I have to insist that your references to anarchism are really references to anarcho-capitalism. I approximate my beliefs to anarcho-communism, and I take issue with your presumption of an anarchist's respect for private property. All anarchism refers to is the advocation of stateless society.
In these comments, my advocation of a "state" is an advocation of small (<4km in radius), democratic governments. This is my interpretation of a "stateless society" [0]. I don't want readers to think I'm defending most modern states; the smaller the state, the more responsible and democratic it tends to be. This is by definition: less people -> more representation.
A capitalist's idea of "ruining the land" is not Gaia's idea of "ruining the land". If a logging company owns a rainforest, it will want to plant more trees when it's destroyed everything else there. The company has no financial incentive to care about the ecosystem it's destroying by logging in the first place, nor the collateral effects of that elsewhere. Your retort may be that the logging company has to acquire the rainforest first - yes, but logging is probably the most profitable activity for a rainforest, so logging companies will tend to acquire such land. I feel sick typing this...
Another major example of markets encouraging overharvesting is when the harvesting occurs on land/water that no one owns (or can reasonably own). Then, the harvesters have no regard for the replenishment of the resource; they just want to make money. In unrestricted capitalism, a herd of bison or a pod of whales is a goldmine at market. A puerile defense to this may be that no one would whale if no one wanted to eat it. You may also say that we'd "cease our dealings" with anyone who ate whale - how would we know? Why would a capitalist care what this other guy eats on weekends if this guy's company is giving him a better deal?
Capitalism has little regard for Gaia. Individuals are mostly selfish, and capitalism runs on individuality and selfishness, so Gaia gets no consideration. We need states to ensure that companies don't act contrary to our long term interests.
You made the point that in modern states, neighbors never consent to one another's conduct, and they rely on the state for control and mediation. Yes, I agree, this is a failing of modern statist societies. But, in my view, if states were significantly smaller, those governing would be your neighbors too, and so legislation would effectively be a "mutual conduct agreement" anyway.
Sure, a state's governing may not please everyone - but if everyone is within walking and living distance, the society would be more able to resolve its differences, or come to a compromise. Thanks to this quality, I think smaller states could function with requiring more than the majority in parliament to pass legislation: e.g. 66% or 75%. Either way, at worst, you can move to a nearby state that aligns more with your beliefs. In this way, "governing" would become a market for ideas that work.
Governments are not violent nor amoral if they have the consent of the governed. If you want to live by your own rules, move somewhere that isn't governed. If you want to live in a town, you have to follow that town's law as determined by popular will.
On your remaining points:
- No, the actions of markets and companies can affect me without my deciding to interact with them, and to say otherwise is laughable and offensive. Capitalism is destroying our planet. Companies can lowers working standards, salaries and social welfare across the industry - especially when they collude.
- The whole non-aggression principle of libertarianism is tiring. Libertarians have to contort their beliefs around the NAP because the philosophy requires an absolutist principle for organizing society. Here are the contortions I see libertarians make: private property is not aggression, corruption is not aggression, market manipulation is not aggression, theft when necessary is aggression, governing-by-consent is aggression, etc. Other political philosophies take a more nuanced view of organizing society, and rightly so.
- Policing by economic deprivation doesn't work, because it's less immoral to deal with someone who committed an immoral action, than it is to commit that immoral action. Say Alice hunts whales (which are endangered), and Bob sells Alice her ships. Bob is viewed as less immoral, because he didn't actually kill the whales, and so it's less likely that others would stop dealing with him. The only reason Bob wouldn't sell Alice ships is if the whales are more important to him than the profit of selling the ships. You would require every {shipbuilder, oil company, ...} in the world to believe this, for whaling to be prohibited - and even then, you can sometimes whale from shore.
- Over the last 100 years, we've learned that consumers act selfishly, and so relying on the consumers to police doesn't work either. If you put whale in a market, consumers will buy it. If a company from a locality abuses people elsewhere, local consumers don't care.
- Your point on corruption is unrelated to mine. If we define "company corruption" as employees acting contrary to the company's interest for their own personal gain, and "market corruption" as companies acting contrary to public interest for their own profit, then only company corruption is inefficient. Market corruption is certainly "efficient", and there's little to stop it in anarcho-capitalism.
