Post by Amadan on May 19, 2017 7:34:59 GMT -5
You mean the way that happens all over the world today, in an era where "governments" are supposed to prevent that sort of thing?
I mean the way that happens all over the world today, where governments do prevent that sort of thing.
Governments sometimes reach failure mode, and you base your entire argument on what happens in a breakdown. We do know what happens in anarchic areas. On a large scale, look at parts of Africa. Or southern Mexico. (I suppose you will call the cartels a "government"? What is your libertarian solution to convince cartels to operate sans institutional authority in a free uncoercive market? Oh, I know - drug laws by the government created the cartels. Fine, but cartel-like organizations will always arise when there is a valuable resource to be controlled and no government to prevent it.) On a small scale, look in the inner cities of Baltimore and Los Angeles. People do not behave like your imaginary unicorn anarchists do in the absence of a "coercive" government.
Well, in this example, you would have two individuals, or groups, acting immorally, and the rest of the members of society recognizing their acts as immoral, instead of giving one side or the other a pass because "government." (Or even worse, everybody giving one or the other side a pass because "my country right or wrong." That's how you get the really big wars.)
We don't give the government a pass, but I as a citizen have a slightly greater ability to influence what the government does than I would to influence what a cartel or gang controlling my neighborhood does. And I can safely organize with other citizens to have greater influence, which would not work so well if I were trying to organize against my local warlord or gang leader.
The warriors and supporters of that violence would therefore be limited to those who are actually willing to expend all their resources, including their own lives, in an attempt to force their viewpoint on others.
Overall, the "wars" would be greatly reduced in size compared to having impotent old men sending our children to foreign lands to do battle for them, while robbing productive society to support the battles they haven't got the guts or resources to fight themselves.
This is another great illustration of Higgs' main theme, though. Thanks for that!
"In debates between anarchists and statists, the burden of proof clearly should rest on those who place their trust in the state. Anarchy’s mayhem is wholly conjectural; the state’s mayhem is undeniably, factually horrendous.”
"In debates between anarchists and statists, the burden of proof clearly should rest on those who place their trust in the state. Anarchy’s mayhem is wholly conjectural; the state’s mayhem is undeniably, factually horrendous.”
And as I said, you look at what happens when states go to war - which, yes, is horrendous. But war is not something that happens because we keep screwing up and creating governments, which seems to be your theory, that if we just didn't create any governments, we wouldn't have any wars. I look at what happens when governments fail. I would rather live in the U.S. than in Somalia or southern Mexico, and I'd rather have a police force, which sometimes needs to be monitored or replaced, than just rely on shooting it out with any gangbangers who decide they want my stuff.