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Discussing a voluntary society

young grasshopper

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Hi, I'm making this thread in response to this post from Erimir Erimir :

Well, it sounds like you're some kind of anarcho-libertarian, which is a whole other discussion*.

But the point is that government shutdowns are not caused by big government, because they are practically unheard of outside the US, and the US has a smaller government (relative to its size) than many countries. That point is unaffected by your other policy preferences.

*I do have a couple questions about this system of "voluntary contracts between private individuals", that would perhaps be better answered elsewhere.

The first can be answered yes or no: does this mean you want the elimination of corporate entities (i.e. corporations), given that they only exist as a legal artifice created by government? Discussing the implications of either answer would require going off-topic though.

The second is more complicated and best discussed elsewhere, but you can create a new thread if you're interested: where does land ownership come from under this system? Or, will there be no such thing as land ownership? (I think the lack of a satisfactory answer to this question basically undermines the whole libertarian ideology.)
Firstly, my point was not that shutdowns are caused by government being too big, but rather are worsened by the size of government, due to the fact that a larger government has more relying on it. Thus, more is neglected in the case of a government shutdown.

As for corporations, a voluntary society will allow people to voluntarily associate, sharing economic assets and risks with one another. However, a corporate "entity" that can assume legal responsibilities would not be acceptable, because the individuals comprising the corporation cannot be relieved of their legal liabilities and responsibilities. Doing so would be analogous to saying that your car had personhood, running someone over, and then blaming it on the car.

As for land ownership, property rights naturally flow from the principle of self-ownership. A person owns themselves and their labor, and thus are entitled to own whatever natural resources they directly improve using their labor. These are logical rights that I assert exist in principle whether they are respected or not. In the absence of a coercive state, there would still be "governing" services that would seek to protect rights and settle disputes for their clients. The main difference is that you wouldn't be forced to subscribe to such services under the threat of physical violence. This is what might be called a "private law society". I fully understand that a society free from all crime is rather Utopian, and I am not blind to the reality that property rights will be violated to one degree or another in any society. What I am arguing for is a society that refuses to legalize and legitimize crime.
 

Luigifan18

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Personally, I find corporations having no legal obligations except to their shareholders to be deplorable; that arrangement promotes a whole lot of greed-driven screwing with people, animals, the environment... basically, the fact that corporations are only properly obligated to maximize returns for their stockholders means that they're encouraged to do extremely unethical things if it means making more money. That is flat-out messed up.
 

young grasshopper

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Personally, I find corporations having no legal obligations except to their shareholders to be deplorable; that arrangement promotes a whole lot of greed-driven screwing with people, animals, the environment... basically, the fact that corporations are only properly obligated to maximize returns for their stockholders means that they're encouraged to do extremely unethical things if it means making more money. That is flat-out messed up.
Such exploits are made much easier due to government regulations restricting the market and weakening the power of individuals to protect their own land. A lot of factors play into the issue, chief among them being restricted markets causing laborers to have fewer employment choices, and a phenomenon known as the "tragedy of the commons" wherein blurring the division of individual property leads to exploitation and neglect.
 

Erimir

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As for land ownership, property rights naturally flow from the principle of self-ownership. A person owns themselves and their labor, and thus are entitled to own whatever natural resources they directly improve using their labor. These are logical rights that I assert exist in principle whether they are respected or not.
What do you mean by "natural resources"?

I can understand, ok, I grew these tomatoes, so these are my tomatoes. Or even, I dug this iron ore out, and then I refined it into pure metal, so it's my metal. That makes some sense for ownership, I suppose.

But what gives me the right to use a particular plot of land to grow my crops? Or to mine a particular vein of iron? Do I get to assert exclusive rights to farm or mine that land, and if so, why? Where did the rights to use that land come from?
In the absence of a coercive state, there would still be "governing" services that would seek to protect rights and settle disputes for their clients. The main difference is that you wouldn't be forced to subscribe to such services under the threat of physical violence. This is what might be called a "private law society".
But why would I agree to use these services for resolving a contractual dispute if I have good reason to believe that they will not side with me?

If someone is a wealthy person who brings lots of business to the "governing service", and I (not wealthy) have a dispute with that wealthy person, why would I expect to be treated fairly by the service, who obviously has a financial interest in the wealthy individual continuing to subscribe to their services?

And if we can't agree to use the same service, and reach an impasse, how would things be resolved other than by (what I would expect things to devolve into) "might makes right"?

How would I, as a regular Joe Schmoe, feel that this is a less coercive situation than the current one?
 

young grasshopper

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What do you mean by "natural resources"?

I can understand, ok, I grew these tomatoes, so these are my tomatoes. Or even, I dug this iron ore out, and then I refined it into pure metal, so it's my metal. That makes some sense for ownership, I suppose.

