Anarchy and the "public good"

FreedomFight · Jan 12, 2010

"In economics, a public good is a good that is non-rivalrous and non-excludable. This means that consumption of the good by one individual does not reduce availability of the good for consumption by others; and that no one can be effectively excluded from using the good."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good.

Two good examples would be public roads and national defence.

I see this is the fundamental difference between anarchism and libertarianism. Anarchists completely excludes taxation, while libertarians believe in a minimalist system that supports only goods which fall under this strict definition. The topic for discussion is how a hypothetical anarchial society would deal with either providing or excluding these goods.

DropKick Murphys · Jan 12, 2010

FreedomFight said: ↑

The topic for discussion is how a hypothetical anarchial society would deal with either providing or excluding these goods.
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The exact same way other companies provide other goods or services to consumers.

Two other points:
1) There would be no conception of "national defense" as there would be no nation
2) neither of the two examples you listed are necessarily public goods.

FreedomFight · Jan 12, 2010

Hmm, for some reason my last post dissapeared.

DropKick Murphys said: ↑

The exact same way other companies provide other goods or services to consumers..
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The inherent definition of these goods basically says that one cannot be excluded from it, and therefore there's no incentive to pay for it.

DropKick Murphys said: ↑

1) There would be no conception of "national defense" as there would be no nation
2) neither of the two examples you listed are necessarily public goods.
Click to expand...

Don't get too hung up on the specificity. If you have better examples, or believe that the distinction of these goods to begin with is poor.... I would be more interested.

Sythe · Jan 13, 2010

FreedomFight said: ↑

This means that consumption of the good by one individual does not reduce availability of the good for consumption by others; and that no one can be effectively excluded from using the good."

Two good examples would be public roads and national defence.
Click to expand...

So these traffic jams are just illusion? And I don't know wtf is national defence, but individual defense I don't see any of around here either, but I imagine if there were a cop on every corner it would still be the case that when the police are busy else-where the robbers break into your house.

The 'public-good' term is just an invention -- a spell -- to be cast on slaves to make them shut up and do as they're told instead of rightfully questioning the provision of these so-called services.

FreedomFight · Jan 13, 2010

Sythe said: ↑

So these traffic jams are just illusion? And I don't know wtf is national defence, but individual defense I don't see any of around here either, but I imagine if there were a cop on every corner it would still be the case that when the police are busy else-where the robbers break into your house.
Click to expand...

I don't want to get too caught up in specificity. I am fully aware that these particular examples are debateable in how beneficial they are.

The idea here is whether there are certain commodities that are non-exclusive. I'm just curious how an anarchial society would let's say, prevent itself from getting overun by another nation. Currently, because one cannot opt out of the protection of "national defence", neither can we technically opt out of paying taxes or serving in the draft.

Are you going to argue that security/defence/enforcement (whatever you call it) is unneccessary in a society?

Sythe · Jan 13, 2010

FreedomFight said: ↑

The idea here is whether there are certain commodities that are non-exclusive. I'm just curious how an anarchial society would let's say, prevent itself from getting overun by another nation. Currently, because one cannot opt out of the protection of "national defence", neither can we technically opt out of paying taxes or serving in the draft.

Are you going to argue that security/defence/enforcement (whatever you call it) is unneccessary in a society?
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Not to brush you off, but this debate has been had ad infinitum; I'll quote from Rothbard's flagship book on the subject "for a new liberty".

http://mises.org/rothbard/newlibertywhole.asp#p215

If you don't want to read this wall of text, here's the free professionally produced audiobook of this chapter: http://mises.org/media/1789

Police Protection:

