Political Theory

Re: Marketability of aggression

Individualist — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:46:23 GMT

Fred Furash:

The mafia gets its business from governments that make certain products illegal, thereby creating a black market. And since people on a black market have no recourse to normal legal methods of solving disputes, mafia organisations begin to prosper. Not many people are ready to deal in illegal products and those that do then use the mafia to resolve disputes.

Protection agencies in a free market that became aggressors would quickly lose market share. On the one hand, I don't want my friends to know that I'm subscribed to a criminal agency. On the other hand, legitimate courts would not want to deal with bandit courts and criminal PDAs, thus reducing the amount of disputes that can be resolved peacefully at a lower cost, and criminal PDAs would soon have to start raising their fees in order to pay for the increased blood shed, and all the expenses that come with it, e.g. insurance premiums, wages, and coverage for employees such as security guards would be but one of many expenses which rise when your dispute resolutions are violent too often. Thus, on the one hand most decent people would disassociate themselves from criminal PDAs, and on the other hand the subscription fees they charge would rise phenomenally.

There is a saying in the mafia, that blood is bad for business. This is all the more so in a free market. The more peacefully and quickly agencies can resolve conflict, the lower their costs, and the more competitive they are.

Good post. Is there no aggressive agency of comparable size to the Mafia that does not feed off a state?

Re: Marketability of aggression

Fred Furash — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:05:02 GMT

The mafia gets its business from governments that make certain products illegal, thereby creating a black market. And since people on a black market have no recourse to normal legal methods of solving disputes, mafia organisations begin to prosper. Not many people are ready to deal in illegal products and those that do then use the mafia to resolve disputes.

Protection agencies in a free market that became aggressors would quickly lose market share. On the one hand, I don't want my friends to know that I'm subscribed to a criminal agency. On the other hand, legitimate courts would not want to deal with bandit courts and criminal PDAs, thus reducing the amount of disputes that can be resolved peacefully at a lower cost, and criminal PDAs would soon have to start raising their fees in order to pay for the increased blood shed, and all the expenses that come with it, e.g. insurance premiums, wages, and coverage for employees such as security guards would be but one of many expenses which rise when your dispute resolutions are violent too often. Thus, on the one hand most decent people would disassociate themselves from criminal PDAs, and on the other hand the subscription fees they charge would rise phenomenally.

There is a saying in the mafia, that blood is bad for business. This is all the more so in a free market. The more peacefully and quickly agencies can resolve conflict, the lower their costs, and the more competitive they are.

Marketability of aggression

Individualist — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 23:46:01 GMT

Would aggression agencies be at all viable in a stateless, free-market society? What about large, established aggression agencies like the Mafia?