Without a centralized, involuntary taxation power be sustainable?

[jreelawg]

A prime example of Anarchy is the history of the Mongols. Watch the movie "Mongol", it is really good. They had clans and warlords, and looting was a way life. It was a life of looting and killing and running and hiding from looters and killers.

 

[russ_watters]

A prime example of Anarchy is the history of the Mongols. ... They had clans and warlords, and looting was a way life. It was a life of looting and killing and running and hiding from looters and killers.

That's still not anarchy: it's tribalism. Still, it is a good example of the reality that humans will always organize themselves into, at least, little groups, even when they are undeveloped enough to not organize into nations.

 

[LightbulbSun]

I've noticed a lot of anarchists are refining their definition for anarchy. Some are actually speaking more about the economic framework than the political framework. I know this is debasing what anarchy actually is, but I find it interesting that they're more focused on the economic aspects when contending for anarchy.

 

[LightbulbSun]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9eEK_GwfiI" has a weird definition for anarchy.

Anarchism: Any system that is operating without coercion.

I'm not even sure what that means.

 

[OrbitalPower]

What russ is saying is true of course: people failed to adequately establish essentials to society such as adequate environmental laws and business ethics.

However, I don't think this is the best argument against anarchy. These failures happened (and still do occur in the third world) within the confines of a capitalist system. Of course, in capitalism, there is a profit incentive, and since capitalists don't come up with a very good solution to the tragedy of the commons, the system inevitably led to poor living standards for the masses with large monopolies for the select few protected by the state.

Capitalists inevitably have to turn a profit, so any move to look out for the common good or deal with their own externalities puts them at a disadvantage in the market place. Furthermore, people in a capitalist system are left to take care of their own welfare, their own healthcare, their own workers' compensation, and retirement, so of course there is not much incentive to invest in the community.

Presumably, anarchists (Tucker, Proudhon, etc.) rejected capitalism, "landed monopolies," etc., and thus believed in more communual values and framework. You can't say people won't act a certain way just because they didn't do what you expected them to do under a hierarchical system.

The problem of Somalia is a problem of capitalism:

Somalis are so desperate to survive that attacks on merchant shipping in the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean will not stop, a pirate leader promises.
A French warship keeps guard over commerical vessels in the Gulf of Aden last week.

"The pirates are living between life and death," said the pirate leader, identified by only one name, Boyah. "Who can stop them? Americans and British all put together cannot do anything."

...

Boyah said that the piracy began because traditional coastal fishing became difficult after foreign fishing trawlers depleted local fish stocks. Traditional fishermen started attacking the trawlers until the trawler crews fought back with heavy weapons. The fishermen then turned to softer targets.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/africa/12/01/pirate.interview/index.html

"after foreign fishing trawlers depleted local fish stocks"

That is to say, after the military collapsed the government to back private property rights collapses as well, and you had overfishing.

The argument against anarchy that pythagorean gives is much better.

 

[OrbitalPower]

Anarchy is a temporary phenomena. Heirarchy is always formed, even if it's subtle. Even between three friends, a heirarchy is established.

Technically, anarcho-primativism lasted for about ten thousand years. This was human-kinds most progressive period, evolution wise.

The heirarchy may rotate depending on the context and moods of everyone, of course. But the simple fact is that some people are more willing to do what they're told and other people are more satisfied telling people what to do. Eventually, an authority is established based on power and will. (If someone has power but no ambition, they easily lose their power to someone who has ambition, but no power, thus making someone with power and ambition.)

If you want to get down to it, heirarchy itself is likely formed out of greed. The rich land-owner and lawmakers of the mercantile age eventually realized that they were suffocating their own coffers by restricting trade. Adams, Hobbes, and Locke all showed how the government could profit from letting people own their stuff and making them feel more secure. So allowing more freedoms may have very well been a product of greed itself.

I pretty much agree with everything you wrote here.

Anarchy, like other left-wing theories, puts far much faith in the individual to ultimately do the right thing, rather than being guided by society as the more "right-wing" theories insist.

However, you're putting little faith in people at all, I think.

The problems people face today, limited resources, environmental degredation, declining health and IQ (ironically, which may have been caused by modern pharmacology, sanitation, and various death prevention techniques) in third world countries and even in many first world ones, are huge problems.

Their are problems that will require massive intelligence, good will, and much cooperation among human beings all over the planet.

 

[Pythagorean]

Technically, anarcho-primativism lasted for about ten thousand years. This was human-kinds most progressive period, evolution wise.

Yeah, but I don't think that's the same as anarchy. Anarchy seems to have more conscious human intervention ("If you see somebody taking charge, you'll be expected to beat them!" -NOFX), while anarcho-prmitivism seems more instinctual.

However, you're putting little faith in people at all, I think.

True, but I don't know if this is necessarily an invalidating factor.

addendum:

Anarchism: Any system that is operating without coercion.

I also think this kind of fails in my frame of reference. If you're trying to dismantle a heirarchy, how do you do it without coercion?

addendum 2!:

My underlying, unspoken argument here (I just realized) is that hierarchy is a natural development process and anarchy is an ideal.

 

[OrbitalPower]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9eEK_GwfiI" has a weird definition for anarchy.



I'm not even sure what that means.

I stopped watching at "I'm luke, 21, unemployed, and single..."

Probably not a good idea to learn about political theories from a video blogging site like Youtube.

Free-Resources:

Notes on Anarchism By Noam Chomsky (MIT professor) might be a good place to start.

