2015-01-09 13:22 GMT+01:00 Telmo Menezes <te...@telmomenezes.com>: > > > On Fri, Jan 9, 2015 at 6:50 AM, John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> On Thu, Jan 8, 2015 at 12:02 PM, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote: >> >>> >>> > What would you suggest in place of a democracy? >>> >> >> If we were starting from scratch I would suggest Anarcho-Capitalism, I >> think it would be far superior to democracy, but unfortunately we are not >> starting from scratch and so it would be very difficult to get there from >> here; >> > > I thought of writing something very similar to this but then decided not > to bother. Not because of Bruno -- he is very respectful of other people's > opinions and always argues the ideas without resorting to name calling. > > For some reason that I quite never understood, Anarcho-Capitalism (which > is just an idea) seriously offends people, to a level that makes me think > that it goes against the dogmas of some invisible religion. >
Anarcho-capitalism is bad... because it has nothing to do with anarchism in the first place except the abolition of states... as accumulation of wealth is kept under some hands, hierarchy is kept, and so Anarcho-capitalism can only leads to the richer are the rulers... money is coercion. Quentin > > > >> but don't let the word "anarchy" scare you, it just means lack of >> government. Chaos necessarily implies anarchy but anarchy does not >> necessarily imply chaos. >> >> Good laws are no different from anything else, if you want to maximize >> something then make it a commodity and sell it on the free market. But >> nobody does that for laws very much , that's why there are far more good >> cars than good laws. In a world with minimal or no government Privately >> Produced Law (PPL) would have Private Protection Agencies (PPA's) to back >> them up. Disputes among PPA's would be settled by an independent arbitrator >> agreed to by both parties BEFORE the disagreement happened. Something like >> that can exist today. When companies sign complicated contracts they >> sometimes also agree on who will arbitrate it if differences in >> interpretation happen. Nobody wants to get caught up in the slow, expensive >> court system run by governments. >> >> The arbitrator is paid by the case, and because he is picked by both >> sides, it's in his interest to be as just as possible. If he favored one >> side over >> another or made brutal or stupid decisions he would not be picked again >> and would need to look for a new line of work. Unlike present day judges >> and >> juries, justice would have a positive survival value for the arbitrator. >> >> All parties would have a reason to avoid violence if possible. The >> disputing parties would not want to turn their front yard into a war zone, >> and violence is expensive. The successful protection agencies would be more >> interested in making money than saving face. Most of the time this would >> work so I expect the total level of violence to be less than in the nation >> state system we have now, but I'm not such a utopian as to suggest it will >> drop to zero. Even when force is not used the implicit threat is always >> there, another good reason to be civilized. >> >> Please note that I'm not talking about justice only for the rich. If a >> rich man's PPA makes unreasonable demands (beatings, sidewalk justice, I >> insist >> on my mother being the judge if I get into trouble,etc) it's going to >> need one hell of a lot of firepower to back it up. That kind of an army is >> expensive >> because of the hardware needed and because of the very high wages it will >> need to pay its employees for an extremely dangerous job. To pay for all >> this they will need to charge their clients enormous fees severely >> limiting their customer base and that means even higher charges. They could >> never get >> the upper hand, because the common man's PPA would be able to outspend a >> PPA that had outrageous demands and was just for the super rich. A yacht >> cost much more than a car, yet the Ford motor Company is far richer than >> all the yacht builders on the planet combined. >> >> No system can guarantee justice to everybody all the time but you'd have >> the greatest chance of finding it in Anarcho-Capitalism. In a dictatorship >> one man's whim can lead to hell on earth, I don't see how 40 million >> Germans could have murdered 6 million Jews in a Anarcho-Capitalistic world. >> Things >> aren't much better in a Democracy, 51% can decide to kill the other 49%, >> nothing even close to that is possible in Anarchy, even theoretically. >> > > Yes. Nazis where an extreme case of statism and collectivism, and they > were democratically elected. Let's not pretend otherwise. > > >> >> In general, the desire not to be killed is much stronger than the desire >> to kill a stranger, even a Jewish stranger. Jews would be willing to pay as >> much as necessary, up to and including their entire net worth not to be >> killed. I doubt if even the most rabid anti Semite would go much beyond 2%. >> As a result the PPA protecting Jews would be much stronger than the one >> that wants to kill them. In Anarchy, for things that are REALLY important >> to you (like not getting killed) you have much more influence than just one >> man one vote. >> >> I can't give you a iron clad guarantee that some Private Protection >> Agency won't switch from being a protector to being an oppressor, but I >> can't give you an iron clad guarantee that the US Army will not overthrow >> the government and set up a military dictatorship either. They certainly >> have the means to do so if they wished to. I don't think that's very likely >> to happen, but it's far more likely than the sort of organization I'm >> talking about doing it. >> > > Exactly. Unfortunately, realising that the "guarantees" afforded by > statism stand on nothing, and are probably much weaker than structures > created by networks of self-interest, requires a level of abstract thinking > that the majority of people are either incapable of, or unwilling to embark > on. > > >> The instant a PPA starts acting in a totalitarian way customers would >> abandon it , shut off its money supply and stop its cancerous growth in the >> bud. That is a powerful tool that we don't have today, with the US Army you >> are forced to keep sending it money through taxes even if you hate what >> it's doing. >> >> But this is all theoretical, as I say we are such a enormously long way >> from Anarcho-Capitalism that it may be too late and it's just not practical >> to get to there from here. >> > > Unfortunately I agree. Statism is a very powerful cultural virus, because > it generates a huge population of dependent people. It takes control of the > minds of the citizens from a young age, using Prussian army educational > technology, teaching dependence and doing it's best to kill critical > thought and creativity. It's a technology designed to create armies and > it's very good at that. > > War is the natural talent of nation states. It's what they where invented > for and it's the only thing they can really do well. With this inclination > comes an addiction to growth, that creates ecological problems that it > tries to solve through more statism. And round we go. > > Maybe starting from scratch will be possible one day, either in another > planet or in another computation. > > Telmo. > > >> >> John K Clark >> >> >> >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "Everything List" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. >> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. >> > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. 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