[starcraftzzz]

Drlee's eye-rolling notwithstanding, those seven points are excellent. He seems to either purposefully misunderstand, or else refuse to acknowledge the consequences of those points.

1. One cannot maintain an egalitarian society without ongoing and severe limitations to people's freedoms. People are not all the same. Some are able to produce much more than others. Government would have to severely restrict producer's freedoms or else confiscate most of their production if it is to keep the producers from having more than non-producers.

I see so according to you people can't voluntarily give up their massive wealth to help others. I wonder where you get toe balls to tell everyone what they can and cant do?

2. I think better examples include city streets, especially in poorer neighbourhoods. Private parks tend to be better kept than are city parks. Private bodies of water would tend to be less polluted than public ones.

I find this odd. According to you people treat what they own better then what they don't; so wouldn't it then be better that ALL people owned everything together so that they all treated everything better.

3. Government policies systematically ignore long-run effects, as well as effects on most people. How else would you explain the path to bankruptcy on which most countries find themselves? Or the systematic preference for small special-interest groups over the interests of the public at large?

So according to you ALL government polices ignore long-run effects; meaning according to you NOTHING and NO ONE focuses on long-run effects because if people did then they could implement policies that focus on long term effects.

4. The consequence is that unemployment insurance encourages unemployment, while income tax discourage work. Since the point appears so obvious, surely you can acknowledge that much?

Then how do you explain the fact that people on unemployment insurance look for jobs and find jobs quicker then those who aren't?
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/1 ... rk-harder/
http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2011/ ... insurance/

5. Fair enough. Replace "Nobody spends somebody else's money as carefully as he spends his own" with "People don't tend to spend other people's money as carefully as they do their own". Here. Same message, true statement. Consequence - government officials are not typically as efficient at spending (other people's) tax money as those people would be spending their own earnings.

Except when it comes to health care, retirement, insurance, schools, transportation, prisons, courts, charities, utilities, workers comp, and parking of which all of equals a good segment of the economy.

[Nunt]

Then how do you explain the fact that people on unemployment insurance look for jobs and find jobs quicker then those who aren't?
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/1 ... rk-harder/
http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2011/ ... insurance/

Interesting studies, but...

I am not against unemployment benefits. I think in a free society unemployment benefits would continue to exist, either on a for-profit basis (unemployment insurance), on cooperative basis (mutual fund societies) or on a charity basis (churches). Studies that isolate some aspects of unemployment benefits (nobody can argue that these studies fully take into the entire welfare program including for example taxation effects) are bound to find some positive points of the unemployment benefits. Im sure USSR state farms did also produce some output, this doesn't mean that the whole USSR state farming business was optimal. Rather in this case, it is not sure whether we should interpret more effort to find a job as a good thing. If people are paid to look for jobs, they will look for jobs. They can for example spend time applying for jobs that they know they are not suited for or applying for jobs that they don't really want and delibiratly performing bad at job interviews.

In fact, I do find some evidence of my hypothesis in the article. You would expect that if people invest more time in looking for jobs, they would more quickly find a job. However, the article says that: "some studies have attributed UI benefits to marginal increases (less than 2 weeks) in the length someone remains unemployed". So this more intense search for jobs, does not translate in more quickly finding a job. Looks like more people are pretend-searching for jobs, waisting their own time and employers' time.

Reading the comments on the article, I also found an interesting testimony supporting my hypothesis:
Kipp Inglis Yost: "OH YEAH - I'm definitely living it up on my unemployment. OH, BTW - those jobs out there pay LESS than my UI and offer NO benefits - but I'm supposed to apply for those, right? YEP, at least 2 per week."

So I think this person will appear to search more intesively for jobs, but in reality will deliberatly apply for the wrong kind of jobs and will come across as unmotivated.

[Eran]

What Eran consistently fails to realize is the tyranny of capital that would exist in the absence of any government regulation or intervention.

There is no "tyranny of capital". Capital owners exercise full control over a very limited domain. Land ownership is incredibly diversified. If you don't like one landlord, move to the land of another. Or buy your own land. You have options. With government, you don't.

It's about what works. I view the state as a legitimate tool in the toolkit to solve some of society's problems.

