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Hey guys, I'm a libertarian and an anarcho-capitalist who has lately been interested in the objectivist philosophy. I am beginning to learn about the objectivist defense of the right to life but would like more specifics on how the right to pursue happiness is derived from this right to life. My understanding is that objectivists view life as necessary to uphold any value or to be interested in philosophy in the first place but on a more fundamental level, how does this translate into the right to pursue happiness? After all it is not necessary to be happy in order to live. One could argue that it is necessary to truly fulfill life but what justifies the ability to fulfill life from the right to life and how does this relate to liberty for each individual? As a disclaimer I already uphold the principles of liberty and the non-initiation of force being a libertarian but was curious to learn about the objectivist justifications for the above and how it leads to liberty according to the philosophy. As an anarchist I am also curious as to why objectivists favor the state despite the fact that it violates liberty, namely, in that it imposes a specific protection agency on all human beings within a given geographical territory and does not allow it to choose any other organization regardless of whether or not it upholds the principle of the non-initiation of force.

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Could you clarify something about your question:  

You're asking why a person should have a right to pursue happiness. Are you also asking why a person should have a right to life? Or, do you take the right to life as already proven/validated /obvious in some way?

The reason I ask  is this: if you can show that man has the right to life, those same premises lead you to show that man has the right to pull out a strand of his hair. You don't need any new premises. And, those same premises will lead you to his right to pursue sadness (or happiness, if he so chooses).

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8 hours ago, Aziz 2 Al-Jabir 2 said:

As an anarchist I am also curious as to why objectivists favor the state despite the fact that it violates liberty, namely, in that it imposes a specific protection agency on all human beings within a given geographical territory and does not allow it to choose any other organization regardless of whether or not it upholds the principle of the non-initiation of force.

Actually, an Objectivist government would not prevent individuals from hiring a protection agency of their choice. Current western governments don't do that either. Some require companies that provide protection to be licensed (especially if their agents are armed), but all western governments (and even most dictatorship) allow for the existence of companies that provide protection services to individuals.

An Objectivist government would only claim a monopoly on punishing criminals. The reason for that is that the alternative (victims of crimes, real or perceived, being free to choose when and how to establish guilt and when and how to punish supposed criminals) would be a horrific travesty of justice and, in general, hell on earth.

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6 hours ago, softwareNerd said:

Could you clarify something about your question:  

You're asking why a person should have a right to pursue happiness. Are you also asking why a person should have a right to life? Or, do you take the right to life as already proven/validated /obvious in some way?

The reason I ask  is this: if you can show that man has the right to life, those same premises lead you to show that man has the right to pull out a strand of his hair. You don't need any new premises. And, those same premises will lead you to his right to pursue sadness (or happiness, if he so chooses).

I'm mainly asking about why a person should have the right to pursue happiness and how this is derived from the right to life but a little more background info on the right to life would be helpful in understanding this concept.

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7 hours ago, Nicky said:

Actually, an Objectivist government would not prevent individuals from hiring a protection agency of their choice. Current western governments don't do that either. Some require companies that provide protection to be licensed (especially if their agents are armed), but all western governments (and even most dictatorship) allow for the existence of companies that provide protection services to individuals.

An Objectivist government would only claim a monopoly on punishing criminals. The reason for that is that the alternative (victims of crimes, real or perceived, being free to choose when and how to establish guilt and when and how to punish supposed criminals) would be a horrific travesty of justice and, in general, hell on earth.

Yes, private arbitration agencies rather. A system of competing courts which would be subjected to competition in the free-market just as any other service, resulting in the ones that provide defense against aggression most efficiently to survive due to the competition they will face. If the government is going to violently force private protection agencies that are not aggressing against anyone and are merely punishing criminals righteously, this seems to me to be a violation of liberty. It is as though a special group of people is arbitrarily selected to enact righteous punishment and is given the right to use force against others who do the same thing.

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15 hours ago, Aziz 2 Al-Jabir 2 said:

I'm mainly asking about why a person should have the right to pursue happiness and how this is derived from the right to life but a little more background info on the right to life would be helpful in understanding this concept.