But what gives me the right to use a particular plot of land to grow my crops? Or to mine a particular vein of iron? Do I get to assert exclusive rights to farm or mine that land, and if so, why? Where did the rights to use that land come from?
But why would I agree to use these services for resolving a contractual dispute if I have good reason to believe that they will not side with me?

If someone is a wealthy person who brings lots of business to the "governing service", and I (not wealthy) have a dispute with that wealthy person, why would I expect to be treated fairly by the service, who obviously has a financial interest in the wealthy individual continuing to subscribe to their services?

And if we can't agree to use the same service, and reach an impasse, how would things be resolved other than by (what I would expect things to devolve into) "might makes right"?

How would I, as a regular Joe Schmoe, feel that this is a less coercive situation than the current one?
Land would be owned similarly to any other resource. The default state of land is unclaimed, in which it can be used by anyone. By improving the land with your labor, you gain ownership of it and the right to determine its use. The simplest way to gain ownership of a plot of unclaimed land is to plant a garden/field or to build a structure on it. Once land is owned, it can be traded or given through voluntary exchange (this is important since most land in the world is already owned).

As for the prospect of governing services being biased, we have to keep in mind the whole reason someone is subscribing to them in the first place: their credibility/reputation. People subscribe to court services in order to avoid costly conflicts and might-makes-right situations. The only courts that can succeed without the officiating power of the coercive state are ones who have a strong reputation for being fair and honest. If a court takes bribes, then its word is no better than anyone else's.

The issue of two people trying to use different courts was also one of my first objections to voluntaryism. In the case of an impasse, courts would use what is called "trial in absentia" as a last resort, evaluating the evidence and claims in absence of the defendant. This is far from the ideal though, and makes for a less certain case. In order to avoid conflict and maintain reputation, the court and the person filing the claim have every incentive to have the defendant at the case, and the defendant, naturally, will want to be present to defend themselves before the court. Each person wants a court that will favor them while also being respectable in the eyes of others and agreeable to their opponent, and thus their interests will meet in the middle with an impartial court. Ultimately, the fear of a might-makes-right situation is not a proper argument against a decentralized, voluntary court system, because the state court system we have now is enforced by the might-makes-right idea of sovereignty.
 

Luigifan18

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Such exploits are made much easier due to government regulations restricting the market and weakening the power of individuals to protect their own land. A lot of factors play into the issue, chief among them being restricted markets causing laborers to have fewer employment choices, and a phenomenon known as the "tragedy of the commons" wherein blurring the division of individual property leads to exploitation and neglect.
Government regulations serve to prevent dishonest and coercive shenanigans like price fixing.
 

young grasshopper

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Government regulations serve to prevent dishonest and coercive shenanigans like price fixing.
Price fixing is an action of government. In a free market, prices are chosen based on the values and interests of consumers. It takes a massive amount of influence to fix prices, and so far only governments have been able to enforce price fixing on a large scale (which usually leads to food shortages and starvation). When corporations and conglomerates tried fixing prices, most smaller businesses were able to give secret discounts and thus bypass the corporate meddling. This led corporations to lobby for price disclosure laws, which made it difficult to get around price fixing without going to the black market to do so. Take government power out of the equation, and competition sorts the problem out.
 

Erimir

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Land would be owned similarly to any other resource. The default state of land is unclaimed, in which it can be used by anyone. By improving the land with your labor, you gain ownership of it and the right to determine its use. The simplest way to gain ownership of a plot of unclaimed land is to plant a garden/field or to build a structure on it. Once land is owned, it can be traded or given through voluntary exchange (this is important since most land in the world is already owned).
Yeah, that last bit shouldn't be a parenthetical, given that it's actually far more important than the stuff before it.

You're not proposing a society on the Azores in 1400, which were uninhabited and only just being settled. You're proposing a model of society for the world, in which the ability to gain ownership of unclaimed land is basically irrelevant.

So, as we transition to this "voluntary" society, are all present land ownership claims presumed to be valid? Are we using the register of deeds of the "coercive government" as our determiner of whose ownership claims are valid? It would seem to me that a coercive government's assignments of ownership would be illegitimate, so how would it make sense to convert them into legitimate ownership? But if we're not using that as the basis, which ones will be presumed to be valid?

I mean, in the Americas, if you trace land ownership claims back in time, it seems to me that most land ownership claims come from some combination of conquest (displacement or murder of native peoples) and official government action. How can we discuss land ownership in the US without discussing the Homestead Acts, which were laws that granted land ownership of 270 million acres (nearly 10% of the land area of the US) by government action. You might object that ownership was transferred on the basis of making land improvements, thus comporting with your rules. But the first homestead acts originated during slavery (obviously meaning that African-Americans were unable to benefit), and even after the Civil War and the 14th Amendment they de facto excluded African-Americans. Additionally, only US citizens were eligible and Chinese immigrants were prohibited from obtaining citizenship and their US-born children were not considered citizens until an 1898 SCOTUS case (US v. Wong Kim Ark).

