Now you’ve answered the question in a way that I can’t disagree. I just had issues with your initial argument that advanced goods would fail. I’m satisfied with this, so I’ll leave the pro-anarchy agruments to the anarchists.
How will Anarcho Capitalistism affect transaction costs and efficiency?
Nothing is backing notes now. And you don’t have to accept them if you don’t want to.
Any group of people could get as big as they could support a common cause. This would be varying sizes at varying times.
Yes, the stock market wouldn’t really be possible because stock as we know it wouldn’t exist because corporations as a legal entity couldn’t exist.
Act like that, what makes you think anyone would want to sell you something?
Well clearly we wouldn’t have your help.
erl, you still seem to be ‘wishing away’ these unreasonable bad eggs (which might even appear to include me or lambchops) who would reduce your notional anarchy to a world of shit.
I ask again: is your commitment realistic? We likely share the same ideal. What do you think you and I disagree on here?
We disagree, I though, on the most obvious thing of all: whether or not humans are capable of anarchy. The answer is overwhelmingly ‘no’ because of looters and vandals and people with big guns… and of course, there are no guns, nothing to lot, and nothing to vandalize because there’d be no economy anyway. Acoording to some. Me? I think it is possible. It doesn’t take magical ubermensch. Government is an agreement between a large number of people, that’s all it is. Of course, I see no reason why we can’t agree to do without this silly government if we’re already set on agreeing. Then the counter is that, oh, but no one agrees!
Whence government?
[hijack]For years I’ve typed incorrectly, necessity being the teacher, and chat rooms, emails, and IMs the context. Lately I’ve been teaching myself how to type ‘properly’ and hence, numerous typos. Sorry! :o [/hijack]
Of course they are capable of it. Downtown Mogadishu is accessible by a real aeroplane, not through the back of a magic wardrobe.
If you are genuinely being realistic, the question is surely “Are humans capable of an anarchy which does not engender vastly more suffering than we have in responsible utilitarian democracies today?”
A I say, I’m willing to entertain the notion that technological advancement will somehow increase the likelihood of such capability in the far future, accounting for unreasonableness and bad eggs. But right now? I wish it were otherwise, but no. Actually believing that repealing all laws will make our societies better seems to me the height of naivete.
The question is void, because the counter isn’t “no-one agrees” but “some people won’t agree, just like they don’t agree today, but today there is machinery in place to handle that”.
I actually came back and re-read this thread so I could be sure my question had not already been answered. And it hasn’t. What is the mechanism for enforcing contracts and resolving disputes?
Lambchop asked this question, in a slightly snarkier form, and got this response.
That’s not the level of discourse I expect in Great Debates, so I’ll ask my question without sarcasm or wordplay.
What is the mechanism for enforcing contracts and resolving disputes? Please do not simply say “arbitration.” That only works when both parties agree in advance to abide by the decision. I’m talking about conflicts where someone is not going to be happy whatever the outcome.
Captain Amazing:
OK, fair enough. (Reputation, at any rate. Property is still somewhat problematic). People could print their own money and reputation enables its valuation. We will assume sufficient general trustworthiness and good will (or sufficiently enlightened self-interest, if you prefer) that we don’t have to worry about people of less stellar reputation printing facsimiles of the money that has the good reputation. Essentially it is trust, in lieu of law enforcement, that makes it possible, yes?
Question: why bother? Once you’ve got that degree of trust and voluntary cooperation, why not just go with general reciprocity instead of having a money system?
The money system brings with it its own baggage, it’s own value system if you will, most of it competitive and therefore adversarial. It concentrates wealth and creates economic stratification. Anarchy, necessarily, revolves around a value system that is cooperative and nonadversarial, and concentrated wealth and stratification seem inimical to that. Ownership and possession of anything is a notion held by the owner and shared in common by others such that we all agree you own such-and-such, and in an anarchy, by definition, if you are no longer perceived to be the owner of something, unless you’re carrying it around on your back or under your arm, well you sort of aren’t its owner any more.
General reciprocity makes more sense in an anarchic environment. Don’t keep track of transactions formally, just give and take “family style”, and let reputation alone (rather than currency made valuable by reputation) be the factor that prompts ready & willing cooperation.
kunilou’s question has been asked - one way or another - by lots of people in this thread (including me). It’s the question here.
My claim is that all voluntary exchange takes place in the shadow of coercive power. That is not to say that there would be no voluntary exchange under anarchy, just that the facilitating power would be local and lawless. Certainly transaction costs would be higher were contracts enforced by the Mafia. My answer to erislover’s Whence government? is that it’s the Mafia constrained by happy accident in some places. Those places get rich and constraints are maintained and tightened by luck, inertia and self-denial by a few.
On money (free banking instead of monopoly)
The standard reasons still apply: information - It’s a convenient way of measuring trade-offs (we haven’t assumed those away have we? ;)), storing up value for later, a handy unit of account etc etc. Of course, in this world, we’re not talking of abolishing money(s), we’re just asking whether it (they) would survive.