A key premise underlying the right to life is that we have much to gain from other human beings: working together to produce value. The "division of labor", popularized by Adam Smith, and the value of trade that allows us to have thousands of times the value that we could produce alone or in tiny groups. 

The second main premise is that we need a principle that will best ensure the benefits from this, while imposing the least possible burden on us.

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10 hours ago, Aziz 2 Al-Jabir 2 said:

Yes, private arbitration agencies rather.

Ok, so you said "private protection agencies", and I pointed out that they already exist. Now you changed it to "private arbitration agencies"...and I'm gonna point out that, they too, already exist.

So you're not talking about the right to protection, or to right to arbitration...both of which we already have. You're talking about the right to decide how to punish people who you believe have wronged you. The right to kill your wife for cheating on you, if that's what you deem just punishment, the right to cut off the hand of a thief, the right to just kill/hurt anyone, for whatever action you wish to call a crime.

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Nicky,

I don't think that is the point Aziz is making - he is referring to organisations using retaliatory force that operate with the same authority as the government does - and not a delegated authority of any kind either. That is not the case in the US. 

Your point about abusive agencies applies just as much to abusive governments, only a government has a monopoly on force, whereas a single agency wouldn't have under capitalism. What would be easier for individuals to deal with if one became abusive? That is actually quite an interesting question.

If you have further concerns about this you need to set them out rather than put words into other people's mouths. This would enrich the discussion and show due respect to contributors.

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9 hours ago, Nicky said:

What about the ones that are punishing criminals un-righteously?

That is always a possibility. But this is also a possibility for governments. There will never be a perfect system. Humans are fallible. If governments have the final say in the use of force they could always become corrupted. Governments that start out small seem to inevitably grow bigger such as was the case with the United States government. This is because once prosperity increases due to capitalism the government will want to steal some of that prosperity. Private arbitration agencies, and by this I mean agencies that are charged with trying and punishing criminals, on the other hand would be subjected to market competition and would lose business and possibly their jobs if they were to enact punishment un-righteously. I would argue that these agencies are less likely to become corrupted for this reason as well as because of the fact that there would be many competing agencies that people could turn to in the case that one of the agencies becomes tyrannical. This would be harder to accomplish if the government were to become tyrannical.

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1 hour ago, Aziz 2 Al-Jabir 2 said:

If governments have the final say in the use of force they could always become corrupted. Governments that start out small seem to inevitably grow bigger such as was the case with the United States government. This is because once prosperity increases due to capitalism the government will want to steal some of that prosperity. Private arbitration agencies, and by this I mean agencies that are charged with trying and punishing criminals, on the other hand would be subjected to market competition and would lose business and possibly their jobs if they were to enact punishment un-righteously.

Maybe, but also maybe they'll recognize that such market competition is completely altered if the standard of justice is what the market seeks. If one arbitration agency said slavery is proper so all runaway slaves should return to slaveowners, and another said the opposite, how would the market for justice work? If a large portion of people supported the first, or at least stayed profitable, they would do pretty well. After all, after shopping around, slaveowners would seek an agency that punished those who aided escaped slaves. Inevitably, this will cause direct conflict. This possibility exists just as easily between two governments, the issue is that with arbitration agencies, sharing a geographic region is a major problem for major legal issues.

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Eiuol,

What if the government was influenced by lobbyists and began shifting towards a slavery friendly position?

I ask this not because I disagree with you. I feel that having an alternative of multiple agencies tasked with retaliatory use of force would be worse; I just don't think the decisive reasons why have been given yet.

You touch on it in a sense; the need for a common standard of justice, respecting and protecting individual rights. This could be unduly influenced through markets with private agencies. Without a higher authority what would stop abuses - what would prevent a descent into constant civil war between competing forces?

Yet with the alternative; a government, the fact is that any existing democratic government can vote in pseudo rights or vote away rights, politicians can be lobbied and influenced in ways which are contrary to what they are there for. Other forms of government can be much worse. A government that gets out of hand is very hard to get back under control precisely because citizens have meaningfully been disarmed - that's what it means when a government has a monopoly on force.