This entry in the Encyclopaedia Britannica would be another good place, as it's even written by Kropotkin.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAanarchist.htm is another encyclopedic entry from spartacus.schoolnet, which has very well written entries.

The book "Community, Anarchy, and Liberty" is also a good introduction, written by Michael Taylor I believe and I think the full version is on Google books.

The mathematician and philosopher (who helped moved philosophy more into the scientific realm while finding not much use for the older philosophies) Bertrand Russell talked about anarchy a few times and even wrote a book on it called http://www.zpub.com/notes/rfree10-a.html.

Chomsky on Anarchy is another good one.

And "The Anarchist FAQ web page" also is pretty good.

If you use Debian Linux you can download it by apt-get install anarchism or just google it as well.


I've read a lot of it but don't necessarily agree with it, but just putting it out there for those interested and rebuttals to anarchy in polsci could be posted by someone else.

 

[russ_watters]

However, I don't think this is the best argument against anarchy. These failures happened (and still do occur in the third world) within the confines of a capitalist system.

So you think the "state of nature" is capitalism? Really? Any capitalist worth his salt would argue that market forces should be able to cause people to fund fire departments (just like an anarchist), but in both cases, the result is the same: the lack of regulation leads to human nature making the decision and the decision is no.

Of course, in capitalism, there is a profit incentive, and since capitalists don't come up with a very good solution to the tragedy of the commons, the system inevitably led to poor living standards for the masses with large monopolies for the select few protected by the state.

That's a serious bastardization of the history of industrialization and economics. The common war cry of socialists that "the rich get richer while the poor get poorer" has never been true under capitalism and in industrialization. The fact of the matter is that industrialization benefits everyone in an industrialized society. The meteoric rise in global living standards over the past 100 years is a direct, overall illustration of this fact.

The tragedy of the commons is a human nature issue that every form of government/economics has to deal with. It is not strictly a capitalism issue. But at least in capitalism, the economy can grow on its own and people have the means to do something about it.

Capitalists inevitably have to turn a profit, so any move to look out for the common good or deal with their own externalities puts them at a disadvantage in the market place. Furthermore, people in a capitalist system are left to take care of their own welfare, their own healthcare, their own workers' compensation, and retirement, so of course there is not much incentive to invest in the community.

That's not how capitalists view capitalism. To a capitalist, the profit motive must include looking out for their customers, otherwise their customers will go away. The problem is that pure capitalism suffers from a similar flaw as pure socialism: people are both greedy and short sighted. The greedy part is the bigger problem for socialism, the short sighted part is the bigger flaw for capitalism. A good economic system must try to deal with both.

The problem of Somalia is a problem of capitalism:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/africa/12/01/pirate.interview/index.html

"after foreign fishing trawlers depleted local fish stocks"

Criminals are not a good source of information on the motivation for crime. They are twisted liars. As others have pointed out, being a pirate is far more profitable than being a fisherman. Being bad people in a lawless land, they chose piracy. That's not capitalism, that's anarchy.

That is to say, after the military collapsed the government to back private property rights collapses as well, and you had overfishing.

You're missing the point: if Somalia had a functional government, it would not have piracy. If the foreign fishermen were not around, they would still have piracy. That makes it a [lack of] government problem.

 

[russ_watters]

Technically, anarcho-primativism lasted for about ten thousand years.

So what? We had to learn how to be more than just animals who talk. It may be true that it was more or less stable, but that isn't really relevant here. In people with developed brains, a body of knowledge to draw on, and a high population density, it is a temporary thing.

This was human-kinds most progressive period, evolution wise.

Besides the obvious contradiction of longevity vs progress, comparing that 10,000 to the last 100 would seem to me to be a convincing argument to the contrary.

 

[OrbitalPower]

So you think the "state of nature" is capitalism? Really?

I didn't say anything about the "state of nature" equating to capitalism. I said that because humans are observed acting in a certain way under capitalism, you can't use that to prove that it's a fundamental human condition.

In the anthropological sciences it's well known that humans are essentially social creatures that do their best work when they are cooperative.

"State of nature" theorists in philosophy, such as Rousseau et al., tended to use arguments against civil property as well.

Any capitalist worth his salt would argue that market forces should be able to cause people to fund fire departments (just like an anarchist)...

This isn't true at all. Economists don't predict this will happen and they are the ones who devote most of their time studying capitalism.

Only extremists would make this claim.

That's a serious bastardization of the history of industrialization and economics.

It isn't a bastardization of history, or economics. The greatest period of economic inequality in US history was during the Gilded Age - the time when there was generally a greater degree of "economic freedom" and less regulation on businesses.

There were more monopolies then than now. During America's time of Laissez-Faire capitalism, businesses generally formed mornopolies like standard oil and before that you had coal companies who would "combine" with each other to fire workers to keep down wages, the price of men, and keep up the price of coal, i.e. the wages of capital.

You don't understand the history of the trust busters and all the anti-monopoly legislation that had to be passed until you come to understand laissez-faire capitalism and its failures.

Not to mention the fact that children and women formed one third of the industrial labor force in America in the early 1900s, that there was no worker's compensation, that the menail work that Americans were forced to do for up to 17 hours during busy periods essentially made them "appdendages of the machine" as one classical liberal philosopher put it, and that if you were injured on the job there was no savings plan or any available avenues for you to take except to starve to death or put the kids to work and take them out of school.

Who are these "economists" that don't know this?

