be not smart enough to understand how capitalism works, requiring the rest of us to adopt the above condescending tone.
: what you would seem to offer in return? A very large agency given absolute power over a nation (or a world) and having various people 'represent' vast tracts of different people in the hope that it all evens out and doesnt get too bad (hmm, Waco), or the unlikely stateless-whatever version.
SDF: It isn't my pretense that capitalism offers us 31 flavors of choice as to what government we would or wouldn't like. That's why I'm recommending working for a better society.
: : What it really means is creating a society based on CO-OPERATION -- we can't, after all, agree on our rights without first co-operating with each other. It's also going to mean a society based on SHARING -- nobody is going to willingly agree to be destitute while others live in the lap of luxury. All of which implies a BETTER society, with less of the tough luck factor, than the one
: hence my post to RD saying pretty much, neither option is likely to ever happen.
SDF: Anarcho-capitalism is even less likely to happen, not merely because it's out of reach, it's furthermore illogical, since its ontology is static and thus wilfully ignorant of how people become or don't become "sovereign individuals," and undesirable, being too filled with the tough luck factor.
: : Sorry, Armstrong, your expectations and reality are two different things. You may dream that there's no money in defending irrational, rights-violating people, but successful thieves will be able to pay for the defense of their loot.
: He ought to admit that the present 'agency' in charge of the US and supposedly in receipt of direction from 'the people' is remarkebly adept at doing the above.
SDF: I'm glad we agree that Free-archy is no improvement on the above.
: : The observant reader will note, here, that crime in any real society (excluding fantasy societies dreamt-up by anarcho-capitalists)
: or stateless socialists
SDF: No, actually the stateless socialists have a solution for crime, integrating the "criminal" into society as a whole, rather than merely paying for their ignorance of the causes of social deviance by assuming that "some people are just bad."