The only argument that you can really make in favour of a government is that when it has been properly devised, it can offer the chance for greater stability and consistency in how the system of justice functions. In turn, where the government operates objectively, with recognition of and respect for individual rights, it is more likely to deliver justice than any other alternative. This would be preferable because the result would be less self-defeating conflict amongst people.

Yet as you point out the next issue is the reality of multiple governments. On a global scale, these governments share basically the same dynamics as a system of multiple agencies do within a single nation. Within a nation, hypothetically moral individuals might employ and benefit from agencies which do a good job of providing justice, whilst others find themselves abused by agencies employed by people with immoral intentions, they are the ones who are unable to buy justice from competing moral agencies. Globally you have the same issue with governments and other forceful borderless organisations.

Ultimately if man's aim is to live in his rational self-interest and live with others to mutual benefit, under a system as set out by Rand, this system would work best on a global scale. That seems to be where you end up if you follow the line of reasoning to its conclusion. Individual nations could create greater instability and inconsistency in the provision of justice and in the use of retaliatory force than a single government, therefore creating more opportunities for self-defeating conflict than a global government would.

Now I would expect many here to reject that idea. So my question would be what is it that ultimately makes the nation state preferable, other than it is the form of government we are most familiar and used to - i.e. what reason other than convention can be put forward for it as the ideal?

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23 hours ago, Aziz 2 Al-Jabir 2 said:

That is always a possibility. But this is also a possibility for governments. There will never be a perfect system. Humans are fallible. If governments have the final say in the use of force they could always become corrupted. Governments that start out small seem to inevitably grow bigger such as was the case with the United States government. This is because once prosperity increases due to capitalism the government will want to steal some of that prosperity. Private arbitration agencies, and by this I mean agencies that are charged with trying and punishing criminals, on the other hand would be subjected to market competition and would lose business and possibly their jobs if they were to enact punishment un-righteously. I would argue that these agencies are less likely to become corrupted for this reason as well as because of the fact that there would be many competing agencies that people could turn to in the case that one of the agencies becomes tyrannical. This would be harder to accomplish if the government were to become tyrannical.

Your sci-fi scenario is very far fetched, but that's not the issue I was raising anyway. I have a tried and tested rule of not trying to argue against people who present this particular scenario as a good alternative to government.

What I'm trying to figure out is what this "right" you alluded to is. You mentioned that a government that prevents you from starting an agency that doles out its own brand of justice is violating your liberty. Which implies that you have the right to dole out your own brand of justice.

What I'm curious about is this: what are the limits on this right. Let's say I start my own justice agency. It would be really easy to do, since I don't need to actually fill out any paperwork, I can just put up a sign on my door that says Nicky's Justice Emporium, and that would be that. So that's done. So now, let's talk about what my rights are. Do I have the right to punish someone who stole ten bucks from me with a month in jail? Two years? Ten years? What conditions do I have the right to subject him to, while he's in my jail (that would be my basement). What about someone who stole 10 bucks from my neighbor? Also, do I have the right to do this based on witness testimony? Do I have a right to do it based on a hunch?

And, more importantly than this one particular example, would there be someone I could ask about the many other (infinite, in fact) possible things I have/don't have the right to do? Would some of this maybe be written down somewhere? That would be mighty helpful. And if so, who would get to decide what is written down? And by what right would they get to dictate to the rest of us what our rights are?

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On 12/25/2015 at 10:17 PM, Jon Southall said:

Nicky,

I don't think that is the point Aziz is making - he is referring to organisations using retaliatory force that operate with the same authority as the government does - and not a delegated authority of any kind either. That is not the case in the US. 

Your point about abusive agencies applies just as much to abusive governments

No, it doesn't. Case and point: the US government is limited by all kinds of laws that prevent it from committing any of the acts I listed above. The US government would never kill a wife for cheating on her husband, cut off the hand of a thief, etc., etc.

Private individuals and organizations that have the right to enact their own brand of justice wouldn't have any of those limits. They would, by definition, be free to choose the kind of justice they enact.

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On 12/25/2015 at 10:17 PM, Jon Southall said:

Nicky,

I don't think that is the point Aziz is making - he is referring to organisations using retaliatory force that operate with the same authority as the government does - and not a delegated authority of any kind either. That is not the case in the US. 