Now other countries are in this situation, but, unlike America, they do not have strong central governments to continually help build the economy and US corporations simply keep the majority perpetually in poverty by paying them slave wages, perhaps moving to another country or coddling with a totalitarian government should the employees attempt to fight for their rights.

The common war cry of socialists that "the rich get richer while the poor get poorer" has never been true under capitalism and in industrialization. The fact of the matter is that industrialization benefits everyone in an industrialized society. The meteoric rise in global living standards over the past 100 years is a direct, overall illustration of this fact.

First of all, no one said this comment. Second of all, your facts are questionable here as well. You also had the "second world" during the twentieth century, the Soviet Union, for example, and these countries have gone down in living standards and back into the third world after implementing years of capitalistic "market reforms."

After India became a democratic-capitalist state, they also lost more people every 8 years than the total nubmer who perished in the Great Chinese Famine, according to the economists and political theorists Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen (Hunger and Public Action). Sen is a nobel prize winner in economics. I don't see this as a "success story."

Third, according to the UN and the World Bank, over 50% of the people on the planet live on less than 2 dollars a day; over 60% of the planet live in rural areas. According to Dr. Abraham at the Wharton School of Business, rural population are increasing faster than their urban counterparts "mostly as a result of illiteracy, lack of access to birth control measures, and poverty" the result being that "there are more poor people in the world today than 50 years ago, and most live in rural areas."

These areas are seeing increases in poverty and strains on their resources exactly because of capitalism and industrialization; there are countries in the third world who have shipped more food out of the country than they consume, and it's not because they're fat and happy, either.

According to UN data, there are tens of millions of more people in poverty now than there were 30 years ago in Latin America.

http://www.un.org/popin/unfpa/dispatches/aug96.html

Furthermore, where poverty is decreasing, there are huge, government programs to the tune of billions of dollars every single year going to help support these underdeveloped areas. The same is true in the US as well with all of our economic management programs. The US became the leading nation AFTER WWII, and after the New Deal had built up the economy and provided an economic foundations for the years afterwards. For example, according to the economist Benjamin Bernanke's textbook, 1933-41 was "generally a period of economic growth" with "rising employment in manufacturing" and a rise in living standards. The other period of expansive economic growth was when the US was extremely protectionist. And while you don't have to agree with my interpretation of the facts, everybody who's studied International relations for five seconds knows that globalization is very debatable.

Government funding of industries and anti anti-poverty solutions, and huge, massive reinvestment programs in infastructure is hardly a triumph of capitalism, but of mixed type systems. Economists know this, and thus believe in regulating with market forces in a "market economy," in accordance with market principles, especially in areas where a lack of regulation would cause the economy to breakdown and/or operate in ways that are harmful to the public.

This is hardly "conservative" or "fixed" principles of economics like those that Republicans advocate, and why a majority of economists identify themselves as progressives (and a majority favored Obama as well according to polls by the Economist).

This is why I'd be interested in seeing where you're getting your inforation on "economics" and "the history of industrialization" - sounds like pretty shocking social science evidence to me.

The tragedy of the commons is a human nature issue that every form of government/economics has to deal with. It is not strictly a capitalism issue.

Not my point at all. Ideological capitalists don't come up with a sufficient solution for me. While they believe that sharing it would lead to people taking resources without concern for others, privatizing it leads to the same problem.

For example, if I own 40%, and someone else owns 40% of the commons, and the 20% is owned by whomever, if I try and do what's best for the commons I can be undercut in the market place. Happens all the time in economics Russ, such as with big corporations like Wal-Mart.

To a capitalist, the profit motive must include looking out for their customers, otherwise their customers will go away. The problem is that pure capitalism suffers from a similar flaw as pure socialism: people are both greedy and short sighted. The greedy part is the bigger problem for socialism, the short sighted part is the bigger flaw for capitalism. A good economic system must try to deal with both.

This "people are greedy" philosophy overlooks the cooperative nature in science, how species will sacrifice their own lives for the good species, how mutual cooperation is produced naturally and beneficial to numerous species, and so on.

Richard Dawkins even made a documentary on this entitled "Nice Guys Finish First" which is available free online.

Both claims "people are greedy" and "capitalism has been a success" are not very good arguments. The first one is a half-truth and the second one can be given for monarchies and other totalitarian societies, such as slave based ones, which went on for centuries.

So what? We had to learn how to be more than just animals who talk. It may be true that it was more or less stable, but that isn't really relevant here.

It is relevant if you believe that anarchy is unnatural. Humans seemed to get by just fine, in very harsh conditions as well.

Besides the obvious contradiction of longevity vs progress, comparing that 10,000 to the last 100 would seem to me to be a convincing argument to the contrary.

Not really.

That it took thousands of years of "civilization" to get to a supposedly "good civilization" with billions of people in poverty and another billion more leading completely miserable lives, while the minorty is awash in resources and exploiting other people's, with resources so unevenly spread, doesn't sound very good to me at all.

Not to mention the threat humans are posing to the planet; at least the people in anarcho-primitivism kept to a balance, and they didn't have such massive inequality.

You seem to be satisified with the state of the world, I find it still needs way too much work to even be considered a good, "civilized" society. There are far too many problems that need fixing.

 

[ultimablah]

"How can Mr. Smith afford his smithy even? People will have something whether that's some resources or a skill or what have you everyone will have something and some will have more than others even if they are not obscenely wealthy.