You present yourself as a pragmatist, opposed to libertarian (as well as other) ideologues. I am kin to expose "pragmatists" for the ideologues they actually are. So please tell me:
1. "what works" to what end? How do you determine the ends towards which the state should be employed? Aren't those ends part of your ideology?
2. "legitimate tool" in what sense? How do you determine what you consider legitimate and what isn't? Clearly you feel that the legitimacy of the state is an independent parameter from its efficacy. So your ideology is not entirely pragmatic (in the sense of means justifying the end), but contains a moral component. What is it?

Actually this entire data is bullshit.

The total government budgeted spending in 2012 is about $6.3tn, over 40% of GDP. You are only looking at current taxes, but the relevant metric is spending, not current taxation.

But this figure is itself an understatement. Government cost isn't restricted to government spending. It includes the cost of complying with countless regulations, federal and state. It includes lost earnings due to restrictions on employment and business. It includes lost satisfaction associated with engaging in victimless crimes.

And if you're rich you just need to quit your bitching unless you are going on MC Hammer style spending sprees.

This is a selfish and ignorant statement. It is selfish, because it applies your moral standards at other people's expense. It is ignorant because it ignores the consequences of taxation in terms of reducing investment and incentives to work, as well as private savings and investment. And it isn't the rich who are fundamentally bitching - it is those who crave for government handouts. The rich just want to be left alone.

Still the reason for government is that group collective action can be a lot bigger than individual action.

This is a false dichotomy. The alternative to government action isn't individual action, it is voluntary action. Voluntary action could be taken at the individual level, or as a group collective action. You would have to demonstrate why so many problems can only (or best) be tackled by coercive rather than voluntary action.

Would you, at the very least, agree that the presumption should always be in favour of voluntary action, with coercion requiring positive justification?

Also government can set laws that individuals cannot that govern the functioning of the whole society.

You say it like it is a good thing. It isn't. Why should the same laws apply for a group of over 300 million people?

It was actually Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding fathers you libertarians worship.

You should read Murray Rothbard's opinion of Franklin. He was a political opportunist, making his fortune through government contracts, and far from the libertarian spirit that animated many of the other founding fathers. As for the content of the quote, it is completely wrongheaded.

It confuses "right" and "might". Its essential claim is that since society has the power to rob people of their justly-acquired property, any property not thus robbed is a gift of society to the individual. The individual should just thank society for its generosity in not robbing him of everything he worked for. Did I get it wrong?

I love how they act like those of us who are not libertarians are actually the people taking our cut, like I am taking your mythical 40 percent personally for my own use or handing it out to my statist friends.

I think the writer was actually fair. Nobody claims you are taking the money for your personal use. But you are advocating a system in which the money is taken for those goals determined by the collective process. It is still the case that you support a process whereby individual earners will lose control over a large fraction of their earning.

As noted above, government spending underestimates the cost of government footprint. Compliance costs, for example, are not taken into account, nor are lost earnings due to excessive regulations.

Sounds like one of those liberal Supreme Court Justices but in fact it was Thomas Jefferson who libertarians worship like a god.

It was an interesting quote, but I don't think it applies. Jefferson called for constitutions to be changeable. That doesn't mean he would have supported changing the constitution through judicial whim. Jefferson was very familiar with the process of constitutional amendment. As late as the early 20th century, even progressive realised they need amendments for such things as Federal Income Tax and Alcohol Prohibition. Why does Alcohol prohibition require an amendment, while Marijuana prohibition (which I realise you don't support) doesn't?

If might does not make right then try to bring a knife to a gun fight. Might has always made right. That's the state for you.

I don't think even you believe that. If you did, why did you bother with stating explicitly that government is a "legitimate tool" for obtaining certain goals? By the logic above, "effective tool" would be enough, as legitimacy comes automatically with power.

Do you honestly believe that Maoist Cultural Revolution or Stalinist purges were right, because Mao and Stalin had might on their side?

I doubt it.

Still we also have to have some social cohesion too otherwise we degenerate into anarchy.

You say it like it is a bad thing...

Of course you don't mean anarchy in the sense of "lack of government", but in the sense of "social chaos". In that sense, I agree with your statement. But why does social cohesion have to be enforced at the point of a gun???

It may not be perfect but these are the only alternatives that can ever function in a technologically advanced society.

First, the letter writer is a minarchist, certainly not an anarchist. The alternative he is presenting is not an anarchy, but a society in which government stays out of the economy, just as western governments learned to stay out of religion (and, surprisingly, society hasn't degenerated into chaos).