Your point about abusive agencies applies just as much to abusive governments

No, it doesn't. Case and point: the US government is limited by all kinds of laws that prevent it from committing any of the acts I listed above. The US government would never kill a wife for cheating on her husband, cut off the hand of a thief, etc., etc.

Private individuals and organizations that have the right to enact their own brand of justice wouldn't have any of those limits. They would, by definition, be free to choose the kind of justice they enact.

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Nicky,

Obvious response - what stops private agencies from being prevented from carrying out such abuses "by all kinds of laws"?

We were talking about agencies with the same powers as the government, if laws are what prevents the US gov from committing such abuses, why can't they stop agencies from doing so also.

You have reframed the scenario, rather than explain how you think the abusive situation would come to be.

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On ‎12‎/‎25‎/‎2015 at 5:11 PM, Eiuol said:

Maybe, but also maybe they'll recognize that such market competition is completely altered if the standard of justice is what the market seeks. If one arbitration agency said slavery is proper so all runaway slaves should return to slaveowners, and another said the opposite, how would the market for justice work? If a large portion of people supported the first, or at least stayed profitable, they would do pretty well. After all, after shopping around, slaveowners would seek an agency that punished those who aided escaped slaves. Inevitably, this will cause direct conflict. This possibility exists just as easily between two governments, the issue is that with arbitration agencies, sharing a geographic region is a major problem for major legal issues.

Firstly, in this day and age it is doubtful that the majority of people would support slavery and such agencies would thus lose business from the vast majority of people. If a large portion of people supported slavery however, the government could easily become corrupted by their influence and enact slavery across entire regions un-checked if it existed in such a scenario. also if the trend to support slavery existed government officials would not be immune from this trend. They are only human. The reason slavery existed to the degree the that it did was because of the government's enforcement of slavery laws. In a system of private protection agencies however, corporations have a profit incentive to avoid conflict. Unlike with the government private companies must absorb the cost of fighting with other companies which would be hefty. This would result in higher prices and lower efficiency resulting in the loss of clients. Many clients would also boycott pro-slavery companies causing them to lose more money. The private enforcers, who would be fighting for profit would have to be paid outrageously high salaries for them to want to risk their lives fighting for a cause such as slavery which would be unsustainable for the company. Furthermore their would be many other protective agencies that slaves or slavery opponents could flock toward for protection. Poor slaves would either pay receiving charitable aid or contributions or selling a claim on restitution for a violation of rights as was common practice in ancient Iceland. Gun ownership would not be restricted allowing for people to take up arms against oppressive companies in addition to this and as a last resort. Upholding a system such as slavery would cause too many conflict for private agencies and would be injurious if not detrimental to them economically speaking and thus have an incentive not to uphold such a system. I'm not saying that it's not possible for something to go wrong. I'm merely saying that the free-market handles such situations better than a coercive monopoly. The state has been notoriously bad on the issue of slavery historically speaking

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14 hours ago, Nicky said:

Your sci-fi scenario is very far fetched, but that's not the issue I was raising anyway. I have a tried and tested rule of not trying to argue against people who present this particular scenario as a good alternative to government.

What I'm trying to figure out is what this "right" you alluded to is. You mentioned that a government that prevents you from starting an agency that doles out its own brand of justice is violating your liberty. Which implies that you have the right to dole out your own brand of justice.

What I'm curious about is this: what are the limits on this right. Let's say I start my own justice agency. It would be really easy to do, since I don't need to actually fill out any paperwork, I can just put up a sign on my door that says Nicky's Justice Emporium, and that would be that. So that's done. So now, let's talk about what my rights are. Do I have the right to punish someone who stole ten bucks from me with a month in jail? Two years? Ten years? What conditions do I have the right to subject him to, while he's in my jail (that would be my basement). What about someone who stole 10 bucks from my neighbor? Also, do I have the right to do this based on witness testimony? Do I have a right to do it based on a hunch?

And, more importantly than this one particular example, would there be someone I could ask about the many other (infinite, in fact) possible things I have/don't have the right to do? Would some of this maybe be written down somewhere? That would be mighty helpful. And if so, who would get to decide what is written down? And by what right would they get to dictate to the rest of us what our rights are?

