Anarcho-capitalists, I'm calling you out.... (2 Viewers)

[murphyad]

Its already very progressive in theory. You need to put forward a system that results in the rich actually paying the tax rates the law states they are required to pay. You also haven't addressed the problem of subsidies and corporate welfare by the state that benefit the rich.

With due respect to your points on this issue (which tbh I think are fair enough) we are straying off-topic.

Children are not bound to any contract made by their parents or guardians once they turn 18. So if the normal laws of contracts are to be applied to the social contract, then the social contract immediately ceases to be valid once you turn 18.

I can't find any reference to this law. Could you link it for me please? Besides, one is perfectly capable of renouncing their citizenship once they turn 18 and becoming a stateless individual.

Right so if I get enough people with guns together to command authority I can validly make such a contract?

Well, not really. The social contract is the concept that human beings have made an agreement with their government, whereby the government and the people have distinct roles and responsibilities. It's based on the premise that the common rank & file actually want a state and therefore the need of the state to be answerable to it's people. For a brief overview see here:

What is the social contract?: Information from Answers.com

In the sense that a contract is a legally-binding agreement between two parties (the "general sense" as you so put it), the social contract is perfectly valid, as it applies to both the state and the individual, the two parties who have agreed to enter into the agreement (see above), and is of course legally binding. Granted, it is of a particular form, but it is still a form of contract, hence its particular name, the 'social contract'. And I would argue that it is a good thing, at least potentially - see the linked article for elaboration.

Whatever. It doesn't change the reality of people being locked up for victimless crimes, does it? Nor does it change the fact that if you don't pay your taxes you will eventually be locked in prison, which is the problem I was pointing out in the first place.

A criminal is a criminal regardless of their offense. Of course there are degrees, but that does not change the fact that a person convicted of persistent tax evasion has breached the law, just as a murderer has breached the law. Tax is a part of the social contract as described above. Essentially, tax is payment in exchange for services from government as I'm sure you are aware.

 

[copkiller]

With due respect to your points on this issue (which tbh I think are fair enough) we are straying off-topic.

Not at all. If you maintain that inequality is so great a problem as to make AC unacceptable, you should be able to demonstrate that the state can effectively reduce it to an acceptable level.

I can't find any reference to this law. Could you link it for me please?

Well I'm pretty sure parents can't sign children up to a contract which binds them to be obligated under the contract as adults. Do you disagree? Maybe someone who studies law can help us out here because I'm not 100% sure to be honest.

Besides, one is perfectly capable of renouncing their citizenship once they turn 18 and becoming a stateless individual.

Statelessness does not allow you to escape the rule of the government. You still have to live somewhere and all land is claimed by governments who impose their laws on citizens and stateless individuals alike.

Well, not really. The social contract is the concept that human beings have made an agreement with their government,

I don't recall making such an agreement.

In the sense that a contract is a legally-binding agreement between two parties (the "general sense" as you so put it)

Offer and acceptance of the contract are also essential ingredients.

"Agreement is said to be reached when an offer capable of immediate acceptance is met with a "mirror image" acceptance (ie, an unqualified acceptance)." - just from wikipedia, but a good, simple guide.

Where was the part where the government made me an offer and I gave unqualified acceptance?

A criminal is a criminal regardless of their offense. Of course there are degrees, but that does not change the fact that a person convicted of persistent tax evasion has breached the law, just as a murderer has breached the law. Tax is a part of the social contract as described above. Essentially, tax is payment in exchange for services from government as I'm sure you are aware.

Tax is not a payment for services in the same way that you may freely contract for other services. You are simply told how much tax you will pay and what services you will receive. If you refuse to pay you will eventually be imprisoned.

 

[Empyrean444]

(4)Don't forget that the standards imposed on AC must be reasonable, for eg. it's not reasonable to expect that AC national defense (in a small nation) should be impervious to the world's superpower invading - because if that small country had a democratic national defense it would also fail in this instance.

Just on this specific pt:
The particular instance holds true, but if we had a small 'region' of AC and a small democracy, then, even if they would both lose against a superpower, it is plain wrong to say that both would have an equal collective miltary potential (if we assume that important factors like population, martial doctrine and level of war-tech are equivalent). A democracy would already have a centralised (and therefore 'unified'), streamlined and integrated military, whilst in the AC region the various private defence contractors would have to actually join forces at the outbreak/in the lead up to a war. This is by no means guaranteed, and creates a whole lot of problems in command structure, integration of forces/potentially differing or incompatable technologies etc etc. While I can understand that AC does theoretically wish to reduce/eliminate violence, it is not really a solution that can work securely on a non-global scale.(Viz. even if we do not have states everywhere, we will still have geographical regions which may not wish to go anarchist or may unite together etc. In such a case, regions that are AC are immediately under threat, because, as the argument has gone, of the inherent power of the state; it of course follows that they will be limited in their faculties for resistance. Man has shown a tendency to conquer if it may benefit him and the theoretically lucrative collective wealth of as AC geo area might just be such an enticement). I feel that anything that really requires global political transformation to actually definitely work is not something I would put my faith in.