But on the capacity to afford armed men. A merchant may be able to afford, say, a hundred dollars to purchase a cheap weapon. Perhaps even five hundred to purchase a decent one. But can he weild it well? Can he police and run his shop simultaneously anyway? If he can't weild it well and won't be able to wander his shop brandishing it to discourage theivery what would be the point in spending even as little as a hundred dollars on this weapon? Why not just get a heavy stick for when he does happen to catch a theif? Or maybe he can more easily afford to pay Mr. Smith. Especially if Mr. Smith's men are more capable of discouraging and catching theives and vandals than the merchant with his hundred dollar gun under the counter. For a merchant "Loss Prevention" is the key to whether or not he can afford security. And if his customers feel more safe in his shop he will possibly even get a boost in business. The idea essentially is that the investment should make him money not cost him money. "Affordability" has to do with more than just having the resources, it also requires an ability to make the investment worth the cost."

Okay, the problem with this is, what about the competition? You're assuming Smith is the only smithy in the world, and has no competition, but the chance that there is no other man who can offer services of the quality of Smith's in a world as large as ours is quite low. And again, as I asked, would you purchase Smith's product if you knew he had a monopoly? There would be an "anti-Smith" market, so to speak, which any entrepreneurial individual could capitalize on.

The philosophy is flawed because greedy people will not want to do all those thigns you just said. People will not fund fire departments and police departments and roads voluntarily. We don't have to theorize or philosophize about this: we already know it because it has been tried. This isn't theory, it's reality. Not even in small groups can you find enough agreeable people to do such things (unless ideology is the reason the group is formed). Talk to anyone who belongs to a condo association to hear about this fact of human nature in action.

One wonders how anarchists think we've arrived at the system of government we have today. For example, how do we know people won't build quality buildings if there were no building codes? Answer: for a hundred years, there were no building codes and people did not build quality buildings and as a result, a lot of people died in fires that consumed most of our major cities (among other problems).

If there is ever an example of Political Science really being a science and not a philosophy, this one is it. People call their ideas theories, then ignore the implications of what a theory is. They ignore the experimentation and falsification!

Okay, if people do not want roads and fire departments and police stations, then what right does the government have to force people to pay for the goods and services people do not want? It's like a bakery saying, "our bread is good, and if you don't buy it we'll throw you into our cellar".

You have to remember, the world is a large group, and if there are a portion of people, say, 50,000 out of a million who want hospitals and would be willing to pay for them, then there is a market for that product. A minority should not be able to force the majority to conform to the minority's will. Let people make mistakes, they will learn from them.

So for your building codes question, people, after those fires, realized that the fires were bad, and so made bad buildings illegal. However, that's kind of unnecessary; people would not want to buy a house that was easily destroyed or set on fire, and so people would not buy those, and instead buy buildings which were safer. People would push for higher quality buildings, and companies which pushed low-quality buildings would go out of business.

And, if people would buy a house that is easily destroyed, then they accept the risk of their house being destroyed when they purchase it, and let people make their mistakes.

The point is, people will pay for what they want, and if they do not want a dangerous house, they will not pay for a dangerous house. Let people have the freedom to make their "mistakes".

The only thing the anarchist system assumes is that information is freely available, that people are greedy, and that people will pay for what they want.

So you think the "state of nature" is capitalism? Really? Any capitalist worth his salt would argue that market forces should be able to cause people to fund fire departments (just like an anarchist), but in both cases, the result is the same: the lack of regulation leads to human nature making the decision and the decision is no.

What is wrong with a "no" decision? Are you assuming that people can never learn, and have to be led like lambs?

Also, for the problem of monopolies, now that historical precedents are known, there is definitely a much higher fear of monopolies than there was previously. So what if a monopoly forms? If they start raising prices, a huge, gaping market of "same product, less cost" opens up, and competitors will flood in. What if it's a natural resource, and people can't set up competition? Well, even natural resources(example: coal) have competition with other natural resources(example: gas), so even if coal is monopolized, people will come up with alternative resources that are more efficient, safer, less polluting, and less expensive.

Are people naturally personally lethargic? Can people naturally not make their own decisions about what they want?

 

[jreelawg]

Okay, the problem with this is, what about the competition? You're assuming Smith is the only smithy in the world, and has no competition, but the chance that there is no other man who can offer services of the quality of Smith's in a world as large as ours is quite low. And again, as I asked, would you purchase Smith's product if you knew he had a monopoly? There would be an "anti-Smith" market, so to speak, which any entrepreneurial individual could capitalize on.
Okay, if people do not want roads and fire departments and police stations, then what right does the government have to force people to pay for the goods and services people do not want? It's like a bakery saying, "our bread is good, and if you don't buy it we'll throw you into our cellar".

You have to remember, the world is a large group, and if there are a portion of people, say, 50,000 out of a million who want hospitals and would be willing to pay for them, then there is a market for that product. A minority should not be able to force the majority to conform to the minority's will. Let people make mistakes, they will learn from them.

So for your building codes question, people, after those fires, realized that the fires were bad, and so made bad buildings illegal. However, that's kind of unnecessary; people would not want to buy a house that was easily destroyed or set on fire, and so people would not buy those, and instead buy buildings which were safer. People would push for higher quality buildings, and companies which pushed low-quality buildings would go out of business.

And, if people would buy a house that is easily destroyed, then they accept the risk of their house being destroyed when they purchase it, and let people make their mistakes.

The point is, people will pay for what they want, and if they do not want a dangerous house, they will not pay for a dangerous house. Let people have the freedom to make their "mistakes".

