The market brings true change because the change is voluntarily chosen. If your morality is a thing held in high regard by the majority it will be selected for in the market.
This is the absolute crux of what I'm getting at here. Ancaps project their morality onto the world as much as Marxists. What if the Holy Market selects for slavery, rape and murder?
I do not see countries full of rape, murder, and corruption out competing more civil societies
I should mention that if you peek under the hood of the USA/UK you'll definitely find a few of these skeletons. I'd agree that these are the people holding us back though.
true, they're definitely there just to a lesser degree. know corruption is negatively correlated with economic freedom. havent checked crime rates
I don't trust any reported rates. I'm talking about white collar crime and things like congresspeople using regulations to affect markets and take trades, regulatory capture, etc.
but even reported corruption (defined however but applied universally) is less in economically freer countries. I wouldn’t take the lack of a stat as proof freer have more corruption
"More" is your problematic word here. Are talking number of people? Raw dollar amount. $$ per capita? % of GDP? As usual, you can extract any Narrative you wish.
either way, a lack of a stat doesnt prove more or less (defined as raw dollars, per cap, or %GDP) the only stats we have (which is universally applied) show econ freedom = less corrupt
If you're using raw dollar amounts the largest economies are kings. Remember the 2008 housing crisis? What was that, 10 trillion dollhairs??
i mean sure, if you have different definitions for crimes (like insider trading by congress) the 'official numbers' wont report that. i agree that should be a crime too.
All people who are friendly have the propensity for insider trader. Just a phone call with a friend.
was talking about crime stats. insider trading was an example. meant if congress says insider trading is illegal they should also be bound by that. i'd rather insider trading be legal.
Insider trading is fine. I'm talking about funding color revolutions just to start a civil war and tank a currency that you shorted, starting wars to keep oil prices up, etc.
have you looked for academic papers? people might have tried to measure these things.
If you got a Narrative I got a statistic to prove it. I grew up i a town famous for gangsters(and still run by them) so I don't buy the "corruption and freedom don't mix" line of logic
We’re trying to see how humans behave on average which requires more than a single data point. Who knows, the data may support your experience.
Violence surrounds black market activities because the legal system no longer supports them. Alcohol industry isn’t violent today. Weed in CO isn’t violent.
As it is (like all other crony capitalism) laws meant to take down large players end up just targeting smaller players and reenforcing market dominance.
So, gov oversteps their bounds, outlaws thing people actually want, Capone supplies things. Without the laws Capone wouldn’t have been so strong as he’d have real competition.
Thank you, parts I read were interesting. Chicago history is interesting, I liked Devil in the White City too. Capone was government supported though.
Interesting hearing dogmas of capitalism come out of Alinsky's mouth right? "Community organizing" is nothing more than using useful idiots to pass laws to fatten your bank account.
If you are to become a complete and wise leader you must embrace a larger view of the Force.”
I have friends who are literally afraid of reading/watching "far right wing" publications, as if they're afraid of falling to the dark side. 😂😂😂
It's kind of like skiing. If you're afraid of falling you'll be rigid, fall even harder, and injure yourself.
Palpatine - “Anakin, if one is to understand the great mystery, one must study all its aspects, not just the dogmatic, narrow view of the Jedi.
hahaha true. bit of "know your enemy"
i understand if you've got personal experience (hard to beat) but if you refuse to measure the world around you won't make sense of it and will end up guided by your feelings.
It is dogmatic to throw out all studies because they may have data dredging. It is prudent to carefully consider studies individually and look for any flaws in their methodology.
Furthermore, it's impossible to give proper weight to the impact of the actions of a few white collar criminals(think Ben Bernanke). e.g. How many died because of the 2008 crash?
Dope, yeah I got a good list going for books I need to read. Is there a book recommendations topic yet?
haha same. so much reading, so little time. was some interest in DPR Book Club
it's different in every area and sometimes those laws are stupid. So you're not really measuring crime rate, you're measuring *obedience rate*.
I completely agree, but the data sets for what we're talking about here depend on corrupt judicial systems reporting data accurately. Then you have to consider what's legal and illegal
"patterns in data that can be presented as statistically significant, without first devising a specific hypothesis as to the underlying causality.”
yes, p-hacking is an issue (esp with big data). The issue comes from fishing through all relations looking for statistically significant ones regardless of any potential causal basis.
It's like ancaps think that valuing your neighbor's life as much as your own or your kid's(or even their next meal) is some emergent human property.
Now instead of more capitalist it is more free/more individualist.
But at the end of the day those that were more capitalist were left with greater wealth (greater influence in the world/greater economic fitness).
Much like after the Cold War the more capitalist US was left as a superpower after the fall of the USSR. Both existed for a while & people in the USSR didnt have to become capitalist
guess you could call it an emergent property. dont think it has to be forced on people though. just after the dust settles that's what will be left so might as well move toward it now
Again, it's a chicken and egg thing. I think you don't sustain a free society(nation?) unless the members of that society are committed to preserving the values/morals that created it.
process of coalescence, but there may come a time when the cost of attacking a truly free economic community is too great for the state. Perhaps BCH will play a role in the above. /2
The USA did pretty well by having a very limited mandate for the feds(border defense and basic NAP enforcement) and state legislatures. Had a target on it's back from the word go.
true, this is the problem minarchists have, how do you keep the state at this level when everyone sees it as an easy way to 'solve their problems?'
