Byzantine:Here are your choices: 1. You can live in an anarchist city-state and enjoy the high living standards of a complex economy where risk-spreading mechanisms such as corporations, mutual insurers, trusts, etc. enjoy the protection of their wealthy and well-armed merchant class patrons. 2. You can move out to that non-arable land nobody wants where on a good day you and all the other radical individualists may be able to kill enough squirrels to render into a stew. In the event a traveling salesman happens along the dirt path in front of your hovel, you can haul out your 10,000 page Contract Between Me Individually And All The Rest Of Creation and see if he'll agree to it.
1. You can live in an anarchist city-state and enjoy the high living standards of a complex economy where risk-spreading mechanisms such as corporations, mutual insurers, trusts, etc. enjoy the protection of their wealthy and well-armed merchant class patrons.
2. You can move out to that non-arable land nobody wants where on a good day you and all the other radical individualists may be able to kill enough squirrels to render into a stew. In the event a traveling salesman happens along the dirt path in front of your hovel, you can haul out your 10,000 page Contract Between Me Individually And All The Rest Of Creation and see if he'll agree to it.
Or, I can live in an anarchist city, cut the state, associate with a guild/company where each member is an independent contractor with certain assurances and insurances we negotiate with one another. It is always sad when people resort to this sort of utilitarian argument. You use it to justify corporations. Others can use it to justify slavery or eugenics. You're in good company.
Byzantine:Corporations enable impersonal exchange. Without legal constructs such as corporations, you can only do business with people in a tightly-knit social network such as family, like in southern Italy, Mexico, etc. The fact that abstract concepts are accepted and enforced means there's a rule of law the merchant class can rely upon.
Three words: Mercan til ism. "Merchant class" my ass. There are things, folks, that a stateless society can't handle as efficiently as one with states. However, what is right and just is little effected by what is efficient. It was, of course, efficient for the factories of the industrial revolution to pack people who had been forcefully dispossessed of farmland into hot, windowless factories for 14 hours a day. There are many cases where treating humans as "human resources", as cogs in your corporate machine, in other words, is efficient.
However, you're really just speculating here, because we have not had a modern world with modern technology without corporations, and whether or not such government-enforced monopoly-producing lies would actually be the most efficient way of doing things (inasmuch as they were even possible) in a free society is still in question. I think we ought to at least try for what is just and true instead of discarding it because we're afraid of what might happen.
Byzantine:This is why the West enjoys high living standards and the Third World has flat, inefficient economies where nobody can trade outside their network.
The West enjoys high living standards because our government is not made of dictatorial bastards who simply claim to own all the land (and have the thugs to back that claim) and drain every resource for their personal profit until they're ousted by some revolutionary who promptly starts to do the same thing.
Byzantine:And who's going to invest in things like mass production and rail lines if they know their $10K investment will render them liable for somebody losing their leg a thousand miles away?
You shouldn't claim to own more than you can control.
Merchant Law: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_merchant
"1. You can live in an anarchist city-state"
This statement is nonsensical. There are no states in anarchism.
"risk-spreading mechanisms such as corporations, mutual insurers, trusts, etc"
You speak as if these are the only possibilities. You also speak as if this is all the natural result of a free market. In either case, I prefer risk to be internalized, not externalized. The degree of externalization you're talking about is only possible with corporatist interventionism.
"enjoy the protection of their wealthy and well-armed merchant class patrons."
Where does a "merchant class" come into anarchism?
"taxes are extortion,but if you must tax, tax corporations and not the people and never allow government the right to take your property without due compensation"
The only fair tax there is would be a poll tax, levied at the rate of your property.
Check my blog, if you're a loser
Brainpolice: Where does a "merchant class" come into anarchism?
They are the ones who will fund the private arbitration and mutual defense agencies. These agencies, in turn, will assure that angry philosophy students who try to pursue claims against individual shareholders are rebuffed.
The State has suddenly and quietly gone mad. It is talking nonsense; and it can’t stop. —G.K. Chesterton
Byzantine:They are the ones who will fund the private arbitration and mutual defense agencies. These agencies, in turn, will assure that angry philosophy students who try to pursue claims against individual shareholders are rebuffed.
I see, and how, praytell, shall the "merchant class" get such money as to fund private armies to fend off the philosophers you so deride?
Unless those students own shares in the PDA...
-Jon
I cannot be caged. I cannot be controlled. Understand this as you die, ever pathetic, ever fools.
Irenicus' Diaries.
JCFolsom: I see, and how, praytell, shall the "merchant class" get such money as to fund private armies to fend off the philosophers you so deride?