- Free markets tend towards complete monopoly; the more "freedom" companies have, the quicker they will conglomerate. There's a startup in this city? The incumbent(s) will price them out. As an example, the American media conglomerates are just the result of market forces (and physical realities). The sprawling, centralized US government helps them along, but they would've got to where they are now sooner or later.
- In an ideal world, with people who could make an anarchist society function well, what then would be your objection to a state (by my definition), or to abolition of private property (noting respect for personal property)? And hence, what base is there for anarcho-capitalism?
My belief in anarcho-communism is predicated on the idea that power is bad, as is my disbelief in capitalism and large-statism. Unfortunately, this is also why anarcho-communism is unlikely to ever be implemented successfully: you need power to usurp power, and power attained is unlikely to be forfeited.
On a completely unrelated note, I just wanted to point out that not that many people in Japan actually eat whale meat anymore. They tried to get school children to eat and like whale meat, but it didn't happen. The majority of the whale meat actually was used for pet food in the recent years.
> Your retort may be that the logging company has to acquire the rainforest first - yes, but logging is probably the most profitable activity for a rainforest, so logging companies will tend to acquire such land. I feel sick typing this...
Not necessarily. Several highly lucrative drugs came from bio research conducted in the rainforest. The pharmaceutical industry is far more profitable than the logging industry. Of course, it takes a significant foresight to do research in the rain forest, rather than cut it down for timber.
> Another major example of markets encouraging overharvesting is when the harvesting occurs on land/water that no one owns (or can reasonably own). Then, the harvesters have no regard for the replenishment of the resource; they just want to make money.
This is true if you follow the first capture rule of ownership for resources located in public domain (not owned by anyone in particular due to their nature). However, an alternative would be to argue that all resources in public domain actually belong to everyone, rather than no one. So, if you were to capture a whale in the ocean, you would actually be violating the rights of every other person on the planet to that whale. Thus, you would be obliged to compensate everyone on the planet for the fair market value (minus the cost of capture) of that whale. This means, the best you could do is brake even on your whaling activity. All of the sudden, it's no longer such an attractive economic activity.
> Sure, a state's governing may not please everyone - but if everyone is within walking and living distance, the society would be more able to resolve its differences, or come to a compromise. Thanks to this quality, I think smaller states could function with requiring more than the majority in parliament to pass legislation: e.g. 66% or 75%. Either way, at worst, you can move to a nearby state that aligns more with your beliefs. In this way, "governing" would become a market for ideas that work.
I was actually just writing how much I agree with you, and how in the past I thought that the states in US should have a lot more power, and the Federal government should have a lot less. But than I remembered the state I grew up in, IL, and how incredibly, unflinchingly, and stunningly corrupt that state, and more specifically, the city of Chicago is. Given that example, I wonder if small governments can really avoid being corrupt. That's of course not to say that large governments aren't crazy corrupt as well.
> Several highly lucrative drugs came from bio research conducted in the rainforest.
That research was probably conducted in rainforests protected as a national park, right? At least, I highly doubt that the pharmaceutical companies actually acquired the land before conducting research, or that they would bother buying entire rainforests (to protect the ecosystem) if there wasn't a state to protect them.
An anarcho-capitalist may suggest that the pharmaceutical companies could create a fund with other people who care about preserving the rainforests, to acquire and protect the rainforests. But then, that fund would have to raise as much money as the potential profit to be made by cutting it all down - which is terribly perverted, I think. Still, such a fund would unlikely be universal enough to protect all rainforests and other important ecological centers. The point stands that whatever land a logging company acquires, it will want to destroy.
Logging is far too prevalent as it is - with all the regulation and restrictions imposed on it by modern states. I'm not sure how the argument could be made that logging would be less prevalent if there weren't any states to stop it.
> an alternative would be to argue that all resources in public domain actually belong to everyone, rather than no one
This is a nice idea in theory (and is semi-applicable in anarcho-communism too), but it can't realistically be determined what to share (e.g. these bison were on my property), how to enforce it (e.g. knowing who's harvesting what), or how to handle it (e.g. how to allocate compensation for killing a whale).