And that's ignoring the fact that all that homesteading land was being taken from Native American tribes! Of course, since many Native American people did not "improve" the land according to European/American standards (nomadic buffalo hunting doesn't count as improving the land, so therefore they have no claim to the land they've lived on for years and years). They were not necessarily interested in making European/American-style private land ownership claims either. I suppose it's "voluntary" for them to be forced to live according to a private land ownership vision of society though, eh? And is it voluntary for only enclosed ranches, settled farms and the like to be considered valid bases for land claims, ignoring other ways of living off the land? But even if they did want to become Euro-American style private land owners, Native Americans who maintained tribal affiliation were not US citizens at this time, so they weren't eligible to gain land through the Homestead Acts either.

What is the argument you would make to an African-American, a Native American or a Chinese-American as to why these land grants should be considered valid in this "voluntary" society? Or would you say that Native Americans should be able to make claims to their ancestral lands? And African-Americans, the ones who did the real work of "improving" most of the farmland in the South (not even accounting for the fact that their ancestors were enslaved and could be said to be owed restitution for that as well), should they be able to make claims on that land?

Also, are absentee land owners allowed to continue owning land? Am I allowed to own thousands of acres of land that I have allowed to return to a wild state? Am I allowed to pass it along to my descendants who then do nothing with it? Can I prevent others from "improving" that land? Can squatters supercede my land ownership claims?

Saying "if you improve the land, you get to own it" and "you can trade or give land through voluntary exchange" (and oh, yeah, most land is already owned but how we deal with that is a minor detail) makes for nice pat answers, but the issues you're glossing over are huge.

(And we haven't even gotten into issues involving tragedy of the commons.)
As for the prospect of governing services being biased, we have to keep in mind the whole reason someone is subscribing to them in the first place: their credibility/reputation. People subscribe to court services in order to avoid costly conflicts and might-makes-right situations. The only courts that can succeed without the officiating power of the coercive state are ones who have a strong reputation for being fair and honest. If a court takes bribes, then its word is no better than anyone else's.

The issue of two people trying to use different courts was also one of my first objections to voluntaryism. In the case of an impasse, courts would use what is called "trial in absentia" as a last resort, evaluating the evidence and claims in absence of the defendant. This is far from the ideal though, and makes for a less certain case.
How are the court's decisions enforced?

And a reputation for fairness is not the same as actual fairness. Do you suppose that racism would just poof and disappear? What if a court is widely considered unfair by African-Americans due to racial bias, but white Americans, who are the majority, don't see any problem with it? This isn't an implausible scenario, this is basically all of American history. So what do they do in that situation?
In order to avoid conflict and maintain reputation, the court and the person filing the claim have every incentive to have the defendant at the case, and the defendant, naturally, will want to be present to defend themselves before the court. Each person wants a court that will favor them while also being respectable in the eyes of others and agreeable to their opponent, and thus their interests will meet in the middle with an impartial court. Ultimately, the fear of a might-makes-right situation is not a proper argument against a decentralized, voluntary court system
But the parties to a dispute are not necessarily equal in power. If the more powerful party refuses to use a fair court acceptable to the less powerful party, what recourse does the less powerful party have, exactly?

The notion that everyone will just agree that the more powerful party is in the wrong and their chosen court's reputation will be destroyed or something like that just seems laughably naive to me. I mean, your whole thing is declaring that the current government is illegitimate, coercive and unfair, yet the large majority of people do not see it that way. Why would you assume that they would naturally come to the right conclusion about a corrupt "governing service"?
because the state court system we have now is enforced by the might-makes-right idea of sovereignty.
The courts in the current system certainly have large problems, but they are at least theoretically accountable to the people through the influence of elected officials, rather than who chooses to be a subscriber to their services. The notion that a court system that has elements of democratic accountability should be seen as "might makes right" requires assuming that you're right in the first place. Or supposes that I need to be arguing that a democratic tax-funded government system is perfectly just in order to argue that yours is worse.

The system you're describing would be less transparent. What would force these courts to release transcripts? A non-trivial motivation of corporations and wealthy individuals putting binding arbitration clauses into contracts is the "confidentiality" these private courts provide (they even advertise this as such). And hell, we assume that proper news would be available to people in the first place. But how would media even work in your society? Nobody would have exclusive broadcasting rights, there would be no public infrastructure guaranteeing an ability to distribute news to all the people. The assumption that people will be able to learn of a court's corruption, even supposing they could do anything about it, seems a bit optimistic.
 