Obviously I’m discounting your view that money brings its own baggage. You could expand on this, and perhaps explain why you think money or government prevents the emergence of cooperative relationships. In a way that’s a hijack, because you’re obviously not an ararcho-capitalist, but it would be interesting anyway.
Oh come on. I gave you the answer the question warranted. A local shopkeeping won’t accept checks from people who’ve stiffed him in the past. He ate that transaction. What mechanism did he have, civil court? Heh. Cute. No, he ate the bounced check, ate the cost of the goods, and simply hung it up on his wall.
So in other words, “Please don’t actually answer my question.” That’s not the level of discourse I expect in Great Debates. But nonetheless, I will respond with the utmost civility anyway.
Absolutely correct. In fact I think it is very important to always keep this in mind. It is good that we see eye-to-eye on this part.
Ah, well, why didn’t you actually say so? Now I see what the problem is. Without a permanent enforcement mechanism and permanent method of arbitration, a significant number of people would not be able to resolve disputes because there is no pre-defined way disputes are handled. In other words, the question you’re really looking to ask is, “Absent a permanent sense of forced order, how can you force people to do stuff when they don’t wanna?” Tricky question indeed. And, of course, by asking it, one expects an answer. Unfortunately, I have no answer to give you. Perhaps two people who are disputing will request their otherwise uninvolved friends to serve as a jury. Perhaps they will draw straws, play chess, or step into a boxing ring to settle their dispute. Perhaps one party will simply, like our humble storekeeper, give in to defeat. Perhaps they will attempt to use force to settle it, there being no civilized method of agreement. In short, perhaps things will get handled much as they do now.
What ensures you behave honestly? A law against it. What ensures you’ll follow the law? The threat of force. What stops you from shooting the cops that show up at your door? Nothing (except a law against guns… but even then, you know how black markets are), except a fear of more punishment. What is there to fear from punishment…?
That is the question I would like you to answer. What is there to fear from punishment that anarchy cannot address in a similar, if not identical, manner? I don’t require everyone in anarchy be reasonable all the time (that would be a strange requirement). In fact, I downright expect people to be unreasonable a great deal of the time. Actually, that’s my problem with government: people, Eris bless 'em, are still unreasonable somehow, still bounce checks, declare bankruptcy, steal, murder, rape, vandalize, form gangs… yep. One day I read the line, “Government is an illusion in the mind of the governors,” and I said, “No shit, man, that’s so deep.” 
Actually, it is totally trivial. Have you noticed?
Except the OP seems ok with the idea of private ownership and wealth concentration, and you don’t need a government to have private ownership or concentration of wealth, I guess. You own property so long as you can defend it from those people who want to take it.
Nah. Most people aren’t looters and crooks. You own property so long as others respect your use and possession of it. I assure you the window on my car isn’t stopping anyone. And, since my car has been stolen, I can also assure you that the government isn’t stopping it, either.
Right, but what if somebody doesn’t? What happens to the person who wants to take your property?
If you or yours could not protect it, you’d likely lose it. Isn’t this a truism?
Well, yes, which is why I said that in the OP’s scenario, “You own property so long as you can defend it from those people who want to take it.”
In our existing system, I can own the computer I’m typing on, the clothes I’m wearing, and the book I’m intermittently reading. I could probably own those in an anarchy easily enough, since the computer is a laptop. It all goes where I go, and unless someone tries to take them from me by force (a somewhat unlikely proposition even for the computer), they are mine, I’m holding them and I represent a barrier to anyone else trying to do so.
But in our existing system I can own my apartment with all its contents, I could own this business with all its machines and materials, I might own the Canary Islands for that matter.
Unless I move my business to the Canary Islands and live in my business building, I’d have a much harder time in an anarchy establishing that I’m the owner (and I couldn’t easily be in it and my apartment simultaneously no matter what). And I’d live a rather circumscribed life, never leaving my business-residential building.
“Ownership” as we think of it is entitlement backed up with the force of law. Opportunistic thieves may break in but if caught they go to jail; if they stay and argue with me about who is the owner, courts will sort it out if it’s complicated, cops with handcuffs if it’s pretty straightforward and obvious.
“Ownership” as we think of it is not mediated by any sense of fairness. But in an anarchy, if I decide I “own” a huge chunk of property (Manhattan, let’s say), the willingness of other people to go along with that is likely to be tempered by their need to walk on it to get where they’re going or to use some of it for their own purposes.
hawthorne
The marxist folks use a condemnation of the ills of capitalism to justify a “big chief” / redistributivist economic solution: everyone piles everything in front of the Big Chief who distributes it “fairly”. Their proposal is an economy older than capitalism (it’s tribal) and I won’t waste any time discussing what’s wrong with it, but their condemnation of capitalism is pretty much dead on.