 

[volition]

Empyrean444

(1) I don't think AC necessarily needs to be implemented world-wide for it to work. Free Market National Defence

(2) I think part of the reason war has been so prevalent in the past is that the people who choose to go to war, don't have to pay for it. Some people make the decision, and then tax everybody else to pay for their war. In AC, one definite advantage is that if you want to go to war, at least you have to pay for it yourself. This alone would make it harder to go to war.

(3) I think there are many examples of government inefficiency that I could point to, such as fraud within the military, special interests (such as the gun manufacturers etc) who bribe/make campaign contributions to politicians to get defense contracts etc. Then there's the fact that the government has no feedback mechanism (like private businesses do), so it is not being disciplined by the profit and loss system. Private business actually loses money (and so has more incentive to care about these things and punish/fire the people involved), the government just taxes you more.

 

[volition]

murphyad, with the social contract:

(1) If it's really like every other contract that we enter into - then does that mean if the government fails to fulfill one of it's duties, then the contract is void? Because governments around the world continually fail their duties, such as failure at protecting the people, failure in providing health care etc.

(2) Also, with these types of things, there is usually a 3rd party that you can go to when you have a dispute. With the 'social contract' between person and state, if the person feels he/she is wronged, who do they go to? A court run by the state. The state gets to decide who 'wins the case'. There is a clear conflict of interest here.

 

[murphyad]

murphyad, with the social contract:

(1) If it's really like every other contract that we enter into - then does that mean if the government fails to fulfill one of it's duties, then the contract is void? Because governments around the world continually fail their duties, such as failure at protecting the people, failure in providing health care etc.

This technically would be true apart from the fact that it is pointless to apply such absolute notions of failure to governments. What constitutes failure? One case? Ten percent of the total amount of cases? If anyone attempts to apply such a definition, the result would simply reflect their particular interests: a state would adopt a definition that is sympathetic to itself whereas a libertarian might perhaps apply a definition that would leave no possibility for vindication of the state. The way I see it is that a government should strive to serve it's people to the best of it's ability and if this requirement is not being met (eg. popular discontent) then attention is required. While this idea is still quite subjective, it leaves more room for interpretation of the duties of government than the excessively black-and-white ideas about 'success' or 'failure'. Whilst still a 'contract', the social contract is unique in some ways to other contracts, and while I am not an expert on this subject, it appears to me that the social contract governs a society as a whole and is not meant to be rigidly negotiated at an individual level, if that makes sense.
Next up, even if a government 'voids' its social contract in this way, there is no logical progression from this fact to the foundation of an AC society.

(2) Also, with these types of things, there is usually a 3rd party that you can go to when you have a dispute. With the 'social contract' between person and state, if the person feels he/she is wronged, who do they go to? A court run by the state. The state gets to decide who 'wins the case'. There is a clear conflict of interest here.

Again I feel that this is a case of excessive absolutism. You have treated the state as a single monolithic entity, but the fact is that in Australia and other countries the separation of powers is provided for. While the court system to some extent does constitute 'the state', it does not directly serve that body's interests. May I remind you that in a criminal court a government prosecutor is required to make their case; it is not as though the judge is the prosecutor. If the state decided who 'wins the case', it would rule for itself every time, but this does not occur in reality in Australia. The judiciary does not represent the interests of the state, they represent the judiciary, and the judiciary decides who 'wins the case', not the state. Thus the 'social contract' between a government and its citizens is in fact comprised of a number of parties: local, state and fed govts, police, judiciary and citizens. None of these state agencies represent a unified front against the common citizen, despite that being an image that is highly popular in AC dialogue.

 

[volition]

This technically would be true apart from the fact that it is pointless to apply such absolute notions of failure to governments. What constitutes failure?

I think part of the reason the social contract is unreasonable and unrealistic, is that it doesn't even provide the conditions under which it is voided. A smarter way to do this type of contracting would be to specify the conditions, rather than leaving it open to arbitrary notions of ten percent etc.

So this gets around your problem easily, but I still don't think you've found a way to effectively argue that children are bound by the contracts their parents sign. If there ever was any such thing as a social contract, it would only apply to those people who were around when it came into being and were able to agree to it. For everybody born afterwards, they cannot justly be held to it since you have to have offer and acceptance before a contract is valid.