As an anarchist myself, I challenge your claim. But we don't have to agree. If your argument for government was restricted to the need to maintain law-and-order, we could agree on a long list of scale-backs of government power before the question of whether the left-over is at all necessary or not becomes relevant.

But you already staked your position - you feel government is both an effective and a legitimate tool for achieving many (though not all) social goals. So don't hide behind the "without government there will be chaos" argument.

At the same time I don't see why a social safety net for those who are incapable of taking private initiative is a bad thing, or regulations to prevent the economy from collapsing and me losing all the wealth I earned via private initiative is a bad thing, or why wanting to drink water without pollutants is a bad thing because after all, isn't it cheaper just to dump your sludge in the river? A good business decision.

We can (and should) debate each of those points separately. Essentially, personal responsibility, public charity would provide ample social safety net in a world made much less expensive in the absence of government regulations and invigorated competition. Government regulations are destabilizing the economy as a whole. The fundamental reason should be easy enough to understand - government is in the business of putting all society's eggs in a single basket. It can postpone isolated failures, but only at the risk of creating a huge systemic failure (which is what we observed). As for drinking water without pollutants, why on Earth do you need government for that? Surely you can see that, not being alone, there is a huge market for companies who would be able to provide consumers with adequately pure water? With such a huge market, and without obstacles to competition, the private sector will easily tackle the problem of providing water. When was the last time you entered your supermarket and couldn't find milk or Coke? If the private sector can provide those, why don't you think it could provide you with water?

As for river pollution, you know the drill. Privatise the river, and pollution would be opposed much more effectively by the river owners than by the EPA.

This represents one of the more sizable gripes I have with "libertarians." They oppose only the parts of the government they dislike. They can't stand the government... until they start talking about property, at which point they slavishly devote themselves to the "necessity" of having one.

I am confused. Most statists equate a call to remove government from a certain area of life to indifference to that area. Libertarians have no problem with most of the services government provides. Not just property protection, but also education, safety net, roads, libraries, garbage collection, fire protection, food inspection, dispute resolution, etc, etc.

About the only state functions libertarians categorically reject are war-making, victimless crime persecution, and involuntary income redistribution.

Libertarians believe that voluntary action at the individual or community level, by for- and not-for-profit corporations is more moral, efficient and effective in meeting society members' needs and preferences.

You can't have free markets without a government to grant and protect property rights

You cannot have free markets without property rights being protected. Government routinely violates property rights. The problem of private crime is much smaller than the problem of government crime. And private crime can easily be handled by the private sector - no need for government.

"Rights Enforcement Agency" is a euphemism for government. He's just wanting to privatize the state... not eliminate it

He wants to privatise some state functions. Not government. There are critical differences between a private Right Enforcement Agency and a government:
1. Government maintains a monopoly over its functions. Private agencies don't. Competition breeds progress, efficiency and attentiveness to consumer demands.
2. Government adjudicates disputes between itself and others. Private agencies don't. Any disputes would be adjudicated by independent third parties.
3. Government keeps changing the rules (through legislation). Agencies don't set rules - they just enforce them.
4. Government agents enjoy legal privilege. Agency employees don't. When police arrests you under false pretence, you typically have no recourse once you are released. If an agency tried that, you could sue them for kidnapping.
5. Government brings in revenue through taxes regardless of how well it performs. In fact, underperforming government agencies tend to see their budgets increase, as the problems over which they preside get worse and worse. Agencies only receive fees paid to them voluntarily by customers. If they fail to satisfy customers, they go out of business.

I see so according to you people can't voluntarily give up their massive wealth to help others. I wonder where you get toe balls to tell everyone what they can and cant do?

Of course people can voluntarily give away any or all of their wealth. But then you don't need government to impose taxes, do you? Taxes are imposed because people don't tend to give enough of their wealth away to satisfy you.

According to you people treat what they own better then what they don't; so wouldn't it then be better that ALL people owned everything together so that they all treated everything better.

No. Once something is owned by everybody, it is the same as if it is owned by nobody. This is the tragedy of the commons. It doesn't matter whether the commons are owned in common, or are owned by nobody. It is still the case that nobody has sufficient interest in protecting it.

Government officials have the power, but not the incentive, to manage common resources. They are only temporary care-takers. They don't benefit from preservation of value. Their incentives are always short-term and political.