Exactly. The big problem with ancap is that, while theoretically decentralized, there's no meta-security mechanism. Once you get something good going you will def get attacked.
What you need is a nucleus of individuals around which such a society and culture can grow and which cannot be easily disrupted. Historically, the state always acts to disrupt this /1
History is not a good indicator of the future when exponentials are involved.
kowloon walled city had a good run. heard people were cramming in there despite the conditions.
I see a lot of ancaps using "the state" as an ill-defined slur, much like you'll get a Marxist screaming about "capitalists" but then it always ends up being the same gangster assholes
The state is pretty well defined, no? OTOH, socialists always cherry pick what they mean by "capitalist" which always means some billionaire govt. crony, not a wealthy dentist, etc.
yeah, state is monopoly of violence in a geographic region right?
then there is no reason to think that all behavior will follow selfish lines. Also, the anarcho part of anarchocapitalism means lack of political rulers, not a lack of rules./2
If you're playing a game and only 75% of the players are following the rules you either need a referee or you need to admit that those aren't the rules of the game.
Does 100% of the population follow the rules now? Ancap society does not demand 100% adherence to the NAP, just a critical mass (perhaps). People play by rules that benefit them.
Ancap society is basically just bitcoin protocol but in real life. If more people are not playing by the rules, the market price for defense and security will be higher (more demand)
I have a theory that the original US constitution was a PoW system that got wrecked by authoritarians under the guise of more "democracy" which allowed them to rig the rule making.
Similar to block size controls - the funny thing is that commies beg for this kind of crap. And they think majority rules (aka democracy / soft forks) are great! Keeps everyone in line
Precisely. And then once you have a mafia organisation (aka government) that issues threats of violence in order to implement price controls... market distortions happen. (1/2)
So the ancap faith is that the NAP necessarily creates a positive feedback loop if only "rulers" are eliminated? This sounds childishly simplistic and naive to me.
Been doing some research into history of Anarchy. Looks like Anarchists consider Anarcho-Capitalism to be an Oxymoron as the Capitalist is ruler in biz. structure. Anarchy b socialist.
I mean I understand the sentiment completely. I've been a punk rocker for 20 years now. It's just that an(no)archy(heirarchy) in a universe with competition is complete fantasy imo.
Altruism is found in nature, particularly among genetically related individuals. Culture is at least as important to humans as genetics, so if your neighbor holds similar values /1
Oh and your neighbor aren't enough to defend a border. And if you're forced to choose between your neighbor's or your kid's life, who's do you choose? This is anarchy after all.
***You and your neighbor***
This is a chicken and egg question here. Do societies that value a certain set of human rights succeed? Or is it that if a society is successful they come to value human rights?
So, I think more individualistic societies will over time out compete more collectivist ones, ending at what I consider the most individualistic, ancap.
If allowed, they will. You will always get power hungry people making crazy promises to the poor to get votes. The system then starts to break down. Bastiat's solution is best.
can you elaborate on Bastiat's solution or provide a link?
thank you. good read. agree. havent read the law but i've read a lot of exerts. might have it. its on my list to read.
The trick seems to be, finding the sweet spot where you have individual autonomy within concentric circles of family, neighborhood, city, nation, world. All in proper balance.
The reality seems more like a cycle. As we get more individualistic we wake up and become more successful, then we get arrogant and lazy, then fall asleep back into collective tribes.
It’s like each country tends towards collectivism during its life, but when it hits one of these sharp turning points a new level of individualism is reached.
Through the 1900s where people started moving around more. Interacting with & living with those of different race, religion, and class.
I think on the whole the trend is towards more individualism. Especially if you look from Ancient societies where everyone interacted with the same race, religion, government, class.
Yeah there’s definitely a cycle. Was talking with kokansei here somewhere about how states just grow until there is some sharp turning point back to a smaller state.
So I think the fallacy is when you assume that individualism will reach some kind of escape velocity. This sounds a lot like the Soviet Man. It's just another "substitute for Jesus".
Most people when they taste freedom (which I think more individualism would be more freedom) they crave more of it. (E.g. people liberated from oppressive regimes)
And then if you're born free and you're spoiled and ungrateful you start to think communism would be cool cuz VIVA LA REVOLUCION
unfortunately seems to be the trend :(
Agree it sounds like Soviet man. Not sure it needs to reach an escape velocity and then everything is a peaceful utopia, likely more of a gradual trend toward freedom and individualism
Individualism seems to be a big part of being an ancap.
Also you're using the word society but presumably advocating for zero meta-organization within a certain geography. But what happens when the neighboring country expands it's border?
just using society to talk about the group of people. not zero meta-organization (business organization I think is fine). know someone else mentioned how the name could be oxymoronic.