You have treated the state as a single monolithic entity, but the fact is that in Australia and other countries the separation of powers is provided for....

Ok so allow me to demonstrate why I think this doesn't really work. The general idea of governments is kind of formed around this idea that - in private society, we wouldn't be able to resolve our disputes without a 3rd party, so 'therefore' we need a government to be the 3rd party for our disputes.

So if the judiciary is genuinely separate to the other functions of government, why is it that my taxes go towards those other functions too? If it were really just the judiciary, then why must I pay to support these other arms of government? And why do those other arms of government still set the overarching rules (eg. legislation) down that the judiciary must follow? The separation is not good enough.

The real problem occurs, not in disputes between two private individuals, but in disputes between an individual and the state. According to the above 'argument' about 3rd parties, why is there not a 3rd party above the state that I may appeal to? And in fact, doing this results in an infinite regress, because it just means government above government above government and so on. So, do you think we should have a world government (to appeal to when your country's government does wrong against you)? And another government above that (for when the world government fails you)?

 

[copkiller]

The separation of powers is good in so much as it reduces corruption, but it does nothing to undermine laws which are themselves corrupt.

if the judiciary interprets a law in a way the parliament disagrees with, the parliament can, and often does, immediately pass legislation to clarify its meaning.

Even if somehow a citizen were able to successfully argue that the government had violated the social contract, and the courts found the contract was void, the government would immediately pass legislation to prevent this from happening again.

Another reason why the social contract is void is that the government has extensive laws outlining your obligations, but very few outlining its obligations to you. An essential feature of a contract is that something of value (consideration) is provided to secure to promise made in the contract. The idea is you get services you value like roads, schools, hospitals ect if you don't pay your tax. If you don't pay your tax you get sent to jail, but the government is able to provide poor quality roads, schools and hospitals with impunity.

 

[Empyrean444]

Empyrean444

(1) I don't think AC necessarily needs to be implemented world-wide for it to work. Free Market National Defence

Interesting article. I feel though that the final assumption is oversimplified. It follows:
"no state would be willing to expend more resources invading another territory than it would actually gain by doing so, because no state would willingly follow a policy that leads to its own destruction." This is problematic, because:
1) The 'gain' of the territory (or even of, say, some form of tribute) is hard to be accurately estimated because of factors associated with immediate and short term as opposed to a long term benefit. For instance, a state might be willing to expend huge resources which would be foolish in the short term for the promise of an overall long term gain.
2) As Clausewitz indicates, war is not a completely rational force or policy, so even if a state would receive more holistic benefit in not invading, it may well be deluded (or even make reasonable assumptions that, with later hindsight, turned out to be misleading). While this may damage the state, if it succeeds by expending more resources than it gains, the result is the practically the same for the AC region.
3): The final statement of the quote is unfoundedly clairvoyant. A policy that costs more than it gains will not necessarily lead to its own destruction (certainly not in the short/medial term, at any rate).

On top of this, even if the insurance network were to contact/employ/involve all available large scale military defence contractors, this is still problematic because it does not necessarily solve the purely military problems that result from having providers in conflict with each other that would be less marked in one state. For instance, command structure of the forces combined (even indeed if they were to do this), problems with disparities in equipment, problems with different conditions/wages of soldiers under different firms, integrating the various branches (viz. land, naval, air) which will probably be provided by different groups etc etc. This is not to mention the problems associated with single companies amassing extremely expensive fleets (naval and air). For instance, in such a situation where the different arms/manpower provides are at least a little disparate, a state may well be able to launch a surprise attack which will be all the more harder to quickly recover from because of these structural problems.

Any state has the ability to wage a total war (ie enforce societal controls and subsume/halt certain industries in favour of others) if it can convince its people of the justice or potential gains of the conflict. An AC region cannot of course do this (certainly not with a similar level of ease). Moreover, limited expansion/economic intimidation against individuals on the fringes of an AC region could be employed by the state with little repurcussions from other AC magnates so long as it can convince them of their safety. Just some thoughts.

Once again, while states are each limited in what they can actually do by differentiations in relative might, the 'state' has advantageous structures which give it an upper hand. I admit that a lot of this comes down to problems with the final assumption.

 

[HumanDichotomy]

Any state has the ability to wage a total war (ie enforce societal controls and subsume/halt certain industries in favour of others) if it can convince its people of the justice or potential gains of the conflict. An AC region cannot of course do this (certainly not with a similar level of ease).

This would definitely be the main problem I would have with AC. The existence of a state (and here I'm talking about the Australian state) provides commonality against which we can measure our own and others' behaviour. Where would the common standards be in AC? What sort of dangerous situations could this create? This is not to say that the state is perfect, by any means, but imo, we need some sort of centrality which provides certain guidelines.