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young grasshopper

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Regarding the subject of the homestead act and other related issues, I agree that the way in which the property was claimed was illegitimate. If someone can present a proper case for their being the rightful heir of a piece of property, then it should be transferred to them. If no case is presented, then a forceful transfer of the property from someone who may not be the rightful owner to someone else who may not be the rightful owner doesn't make much sense.

As for the court issues, I am not blind to the fact that courts have problems. A subscription-based court system might not be a good idea. It was merely one possible idea I could see arising in a free society. Ultimately, the court system which best meets the needs of the people will become successful and other courts will learn from its example.

Regarding the notion of our current courts being accountable, that is sadly mistaken. Democracy tends to dissolve accountability by a huge degree, and is absolutely terrible for minorities. The choice of the people is only in effect once every few years or so, and the choice of the majority is forced upon the minority whether they like it or not. In a democracy, the official depends upon most, but in a market, the official is accountable to each individual they do business with.

My basic premise is not that evil will not occur in the absence of government as we know it. My premise is that all people should have the same rights and be judged by the same standards. If I forced you to pay me protection money, and threatened to lock you in a cage should you refuse, you would rightly call it robbery. When the government does the same thing, it is called taxation. I'm not against the basic services that government provides; I'm against the fact that it's given a double standard. My conception of a voluntary society is just one attempt at theorizing a culture that refused to use a double standard in its ethics.
 

Erimir

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So for a person of Lakota descent, you would want them to present evidence linking them specifically to a particular plot of land, even though we know from historical evidence that the Lakota people were semi-nomadic, following buffalo herds, and roamed generally the western portion of South Dakota, ND, NE and eastern Wyoming, and did not practice private land ownership in your sense? That would basically admit to a blanket denial of any Lakota claims to most of the land they used to live on.

I also don't really consider it a valid argument to just say "the courts are hugely corrupt" without actually presenting any evidence of that. Nor for you to make general claims about democracy and accountability without considering democracies in general. You might think the US government is unaccountable (I think it lacks enough accountability, but this is largely due to undemocratic features like voter suppression, gerrymandering and poorly designed electoral systems), but that doesn't really demonstrate the claims since there are many other democracies. The notion that Sweden, for example, is an unaccountable hellscape where the citizens are constantly trampled by the government... does not really hold up. I have lived in Sweden, under your theories it should be clearly worse than the US, since they have a bigger government. It is not (aside from the weather...)
 
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Mic_128

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Take government power out of the equation, and competition sorts the problem out.
Except that the bigger businesses just squash little businesses. We've had a lot of smaller green grocers here getting pushed out of the market by the bigger businesses lowering prices to where the smaller places couldn't afford to keep in business, then when they were gone, raising their prices back up.
 

Luigifan18

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Except that the bigger businesses just squash little businesses. We've had a lot of smaller green grocers here getting pushed out of the market by the bigger businesses lowering prices to where the smaller places couldn't afford to keep in business, then when they were gone, raising their prices back up.
That is exactly what I meant by "price fixing", and the government had to step in to make that illegal.
 
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young grasshopper

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So for a person of Lakota descent, you would want them to present evidence linking them specifically to a particular plot of land, even though we know from historical evidence that the Lakota people were semi-nomadic, following buffalo herds, and roamed generally the western portion of South Dakota, ND, NE and eastern Wyoming, and did not practice private land ownership in your sense? That would basically admit to a blanket denial of any Lakota claims to most of the land they used to live on.
I might be willing to adjust my theory of original property to account for these cultures.

I also don't really consider it a valid argument to just say "the courts are hugely corrupt" without actually presenting any evidence of that. Nor for you to make general claims about democracy and accountability without considering democracies in general. You might think the US government is unaccountable (I think it lacks enough accountability, but this is largely due to undemocratic features like voter suppression, gerrymandering and poorly designed electoral systems), but that doesn't really demonstrate the claims since there are many other democracies. The notion that Sweden, for example, is an unaccountable hellscape where the citizens are constantly trampled by the government... does not really hold up. I have lived in Sweden, under your theories it should be clearly worse than the US, since they have a bigger government. It is not (aside from the weather...)
Democracy is inherently unjust because it allows people to force their will upon others. It doesn't matter how many people agree with my opinions about how you should spend your money, I can't form a mob to steal your wallet and choose how to spend it. Democracy also dilutes individual responsibility by assimilating the individual into the crowd. If some people want to form a voluntary democracy, they are free to do that. It becomes unjust when democratic decisions are forced on someone who did not consent to be a part of that system.

Now, I fully recognize that there are many democracies today that are thriving for the moment. That is largely because government is not the primary factor in determining the quality of a country. Culture and economy play much larger roles than government does. Throughout history, though, democracy has a trend of slowly wearing away at the heart of a nation and causing it to collapse on itself over time.