So according to you ALL government polices ignore long-run effects; meaning according to you NOTHING and NO ONE focuses on long-run effects because if people did then they could implement policies that focus on long term effects.

Government policies are set and approved by politicians. Their immediate motivation is always political. Political motivations fall into two broad categories - appeasing special interests, and appealing to the general public.

Special interests are represented by professional lobbyists and lawyers. They are very knowledgeable about issues they care about. They care, and they spend. As a result, they tend to be effective at steering legislation to their members' benefit. In part, this trend manifests itself as the famous regulatory capture.

The general public is rationally ignorant. They never bother looking at the details of any legislation. They consume sound-bytes and headlines. Policies that appear attractive are fine, regardless of how successful they are likely to be (or have been in the past). And while the public likes to be told that policies would be great in the long-run, they actually react in very short-term way. And politicians know that. So just prior to an election, the public (and consequently politicians) care about current unemployment, not about future prospects.

Then how do you explain the fact that people on unemployment insurance look for jobs and find jobs quicker then those who aren't?

That is not what the study even claims. Rather, the claim is that people on unemployment insurance work for jobs more "intensely", whatever that may mean. But I only gave unemployment insurance as an example. Welfare payments and other benefits have exactly the same effect. What's worse, while unemployment benefits are both temporary and given to people who are normally working, welfare benefits trap people in idleness.

Except when it comes to health care, retirement, insurance, schools, transportation, prisons, courts, charities, utilities, workers comp, and parking of which all of equals a good segment of the economy.

What makes you think those are exceptions? For example, do you really think people on Medicare are as careful about their health care spending as if they had to make those payments themselves?

[starcraftzzz]

--------Then how do you explain the fact that people on unemployment insurance look for jobs and find jobs quicker then those who aren't?
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/1 ... rk-harder/
http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2011/ ... insurance/

Interesting studies, but...
I am not against unemployment benefits. I think in a free society unemployment benefits would continue to exist, either on a for-profit basis (unemployment insurance), on cooperative basis (mutual fund societies) or on a charity basis (churches).[/quote]
Yes that's true, however private insurance generally is around 40% less efficient then government insurance so without govt unemployment insurance people would end up poorer; furthermore given that charity is highly inefficient compared to govt. relying on charity rather then govt to alleviate poverty means there will be more poverty and more dead weight loss.

Studies that isolate some aspects of unemployment benefits (nobody can argue that these studies fully take into the entire welfare program including for example taxation effects) are bound to find some positive points of the unemployment benefits.

Yes no one can say that studies are perfect, however the fact that I have two studies that support my opinion and you have 0 means my opinion is more valid because it is based on evidence rather then pure ideology.

I'm sure USSR state farms did also produce some output, this doesn't mean that the whole USSR state farming business was optimal.

Yes , and I accept the fact that USSR policies of starving farmers (in order to feed industrialists), kicking current farmers off their land and replacing them with non farmers, treating all arable land as the same, and having the govt make all the decisions did not result in a better agriculture industry. Ironically however when for decades the govt makes all decisions for all agriculture issues suddenly shifting to a decentralized oriented economy doesn't necessarily mean success; I say this given that after more decentralized reforms the first half decade in the USSR saw an even weaker economy then before the reforms. However I am not really knowledgeable on former USSR polices after 1990 so I do not really know if some former USSR republics found a better way to transition. However I would say that the China/Vietnam transition Model was better then the general USSR one. Given this graph (IE China and Vietnam's gradual reforms did not result in a large economic depression). However having NO reforms is worse then any reforms (given North Korea as an example).
http://www.google.com/publicdata/explor ... &ind=false

Rather in this case, it is not sure whether we should interpret more effort to find a job as a good thing. If people are paid to look for jobs, they will look for jobs. They can for example spend time applying for jobs that they know they are not suited for or applying for jobs that they don't really want and delibiratly performing bad at job interviews.

So you are saying that when people are more willing to actually look for jobs it means that they are actually deliberately not trying to get a job. Furthermore the studies include the actual occurrence of getting a job of which those on unemployment were got one quicker. So even if "activity" looking for a job means you are not putting the same amount of effort into getting a job then those not searching the end result is that those on unemployment still find jobs quicker.