Right! "Group of people" implies there's some value that's joining them together. I don't see how a company and a government are different(unless you do some 1984 newspeak gymnastics).
these are good questions, thanks! having to spend a lot of time thinking about them. letting the question roll around my head for a few days.
I mean the typical cited difference is just that you can leave a company. I’d be fine with government if taxes were like kickstarter (pay for what/how much you want), lol.
So yeah, if you're paying some tax and getting very little back for it, fight to make it more fair! But also, don't let it ruin your day, and getting thrown in jail is not worth it.
because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy.”
it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses
Hard to say fight to make it fair with 1 vote vs 350,000,000. “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers
I mean the bottom of this conversation is ultimately "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's". If you think you'll ever get out of paying tribute to someone or something you're delusional.
Sure, agree. & I’d be happy with minarchism (like early US) where gov spending to GDP was 3%. Now we’re forced to pay for tons of crap.
There's gotta be some check on it. I think in an anarchy situation companies can become territorial mafias very easily. So no, you can't necessarily just quit.
dont agree here, but somewhere earlier said there i dont have data for this, just talking about what we thing human nature is. ehh.
I think the shared value is individualism.
Saudi Arabia, China, Soviet Russia arguably did great as a collective. The metric I'm concerned about is individual freedom within that society.
1) people are generally what you and I would consider immoral (they support murder/rape/slavery) but also 2) an immoral society can out compete moral societies
In my experience and historical research - self determination is not the human default. In situations where there is no king, groups will appoint a leader from among them.
Self-determination being “free choice of one's own acts without external compulsion?” Or right to choose “their sovereignty and international political status”
There's enough percentage of people who would sacrifice the long term for short term comforts, especially in an anarchy situation, that you'd spend a lot of energy on self defense.
I mean, certainly you could have a situation like some failed countries where everything has been stolen.
The current system incentivizes this by caring for these people, so we’re left with more of these people. In anarchy they would starve & be selected against.
Nope. The system incentivizes people to go on and stay on wellfare. They vote to get more free shit from there. If you have no wellfare people will find jobs, they wont starve.
sorry, meant the current system incentivizes people to sacrifice long term for short term. I agree with you. really meant they'd either get a job & change behavior or starve.
But I think there is an IQ issue which limits abstract thinking (ie planning for the future & what-if scenarios eg what if I need food in the future).
Hard to account for upbringing of people in all these places. If you wanted to prove such a relationship you'd have to see if it holds for kids of races raised in foreign places.
including Somalia to preempt the typical, "if you like ancap so much move to Somalia" argument
agreed. didnt mean to debate racial differences and IQ, just the best graph I had to show IQ differences across countries.
Not sure I agree here. With an anarchy there wouldn’t be a safety net. People would be responsible for their own actions and the consequences. E.g. buying a tv not food.
Further, all societies are in competition with each other. So to support your position you would have to believe
See USA after Civil War, it wasn’t kumbaya, laws against the now free slaves were enacted (Jim Crow, segregation).
You're contradicting yourself here. I thought that most people were moral but here you're saying that enacting or abolishing a law doesn't make people moral(true!).
I'm not sure I see the contradiction, could you change the wording a bit or explain it a bit differently?
So the contradiction is that you're arguing that laws are a top-down imposition but here you're saying Jim Crow laws were bottom up.(imo this is historically innacurate)
So, whites just came up with more creative ways (like segregation) to keep blacks from advancing (economically or socially)
I mean it did technically free them which is a step in the right direction but it didn’t change the feelings whites had towards blacks.
oh ok, thanks. I think you’re right Jim Crow was top-down?
I'll defer to Dinesh D'Souza on this one. It's a deep deep rabbit hole of rewritten, hidden and spun history. Start with the shock doc "Hillary's America"
Sorry! >_< I mean to say that you've indicated(I think?)that the NAP is independent of laws but then abolishing slavery(was that adding or removing a law?) didn't help to free anyone.
My point is legislating morality creates a sharp divide in an otherwise smooth transition.
Change does happen, I think people are becoming more accepting of others as the world becomes more connected.
By having a government with laws you’ve not changes those feelings you’ve just painted over them and pretend they don’t exist (which leads to resentment not acceptance).
By true change I mean it’s genuine. If the ‘holy market’ selects for rape that is what the people actually want.
Then Walmart would make a lot more sense...
Exactly. I think you do have more freedom if a sovereign nation legislates and enforces(via individual self-defence rights and small local police forces) the non aggression principle.
This is why I love the show Stranger Things - it's the story of a local cop trying to protect his community(his loved ones) from feds who violate the NAP against sovereign citizens.
I am saying that the market currently does select for these things, but not via the buyer, and not at the point of sale: there're aren't many things more opaque than a supply chain.
Right! What is the *reason* the market currently selects for these things? You have to qualify the statement "freedom begets freedom" for ancap to work. I don't think it's true.