In the first place, there is a common fallacy, held even by most advocates of laissez-faire, that the government must supply "police protection," as if police protection were a single, absolute entity, a fixed quantity of something which the government supplies to all. But in actual fact there is no absolute commodity called "police protection" any more than there is an absolute single commodity called "food" or "shelter." It is true that everyone pays taxes for a seemingly fixed quantity of protection, but this is a myth. In actual fact, there are almost infinite degrees of all sorts of protection. For any given person or business, [p. 216] the police can provide everything from a policeman on the beat who patrols once a night, to two policemen patrolling constantly on each block, to cruising patrol cars, to one or even several round-the-clock personal bodyguards. Furthermore, there are many other decisions the police must make, the complexity of which becomes evident as soon as we look beneath the veil of the myth of absolute "protection." How shall the police allocate their funds which are, of course, always limited as are the funds of all other individuals, organizations, and agencies? How much shall the police invest in electronic equipment? fingerprinting equipment? detectives as against uniformed police? patrol cars as against foot police, etc.?

The point is that the government has no rational way to make these allocations. The government only knows that it has a limited budget. Its allocations of funds are then subject to the full play of politics, boondoggling, and bureaucratic inefficiency, with no indication at all as to whether the police department is serving the consumers in a way responsive to their desires or whether it is doing so efficiently. The situation would be different if police services were supplied on a free, competitive market. In that case, consumers would pay for whatever degree of protection they wish to purchase. The consumers who just want to see a policeman once in a while would pay less than those who want continuous patrolling, and far less than those who demand twenty-four-hour bodyguard service. On the free market, protection would be supplied in proportion and in whatever way that the consumers wish to pay for it. A drive for efficiency would be insured, as it always is on the market, by the compulsion to make profits and avoid losses, and thereby to keep costs low and to serve the highest demands of the consumers. Any police firm that suffers from gross inefficiency would soon go bankrupt and disappear.
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National Defense:

We come now to what is usually the final argument against the libertarian position. Every libertarian has heard a sympathetic but critical listener say: "All right, I see how this system could be applied successfully to local police and courts. But how could a libertarian society defend us against the Russians?"

There are, of course, several dubious assumptions implied in such a question. There is the assumption that the Russians are bent upon military invasion of the United States, a doubtful assumption at best. There is the assumption that any such desire would still remain after the United [p. 238] States had become a purely libertarian society. This notion overlooks the lesson of history that wars result from conflicts between nation-states, each armed to the teeth, each direly suspicious of attack by the other. But a libertarian America would clearly not be a threat to anyone, not because it had no arms but because it would be dedicated to no aggression against anyone, or against any country. Being no longer a nation-state, which is inherently threatening, there would be little chance of any country attacking us. One of the great evils of the nation-state is that each State is able to identify all of its subjects with itself; hence in any inter-State war, the innocent civilians, the subjects of each country, are subject to aggression from the enemy State. But in a libertarian society there would be no such identification, and hence very little chance of such a devastating war. Suppose, for example, that our outlaw Metropolitan Police Force has initiated aggression not only against Americans but also against Mexicans. If Mexico had a government, then clearly the Mexican government would know full well that Americans in general were not implicated in the Metropolitan's crimes, and had no symbiotic relationship with it. If the Mexican police engaged in a punitive expedition to punish the Metropolitan force, they would not be at war with Americans in general — as they would be now. In fact, it is highly likely that other American forces would join the Mexicans in putting down the aggressor. Hence, the idea of inter-State war against a libertarian country or geographical area would most likely disappear. There is, furthermore, a grave philosophical error in the very posing of this sort of question about the Russians. When we contemplate any sort of new system, whatever it may be, we must first decide whether we want to see it brought about. In order to decide whether we want libertarianism or communism, or left-wing anarchism, or theocracy, or any other system, we must first assume that it has been established, and then consider whether the system could work, whether it could remain in existence, and just how efficient such a system would be. We have shown, I believe, that a libertarian system, once instituted, could work, be viable, and be at once far more efficient, prosperous, moral, and free than any other social system. But we have said nothing about how to get from the present system to the ideal; for these are two totally separate questions: the question of what is our ideal goal, and of the strategy and tactics of how to get from the present system to that goal. The Russian question mixes these two levels of discourse. It assumes, not that libertarianism has been established everywhere throughout the globe, but that for some reason it has been established only in America and nowhere else. But why assume this? Why not first [p. 239] assume that it has been established everywhere and see whether we like it? After all, the libertarian philosophy is an eternal one, not bound to time or place. We advocate liberty for everyone, everywhere, not just in the United States. If someone agrees that a world libertarian society, once established, is the best that he can conceive, that it would be workable, efficient, and moral, then let him become a libertarian, let him join us in accepting liberty as our ideal goal, and then join us further in the separate — and obviously difficult — task of figuring out how to bring this ideal about.