Except that the bigger businesses just squash little businesses. We've had a lot of smaller green grocers here getting pushed out of the market by the bigger businesses lowering prices to where the smaller places couldn't afford to keep in business, then when they were gone, raising their prices back up.
A big business cannot afford to continue raising their prices, because competitors can always spring back up if there is demand for lower prices. Government regulations and tax codes make this more difficult by getting in the way of start-up businesses (this is a part of regulation capture). A company that squeezes a free market too tightly will find that it slips through its grasp. Even if this was not the case, is it right for one person to use the threat of violence to control someone else's business? Every government regulation is enforced with the eventual threat of violence, be that robbery, kidnapping, or murder. I find it reasonable to say that the only proper uses of such methods are against people who partake in the same violent crimes.
 
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Erimir

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Democracy is inherently unjust because it allows people to force their will upon others. It doesn't matter how many people agree with my opinions about how you should spend your money, I can't form a mob to steal your wallet and choose how to spend it.
Nothing you've proposed would stop people from forcing their will upon others.

It's all based on pretending that two sides of a contract are always equally powerful. But if someone is starving, I can get them to sign a contract with all sorts of things in it. I could force them to live in my company housing and eat at the company store, and this will be better than starving, but coincidentally, I'm paying them less than I'm charging them for rent.

And when they want to escape and not pay back the debt they owe me, I will send my hired "government services" to retrieve them. We will not be able to agree on an arbiter, or they won't know of any more fair arbiter, and at any rate, we did have a contract. What would the punishment be for breaking the contract and/or being in my debt?

But hey, it's better than starving, and the contract was "voluntarily" entered.

What enables people to force their will upon others is a concentration of power. Government and democracy can at least theoretically address that problem. The US is not the best at this, but other democracies (Sweden is one example) have much more equal distributions of wealth, which is a good proxy for power. You would throw away any tools that could address a concentration of power, thus inevitably, someone will acquire enough power to impose upon others.

I don't think it's any better that some rich asshole imposes on you than for the democratic majority of people to sometimes impose on you (in situations where they disagree with you... I assume you're mostly fine with democratic laws against murder).

We can't prevent any imposition on anyone's freedom, it's just impossible. But democracy is better than "voluntary" contractual feudalism.
 

young grasshopper

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Democratic laws against murder are redundant, because murder already violates individual rights. Murder has been recognized as immoral in nearly every society, regardless of whether the said societies had democracy or not.

My argument is not that anyone should be able to buy a government so as to oppress people, but that no use of government oppression should be given false-legitimacy. Having monolithic governments like we do today creates a nasty combination of false-legitimacy and concentrated power. They restrict travel, prohibit products, grant monopolies, manipulate trade, indoctrinate children, start wars, and force us to pay for all of this at gunpoint. Governments, as they exist in the world today, are inconsistent with individual human rights.
 

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Hi, I'm making this thread in response to this post from Erimir Erimir :



Firstly, my point was not that shutdowns are caused by government being too big, but rather are worsened by the size of government, due to the fact that a larger government has more relying on it. Thus, more is neglected in the case of a government shutdown.

As for corporations, a voluntary society will allow people to voluntarily associate, sharing economic assets and risks with one another. However, a corporate "entity" that can assume legal responsibilities would not be acceptable, because the individuals comprising the corporation cannot be relieved of their legal liabilities and responsibilities. Doing so would be analogous to saying that your car had personhood, running someone over, and then blaming it on the car.

As for land ownership, property rights naturally flow from the principle of self-ownership. A person owns themselves and their labor, and thus are entitled to own whatever natural resources they directly improve using their labor. These are logical rights that I assert exist in principle whether they are respected or not. In the absence of a coercive state, there would still be "governing" services that would seek to protect rights and settle disputes for their clients. The main difference is that you wouldn't be forced to subscribe to such services under the threat of physical violence. This is what might be called a "private law society". I fully understand that a society free from all crime is rather Utopian, and I am not blind to the reality that property rights will be violated to one degree or another in any society. What I am arguing for is a society that refuses to legalize and legitimize crime.
Life was like this to an extant already going back to Ancient Greece but the psychological need to form tribes underpins human nature to an extent that regardless of logic one cannot assume we wouldn't start forming groups regardless of the structure apparent or intentions behind them. And as such the tribe of America seems the safest solution though obviously it does have its problems.
 

young grasshopper

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Life was like this to an extant already going back to Ancient Greece but the psychological need to form tribes underpins human nature to an extent that regardless of logic one cannot assume we wouldn't start forming groups regardless of the structure apparent or intentions behind them. And as such the tribe of America seems the safest solution though obviously it does have its problems.
I'm not against groups and group structures. Rather, it is my assertion that group structures operate best when they respect individual rights and uphold consistent standards. There have been a few cases throughout history where individuals partook in free association while respecting one another's rights and enforcing justice without the need for a mandatory government.

