We've all gone through a process to arrive at the opinions we currently hold. When we look back at ourselves a year ago, or five, or ten, hopefully we notice that our beliefs have "evolved" much in the same way that a black belt looks back at his former white belt self. And evolve is a good word for it, because with something dynamic, it's a never-ending process. That same black belt will look back at his current self in a simlar way after another few years have passed.
I've noticed something, and not just on these boards, but it's like watching "a white belt mistake" over and over again. And I don't say that in a judgemental way, I think it's a natural part of the learning process and I'm still learning myself.
To be specific, it's a problem I'll call "Omitting the actor". This thread is a great example of it: http://mises.org/Community/forums/t/2334.aspx. I'll come back to that in a minute, but I want to share the mental exercise first. It really helped me understand a lot of issues as they relate to a stateless society. It forced me to turn theory into reality. It won't sound like a big deal, and I'm sure some of you have already done this, but here it is:
*You* are the entrepreneur who will create a private defense/insurance company. Come up with a business plan, be *detailed* (this is the key). What will your business model be? How will you handle the free rider problem? How will you handle conflicts with other companies/individuals? What restrictions, if any, will you place on your customers? How would you start such a company *now*, in today's world? Or is that even possible? Try to work out the tough situations, not just the easy ones.
Get as detailed as you can, you might find some interesting things, I know I did. And this brings me back the thread I mentioned before where there was a debate over animal rights. We can debate "right or wrong" but it doesn't tell us what a stateless society will look like. It omits the actor. *Who* or *what* will enforce the right or wrong? Go back to the mental exercise and imagine a customer of yours continually tortures animals. Will this effect his subscription to your service in any way? What if his place keeps getting vandalized or he keeps getting personally attacked because of his lifestyle?
The point of this post isn't to debate the animal rights issue, just to pose the question "How would your company handle it?" for these types of issues.
PW, saw this last night (or rather it was morning) but too tired to respond then.
PeterWellington:To be specific, it's a problem I'll call "Omitting the actor".
It's an interesting exercise, although I don't think it is a problem that it is not often discussed.
It is difficult to imagine every permutation of action without the state, and then the corresponding responses.
I feel Rothbard, Hoppe, Long, and others go wrong when they start trying to be predictive and impose their own values on what the outcomes should be.
It is impossible for any of us to accurately predict or to understand what post state outcomes will be. Which is a good thing, because if we could, then it might validate some form of plan or common direction, and that would be very dangerous ultimately to freedom and the individual.
If you find something evil that wobbles, push it. - Gary North
liberty student:It is difficult to imagine every permutation of action without the state, and then the corresponding responses.
Try putting 1 million cards in a deck, shuffling the cards, and imagining every combination, or even how many possible combinations.
Anyways, the thing that will be known is that people will have freedom, lest they establish a new coercive state to rule them all, or a state somehow wins.
Schools are labour camps.
The art of debate is often about asking the right questions, not making the right arguments.
Microsecession as a strategy for revolution | Challenge to minarchist | How would a private road system work?
eliotn: Try putting 1 million cards in a deck, shuffling the cards, and imagining every combination, or even how many possible combinations.
If my math doesn't fail me, this would be (1 x 10^6)!, or 1.000.000 x 999.999 x 999.998 ... x 1.It's all a matter of stochastics.
liberty student & eliotn,
The exercise isn't intended to predict how exactly the world will look under anarchy, but to explore potentially viable business models and how specific situations would be handled under them.
When we debate, most of us want the theoretical "right or wrong" to manifest itself in the real world. But for theory to become reality, *someone* has to enforce those rights and wrongs. And when I say enforce, I don't necessarily mean physical force but any mechanism that encourages/discourages behavior, ostracism would be an example of non-physical enforcement.
To go back to the example in my original post, so you think animals have rights, so what? So you think animals don't have rights, so what? What does that mean? Who is going to enforce their rights in a stateless society? Or, who is going to enforce their non-rights (your ability to torture them)? Those are the more pressing questions, IMO.
Go speak to the heads of the big families and the natural elites. That's the first thing you'd need to do. After that you need to filter out the good business risks and the bad, that means not insuring people who are likely to walk around the Muslim neighbourhood with a can of beer in one hand and a BLT in the other.
"You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows"
Bob Dylan
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