Newgrounds.com — Everything, By Everyone.

---

You have to forget the notion that individuals will just set up their businesses according to

Profitability DOES have an effect on crime, albeit marginally. [Not so much crimes of passion, but organized crime is seldom built around crimes of passion]

1) Professional bulglars don't seldom slums [Wealthier houses = more 'profit' in the broad sense of the word]
2) Generally speaking, robberies occur less often when would-be robbers fear that the home owners are armed [i.e. higher costs]

Now when we're talking about crime that isn't financially motivated, then we can't talk about it in money terms.

Yeah again, the "all or nothing" strategy.

This works both ways and so doesn't bother me. When voluntaryism fails to meet your standard of perfection you advocate 'tearing down' the system and putting in it's place the state. The only difference is that my philosophy doesn't preclude you from having the same agency take care of YOU.

But that agency, like any other, should have to earn it's shape and reputation, rather than have it presupposed.

I'll put it this way;

1) I don't want to fund an agency that has as it's proof of it's superiority armed enforcers who compel everyone to participate in the program, regardless of their feelings about the agency or whether they even need the agency

2) For the same reason, I don't see it as a taxpayer responsibility to keep me from engaging in self-destructive behaviours that are otherwise harmless to you. If I want to protect myself from unsafe products, I'll do it with my own money.

3) If YOU feel safer having someone compel you not to buy certain foods because they think they are toxic, then sign a contract with the government surrendering your right to choose freely in the matter and let the Government arrest you if they find you buying products that lack a federal approval seal, and if this program keeps you and like minded individuals in good health, then other people might join the program

and if you think people are too stupid to realize the benefits of such a program, maybe you should rethink giving them the right to choose the individuals that create ALL of the federal programs to begin with.

---

At 11/19/10 12:06 AM, SmilezRoyale wrote: 1) Why is it assume that the federal agency will be staffed with competent technocrats 2) Why do you assume... with technocrats that will act on the behalf of the consumers rather than the agency they are regulating

Why is it that your argument against this is basically "why do you assume they will do a better job then if the industry regulated itself?" and then you go on to tell me the industry should regulate itself?

I think the Tobacco companies are one of the most famous cases of this self-regulation, when they were put on trial because their shit caused cancer and it came to light that they were discarding whatever test data didn't show the conclusion they wanted.

That's what happens with self-regulation. It's not an argument to say it will always happen, or happen most of the time, but it's the kind of think that happens a lot more often without truly independent inspectors and studies.

Though more specifically, why they will act MORE SO on the behalf of the consumers?

Because it's not their company, fortune, reputation and salary that's at stake, even if they're bought.

In the case of food regulation, companies that suffer declining consumer confidence from scandals often times call for a regulation of their industry.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB11899850 8806429191.html?mod=hpp_us_whats_news

I don't subscribe to that.
But how does this show any "self-regulation"? Seems to me they're trying to put the FDA in their pocket so they can have the kind of regulation THEY want.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politi cs/Obama-teams-with-Philip-Morris-to-bea t-tobacco-industry_06_24-48935107.html

Yeah that's bogus, 40 years after the fact and after Tobacco companies fought tooth and nail to hide the truth about their products. You expect me to go "wow they're really up for self-regulation and not having kids hooked on cigs!"

hahaha

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/tcarney4 .1.1.html

Again, trying to flail back into the spotlight after being caught by a third party.
And notice that the way they're doing it is by having a custom government-issued stamp on their products? You know, that thing that wouldn't exist in your world? That thing that would be completely meaningless and easy to fabricate / counterfeit in the absence of punishments against such practices?

Anyway the subject of safety regulations is always hard to balance. How much is too much? That doesn't mean that "any" is too much.

If your statist solution is so effective and my voluntarily solution is so idealistic, why aren't lobbyists pressuring congress to do what I am suggesting.

What ARE you suggesting? I can't figure it out : O

All the examples you show are is them trying to buy out the government to make regulations in their favor and exclude regulations that aren't.

Another food-related example, Chicago meat packers were the chief backers of the pure food and drug act of 1906, not the 'public' [Speaking of the 19th century, [i know 19th century means 1800's, but 1906 is more late 19th century than it is 20th century]

I didn't make any of the claims this guy refutes in his article. His big beef seems to be that the meat packers "passed on" the price of the inspections to the taxpayers.

That's fine by me! Everyone wins with inspections: producers have buyer confidence and buyers have safe products. If the government picks up the tab for X companies, that means smaller businesses can have their products inspected.

Of course that's if the laws were well-written and not fuled by lobbyinst douchebags.

Anyway you've yet to actually provide a single example of actual self-regulation.
And it frankly can't be that hard to find, I'd be surprised if there wasn't any.

Now what happens when Governments are responsible for making their own buildings, what building codes are they going to obey and what reason they have to obey them?

That's why you don't get governments to build buildings, but private contractors who are fully liable in the event of an accident.
But here, you can still sue the government for damages anyway.

but because no self interested individual or group is going to want to commission a building when the people in charge of it are cutting corners.

The proof to the contrary is right in the article you just linked. It stated plainly and clearly that they got a shitty school because THEY WERE POOR and that's all they could afford and it just collapsed on them because it was build in a shitty fashion by a corrupt government.

You know who's going to buy those bad, unsafe buildings? POOR PEOPLE. That's how it used to be. Poor people worked in the shitty factory with no fire exist and were chained to their machine 10 hours a day.
Rich people worked in the fancy office next to the fire station.

And somehow "revenge" isn't ex-post-facto?