In fact, I do find some evidence of my hypothesis in the article. You would expect that if people invest more time in looking for jobs, they would more quickly find a job. However, the article says that: "some studies have attributed UI benefits to marginal increases (less than 2 weeks) in the length someone remains unemployed".

Reading further," and while some studies have attributed UI benefits to marginal increases (less than 2 weeks) in the length someone remains unemployed, the JEC report concludes that this minor effect is “simply because some of those unemployed workers would have otherwise dropped out of the labor force, discouraged by lack of job prospects” were it not for their UI benefits. " The quote study then goes on to say that UI MAY be a cause, but I am betting that the real cause is a weaker economy and more people being unemployed.
Furthermore evidence ind in Austria finds that extended UI benefits actually results in less duration of not having a job.

Reading the comments on the article, I also found an interesting testimony supporting my hypothesis:
Kipp Inglis Yost: "OH YEAH - I'm definitely living it up on my unemployment. OH, BTW - those jobs out there pay LESS than my UI and offer NO benefits - but I'm supposed to apply for those, right? YEP, at least 2 per week."

....So if you cherry pick the data you can find that it supports your hypothesis, but if you look at ALL the data it supports mine.

[starcraftzzz]

-------What Eran consistently fails to realize is the tyranny of capital that would exist in the absence of any government regulation or intervention.--------
There is no "tyranny of capital". Capital owners exercise full control over a very limited domain. Land ownership is incredibly diversified. If you don't like one landlord, move to the land of another. Or buy your own land. You have options. With government, you don't.

I see so tyranny under Capital owners is alright because you can go be subjected by another tyranny or you could be subjected to the tyranny long enough to become your own tyrant/or to exit the whole tyranny charade.

------It's about what works. I view the state as a legitimate tool in the toolkit to solve some of society's problems. --------
You present yourself as a pragmatist, opposed to libertarian (as well as other) ideologues. I am kin to expose "pragmatists" for the ideologues they actually are. So please tell me:
1. "what works" to what end? How do you determine the ends towards which the state should be employed? Aren't those ends part of your ideology?

You've been told what works countless times yet you still refuse to accept reality, and in some instances claim that dying and cancer are benefits.

But this figure is itself an understatement. Government cost isn't restricted to government spending. It includes the cost of complying with countless regulations, federal and state. It includes lost earnings due to restrictions on employment and business. It includes lost satisfaction associated with engaging in victimless crimes.

Yes and all analysis of the effects of those regulations show that as a whole they save the economy far more then they cost it

And if you're rich you just need to quit your bitching unless you are going on MC Hammer style spending sprees.------
This is a selfish and ignorant statement. It is selfish, because it applies your moral standards at other people's expense. It is ignorant because it ignores the consequences of taxation in terms of reducing investment and incentives to work, as well as private savings and investment. And it isn't the rich who are fundamentally bitching - it is those who crave for government handouts. The rich just want to be left alone.

And by left alone you mean they want to pay less taxes then poor people and get govt subsidies.

Also government can set laws that individuals cannot that govern the functioning of the whole society. ------
You say it like it is a good thing. It isn't. Why should the same laws apply for a group of over 300 million people?

So for example do you think that certain people should be able to torture animals because they are different?

I love how they act like those of us who are not libertarians are actually the people taking our cut, like I am taking your mythical 40 percent personally for my own use or handing it out to my statist friends.---------
I think the writer was actually fair. Nobody claims you are taking the money for your personal use. But you are advocating a system in which the money is taken for those goals determined by the collective process. It is still the case that you support a process whereby individual earners will lose control over a large fraction of their earning.

Resulting in higher earnings/living standards for everyone

[starcraftzzz]

We can (and should) debate each of those points separately. Essentially, personal responsibility, public charity would provide ample social safety net in a world made much less expensive in the absence of government regulations and invigorated competition.

Not in reality. See this is the problem everything you say is contrary to reality

Government regulations are destabilizing the economy as a whole.

Again only in Erans fantasy world.

As for river pollution, you know the drill. Privatise the river, and pollution would be opposed much more effectively by the river owners than by the EPA.

Yet in reality when rivers were "privatized" they were polluted unit the EPA and govt came along

-------I see so according to you people can't voluntarily give up their massive wealth to help others. I wonder where you get toe balls to tell everyone what they can and cant do?-------
Of course people can voluntarily give away any or all of their wealth. But then you don't need government to impose taxes, do you? Taxes are imposed because people don't tend to give enough of their wealth away to satisfy you.