It's not a "sci-fi scenario." It's economics. Under a free-market system, you must satisfy the needs of your consumers in order to make a profit and stay in business. Private justice services are no different. An oppressive organization that violates the liberty of it's customers would not stay in business for long and would risk being attacked by other organizations that consumers would be free to turn to due to the competition created by the market.

The law will be a simple and restitution based civil law which will prohibit the initiation of force and will enact punishment that is proportional to the crime. If you stole 10 bucks you owe your victim monetary or labor compensation. A private justice company that convicted people based on weak evidence would lose business due to the fact that its clients would be risking being convicted of a crime on weak evidence and would not be able to trust it as a reliable source for bringing the correct criminals that violated their rights to justice. The competition they would face would force them to strive for maximum efficiency. When it comes to the specific details of certain codes of conduct, such things would be determined by the norms of the society at the time. This is how law developed before the state began to institute laws in ancient times. These systems tended to be restitution based. Now you might ask isn't this arbitrary? So is government. Politicians are corruptible and ever changing and will arbitrarily determine certain standards as well at different times. There will never be a perfect enactment of justice as people are imperfect. Governments however are no exception to this and are only composed of people themselves which who will not all of a sudden enact justice perfectly according to one moral code in every instance. The difference between the market and that state however is that people would likely not support transgressive companies because continuing to do this would make themselves vulnerable to this type of transgression and the companies would could be checked by other companies.

Law does not need to be derived from a central source. I know this is hard to imagine today but historically laws arose due to universal principles such as non-aggression and were based on civil law in which victims could receive compensation for acts of force wielded against them. The reason that the law would consist of just and non-violent codes is because most people would only want to pay money to enforce laws that impact them directly. People would also not support agencies that could initiate force arbitrarily as other agencies could then do the same thing to them. Capitalism is perfectly capable of providing law in a more just and non-violent way than an un-checked monopoly.

Also, I do not believe anyone has the right to enact their own "brand of justice." I just believe that it is wrong to allow one arbitrary entity the ability to forcibly run anyone else out of the market. There is more than one group of people capable of enforcing the principle of non-initiation of force and the government has no right to prevent them from engaging in the same business they do nor to prohibit me from hiring the agency of my choice. One group of arbitrarily selected cannot simply be risen to God-like status and be considered the only righteous entity and will always adhere to one moral code. The competition would enact a system of checks and balances amongst the various agencies. There of course exists the possibility for injustice in an anarcho-capitalist society just as with any other society. A perfect utopia does not exist. A coercive monopoly however is much more un-checked and posses a much greater threat to freedom than a free-market in protection services as history can clearly demonstrate.

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Hey guys, I'm a libertarian and an anarcho-capitalist who has lately been interested in the objectivist philosophy. I am beginning to learn about the objectivist defense of the right to life but would like more specifics on how the right to pursue happiness is derived from this right to life. My understanding is that objectivists view life as necessary to uphold any value or to be interested in philosophy in the first place but on a more fundamental level, how does this translate into the right to pursue happiness? After all it is not necessary to be happy in order to live. One could argue that it is necessary to truly fulfill life but what justifies the ability to fulfill life from the right to life and how does this relate to liberty for each individual?

 

Not sure if this part was responded to yet? As previously mentioned, Rand's ethics can be seen as a neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics. Political rights are justified in terms of egoism, however this is not your Hobbesian type of egoism, in which a bare survival of the individual is the ultimate end. To Rand and the Greeks, the ultimate end was a more robust conception of long term happiness and well being of a virtuous life, much more like the picture of her characters in the novels. The Greeks used the word "eudaimonia" to convey the ultimate end, most modern virtue ethicists use "flourishing" or something like that to convey the Randian "man's life qua man." This, not survival, is the ultimate end, although obviously survival is a component of flourishing.

And in fact many philosophers in the natural law tradition from the Stoics to Locke had this sort of implied egoism in their political philosophy, even though not specifically libertarian in a noncontradictory way. Since these philosophers upheld the Greek "unity of virtue" theory, they would not understand "deriving" the right to liberty separately from the right to life. The right to pursue happiness and the right to ones physical body and property are literally the same thing. Jefferson likely got the phrase "pursuit of happiness" from Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding.