I'm not sure why we have to go through these economic gymnastics just to avoid the concept of having an association of democratic governments banning whaling or deforesting. What's so wrong with that?
> the state I grew up in, IL, and how incredibly, unflinchingly, and stunningly corrupt that state, and more specifically, the city of Chicago is
I have connections to Chicago, and can relate :-)
In my ideal world, Chicago would be broken up into governments even smaller than the City of Chicago today, which spans about 15km x 40km it seems.
I think many city councils are "optimized" for administration, and not for representation. If each of these small states were completely autonomous, and had to legislate their entire body of law, the citizens would care more, and they would develop more representative and accountable voting systems and institutions, due to the extent of the government's responsibilities.
Also, to make the point again, if a certain state is known to be corrupt, and does nothing to address it, it will probably lose business and residents to nearby states that aren't. Similarly, neighboring states would have an interest in supporting one another, and would try to discourage corruption (e.g. avoiding companies that bribe officials elsewhere).
The key point for smaller states, in my opinion, is that their constituents care. I feel like people are more apathetic in larger states, because they have less power individually, and their responsibility to keep their government accountable is further absolved. When you get people to care, and give them power collectively, everything else follows.
> If each of these small states were completely autonomous, and had to legislate their entire body of law, the citizens would care more, and they would develop more representative and accountable voting systems and institutions, due to the extent of the government's responsibilities.
I see several possible problems with this approach. I had similar thoughts in the years past, an I was wondering what your opinions were as to the following issues:
1. Inconsistent laws in a small geographical area. As a real world example, take a look at the car window tint law in the State of Illinois and the City of Chicago. In Illinois you can have up to 60% tint on your windows, while in Chicago, the local rule is that you can only have up to 30% tint. Don't quote me on those figures, last I looked into it was 10 years ago. But the point is, you can live outside Chicago, have a perfectly legal 50% tint, and than, as soon as you drive into Chicago, your car is all of the sudden in violation of one of the local laws. And they do ticket you for it. In your proposed system you would have all kinds of inconsistent laws. This is a problem for automotive laws, food safety, building codes, etc. The only solution I see would be for all of the small governments to gather together and agree on some standard set of laws that they will all implement. But than you are more or less back to square one.
2. Large infrastructure projects. Large projects require a lot of capital and a lot of cooperation from people in a large geographical area. Things like highway construction, rails, bridges, aqueducts, pipelines, all of those would require cooperation of dozens, if not hundreds of individual governments in your system. And you would always have holdouts, townships that would demand an extra something for their cooperation.
3. Research projects. Currently the united states government sponsors significant amount of research. If we were to switch to the township system, than that research would not be sponsored any more. Alternatively, maybe a bunch of townships could unite in a consortium to pay for research. But then you run into problems with division of profits from that research. Say 6 out of 10 townships paid for the research which resulted in development of a cancer cure. Would they then be able to deny the benefits of that cure to the other 4 townships?
There are a bunch of examples that I can think of in addition to this. In the past after thinking about this idea, the Jefferson Township model of government, I decided that I could not think of a way to make it work. However, a State system might work. A state system would largely eliminate the Federal Government and programs like the Social Security, ACA, Medicare, and all of the other social programs. It would also eliminate the Federal Income tax. The Federal Government would be responsible for national defense (military), borders, interstate transportation, and the interstate laws and treaties. The interstate laws would be a set of laws that 3/4 of the states would agree on. Things like food labeling, minimal vehicle safety requirements, etc.
To pay for the Federal Government each state would pay a yearly membership fee based on the number of people in that state and the GDP of the state, or some other kind of matrix. It would be up to each state to organize their own Social Security, health program, and other social programs. Each state would also be free to decide how to govern it self, would have the power to collect income tax, etc. The main key to the system would be free travel. This means that no person could be prevented from leaving one state or moving to another. This would allow each state to experiment with all kinds of government models, and would allow people to vote with their feet.
Any way, my idea is as unlikely to ever come true as the Jefersonian system.
> 1. Inconsistent laws in a small geographical area.
Having different window tinting laws is a good example of the kind of baseless legal inconsistency that could harm a region's competitiveness. If the states of a region could not come to an agreement on window tinting, it would probably damage their reputation elsewhere.