If we do move on to strategy, it is obvious that the larger an area in which liberty is first established the better its chances for survival, and the better its chance to resist any violent overthrow that may be attempted. If liberty is established instantaneously throughout the world, then there will of course be no problem of "national defense." All problems will be local police problems. If, however, only Deep Falls, Wyoming, becomes libertarian while the rest of America and the world remain statist, its chances for survival will be very slim. If Deep Falls, Wyoming, declares its secession from the United States government and establishes a free society, the chances are great that the United States — given its historical ferocity toward secessionists — would quickly invade and crush the new free society, and there is little that any Deep Falls police force could do about it. Between these two polar cases, there is an infinite continuum of degrees, and obviously, the larger the area of freedom, the better it could withstand any outside threat. The "Russian question" is therefore a matter of strategy rather than a matter of deciding on basic principles and on the goal toward which we wish to direct our efforts.

But after all this is said and done, let us take up the Russian question anyway. Let us assume that the Soviet Union would really be hell-bent on attacking a libertarian population within the present boundaries of the United States (clearly, there would no longer be a United States government to form a single nation-state). In the first place, the form and quantity of defense expenditures would be decided upon by the American consumers themselves. Those Americans who favor Polaris submarines, and fear a Soviet threat, would subscribe toward the financing of such vessels. Those who prefer an ABM system would invest in such defensive missiles. Those who laugh at such a threat or those who are committed pacifists would not contribute to any "national" defense service at all. Different defense theories would be applied in proportion to those who agree with, and support, the various theories being offered. Given the enormous waste in all wars and defense preparations [p. 240] in all countries throughout history, it is certainly not beyond the bounds of reason to propose that private, voluntary defense efforts would be far more efficient than government boondoggles. Certainly these efforts would be infinitely more moral.

But let us assume the worst. Let us assume that the Soviet Union at last invades and conquers the territory of America. What then? We have to realize that the Soviet Union's difficulties will have only just begun. The main reason a conquering country can rule a defeated country is that the latter has an existing State apparatus to transmit and enforce the victor's orders onto a subject population. Britain, though far smaller in area and population, was able to rule India for centuries because it could transmit British orders to the ruling Indian princes, who in turn could enforce them on the subject population. But in those cases in history where the conquered had no government, the conquerors found rule over the conquered extremely difficult. When the British conquered West Africa, for example, they found it extremely difficult to govern the Ibo tribe (later to form Biafra) because that tribe was essentially libertarian, and had no ruling government of tribal chiefs to transmit orders to the natives. And perhaps the major reason it took the English centuries to conquer ancient Ireland is that the Irish had no State, and that there was therefore no ruling governmental structure to keep treaties, transmit orders, etc. It is for this reason that the English kept denouncing the "wild" and "uncivilized" Irish as "faithless," because they would not keep treaties with the English conquerors. The English could never understand that, lacking any sort of State, the Irish warriors who concluded treaties with the English could only speak for themselves; they could never commit any other group of the Irish population.14