The only thing the anarchist system assumes is that information is freely available, that people are greedy, and that people will pay for what they want.
What is wrong with a "no" decision? Are you assuming that people can never learn, and have to be led like lambs?

Also, for the problem of monopolies, now that historical precedents are known, there is definitely a much higher fear of monopolies than there was previously. So what if a monopoly forms? If they start raising prices, a huge, gaping market of "same product, less cost" opens up, and competitors will flood in. What if it's a natural resource, and people can't set up competition? Well, even natural resources(example: coal) have competition with other natural resources(example: gas), so even if coal is monopolized, people will come up with alternative resources that are more efficient, safer, less polluting, and less expensive.

Are people naturally personally lethargic? Can people naturally not make their own decisions about what they want?

Lets just assume the whole world is in anarchy. Who is going to be the person who keeps it that way? In reality at least one nation would form. Then that nation would do as nations have done for thousands of years, conquest and colonize. How would rock throwing self serving anarchists fight off a united military with billions and billions of tax funds?

 

[mheslep]

Technically, anarcho-primativism lasted for about ten thousand years. ...

I believe you must mean the human hunter-gatherer period. 'Anarcho-primativism' appears to be a political construct that makes reference to hunter-gatherer societies as part of its model; its not a term of art in anthropology.

 

[mheslep]

...It isn't a bastardization of history, or economics. The greatest period of economic inequality in US history was during the Gilded Age - the time when there was generally a greater degree of "economic freedom" and less regulation on businesses.

There were more monopolies then than now. During America's time of Laissez-Faire capitalism, businesses generally formed mornopolies like standard oil and before that you had coal companies who would "combine" with each other to fire workers to keep down wages, the price of men, and keep up the price of coal, i.e. the wages of capital.

You don't understand the history of the trust busters and all the anti-monopoly legislation that had to be passed until you come to understand laissez-faire capitalism and its failures.

Many of those monopolies were temporary, the rose and collapsed under their own weight.

Not to mention the fact that children and women formed one third of the industrial labor force in America in the early 1900s, that there was no worker's compensation, that the menail work that Americans were forced to do for up to 17 hours during busy periods essentially made them "appdendages of the machine" as one classical liberal philosopher put it, and that if you were injured on the job there was no savings plan or any available avenues for you to take except to starve to death or put the kids to work and take them out of school.

This should be put into the perspective of the rural farm life of the time and from which they came. Subsistence farming was a brutal life for most. ALL women and children worked on subsistence farms, all the time. The people who headed for the factories are evidence of this in that they voted with their feet.

After India became a democratic-capitalist state, they also lost more people every 8 years than the total nubmer who perished in the Great Chinese Famine, according to the economists and political theorists Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen (Hunger and Public Action). Sen is a nobel prize winner in economics. I don't see this as a "success story."

Don't confuse capitalism with free markets. Every country has 'capitalism' in that sense, even the former Soviet Union. The question is who controls the capital. In the SU the state controlled it all. India did not become a free market capitalist state until the 90's. Prior to that, the capital was mostly under the control of the state, and in that aspect analogous to the Soviet Union.

Not to mention the threat humans are posing to the planet; at least the people in anarcho-primitivism kept to a balance, and they didn't have such massive inequality

That is not consistent with any common history of, say, the native American peoples as described by the early Columbian era explorers - if that era and place is in keeping with what you mean. Some tribes were extremely well off - well fed, well clothed, rich culture, holding large numbers of slaves, and others were very poor, on the verge of collapse - all well before the Europeans arrived.

 

[OrbitalPower]

Many of those monopolies were temporary, the rose and collapsed under their own weight.

The monopolies formed because of free-market policies, they came to an end after government regulation.

This should be put into the perspective of the rural farm life of the time and from which they came. Subsistence farming was a brutal life for most. ALL women and children worked on subsistence farms, all the time. The people who headed for the factories are evidence of this in that they voted with their feet.

These are the same people who provided much of the evidence against their masters to parliament in England (the saddler committee) and in the US.

Saying one form of servitude is better than another really isn't much of a convincing argument.

Every country has 'capitalism' in that sense, even the former Soviet Union. The question is who controls the capital. In the SU the state controlled it all. India did not become a free market capitalist state until the 90's. Prior to that, the capital was mostly under the control of the state, and in that aspect analogous to the Soviet Union.

Ridiculous. There was no private property in the USSR whereas many industries in India were privatized, the government only providing regulation of the industries.

It was nothing like the USSR.

That is not consistent with any common history of, say, the native American peoples as described by the early Columbian era explorers - if that era and place is in keeping with what you mean. Some tribes were extremely well off - well fed, well clothed, rich culture, holding large numbers of slaves, and others were very poor, on the verge of collapse - all well before the Europeans arrived.

It is consistent with it.

Columbus himself was amazed at the cooperation and the share-and-share-alike spirit of the Indians - he even wrote about it in his journals. Las Casas and other historians wrote much of the same thing.

There were tens of millions of Indians by the time Columbus had care in the America - about 80 million according to Encarta. They were wiped out after the Europeans came.

And they certainly did have a balance, they had nothing like the inequality that exists in the world today.

 

[OrbitalPower]

I believe you must mean the human hunter-gatherer period. 'Anarcho-primativism' appears to be a political construct that makes reference to hunter-gatherer societies as part of its model; its not a term of art in anthropology.

David Graeber is a world famous anthropologist, who has done very good work in anthropology, and he often puts anarchism in the perspective of anthropology as well.

