I am new to the idea of anarchy and I was wondering what would stop a group of individuals from gaining power and forming a government? Thanks.
Gaining power....with what? How? Method?
Think of what your question presumes.
For example, let's say two companies are making widgets and company A creates an extremely efficient way of making them and keeps the process secret so they put company B out of business. Then company A has a monopoly on widgets and could use their money to take power. Basically I just want to know what prevents monopolies from arising.
rhagan: For example, let's say two companies are making widgets and company A creates an extremely efficient way of making them and keeps the process secret so they put company B out of business. Then company A has a monopoly on widgets and could use their money to take power. Basically I just want to know what prevents monopolies from arising.
As long as they don't use force, what's the problem?
Competition prevents monopolies from arising, that's what.
"You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows"
Bob Dylan
rhagan:For example, let's say two companies are making widgets and company A creates an extremely efficient way of making them and keeps the process secret so they put company B out of business. Then company A has a monopoly on widgets and could use their money to take power. Basically I just want to know what prevents monopolies from arising.
And what makes you think that reality would have such a duopoly in the first place? Or that a monopoly could arise without a government mandating it?
These are very basic questions to which you could have found the answers with a search on google. Please take some initiative and do that, ok?
rhagan: I am new to the idea of anarchy and I was wondering what would stop a group of individuals from gaining power and forming a government? Thanks.
Well nothing would, but on the other hand they could only do it to themselves.
Microsecession as a strategy for revolution | Challenge to minarchist | How would a private road system work?
For example, let's say two companies are making widgets and company A creates an extremely efficient way of making them and keeps the process secret so they put company B out of business.
February 17 - 1600 - Giordano Bruno is burnt alive by the catholic church. Aquinas : "much more reason is there for heretics, as soon as they are convicted of heresy, to be not only excommunicated but even put to death."
rhagan, welcome to LvMI.
Please ignore Knight, he's been unsuccessful finding a companion in the penitentiary system, and his mood is not all that it can be under more romantic circumstances.
Another poster answered this best (in my opinion) in another thread recently. Under anarchy, there is no monopoly on violence. People could form a government, but you and others could resist that government if you so chose. Under the current system, you cannot resist the government, you cannot separate from it, and they pretty much have the monopoly on justice, law, violence etc.
Hope that helps.
If you find something evil that wobbles, push it. - Gary North
Knight was right though, this is basic stuff.
My personal bias is to feed someone hungry for knowledge about anarchism, hoping to find an ally, than rejecting them for not being rigorous enough in their pre-education.
Not everyone uses Google search. If they did, they would (mostly) only ever read Wikipedia as an authority source.
Indeed. One needs to have some awareness of how competition functions on the free market to understand how this would work out under market anarchism.
-Jon
To darkness I condemn you...
rhagan:Then company A... could use their money to take power.
What do you mean by "power?" The ability to beat a guy up and get away with it? Then company A would have no more power than somebody today with a good lawyer, and probably a lot less at that with competing courts and all.
rhagan:Basically I just want to know what prevents monopolies from arising.
It is possible for natural (not induced by protectionism) monopolies from arising on a free market just by outcompeting other companies. In such a occurence two possible things can happen: company A can continue to charge a market price, in which case the consumers receive the same quality service as before; charge above market price in which case 1) consumers will seek out alternatives to A's service, and 2) A's competitors now have ample opportunity to return to the market. Basically, a free-market monopoly is either unsustainable or irrelevant.
This is a particularly important concept, since most non-austrians seem incapable of comprehending it, all of them believing in the mystical, question-begging notion that a monopolized industry is an inherently bad thing (mainly I think from protectionist sympathy for the incompetent competitors).
Anyway, this is all in the literature.
Diminishing Marginal Utility - IT'S THE LAW!
Rhagan,
You ask a good question, and here is suposed to be the place to do that. I suggest a paper that cleared this question up nicely for me:
Thomas DiLorenzo's The Myth of Natural Monopoly
http://mises.org/journals/rae/pdf/RAE9_2_3.pdf
There is a great volume of freely available and amazing economic knowledge to be found here at Mises.org, though if you are not familiar with the site or don't know what treasures are burried you might miss a great deal of it. I don't understand why someone would waste their time seeking out people to abuse, I hope you havn't been detered from asking more questions in the future.
I would also recomend that you tackle chapter 10 from Rothbard's Man, Economy and State
http://mises.org/rothbard/mes.asp
Good luck, I would love to answer any other questions I can, but I am really just an interested reader my self, not a scholar by any means.
Ludwig von Mises Institute | 518 West Magnolia Avenue | Auburn, Alabama 36832-4528
Phone: 334.321.2100 · Fax: 334.321.2119
contact@Mises.org | webmaster | AOL-IM MainMises
Mises.org sitemap