Sources for historical societies that got close to the ideal of voluntarism:
https://freeblr.org/faq/resource/anarchism/have-there-been-any-anarcho-capitalist-societies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism#Historical_precedents_similar_to_anarcho-capitalism
(I know Wikipedia is usually not a reliable source, but this section is filled with good citations, and it is more simple to link the page than it is to list all the primary sources)
 

Sucumbio

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I'm not against groups and group structures. Rather, it is my assertion that group structures operate best when they respect individual rights and uphold consistent standards. There have been a few cases throughout history where individuals partook in free association while respecting one another's rights and enforcing justice without the need for a mandatory government.

Sources for historical societies that got close to the ideal of voluntarism:
https://freeblr.org/faq/resource/anarchism/have-there-been-any-anarcho-capitalist-societies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism#Historical_precedents_similar_to_anarcho-capitalism
(I know Wikipedia is usually not a reliable source, but this section is filled with good citations, and it is more simple to link the page than it is to list all the primary sources)
Well okay but those examples were mostly during perilous times and or were peopled with savages. Not to disparage those peoples but I'm not a savage, or a gunslinger or sword wielder etc. Modern convenience is a by-product of capitalism, surely. And so groups will still meander toward cooperation corporations because if every man is an Island so to speak then tribal mentality dictates we harbor together leading to what we already have. I understand the appeal to dial it back but us.gov is still the best solution for this many people. If we found ourselves in a world like Walking Dead then sure just look at how Negan vs Rick turned out... Fascism. Not the best ideal but it's where you end up when might makes right.
 

young grasshopper

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Well okay but those examples were mostly during perilous times and or were peopled with savages. Not to disparage those peoples but I'm not a savage, or a gunslinger or sword wielder etc. Modern convenience is a by-product of capitalism, surely. And so groups will still meander toward cooperation corporations because if every man is an Island so to speak then tribal mentality dictates we harbor together leading to what we already have. I understand the appeal to dial it back but us.gov is still the best solution for this many people. If we found ourselves in a world like Walking Dead then sure just look at how Negan vs Rick turned out... Fascism. Not the best ideal but it's where you end up when might makes right.
I think trying to force one solution on such a large number of people whether they like it or not is a bad way to meet the basic human need for community. Take a look at Facebook, or think about the stereotypical Thanksgiving dinner, and then try telling me that the US government helps bond human society. I think that society is a beautiful thing, and would be even better if it arose from people freely choosing who they want to congregate with and under what terms. The best parts of society are the parts we choose for ourselves: who to love, who to work alongside, who to worship with. Making governance a choice would only make it better.
 

Luigifan18

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I think trying to force one solution on such a large number of people whether they like it or not is a bad way to meet the basic human need for community. Take a look at Facebook, or think about the stereotypical Thanksgiving dinner, and then try telling me that the US government helps bond human society. I think that society is a beautiful thing, and would be even better if it arose from people freely choosing who they want to congregate with and under what terms. The best parts of society are the parts we choose for ourselves: who to love, who to work alongside, who to worship with. Making governance a choice would only make it better.
In before prejudice screws everything up...
 

young grasshopper

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In before prejudice screws everything up...
Prejudice is a problem that will not be solved by restricting a person's choice of association and governance. If people want to choose how they associate based on prejudice, that is bad, but it is not the kind of problem to warrant the use of violent force. Government control and regulation is, in its very essence, a form of violent power, and must be restricted only to cases that demand the use of such force. Every government ruling is backed up by an "or else" statement. If we want to enjoy a civil society where different ideas can be expressed and tolerated, then physical violence must be restrained to its most necessary role.
 

Erimir

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Democratic laws against murder are redundant, because murder already violates individual rights. Murder has been recognized as immoral in nearly every society, regardless of whether the said societies had democracy or not.
Right, so you agree that it should be illegal, which is all I was saying - that you don't always disagree with the conclusions of democratic processes.

Weirdly you didn't have many thoughts about how free workers in company towns with their "voluntary" employment contracts would be, and how your society would respond to these types of arrangements.
[governments] restrict travel
They also make travel safer and cheaper. Do you really think we would be able to drive from Dallas to Philadelphia cheaper on private roads? Does having centralized air traffic control not help us prevent airplanes from crashing into each other? And safety regulations in cars and planes protect us from dying due to mechanical errors, and make us safer in the event of a crash.

We've already tested the hypothesis of what would happen if automobiles didn't have to have seatbelts and other safety features. The results were that people died in car crashes more frequently and at lower speeds.