Anthropologists and historians often speak of "pre-civilization" which is a time when homo-sapiens lived when there didn't exist much in terms of official records or works, and there certainly wasn't a government.

I don't see why you can't say they were "anarchist" since they had no government.

 

[mheslep]

The monopolies formed because of free-market policies, they came to an end after government regulation.

These are the same people who provided much of the evidence against their masters to parliament in England (the saddler committee) and in the US.

Saying one form of servitude is better than another really isn't much of a convincing argument.

Servitude on the farm? Incoherent and a non-sequitur.

Ridiculous. There was no private property in the USSR whereas many industries in India were privatized, the government only providing regulation of the industries.

It was nothing like the USSR.

Private property? Non sequitur. I said capital. Most of the 'commanding heights', as Lenin called the the heavy industry, was nationalized or utterly controlled by the state in India for decades after its independence.

It is consistent with it.

Columbus himself was amazed at the cooperation and the share-and-share-alike spirit of the Indians - he even wrote about it in his journals. Las Casas and other historians wrote much of the same thing.

There were tens of millions of Indians by the time Columbus had care in the America - about 80 million according to Encarta. They were wiped out after the Europeans came.

And they certainly did have a balance, they had nothing like the inequality that exists in the world today.

An avalanche of non-squiturs Orbital.

 

[OrbitalPower]

How in the world are those non-sequiturs? You said Columbus said they were unbalanced; I haven't heard this.

What we were talking about was if industrialization and trade had always benefitted everyone. I don't see how that is the case when there are more people in poverty today than as Dr. Abraham George notes. Apparently there are "better" forms of poverty.

Read the book 1491 - the Indian populations were flourishing before the Europeans came here in the Americas.

If anything, the destruction of the Native Americans is another argument that "industrialization" and "free-trade" do not always lead to a greater benefit for all, which is what Russ had claimed.

 

[mheslep]

...If anything, the destruction of the Native Americans is another argument that "industrialization" and "free-trade" do not always lead to a greater benefit for all, which is what Russ had claimed.

95% of the loss in native American population was due to the spread of disease, and that 95% does not include intentional bio bombs of British 'pox blankets', if that ever occurred at all.

 

[OrbitalPower]

95% of the loss in native American population was due to the spread of disease, and that 95% does not include intentional bio bombs of British 'pox blankets', if that ever occurred at all.

The figure among historians seems to be "up to 80%" more or less in some areas:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Americans_in_the_United_States#European_explorations

"Epidemics often immediately followed European exploration and sometimes destroyed entire village populations. While precise figures are difficult to determine, some historians estimate that up to 80% of some Native populations died due to European diseases after first contact."

The book is 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (over 200 reviews on amazon, an average of 4 and 1/2 stars), which provides a culmination of evidence from the social sciences and the humanities and shows that they were actually quite successful, pre-trade.

This perhaps would be a good source to use as to whether they lived out of a balance with the environment, and since they seemed to be me mostly living off of "living sunlight" rather than "dead sunlight" I would say they had a blance.

The historical record is pretty clear: expansionism does not always lead to success. Slavery and Africa. And in the twentieth century, you had America and Britain etc. competing for oil in the middle east, the results of that being Britain carving up the middle east and the US propping up various dictators, even putting down attempts for the societies to democratize, etc.

Furthermore, US intervention in Latin America also led to millions of deaths, failed governments, etc.

So, I don't see how the record is "clear" that trade and industrialization is always a benefit, when it has failed even into the twentieth century.

 

[drankin]

So, I don't see how the record is "clear" that trade and industrialization is always a benefit, when it has failed even into the twentieth century.

Help me out here, what failed?

 

[ultimablah]

Lets just assume the whole world is in anarchy. Who is going to be the person who keeps it that way? In reality at least one nation would form. Then that nation would do as nations have done for thousands of years, conquest and colonize. How would rock throwing self serving anarchists fight off a united military with billions and billions of tax funds?

Anyone who wants to stay free of government tyranny will keep it that way. Nations or governmental bodies can voluntarily form, and they can voluntarily affect the people who agreed to it, but people, due to historical precedent, would realize that, in all likeliness, they would NOT benefit from a large, over-ruling governmental body. So a nation could form, but people would voluntarily fund committees to protect them from that nation should it attempt to conquer them. The government would form voluntarily, but only affect those who entered in it voluntarily(which is exactly what almost all governments today are not). If it started trying to involuntarily affect others, how would individuals protect themselves? Or in other words, how would rock throwing self serving anarchists fight of a united military with billions and billions of tax funds? Well, if a government wants to take over, first, it needs to get those billions and billions of tax funds, and in order to get tax funds, it has to tax, and in order to tax, it has to have the power to tax, and in order to get the power to tax, it first has to take over, which leads to the problem of people giving a government power. How many people would fund that government, knowing it would most likely turn on them and use them (a historical precedent set by every government), lowering the quality of life they could have otherwise gained? Where's the benefit per risk and cost?

And if people were being attacked by an outside government, then wouldn't a governmental body overrun an anarchist society? Well, they'd try their hardest to defend themselves, funding private military projects(but including, of course, requirements that the army cannot then turn on the funders, and limitations on power that would prevent the army from being able to take over after the war finishes). Not to mention, private individuals would have their own weapons(unlike the declawed population of today... if the government decides to attack us, who would defend us against our own military? It certainly would be difficult to defend ourselves).