If people can do it then dont say they can't

According to you people treat what they own better then what they don't; so wouldn't it then be better that ALL people owned everything together so that they all treated everything better?------
No. Once something is owned by everybody, it is the same as if it is owned by nobody. This is the tragedy of the commons. It doesn't matter whether the commons are owned in common, or are owned by nobody. It is still the case that nobody has sufficient interest in protecting it.

I see so according to you owning a timeshare meas you don't take care of it.

So according to you ALL government polices ignore long-run effects; meaning according to you NOTHING and NO ONE focuses on long-run effects because if people did then they could implement policies that focus on long term effects. -------
Government policies are set and approved by politicians. Their immediate motivation is always political. Political motivations fall into two broad categories - appeasing special interests, and appealing to the general public.

I did not realize that there was another intelligent race of beings called politicians who lacked the human quality of planning long term.

Then how do you explain the fact that people on unemployment insurance look for jobs and find jobs quicker then those who aren't?--------
That is not what the study even claims. Rather, the claim is that people on unemployment insurance work for jobs more "intensely", whatever that may mean. But I only gave unemployment insurance as an example.

Yes you gave an example that was wrong.

Welfare payments and other benefits have exactly the same effect. What's worse, while unemployment benefits are both temporary and given to people who are normally working, welfare benefits trap people in idleness.

Given that your first example was proven to be wrong how about your prove your second example.

Except when it comes to health care, retirement, insurance, schools, transportation, prisons, courts, charities, utilities, workers comp, and parking of which all of equals a good segment of the economy.-----
What makes you think those are exceptions? For example, do you really think people on Medicare are as careful about their health care spending as if they had to make those payments themselves?

They aren't ALL the exceptions just the ones that are 100% obviously true to anyone with a brain.

[grassroots1]

There is no "tyranny of capital".

Tell this to Gilded Age laborers in America who had to unionize to struggle against that very tyranny.

[Phred]

You should read Murray Rothbard's opinion of Franklin. He was a political opportunist, making his fortune through government contracts, and far from the libertarian spirit that animated many of the other founding fathers.

Very true.

Libertarians have no problem with most of the services government provides. Not just property protection, but also education, safety net, roads, libraries, garbage collection, fire protection, food inspection, dispute resolution, etc, etc.

Please, Eran, speak for yourself and your fellow AnCaps. Don't presume to speak for me and my fellow Libertarians as Libertarianism is defined by the forum description. The only one of those services with which I agree is "dispute resolution" in the sense of the civil justice system. All the rest can and should be handled by non-governmental methods. Surely by now you have heard more than enough Libertarian/Classical Liberal/Laissez-faire Capitalist/Minarchists repeat the same mantra over and over -- "courts, cops, military". Period. Do any of those (other than the vaguely described "dispute resolution") areas on your list fall under the headings of courts, cops, or military? Nope.

You cannot have free markets without property rights being protected. Government routinely violates property rights.

Non-Libertarian governments in existence today do that, yes. What's your point?

And private crime can easily be handled by the private sector - no need for government.

This is an unsupported assertion. See viewtopic.php?p=13952398#p13952398 as just one of many posts in this forum contradicting this false statement.

3. Government keeps changing the rules (through legislation). Agencies don't set rules - they just enforce them.

Who sets the rules? What substantive difference is there between the agency that sets the rules and a democratically elected legislature operating under a constitution of enumerated powers?

4. Government agents enjoy legal privilege. Agency employees don't. When police arrests you under false pretence, you typically have no recourse once you are released. If an agency tried that, you could sue them for kidnapping.

Oh yeah? At some other "agency", I'm guessing. Which brings us to the obvious question - why should the arresting agency give two squats what the suing agency thinks?

5. Government brings in revenue through taxes regardless of how well it performs. In fact, underperforming government agencies tend to see their budgets increase, as the problems over which they preside get worse and worse. Agencies only receive fees paid to them voluntarily by customers. If they fail to satisfy customers, they go out of business.

What money do these agencies receive from imprisoning, say, a serial rapist?