And “capitalism” as indicted by the marxists is pretty much the money system, raw and unfettered by any ameliorative governmental interferences such as laws against monopolies, laws imposing fair business practices, laws protecting employees and guaranteeing the safety of the workplace, etc etc. No evil people or evil classes of people really need apply, it’s simply how the money system itself works.
• While any given exchange may be perceived as beneficial to both parties to the transaction, the system tends over time to concentrate capital. Once a small concentration has been achieved, its very existence creates the leverage to concentrate more (make a better profit), marginalizing and eliminating competition in that market, then expanding vertically to encompass the markets pertaining to the production and distribution of source materials and those pertaining to the distribution and endpoint selling of the finished product along with similar items; then expanding horizontally to encompass similar parallel markets that can make similar use of the same sourcing and distributing and reselling arrangements.
• While any given exchange may be perceived as beneficial to both parties, each party has an incentive to extract the greatest benefit from the exchange that’s possible, which has the general if not universal effect of occurring at the expense of the other party. In conjunction with the concentrating effect noted above, this results in those individuals (or collectivities: families, businesses, corporations, etc) with a greater amassed concentration of wealth being in a better position, over time, to extract more benefit from a sequence of transactions and exchanges than those they interact with. Thus, an adversarial, not merely a competitive, relationship is posited between parties to these transactions: the losers, those who extract less benefit from transactions over time, become increasingly subject to privation; the losers in any given transaction have, in general, an increased likelihood of being losers in transactions to follow as a direct consequence of having extracted less benefit from that particular transaction.
• This sequence of concentration of wealth and of the tendency for the benefits extracted from exchanges to include increased ability to extract more benefits from future exchanges means that the money system itself, through its own machinations – how its activities play out as a game – victimizes people who do not end up holding concentrated wealth at the outcome. Given anarchy – the freedom to play or not play this game, the freedom to choose to ignore claims about ownership and the desirability or necessity of possessing money in order to engage in transactions – it seems inevitable that many such victimized people would do so, would help themselves to the things that their loser-status privations have denied to them within the game, and that in the absence of governments, police forces, and other organized systems of forcible enforcement of rules that would be the end of the money game.
• Voluntary cooperation as a modality makes one’s reputation currency; the person who, through his or her activities, treats other people well and pitches in and helps out, acquires more of this currency so as to better obtain participatory help from others later. The money system introduces a different currency which rewards a very different set of behaviors, adversarial behaviors, zero-sum behaviors defined in terms of maximizing one’s benefit in each transaction.
• The acquisition and concentration of wealth becomes its own motivation through economic Darwinism (no rapacious exploitative bourgeois capitalists need make an appearance): of three people/orgs/etc each of which has a large concentration of capital, the one that acts so as to use that concentration to concentrate yet more capital will thrive at the eventual expense of the others. Therefore activities that are not deemed intrisically desirable by any participant take place as a means of trapping more money in this particular pile. Paper mills are built at the expense of nice forests and pretty rivers in situations where we would have done OK, paperwise, without them, and the monetary expense of cleanup is saved at the nonmonetary expense of leaving the place a polluted ugly-looking eyesore; and if not by this family or business, by the next one that takes over the business-territory by having amassed more capital and dominated the industry.
And so on. We end up doing things not in our enlightened (or even unenlighted short-term megaselfish) best interests as a consequence of using the money system. And we end up canning anarchy in favor of organized law enforcement or else we discontinue the money system at the point where hardships and the general sense of the unfairness of it all motivates the losers to stop playing.
I can see anarchy as a stable system, or money as a stable system, but I just can’t see a hybrid of the two existing as a stable system.
At last, one of the clearest, most honest and most straightforward answers ever posted in any forum on this message board. Thank you,erislover.
May I restate this topic as I currently understand it?
Every form of government by its very nature infringes on the interactivity between people. It imposes a value system, by force if necessary, rather than allowing individuals to choose their own behavior.
Anarcho-capitalism permits (indeed, relies on) individuals being completely free to develop an effective and interdependent society using their own values, capabilities and needs.
Am I correct so far?
Allow me to restate my question: in an anarcho-capitalist society, how are disputes resolved and agreements enforced? By the threat of force? Isn’t that the same way government operates?
The difference being that in a representative government, the rules and enforcement of dispute resolution are codified, with each member of that society (theoretically) having input into the proces, and, therefore, a stake in the outcome. What societal advantage is their to the ad hoc rules and enforcement in anarcho-capitalist society?
Yes and no. Disputes are resolved through some method of agreed arbitration, the exact details of which, for what I think are obvious reasons, satisfy the disputees alone and could vary wildly. Where there can be no agreement, force may come about.
Yes. Except that, generally speaking, most of us don’t have a stake in the outcome even though we back it up with force anyway.
I’m not sure how to answer this in a way that will satisfy you.