If I am following correctly, it will be the cost of doing business.
I would make a great bureaucrat. Wanna see? Click here. It's fun.
liberty student:If I am following correctly, it will be the cost of doing business.
Well, right, but what makes people think that middlemen will be so popular that they'll be able to constitute an entire class?
I believe he is talking about an investor/entrepreneurial class. Their popularity will be relative to their ability to conduct commerce and produce profit.
I'm just filling in here. Byzantine might have had other thoughts in mind. These are my random blabberings on the topic.
JCFolsom: Well, right, but what makes people think that middlemen will be so popular that they'll be able to constitute an entire class?
They are the same class that get commerce done today while economics and philosophy students debate abstract models. Businesspeople like risk-spreading and investment income, so that's what's going to be done. And if there isn't a government around to guarantee contract enforcement and limited liabilty, then they'll hire Blackwater instead.
Byzantine:They are the same class that get commerce done today while economics and philosophy students debate abstract models. Businesspeople like risk-spreading and investment income, so that's what's going to be done. And if there isn't a government around to guarantee contract enforcement and limited liabilty, then they'll hire Blackwater instead.
Stunning. Incredible. So, you are advocating we get rid of government to replace it with a "private" ruling class that forces people into accepting their preferred injustices with their private armies? Why not have their mercenaries enforce that they have no liability, at least not to the suckers that have to work for or buy from them? Why would I do business with such people? Why would anyone... unless you plan to have your Blackwater thugs enforce monopolies as well?
You seem to admire the rapacious business owners of today, the CEOs, the landlords. People who benefit from, and lobby to sustain, government restrictions on the market, effectively enforcing their monopolies. You are no anarchist. You are a corporatist. You would replace the corrupted politicians of today with the even more corrupt merchant princes of old. No doubt you think the East India Trading Company had a great business model, eh?
JCFolsom: Stunning. Incredible. So, you are advocating we get rid of government to replace it with a "private" ruling class that forces people into accepting their preferred injustices with their private armies? Why not have their mercenaries enforce that they have no liability, at least not to the suckers that have to work for or buy from them? Why would I do business with such people? Why would anyone... unless you plan to have your Blackwater thugs enforce monopolies as well? You seem to admire the rapacious business owners of today, the CEOs, the landlords. People who benefit from, and lobby to sustain, government restrictions on the market, effectively enforcing their monopolies. You are no anarchist. You are a corporatist. You would replace the corrupted politicians of today with the even more corrupt merchant princes of old. No doubt you think the East India Trading Company had a great business model, eh?
That's not at all what he is advocating if I understand it correctly. Why are you being so melodramatic?
You won't do business with firms who try to deal heavy handedly. No one is forcing you to. If they do force you to, that is immoral and wrong.
I think anarchists forget that in the absence of government, liberty still must be defended by everyone who wishes to attain and maintain it. There are still going to be thieves, liars, war mongers and other such dastardly characters. Government makes them stronger, it does not create greed, envy and evil exclusively.
liberty student:That's not at all what he is advocating if I understand it correctly. Why are you being so melodramatic? You won't do business with firms who try to deal heavy handedly. No one is forcing you to. If they do force you to, that is immoral and wrong. I think anarchists forget that in the absence of government, liberty still must be defended by everyone who wishes to attain and maintain it. There are still going to be thieves, liars, war mongers and other such dastardly characters. Government makes them stronger, it does not create greed, envy and evil exclusively.
Enforcing limited liability without a contract to that effect is an act of tyranny. It is one person saying to another, "If I wrong you, you may collect damages only to the degree I specify." That is nonsense.
JCFolsom:Enforcing limited liability without a contract to that effect is an act of tyranny. It is one person saying to another, "If I wrong you, you may collect damages only to the degree I specify." That is nonsense.
I really don't understand your point. It's like you're arguing just to argue.
Limited liability is the choice of the shareholders/investors/entrepreneurs. If we believe in freedom and property rights, they are free to specify how liable they are willing to be to their suppliers, shareholders, consumers etc. If they will not be responsible to an acceptable level, the market will punish them either on the investment side, the consumptive side or both.
However, they are entitled to construct any sort of bad business model, and to pay for the enforcement of their contractual terms.
Anything which exceeds or diminishes the contract is clearly illegal, and arguing about such, seems circular. If they use force to push limited liability where none contractually exists, that is clearly wrong. Of course in the real world, the guy with the best PDA/Mercs and the most money will rule. It may be immoral and unethical, but that doesn't mean it may not happen.