Phred

[Rich]

"Why is it that you libertarians never seem to learn anything about business? You see almost any shortcoming in a government program as a reason to end all government programs, but you rarely see any market failure as a reason to regulate. In fact I wonder at times if you are honestly capable of identifying the shortcomings of the free market at all! Do we really have to give you an encyclopedia of social inequality, market failures, and bank collapses to get your attention? Do we have to recite all the libertarian utopias that never materialized, the wealth that never trickled down, and the problems that the libertarian economists said the free market was supposed to solve on its own but that continued on into perpetuity?

An excellent post Nucle Punch, what in the military sphere would be described as destruction in detail. Of course the Libertarians like the Commies always have the escape clause that its not true libertarianism.

The first States that we know about arose in Mesoptamia. 80 -90% of the population lived inside the city walls, although 80 - 90% of the population worked on the land. The state arose to defend private property and the persons of those who owned and worked private property. What is the difference between a market economy and the law of the jungle? A set of rules that are enforced by the state. The market economy is the creation of the state. Pre state societies didn't have market economies. They were internally collectivist and their external relations were dominated by frequent conflict. Market relations made up a small amount of pre state economies.The costs due to lack of security were prohibitive for any capital intensive venture. The early states were formed by petty capitalists, middle class farmers, what Marx would label the petit bourgeois. They were democratic and egalitarian. Unfortunately differential accumulation, led to widening inequalities which undermined the basis for democracy, coupled with the fact that these democratic hard working owner farmers, the salt of the earth, these primitive early sturdy yeomanry, the fore runners of Mel Gibsons Patriot were not adverse to going over to neighbouring polities, sacking their cities raping their women and enslaving their population.

The Libertarians want to eliminate government bureaucracy and rely on the courts, even for nuclear power safety. It was the capricious nature of the endless court actions that brought an end to what was left of Democracy in the Roman republic

[Eran]

I wrote: "Libertarians have no problem with most of the services government provides. Not just property protection, but also education, safety net, roads, libraries, garbage collection, fire protection, food inspection, dispute resolution, etc, etc."

Please, Eran, speak for yourself and your fellow AnCaps.

In this particular case, I think you misunderstood my point. Please read it again carefully. I didn't say anything about libertarian views as to which type of organization ought to provide different services. Merely that we libertarians have no problem with those services in and by themselves.

Do you know of any libertarian who objects to any of those services being provided one way or another?

Non-Libertarian governments in existence today do that, yes. What's your point?

That was precisely my point. Elsewhere I have argued that a government completely free of property right violations is impossible, but there is no need to take this discussion on here. I was arguing with a mainstream statist (Someone5 I believe), not with you or with other libertarians.

This is an unsupported assertion. See viewtopic.php?p=13952398#p13952398 as just one of many posts in this forum contradicting this false statement.

I accept that it is controversial. You point to an ongoing thread in which I have so far responded to each of your points (and I have no doubt you'll be able to respond to each of mine). I think our discussion is more civil when we restrict the adjective "false" to factual claims rather than mere opinions (as both yours and mine are).

Who sets the rules? What substantive difference is there between the agency that sets the rules and a democratically elected legislature operating under a constitution of enumerated powers?

No particular organization needs to set the rules. In the common law system, for example, no single organization set the rules. Rather, judges discovered the rules member of society were in the habit of obeying.

Oh yeah? At some other "agency", I'm guessing. Which brings us to the obvious question - why should the arresting agency give two squats what the suing agency thinks?

Because the question would be brought in front of a reputable and neutral arbitration company. If the arresting agency refuses to engage in arbitration, or to comply with the decision of the arbitrator it will be marked as an outlaw, and the combined forces of the rest of society would be brought to bear against it.

Why does the President give two squats what the Supreme Court thinks?

What money do these agencies receive from imprisoning, say, a serial rapist?

Local insurance companies would gladly pay to get a serial rapist (and all the claims he generates) off the streets. Additionally, the rapist can be made to work, and part of his income would go towards the cost of his capture, conviction and incarceration.

[Elect G-Max]

Let's say that the whole country is a China-shop. Every facet of society that can be represented by a social institution is stacked and arranged together in great showcases and piles of very delicate plates and tea cups. Secondly, suppose that humans with tools which developed and are continually developing historically, are inside this shop carrying out construction operations. Now let's tell this story.

(blah blah)

Cool story bro.

Now tell us one that it comparable to reality in some way.

[Rei Murasame]

If you don't have a real response to my post, then don't bump a thread from months ago.