If you're talking about crossing borders, sure, but if we got rid of our government, it wouldn't make us free to cross other countries' borders, it would just make everyone else free to cross into the US. Which isn't to say I favor strict border controls, just that that freedom of movement only comes if every society is getting rid of its government. And with the addition of private roads everywhere, my freedom of movement would likely be less, not more.
prohibit products
Yes, we're all upset that we can't buy diet pills that can cause heart disease and stroke, or food that's contaminated with e. coli, or lead paint that will cause brain damage in your children that you won't realize for years, etc.
grant monopolies
But I suppose natural monopolies with no governmental authority that could ever break them up will totally be benevolent.

Suppose someone owns all the paved private roads into a town or city. Wouldn't this monopoly be able to force far worse things onto the citizens than the government does?

The government also prevents abusive monopolies in many cases, although it has been worse at this lately, under the influence of conservative pro-business politics. But breaking up AT&T was a good thing, for example. And for example, the postal service and public roads provide coverage to people where the market would otherwise tend towards at a minimum, local monopolies, or basically no service. The Tennessee Valley Authority exists in the first place because the free market did not bring electrical infrastructure to many rural areas.
manipulate trade
Something private business would never do, I'm sure.
indoctrinate children
Private schools don't indoctrinate children? I'm sure all the race academies in the South and religious schools don't think of themselves as indoctrinating, but...
start wars
It might be worthwhile to examine what happened to the anarchist societies your article mentions, to see how effective they are at defending themselves from war and other societies. If your model of society can only succeed as long as the entire world adopts it but otherwise will collapse when challenged by a non-anarchist society... it doesn't seem very good.
I'm not against groups and group structures. Rather, it is my assertion that group structures operate best when they respect individual rights and uphold consistent standards. There have been a few cases throughout history where individuals partook in free association while respecting one another's rights and enforcing justice without the need for a mandatory government.

Sources for historical societies that got close to the ideal of voluntarism:
https://freeblr.org/faq/resource/anarchism/have-there-been-any-anarcho-capitalist-societies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism#Historical_precedents_similar_to_anarcho-capitalism
These may be societies with no centralized government, but I'm not sure they can count as voluntary societies or ones that respect individual rights.

What happens in those societies when you disagree with the community standards? Are you essentially forced to conform, or will your "individual rights" be respected? As a gay person, I can safely infer that I have more freedom in US society than I would in several of those.

I can be pretty sure that the case of Somalia is not one with more individual freedom for many people, since it is based in Islamic law. I doubt it means individual freedom for non-Muslims, or for LGBT people, or that women are treated equally to men. (And of course, it didn't last, as more centralized competing governments arose until the final settlement and re-establishment of a national government.)

Those examples don't necessarily sound all that similar to your system, aside from having no centralized government.

Aside from Somalia, they are also all societies that had smaller, pre-modern populations. They didn't have electricity or indoor plumbing, etc. Do you really think the society of the Kapauku of New Guinea is a model that would work for New York City? Some forms of societal relations work at a small scale, when basically everyone knows each other. When you're in a dense city of millions, society can't rely on everyone having personal relationships with each other.

I'd also note that the Old West was an area with weak government control/law enforcement in rural areas, but not one with no government. The settlement of the Old West by non-indigenous peoples was supported by government actions, such as the US military first seizing control from Mexico through conquest and subsequently waging war on native tribes, the homestead acts, etc. It seems ludicrous to say it was an anarcho-capitalist society when it only existed due to governmental action.
 

young grasshopper

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Private roads would be cheaper and of a higher quality than government ones. This is because they would be funded by the people who want them, which means that they would be coordinated by people who have both the information and incentives necessary to make the roads efficient.

People would still use safety features while traveling, they simply wouldn't be fined, imprisoned, or shot for refusing to use them. Enforcing safety features in that way kinda defeats the purpose when you think about it.

As for products, there is already a natural market demand for reliable safety reviews. You don't need theft (i.e. taxation) to accomplish that.

Third-party forceful interference in trade is an act of aggression that is illegitimate whether it is done by a business or a government, and should rightly be opposed no matter who's doing it. You seem to accuse me of granting a double standard to private businesses, when my very argument is that government enjoys a double standard. If you have some consistent standard explaining why government restrictions on trade are legitimate, but private ones are not, then I'd love to hear it. For the moment, I oppose both.

As for the anarchic societies I listed, I do not hold them as being ideal (and I have changed my mind about them being near-ideal), but they are merely a proof-of-concept that it is possible to organize legal systems without mandatory centralized government.
 

Erimir

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Private roads would be cheaper and of a higher quality than government ones. This is because they would be funded by the people who want them, which means that they would be coordinated by people who have both the information and incentives necessary to make the roads efficient.
And your evidence for this is...?
People would still use safety features while traveling, they simply wouldn't be fined, imprisoned, or shot for refusing to use them. Enforcing safety features in that way kinda defeats the purpose when you think about it.
My safety is affected by what safety features other people's cars have.