As far as anarchy, Rand gave only a few arguments against it, mainly centered on the "mob rule" argument, which is one of the weaker ones. What you need to understand about Randian defenses of the state is they usually focus on Rand's conception of "objective law," that is Rand upheld not just libertarian property rights, but a kind of Nozickian "procedural rights" as well. Rothbard argued that there were no such thing and that the market can find the best procedures. Since Rand thought law was objective and identifiable by human reason, she would not disagree that we are capable of finding the correct procedures, however once we did, she would say we have a right to prohibit nonobjective procedures and that, ergo, only one monopoly agency tasked with enforcing objective law follows.

I don't think the "ergo" follows there. It is possible to agree that there should be a single monopoly of law without being committed to there being one single monopoly agency that enforces said law. Objectivists however, tend to put all their stock into legislative law. All law proceeds centrally from a legislative body. I find objectivists are generally very ignorant of the history of law, that legislation and law are separable, and indeed have been for the majority of human history, and that many of the most libertarian portions of modern law come from the non legislative sources, and that if we look at the structural requirements of any legal system, a free society has a much better chance of sustaining itself in a non legislative system. For objectivists this is much too "messy." The only law is a centrally planned law from a presumably objectivist legislative body and anything else is just historical talk. In any event, Rand seemed to mainly be concerned with disagreements leading to war between agencies, and with agencies applying the law and using force subjectively. Better to have one single objective agency.

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The difference between the market and that state however is that people would likely not support transgressive companies because continuing to do this would make themselves vulnerable to this type of transgression and the companies would could be checked by other companies. - Aziz

People would also not support agencies that could initiate force arbitrarily as other agencies could then do the same thing to them. -Aziz

A government that gets out of hand is very hard to get back under control precisely because citizens have meaningfully been disarmed - that's what it means when a government has a monopoly on force. - Jon Southall

One point of disagreement or questioning looks to be what is the cause of a corrupt society. To say government is hard to reign back if it gets corrupt because people are disarmed, is to suggest trends in a society are primarily due to applications of force. So if we de-monopolize force, corruption will become far less likely when there are more options. Yet from an Objectivist stance, corruption is caused by philosophical trends in a society. Nazi Germany became that way because the populace in general supported Nazi ideals, in particular a bastardization of Nietzsche, Christian ideals, and a narrative for a stronger race. The Nazis upped the ante later, but the corruption more or less began when a portion of the population agreed with Nazi ideals. The control of force does not cause corruption. It reminds me of how people say "power corrupts", which I don't buy.

Clearly, governments can go bad, and nobody claimed arbitration agencies can't. But I'd say a monopoly on force protects from rampant disagreements, and promotes overarching standards of justice. There may well be a Nazi-like arbitration agency, all they need is enough supporters. A niche market for neo-Nazis. To be sure, most of the American population would not support it, but if you support multiple arbitration agencies in a region, you are claiming you must stay out and wait for the neo-Nazi company to go out of business. If I treated force as a typical market, I'd have to treat it like I do Apple - I don't like their products, but I've no right to disband their business being available in my geographic area.

The point is we can't pretend that there aren't people out there who would seek out arbitration agencies to punish abortion doctors, or round up muslims who pray in mosques, etc. A sizable portion of people probably - Trump supporters are real. Yes, for things like theft or vandalism, arbitration agencies, perhaps that'd work, but what do we do for major issues? War would be one thing, but the issue is it -really would- work like a market, where inefficient companies can exist for a bit, some people really do support irrational companies, and should last as long as people are willing to run the company and it has customers. Sure, it's in the interest of companies to avoid war, but ancap appears to depend on certain radical idealogies remaining always on the fringe.

A coercive monopoly however is much more un-checked and posses a much greater threat to freedom than a free-market in protection services as history can clearly demonstrate. -Aziz

I really don't know why a government is necessarily a coercive monopoly. It's not as though a government must go out and find people who for whatever reason choose to secede and live alone. They should be let alone. If you want to live in the Alaskan wilderness hunting deer, go ahead, just don't expect help if a fellow survivalist decides to burn down your log cabin. Also don't be surprised if you are attacked for egregious rights violations. The right to secede is a different issue, one that I'm not aware Rand made any arguments for or against. You can believe in a right to secede while also maintaining that a monopoly on force is proper.