Furthermore, the occupying Russians' lives would be made even more difficult by the inevitable eruption of guerrilla warfare by the American population. It is surely a lesson of the twentieth century — a lesson first driven home by the successful American revolutionaries against the mighty British Empire — that no occupying force can long keep down a native population determined to resist. If the giant United States, armed with far greater productivity and firepower, could not succeed against a tiny and relatively unarmed Vietnamese population, how in the world could the Soviet Union succeed in keeping down the American people? No Russian occupation soldier's life would be safe from the [p. 241] wrath of a resisting American populace. Guerrilla warfare has proved to be an irresistible force precisely because it stems, not from a dictatorial central government, but from the people themselves, fighting for their liberty and independence against a foreign State. And surely the anticipation of this sea of troubles, of the enormous costs and losses that would inevitably follow, would stop well in advance even a hypothetical Soviet government bent on military conquest.
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FreedomFight · Jan 14, 2010

Sythe said: ↑

Not to brush you off, but this debate has been
had ad infinitum
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Ha. I'll take it as a learning experience then. Seems most debates
here are of that nature anyways.

Sythe said: ↑

In that case, consumers would pay for whatever degree of protection
they wish to purchase.
Click to expand...

Has this notion ever worked in a stable society? I've always viewed
ideal law as an absolute. It seems a system like this would immediatly
shift power to those with the most money (and the biggest guns),
without any chance of a free market.

Sythe said: ↑

in all countries throughout history, it is certainly not beyond the
bounds of reason to propose that private, voluntary defense efforts
would be far more efficient than government boondoggles. Certainly
these efforts would be infinitely more moral.
Click to expand...

Everything in that paragraph just seems awfully convenient. Even if a
privately funded operation was more efficient, he makes no effort to
quantify or estimate how much less would be invested in such an
effort.

Survival at it's core isn't really about upholding morals - it's about
one thing, survival only.

Sythe said: ↑

If you don't want to read this wall of text
Click to expand...

I read it all.

Sythe · Jan 14, 2010

FreedomFight said: ↑

Ha. I'll take it as a learning experience then. Seems most debates
here are of that nature anyways.

Has this notion ever worked in a stable society? I've always viewed
ideal law as an absolute. It seems a system like this would immediatly
shift power to those with the most money (and the biggest guns),
without any chance of a free market.

Everything in that paragraph just seems awfully convenient. Even if a
privately funded operation was more efficient, he makes no effort to
quantify or estimate how much less would be invested in such an
effort.

Survival at it's core isn't really about upholding morals - it's about
one thing, survival only.

I read it all.
Click to expand...

I encourage you to read / listen to the entire book. It's very good. Written probably before you were born and covers almost every argument against anarcho-capitalism, and written by the key philosopher behind anarcho-capitalism. The rest of the audiobook is free here: http://mises.org/media.aspx?action=category&ID=87

Anyway getting back to your comments. Consider communism. Why does communism work at all. Why do people subscribe to this wretched ideology that rapes them literally and figuratively of all their property and worth and value? How can such a state of things persist for tens of decades??

The power of ideas is the most underestimated force in the world. And the reason it is underestimated because the underestimation of it is in fact caused by it. The common ideology today is that ideas hold no power and you cannot change the status quo. But this itself is an IDEA and the reason you believe it strongly is precisely because ideas do hold power.

All that is required for voluntarily society is for people to believe in voluntary interaction. Just like all that is required to have a roman catholic church is for people to believe in the pope. It's really that simple. It's self-fulfilling.

god69er · Jan 18, 2010

i find it hard to believe that sythe actually believes all these radical theories which are commonly accepted by the mentally ill. he must just say this stuff to piss off the rational thinkers on his forums.

Sythe · Jan 18, 2010

god69er said: ↑

i find it hard to believe that sythe actually believes all these radical theories which are commonly accepted by the mentally ill. he must just say this stuff to piss off the rational thinkers on his forums.
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That's not an argument. And frankly believing in magical men in the sky or that violence can solve complex social issues is the domain of the mentally ill.

In the days of slavery I would have been one lone voice in protest of slavery, and you would have come along, much as you have just now, and said "man I can't believe Sythe believes all these radical theories."

All I'm doing is applying reason equally to all aspects of all things. I don't pick the winners, just as I don't pick the outcome of a math problem.

So unless you can demonstrate that some of my reasoning is false then you have no feet to stand on in making such allegations.

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