> In your proposed system you would have all kinds of inconsistent laws.
Although there's little reason to differ on window tinting laws, I can imagine reasonable states having different opinions on, say, engine noise limits. This leads to the same kind of inconvenience, but yet is more understandable. Nonetheless, if the people of a (small) state don't want loud engines (or perhaps they want to ban driving altogether) in their neighborhood, isn't that their right?
> The only solution I see would be for all of the small governments to gather together and agree on some standard set of laws that they will all implement.
Right, so for any matter that calls for it, you would hope that neighboring states would be able to agree to pass identical pieces of legislation. The Australian states do this all the time (when the pre-existing law wasn't federal).
> But than you are more or less back to square one.
No, there's a very significant difference between a collection of autonomous states agreeing to a certain piece of legislation, and a collection of states being forced to abide by a piece of legislation passed by a federal parliament.
In the former, if a company wants to coerce the entire country on some political issue, it has to coerce the politicians of every single state: in a federation, it need only coerce the federal politicians.
If an independent state thinks a law is bad (e.g. wants to legalize marijuana), it can remove it without being beholden to outside forces. If the law was made by a federal parliament, it can only be undone by the federal parliament.
If an independent state thinks a program is bad (e.g. a war, a department, currency devaluation), it can remove itself (personnel/funding) on its own volition.
Regional agreements are very different to regional parliaments.
> This is a problem for automotive laws, food safety, building codes, etc
Buildings don't tend to get up and walk into a different neighborhood. I think that if the people of a state want certain building codes (or none at all!), that's their right. I don't think it's a big ask of construction companies to abide by the codes of the state they're building in: they do that all the time today.
I think regional agreements could be justified for things that are inherently mobile, or that make sense to operate at scale: automotive laws, food safety laws, airport administration, public health insurance, extradition, public broadcaster funding, university funding (maybe), infrastructure (telecoms, roads, train tracks), park administration, military, ...
The difference here is that if some state doesn't want to contribute to a regional health insurance fund, it doesn't have to.
> 2. Large infrastructure projects
Right, this is harder when you have many autonomous states, but they're still certainly doable. If there's an imperative to do something, the states will come to agreement.
States that contribute to interstate highways could sell permits to their citizens as part of their car registration. There could be toll booths to sell temporary permits to non-citizens. This way, if states A, B and C want to build highways between each other, but state D, adjacent to A and B, doesn't want to contribute, then A, B and C can fairly bill the citizens of D that end up using that highway anyway.
> If we were to switch to the township system, than that research would not be sponsored any more.
Why not? Research would only stop being sponsored by a state if the people of that state didn't want to sponsor it. And if they don't want to, they shouldn't be forced to.
If your point is that something like the Cold War would never happen in small-state anarchy, then I concede that. But, for all the merits of the space race, it was not worth the risk of the Cold War.
By the way, check your thens and thans :)
> However, a State system might work. The Federal Government would be responsible for...
Again, it seems like you're confounding the differences between having many independent states, and having a federation of states. My points above stand against federations (as in, federated parliaments). Federations should not exist: they are a remnant of a bygone era of imperialism and war-mongering. If by "federal government" you're referring to agreements between most states to pass some legislation (e.g. open borders), then sure, I'm with you. But if you're talking about having a legally-usurping federal parliament that is in command of the military, then I'm not.
Your post basically makes the point that cooperation is harder when you have more autonomous states. I agree, but I think (1) states will cooperate when there is an imperative to do so, (2) if a state doesn't want to cooperate, then that's their democratic right, and (3) by having the choice of cooperation, states can experiment, and better ideas will flourish.
In these comments, my advocation of a "state" is an advocation of small (<4km in radius), democratic governments. This is my interpretation of a "stateless society" [0]. I don't want readers to think I'm defending most modern states; the smaller the state, the more responsible and democratic it tends to be. This is by definition: less people -> more representation.
A capitalist's idea of "ruining the land" is not Gaia's idea of "ruining the land". If a logging company owns a rainforest, it will want to plant more trees when it's destroyed everything else there. The company has no financial incentive to care about the ecosystem it's destroying by logging in the first place, nor the collateral effects of that elsewhere. Your retort may be that the logging company has to acquire the rainforest first - yes, but logging is probably the most profitable activity for a rainforest, so logging companies will tend to acquire such land. I feel sick typing this...