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On 12/27/2015 at 2:10 PM, Aziz 2 Al-Jabir 2 said:

It's not a "sci-fi scenario." It's economics. Under a free-market system, you must satisfy the needs of your consumers in order to make a profit and stay in business.

I am aware of no economist who studied the dynamics of economic interactions in an anarchy.

As far as I can tell, all well known economists assume the existence of a government that protects the lives and property of the participants, but does not regulate trade, in their definitions of a free market. So what is this "economics" that you speak of, that supposedly uses science to prove that the laws of free market economics apply in anarchy as well?

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On 12/27/2015 at 2:10 PM, Aziz 2 Al-Jabir 2 said:

The law will be a simple and restitution based civil law which will prohibit the initiation of force and will enact punishment that is proportional to the crime. If you stole 10 bucks you owe your victim monetary or labor compensation.

Ok, sounds simple enough. So here comes one of the many obvious monkey wrenches: what about rape?  Are you just gonna rape the guy back? Because I don't think a rapist would particularly mind getting raped by their victim. In fact, it would just be them having sex again with the lady they raped in the first place.

Restitution based civil law sounds decidedly rapist friendly to me.

On 12/27/2015 at 2:10 PM, Aziz 2 Al-Jabir 2 said:

This is how law developed before the state began to institute laws in ancient times.

Alright, so your proposition is that laws developed in this way are superior to laws developed by current governments, like the US, UK, Switzerland or Japan (just to name a few).

So, it stands to reason that the societies that developed these laws were more just than American, British, Swiss or Japanese society today. Would you mind naming one of these superior ancient societies? I would like to verify your proposition...just to run it against reality, and thus decide, once and for all, whether it's science or sci-fi.

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On ‎12‎/‎28‎/‎2015 at 7:11 PM, Eiuol said:

The difference between the market and that state however is that people would likely not support transgressive companies because continuing to do this would make themselves vulnerable to this type of transgression and the companies would could be checked by other companies. - Aziz

People would also not support agencies that could initiate force arbitrarily as other agencies could then do the same thing to them. -Aziz

A government that gets out of hand is very hard to get back under control precisely because citizens have meaningfully been disarmed - that's what it means when a government has a monopoly on force. - Jon Southall

One point of disagreement or questioning looks to be what is the cause of a corrupt society. To say government is hard to reign back if it gets corrupt because people are disarmed, is to suggest trends in a society are primarily due to applications of force. So if we de-monopolize force, corruption will become far less likely when there are more options. Yet from an Objectivist stance, corruption is caused by philosophical trends in a society. Nazi Germany became that way because the populace in general supported Nazi ideals, in particular a bastardization of Nietzsche, Christian ideals, and a narrative for a stronger race. The Nazis upped the ante later, but the corruption more or less began when a portion of the population agreed with Nazi ideals. The control of force does not cause corruption. It reminds me of how people say "power corrupts", which I don't buy.

Clearly, governments can go bad, and nobody claimed arbitration agencies can't. But I'd say a monopoly on force protects from rampant disagreements, and promotes overarching standards of justice. There may well be a Nazi-like arbitration agency, all they need is enough supporters. A niche market for neo-Nazis. To be sure, most of the American population would not support it, but if you support multiple arbitration agencies in a region, you are claiming you must stay out and wait for the neo-Nazi company to go out of business. If I treated force as a typical market, I'd have to treat it like I do Apple - I don't like their products, but I've no right to disband their business being available in my geographic area.

The point is we can't pretend that there aren't people out there who would seek out arbitration agencies to punish abortion doctors, or round up muslims who pray in mosques, etc. A sizable portion of people probably - Trump supporters are real. Yes, for things like theft or vandalism, arbitration agencies, perhaps that'd work, but what do we do for major issues? War would be one thing, but the issue is it -really would- work like a market, where inefficient companies can exist for a bit, some people really do support irrational companies, and should last as long as people are willing to run the company and it has customers. Sure, it's in the interest of companies to avoid war, but ancap appears to depend on certain radical idealogies remaining always on the fringe.