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

Okay, the problem with this is, what about the competition? You're assuming Smith is the only smithy in the world, and has no competition, but the chance that there is no other man who can offer services of the quality of Smith's in a world as large as ours is quite low. And again, as I asked, would you purchase Smith's product if you knew he had a monopoly? There would be an "anti-Smith" market, so to speak, which any entrepreneurial individual could capitalize on.

There are always certain businesses that do better than others either because they have some edge over their competitors or simply got lucky. A company that gains a lead in a market can easily reinvest to expand and increase that lead. This does nto even require any sort of greed or intent for dominion on the part of the company. Mr. Smith may simply like that he is providing a good service protecting people and their businesses and providing so many people with good jobs. In fact a company that has little interest in their own personal gain will theoretically have more capital to reinvest and expand their business.

And Smith needn't compete with everyone in the world only everyone in his general region of the world in order to gain a foot hold there. Why would people necessarily have a problem with a monopoly? If people trust Mr. Smith, believe that he is a good man, like the services he provides, and the jobs he creates why would anyone (save his competitors) have a problem with this? You seem to have this idea that people will instinctively distrust a monopoly. But if you look at the world around you you will see that in most markets there are only a few giants and many much smaller entities, despite even government regulation against monopolies, and primarily because people have "voted" for them by giving them their business.

 

[ultimablah]

Okay, so what, then, is the problem with monopolies? They're still purely voluntary.

Or, are you saying that people wouldn't suddenly become wary if Mr. Smith started hunting down people who denied his service? If Mr. Smith made any part of his company opaque?

In an anarchist society, business would be as close to politics as the system gets. I mean, if one company got a monopoly in physical power, do you think nobody would realize the dangers of such a monopoly?

On both sides, for and against any political system, slippery slope arguments appear en masse.

 

[DropGems]

You pseudo-intellectuals should try reading some Gnome Chomsky before you go spouting off on the intricacies of anarchy.

 

[LightbulbSun]

You pseudo-intellectuals should try reading some Gnome Chomsky before you go spouting off on the intricacies of anarchy.

It's NOAM not Gnome.

 

[mheslep]

It's NOAM not Gnome.

No its http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nim_Chimpsky" .

 

[mheslep]

The figure among historians seems to be "up to 80%" more or less in some areas:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Americans_in_the_United_States#European_explorations

"Epidemics often immediately followed European exploration and sometimes destroyed entire village populations. While precise figures are difficult to determine, some historians estimate that up to 80% of some Native populations died due to European diseases after first contact."...

My source was UCLA professor Jared Diamond:

...Throughout the Americas, diseases introduced with Europeans spread from tribe to tribe far in advance of the Europeans themselves, killing an estimated 95 percent of the pre-Columbian Native American population...

http://books.google.com/books?id=kL...r&dq=jared&ei=NClRSemcFIPmzASU5rzHBg#PPA78,M1
The main point of contention seems to be the pre-Columbia estimate of population, which varies from 1 or 2 million up to 20 million.

Edit: Jared goes on to answer the question: Why were the native Americans decimated and not the other way around when the Spanish ships returned home carrying American infections? Answer: hunter-gatherer vs agriculture based cultures. Agrarian cultures support 10-100 denser populations (at the time) and they stay on top of their own refuse where as the h-gs move on. The result is the agrarians societies hosted diseases and their populations were forced, over the eons and bouts w/ plagues, to develop immunities; the h-g's never had to. There was an interesting recent study showing that, even today, people demonstrating immunity to AIDS, despite direct contact with the virus, are often direct descendants of 14th century plague survivors in Europe.

 

[shakemyhandbo]

I think this is false in the sense that today I observed heirarchy among ducks. I live at a marina and ducks were on the docks. One pair of the ducks were like the in-crowd, the cool popular ducks, stretching showing good posture, confidence, self-esteem. The other ducks were tucked up napping but they didn't look cool at all. And there is a malard duck that looks different from the others, yesterday it was not accepted, today it was accepted and it was happy. Humans are no different.

I usually find that I reject my friends in favor of people who aren't as kind.

Anarchy is a temporary phenomena. Heirarchy is always formed, even if it's subtle. Even between three friends, a heirarchy is established.

The heirarchy may rotate depending on the context and moods of everyone, of course. But the simple fact is that some people are more willing to do what they're told and other people are more satisfied telling people what to do. Eventually, an authority is established based on power and will. (If someone has power but no ambition, they easily lose their power to someone who has ambition, but no power, thus making someone with power and ambition.)

If you want to get down to it, heirarchy itself is likely formed out of greed. The rich land-owner and lawmakers of the mercantile age eventually realized that they were suffocating their own coffers by restricting trade. Adams, Hobbes, and Locke all showed how the government could profit from letting people own their stuff and making them feel more secure. So allowing more freedoms may have very well been a product of greed itself.

 

[shakemyhandbo]

The real problem that we have in the world is people who are floaters, interested in doing the minimum to gain social acceptance and status. Say 5% of people really know how to solve problems, useful skills. The rest of people don't contribute in the same way. This is the most intelligent forum I've seen around, you have no concept. It doesn't quite make sense to release the best inventions into society that would only impose more rules on the very same innovator.

 

[Al68]

Would a society without a centralized, involuntary taxation power be sustainable? (eg. an anarchy?) Could people be happy without having to rely on a system that uses force to mandate policies? Would economics work?

You could easily have government, even a republican form, without involuntary taxation. Government could simply engage in business ventures to make money, or donated trusts, or private financing, etc. It would be unlikely that it would be a monstrous gov't like the US, but only a small fraction of federal tax revenue in the US is used to operate gov't itself, build highways, basic law enforcement, etc.