Another major example of markets encouraging overharvesting is when the harvesting occurs on land/water that no one owns (or can reasonably own). Then, the harvesters have no regard for the replenishment of the resource; they just want to make money. In unrestricted capitalism, a herd of bison or a pod of whales is a goldmine at market. A puerile defense to this may be that no one would whale if no one wanted to eat it. You may also say that we'd "cease our dealings" with anyone who ate whale - how would we know? Why would a capitalist care what this other guy eats on weekends if this guy's company is giving him a better deal?
Capitalism has little regard for Gaia. Individuals are mostly selfish, and capitalism runs on individuality and selfishness, so Gaia gets no consideration. We need states to ensure that companies don't act contrary to our long term interests.
You made the point that in modern states, neighbors never consent to one another's conduct, and they rely on the state for control and mediation. Yes, I agree, this is a failing of modern statist societies. But, in my view, if states were significantly smaller, those governing would be your neighbors too, and so legislation would effectively be a "mutual conduct agreement" anyway.
Sure, a state's governing may not please everyone - but if everyone is within walking and living distance, the society would be more able to resolve its differences, or come to a compromise. Thanks to this quality, I think smaller states could function with requiring more than the majority in parliament to pass legislation: e.g. 66% or 75%. Either way, at worst, you can move to a nearby state that aligns more with your beliefs. In this way, "governing" would become a market for ideas that work.
Governments are not violent nor amoral if they have the consent of the governed. If you want to live by your own rules, move somewhere that isn't governed. If you want to live in a town, you have to follow that town's law as determined by popular will.
On your remaining points:
- No, the actions of markets and companies can affect me without my deciding to interact with them, and to say otherwise is laughable and offensive. Capitalism is destroying our planet. Companies can lowers working standards, salaries and social welfare across the industry - especially when they collude.
- The whole non-aggression principle of libertarianism is tiring. Libertarians have to contort their beliefs around the NAP because the philosophy requires an absolutist principle for organizing society. Here are the contortions I see libertarians make: private property is not aggression, corruption is not aggression, market manipulation is not aggression, theft when necessary is aggression, governing-by-consent is aggression, etc. Other political philosophies take a more nuanced view of organizing society, and rightly so.
- Policing by economic deprivation doesn't work, because it's less immoral to deal with someone who committed an immoral action, than it is to commit that immoral action. Say Alice hunts whales (which are endangered), and Bob sells Alice her ships. Bob is viewed as less immoral, because he didn't actually kill the whales, and so it's less likely that others would stop dealing with him. The only reason Bob wouldn't sell Alice ships is if the whales are more important to him than the profit of selling the ships. You would require every {shipbuilder, oil company, ...} in the world to believe this, for whaling to be prohibited - and even then, you can sometimes whale from shore.
- Over the last 100 years, we've learned that consumers act selfishly, and so relying on the consumers to police doesn't work either. If you put whale in a market, consumers will buy it. If a company from a locality abuses people elsewhere, local consumers don't care.
- Your point on corruption is unrelated to mine. If we define "company corruption" as employees acting contrary to the company's interest for their own personal gain, and "market corruption" as companies acting contrary to public interest for their own profit, then only company corruption is inefficient. Market corruption is certainly "efficient", and there's little to stop it in anarcho-capitalism.
- Free markets tend towards complete monopoly; the more "freedom" companies have, the quicker they will conglomerate. There's a startup in this city? The incumbent(s) will price them out. As an example, the American media conglomerates are just the result of market forces (and physical realities). The sprawling, centralized US government helps them along, but they would've got to where they are now sooner or later.
- In an ideal world, with people who could make an anarchist society function well, what then would be your objection to a state (by my definition), or to abolition of private property (noting respect for personal property)? And hence, what base is there for anarcho-capitalism?
My belief in anarcho-communism is predicated on the idea that power is bad, as is my disbelief in capitalism and large-statism. Unfortunately, this is also why anarcho-communism is unlikely to ever be implemented successfully: you need power to usurp power, and power attained is unlikely to be forfeited.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stateless_society