A coercive monopoly however is much more un-checked and posses a much greater threat to freedom than a free-market in protection services as history can clearly demonstrate. -Aziz

I really don't know why a government is necessarily a coercive monopoly. It's not as though a government must go out and find people who for whatever reason choose to secede and live alone. They should be let alone. If you want to live in the Alaskan wilderness hunting deer, go ahead, just don't expect help if a fellow survivalist decides to burn down your log cabin. Also don't be surprised if you are attacked for egregious rights violations. The right to secede is a different issue, one that I'm not aware Rand made any arguments for or against. You can believe in a right to secede while also maintaining that a monopoly on force is proper.

The power to dominate un-checked certainly can corrupt. When the populace favors such ideas the government will also tend to do the same thing. The government is made of fallible people who are not immune from the norms of the time. The populace will also tend to influence government to support such policies. Once a monopoly on force becomes tyrannical most people are left defenseless and have no one to turn to for defense. The reason Nazism caused the degree of horror that it did was because of the strong, centralized, imperialistic government that it commanded. Hitler used people's allegiance to the state to promote his radical nationalist ideology. Without a centralized monopoly on force up for the taking by Hitler and other fascists, Nazism wouldn't have the ability to have caused the volume of murder and destruction that it did. Under a free-market system people would have other agencies to turn to. Such policies as I have stated will cause undesireable conflicts with other agencies as well as profit loss. Also the fact that tyrannical policies will be destructive to a company will make it an economic norm to not engage in those type of activities. I disagree that the power to manipulate others and dominate a market will not corrupt. It is human nature to take advantage of others when the opportunity presents itself. The fact that un-checked power is concentrated in the hands of a few exists will lead to immense amounts of corruption. It is true that you could have a certain period in time in which radical ideas are popular. This however will not change the fact that they are not economically sustainable for the companies to engage in. If you have one government, this government would easily be corrupted by this popular interest and those who are in the minority would then become helpless as they are not allowed to hire a competing agency to protect them. Governments are not somehow more benevolent and trustworthy than your average population. If anything the people in governments are likely people who have are willing to walk over a lot of people to get in the positions that they get in. I think one thing you are missing is that governments are only people too and they will change over time and be susceptible to corrupt influences. With a coercive monopoly this danger is amplified significantly. The reason I call governments coercive monopolies is because if you claim to be the only one who can administer justice or enforce the law you are really saying "If you attempt to start your own protection agency or justice agency no matter how righteous you are, we will violently force you out of the market because we happen to be the only righteous individuals."

Edited by Aziz 2 Al-Jabir 2
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On ‎12‎/‎29‎/‎2015 at 2:53 PM, Nicky said:

I am aware of no economist who studied the dynamics of economic interactions in an anarchy.

As far as I can tell, all well known economists assume the existence of a government that protects the lives and property of the participants, but does not regulate trade, in their definitions of a free market. So what is this "economics" that you speak of, that supposedly uses science to prove that the laws of free market economics apply in anarchy as well?

There are plenty of economists who have studied the dynamics of economic interactions in an anarchist system. Have you heard of the Ludwig von Mises Institute? If not I highly recommend you check it out. They have excellent economists who have studied how an anarcho-capitalist systems would work. The Austrian school of economics can provide several theories about how a free society might look. Murray Rothbard who was an Austrian economist founded the term "anarcho-capitalist" as a matter of fact. Also it is important to keep in mind that justice and protection are marketable services just like any other kind and that virtually the same principles of economics would apply to them. If you accept that capitalism and competition leads to the best and most efficient services when it comes to things such as health care and banking then you should also accept that they will also work well for protective services and justice services as well

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2 hours ago, Aziz 2 Al-Jabir 2 said:

It is human nature to take advantage of others when the opportunity presents itself. The fact that un-checked power is concentrated in the hands of a few exists will lead to immense amounts of corruption.

You need to justify this claim. I'm disputing that a monopoly on force is -itself- a cause of corruption. I dispute that human nature operates as you say it does.

Edited by Eiuol
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