As far as economics, free enterprise only needs basic rule of law to operate at its best, ie, prohibitions against theft, fraud, murder, etc.

It should be noted that the US went from (literally) nothing to the greatest nation in history with no income or payroll tax, with rare (and insignificant) exception. During this time, the US federal gov't as a whole would be considered economically insignificant by today's standards.

 

[Al68]

Of course, in capitalism, there is a profit incentive, and since capitalists don't come up with a very good solution to the tragedy of the commons, the system inevitably led to poor living standards for the masses

Poor living standards for the masses caused by capitalism? Are you joking? You cannot believe that the living standards for the masses are worse than before the rise of capitalism. Unless you grossly, grossly, grossly, overestimate their living standards in the past. In countries with relatively free economies today, most people eat a decent meal almost every day. This situation is virtually unique to capitalism.

In countries that greatly restrict capitalism, there is widespread abject poverty. This situation is obfuscated in the US due to our operational definition of "poverty" including children who have clothing, shelter, eat every day, water that won't kill them, etc. Some people just don't realize how much worse people in economically oppressed countries have it.

There are zero countries with significantly free economies that have such widespread abject poverty. Zero.

 

[misgfool]

It should be noted that the US went from (literally) nothing to the greatest nation in history with no income or payroll tax, with rare (and insignificant) exception.

You may be on to something. I don't think mongols had income or payroll tax either.

Poor living standards for the masses caused by capitalism? Are you joking? You cannot believe that the living standards for the masses are worse than before the rise of capitalism. Unless you grossly, grossly, grossly, overestimate their living standards in the past. In countries with relatively free economies today, most people eat a decent meal almost every day. This situation is virtually unique to capitalism.

It isn't capitalism that brings decent meals. It's technology.

 

[OrbitalPower]

Poor living standards for the masses caused by capitalism? Are you joking? You cannot believe that the living standards for the masses are worse than before the rise of capitalism.

Yes, I believe it is quite clear that capitalism drives down living standards. When it first appeared in Enlgand, more than fifty-seven per cent of the working class children died before the age of thirty-two - they had better living standards under Feudalism. The working conditions in American capitalism were equally deplorable and compared to farm life it was not as self-sustainable as well, not to mention that they also saw a decrease in political power as well.

The roaring 20s and gay 90s (1890s) also experienced extreme poverty and the policies of laissez-faire led right into the Great Depression which again saw a reversal of living standards.

The record is quite clear that capitalism only works with massive government regulation and programs.

The best empirical evidence of pure capitalism is Latin America - numerous countries followed the advice of free-market economists after the 50s and 60s and this led to some of the highest inflation and worst living standards the countries had seen in years, Chile, Argentina, and especially Nicaragua.

Nicaragua became the second poorest region in the hemisphere after the Reagan administration and freedom fighters "liberated it." The Indians in the region that Reagan was supposedly saving only could find work as divers, where a lack of standards had them diving without equipment where there brains would get smashed as it was calculated companies could bring in new workers cheaper than they could have effective living standards.

The record of laissez-faire capitalism is clear: failure after failure after failure - free-market economics has effectively been discredited.

Unless you grossly, grossly, grossly, overestimate their living standards in the past. In countries with relatively free economies today, most people eat a decent meal almost every day. This situation is virtually unique to capitalism.

Actually the clear majority of first world countries with high living standards are those who have "mixed economies" what Republicans here in the US call "socialism."

The extreme in either direction - extreme laissez-faire capitalism or other forms of laissez-faire societies, and extreme totalitarian ones - have generally been failures.

http://economist.com/markets/rankin...ory_id=8908454&CFID=16415879&CFTOKEN=94552766

The US is certainly no stranger to heavily regulated government industries and government programs that stimulate the economy in the first place, however, the regulation tends to be on behalf of industry rather than on behalf of the people.

In countries that greatly restrict capitalism, there is widespread abject poverty.

This is not true. Many countries supposedly "restrict" capitalism to a greater degree than the US does and they do not have abject widespread poverty.

If you look at the U.N. development index the US has gone down on the list whereas social market nordic nations are at the top.

This situation is obfuscated in the US due to our operational definition of "poverty" including children who have clothing, shelter, eat every day, water that won't kill them, etc. Some people just don't realize how much worse people in economically oppressed countries have it.

The US is not a free-market economy and hasn't been in decades. Some of its most prosperous times come when it regulated the economy, mostly due to what are called "Keynesian economics."

If anything, the economy is more regulated now than it has ever been. The Reagan adminstration, prior to Bush, was the biggest corporate welfare proponent of all time, bailing out corporations at the estimated amount of 500 billion. Bush has even surpassed this, which is something many people didn't even think was possible.

The current problems the US is facing is clearly the problem of these failed, corporatist policies.

There are zero countries with significantly free economies that have such widespread abject poverty. Zero.

Again this is untrue as Mexico went into its worst recession in its history AFTER they had implemented the policies of trade and the World Bank and many Latin American countries that were free-market had difficulty competing with Cuba when it came to education and health care.

Brazil also is awash in resources but they have problems with extreme poverty with children who spend their lives sniffing glue on the streets and families without homes etc.

All other countries that are supposedly successful "capitalist" stories like Hong Kong or Japan have various measures such as price-controls, oligarchies left over from British colonization, anti-comeptitive practices (numerous companies have been forced out of Hong Kong because of their food cartels), and so on.