And children cannot make informed choices about the cars they ride in or about the decision to buckle up, etc.
As for products, there is already a natural market demand for reliable safety reviews. You don't need theft (i.e. taxation) to accomplish that.
You think Consumer Reports is going to prevent people from buying shoddy or tainted or carcinogenic products, etc.? Do you think lead paint only existed because the government distorted the market?

Or was it because the harmful effects of lead take years to manifest, and they also took years for people to understand them? How will I, as a consumer, ensure that no paint I buy contains lead without government regulators that do those investigations properly?

This kind of thinking makes sense in a small society, where we will all recognize who is a con artist or who makes shoddy products, and their reputation will be common knowledge. It does not work when you go to the store and you see twenty brands and you can't really evaluate which one is best. How will it be easier for me to determine which clothing detergent is really best and which is the safest if there are no regulations against false advertising, no requirement that manufacturers allow others to examine their production methods, no national authority that can enforce a punishment against a libelous competitor, no National Institutes of Health or other governmentally funded research organizations that investigate the causes of cancer and such and make their findings freely available, no authority that enforces trademark infringement so you can even be sure you're actually buying the "good" brand rather than something just in a box that looks like Tide (or whatever), etc.? How does a poor person have the time, money and knowledge to investigate these things for themselves?

The libertarian argument relies on a hidden and false premise that inequalities in power and information do not exist or do not undermine their ideas that things will be free and not harmful.

You can say you think it's worth it for FREEEEEDUM for people to wash their clothes in poisonous chemicals, but don't feed me some bull**** that people will have an easier time avoiding it than under government regulation.
Third-party forceful interference in trade is an act of aggression that is illegitimate whether it is done by a business or a government, and should rightly be opposed no matter who's doing it.
It's all well and good to condemn use of force (although some use of force must be legitimate in order to enforce a contract, otherwise people will be able to violate contracts with impunity), it's another for your system to actually be able to prevent it. You also presume that manipulation of trade is not possible by exploiting power and information imbalances to write extremely favorable "voluntary" contracts. Or you're defining that as not "manipulation" even though the effects it would have on other people may be basically the same.
You seem to accuse me of granting a double standard to private businesses, when my very argument is that government enjoys a double standard.
No, I'm arguing that your notion that this system will enforce itself because ill-intentions and bad behavior originate with government or are only possible because of government is silly.
As for the anarchic societies I listed, I do not hold them as being ideal (and I have changed my mind about them being near-ideal), but they are merely a proof-of-concept that it is possible to organize legal systems without mandatory centralized government.
But they are not proof of concept for any place resembling modern developed countries. Nor for American libertarian ideas of individual rights. Just because a society had no centralized government does not make it individualistic.
 
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young grasshopper

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It sounds like you are coming from a consequentialist background. I am sorry, but I cannot give you a guarantee that freedom will be safe. It may very well be right that a free society will not be able to properly verify large companies, which might lead to disaster, or it might lead to more localization. It might end up being the case that the strong and influential members of society act in ways that are just as corrupt as government, or even moreso. I do not know. What I do know is that taking someone else's property without their permission is wrong no matter who you are, that lying is wrong no matter who you are, and that kidnapping or killing someone who hasn't harmed others is wrong no matter who you are. Maybe I'm being optimistic, but I would like to see a society that can successfully fight against these wrongs without stooping to the same level.
 

Luigifan18

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It sounds like you are coming from a consequentialist background. I am sorry, but I cannot give you a guarantee that freedom will be safe. It may very well be right that a free society will not be able to properly verify large companies, which might lead to disaster, or it might lead to more localization. It might end up being the case that the strong and influential members of society act in ways that are just as corrupt as government, or even moreso. I do not know. What I do know is that taking someone else's property without their permission is wrong no matter who you are, that lying is wrong no matter who you are, and that kidnapping or killing someone who hasn't harmed others is wrong no matter who you are. Maybe I'm being optimistic, but I would like to see a society that can successfully fight against these wrongs without stooping to the same level.
"Optimistic" might be too gentle a word to describe you...

That wasn't a compliment!
 
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Sucumbio

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I think trying to force one solution on such a large number of people whether they like it or not is a bad way to meet the basic human need for community. Take a look at Facebook, or think about the stereotypical Thanksgiving dinner, and then try telling me that the US government helps bond human society. I think that society is a beautiful thing, and would be even better if it arose from people freely choosing who they want to congregate with and under what terms. The best parts of society are the parts we choose for ourselves: who to love, who to work alongside, who to worship with. Making governance a choice would only make it better.
Hm... I do value self determination highly. In fact in America though somewhat more difficult you can still dissappear off the grid.
 
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