 

[volition]

Empyrean444,

1) If the gain from invading is hard to be estimated, then that means it is harder to convince people to support/pay for the war
2 + 3) I'm not suggesting that "AC defense is infallible and no state in it's right mind would ever invade". So yes, it is possible that some crazy dictator of a large nation wants to go to war even if it is ridiculously expensive - and this is a problem that would equally apply to any democracy wanting to defend itself from the dictator.

Let me just remind you that I'm not dealing in perfect solutions here, I'm just trying to present the case for what I believe to be better than the current situation. Don't forget that in AC, there is no 'head' to lop off (conquering now means an invader has to be even more thorough and take all the land, not just the big cities - and then potentially deal with guerillas because the invading forces are spread too thinly), there is no taxation apparatus to gain control of (which makes recouping the costs harder).

HumanDichotomy,

Not having the state as the one, large overriding authority does not mean that standards won't arise. Private standards arise all the time, look at competing standards in products such as Bluray and HD-DVD, where the market (which is really just a matrix of exchanges) eventually chooses one and that's what most people use. Did the government have to set down the standardised system of batteries too? AA, AAA, C, D etc? Or clothes sizing? QWERTY or DVORAK? What about being able to use your Westpac keycard at an ANZ ATM? There's lots of standardising that went into that and pretty much none of it required the state.

And if you think this works for 'normal' goods, but wouldn't work for laws, then I'd recommend watching this series: Anarchic vs Statist Law and Justice. Prior to the government stepping in, many businesses were able to work out a common set of rules to conduct international business by - without the aid of the government - because it was their individual self-interest in the matter that led them to want to do this.

Lastly, there is no world government setting down the standards for individual nations. Are you in support of a world government?

 

[Ayatollah]

This would definitely be the main problem I would have with AC. The existence of a state (and here I'm talking about the Australian state) provides commonality against which we can measure our own and others' behaviour. Where would the common standards be in AC? What sort of dangerous situations could this create? This is not to say that the state is perfect, by any means, but imo, we need some sort of centrality which provides certain guidelines.

what a disturbing admission,
you would be out raping/butchering innocent bystanders if such behaviour where not 'illegal'?
you dont 'just know' when something is wrong? very odd

 

[Openlang]

Here's a breakdown of some of Naomi Klein's deliberate distortions in her book Defaming Milton Friedman - Reason Magazine .

 

[Planck]

Was anyone posting anything in favour of Klein's book?

 

[Riet]

DVORAK is actually a better layout its just convention that most people still use qwerty.

 

[yoddle]

I went to the Black Rose anarchist bookshop when I was in Sydney, and hung out with some semi-comitted anarchists for most of the time.

I really liked their frame of mind where they realised they had a much better, healthier, relaxing and satisfying lifestyle than the suits. And they did. All fiercely intelligent and fiercely anti-capitalist.

Efficiency, the growth paradigm, increased productivity etc, are all abstract concepts, I think, in comparison to life.

Relevance? Dunno.
Just sayin'.

 

[jennyfromdabloc]

All fiercely intelligent and fiercely anti-capitalist.

In a state of anarchy, how can you suppress capitalism?

 

[HumanDichotomy]

HumanDichotomy,
Not having the state as the one, large overriding authority does not mean that standards won't arise. Private standards arise all the time, look at competing standards in products such as Bluray and HD-DVD, where the market (which is really just a matrix of exchanges) eventually chooses one and that's what most people use. Did the government have to set down the standardised system of batteries too? AA, AAA, C, D etc? Or clothes sizing? QWERTY or DVORAK? What about being able to use your Westpac keycard at an ANZ ATM? There's lots of standardising that went into that and pretty much none of it required the state.

Yes...ok. Didn't make it clear what I actually meant. Sure, there are still standards. But...you've hit the nail on the head with the notion of competition...there would be no laws to regulate the extent to which the competing companies could exploit the consumers...and you'd get different standards with different companies...even if some laws *did* arise, they would be competing as well...the law companies or whatever.

what a disturbing admission,
you would be out raping/butchering innocent bystanders if such behaviour where not 'illegal'?
you dont 'just know' when something is wrong? very odd

What a ridiculous assumption. You're attacking a straw man here. Of course I, as an individual, am not devoid of morals...but we're talking about whole systems here...societies, companies etc.

 

[volition]

HumanDichotomy, way to only read my first paragraph

Did you not see the stuff about how international business originally ran?

Or the objection regarding the fact that the individual nation states of this world have no one large overriding authority to rule over them?

 

[samsunghugh]

Can someone please explain to me (and I apologise if it has been said before, I did not read this thread in its entirety) but, in a anarcho-capitalist society, what is to stop a person (or group) gaining absolute power?