It's better than nothing, i.e. your system.
Again, trying to set up a false dichotomy where, if you find any flaw in the current system, it means it has to be torn down and replaced exactly by yours and no other.

We see this most clearly in the Hanky panky that goes on with the TSA, in spite of the fact that airports stand to lose the MOST from failing to take proper security measures, people of your mindset labor under the delusion that federal agents [experts mind you, not politicians :D ] are more suited to handle the task of security in spite of their failures.

Again this is a case by case basis.
Just because I'm for a government doesn't mean I'm for everything the government does.

---

At 11/19/10 01:57 AM, SmilezRoyale wrote:

Now when we're talking about crime that isn't financially motivated, then we can't talk about it in money terms.

The point is that committing a crime is the equivalent of buying scratch tickets as far as making money goes, yet people still do it. Even "organized" crime is filled to the brim with rank and file pea-brains who constantly get caught.

But it doesn't stop people from trying and even being repeat offenders.

That's because humans behave in a short-sighted, irrational fashion while economic models predict broad, long-term trends. If you applied economic theory to crimes, you'd conclude that it would die out eventually due to it being unprofitable.

This works both ways and so doesn't bother me. When voluntaryism fails to meet your standard of perfection

See, the difference is that the system you propose has never been observed to work anywhere while the current system does work pretty well all over the world.

So you need something better than "well the free market will solve it" to convince me that your solution is so great.

But hey, feel free to join the island nation project and see how that works out. That's probably the only way we'll ever know for sure.

3) If YOU feel safer having someone compel you not to buy certain foods because they think they are toxic

Food inspection isn't about you choosing to buy shitty food, it's about you being sold shitty food WITHOUT YOUR KNOWLEDGE.
People buying cigarettes in the 50s didn't know it caused cancer. The Tobacco industry has caused MILLIONS OF DEATHS. LITERALLY TENS OF MILLIONS OF DEATHS.
http://quitsmoking.about.com/b/2006/07/1 3/death-by-tobacco-could-reach-1-billion -this-century.htm

And today they are selling to China and Africa because they can market to them without them having the same knowledge we do.

and if you think people are too stupid to realize the benefits of such a program, maybe you should rethink giving them the right to choose the individuals that create ALL of the federal programs to begin with.

Maybe we should.

---

At 11/19/10 07:49 AM, poxpower wrote:

At 11/19/10 12:06 AM, SmilezRoyale wrote: 1) Why is it assume that the federal agency will be staffed with competent technocrats 2) Why do you assume... with technocrats that will act on the behalf of the consumers rather than the agency they are regulating

Why is it that your argument against this is basically "why do you assume they will do a better job then if the industry regulated itself?" and then you go on to tell me the industry should regulate itself?

If by "The industry" You mean the relevant society EXCLUDING state and statist designed organizations, then yes, the industry should regulate itself. My only qualifications for an acceptable regulator is that the regulator NOT receive it's income by through taxation [i.e. via threats of imprisonment, non-contractual expatriation or death] and, as a corollary, it MAY go bankrupt if poorly managed. You can even staff an agency such as this with former politicians and bureaucrats.

I imagine that most businesses, although they would prefer their customers to accept their product's quality on faith, would have to find some way of proving that their goods are safer than their competitors in the same way they try to find some way of proving they are more desirable for other reasons. And since inspecting one's own products wouldn't likely be seen as genuine and would opt for some third party who was recognized as diligent and respectable.

The reason I don't want this task being managed by an agency that collects taxes is because any agency with an unconditional source of revenue that doesn't directly stem from the approval of those directly involved [or as directly as practicable] will have less of a reason to care about their job.

This is also why some companies, depending on the safety risks and circumstances, permit tours of their factories.

I think the Tobacco companies

Irrelevant as discussed above. I get the impression that, with you, it's either the state regulates the firm, or the firm regulates itself. Ignoring the giant gap in between; the hundreds of millions of other individuals that are neither part of the state nor part of the State nor the firm; who them selfs may stand to gain more than either party in ensuring that the company is well regulated.

Though more specifically, why they will act MORE SO on the behalf of the consumers?

Because it's not their company, fortune, reputation and salary that's at stake, even if they're bought.

The same applies to any third party. And again it hinges on the same assumption as above, so again irrelevant as far as i am concerned.

I'll put it this way; the federal government has access to a nuclear arsenal capable of destroying the planet several times over. Who will regulate this monstrosity? Saying that there are different agencies all checking on each other in government to prevent nuclear holocaust would be advocating SELF regulation. [Unregulated capitalism, meet unregulated government] Saying that the voters are ultimately responsible for keeping their government from misusing the nuclear arsenal is NOT advocating self-regulation, depending on how you define the word 'self'.

But how does this show any "self-regulation"? Seems to me they're trying to put the FDA in their pocket so they can have the kind of regulation THEY want.

It should make sense now that we've established the difference between State regulation, self regulation, and non-state-non-self-regulation. :D

Yeah that's bogus,

This is what happens when you look at an industry as a single monolithic agency. A firm of X industry views it's competitors as more of a threat than it's consumers. The largest tobacco company wants the Gvt. To toss regulations [that it can shoulder] on it's smaller competitors, what is so strange about this?

And notice that the way they're doing it is by having a custom government-issued stamp on their products? You know, that thing that wouldn't exist in your world? That thing that would be completely meaningless and easy to fabricate / counterfeit in the absence of punishments against such practices?

Products already voluntarily opt for their goods to be stamped by various agencies for publicity reasons, it's the same reason companies wouldn't issue products without any name labeling, consumers wouldn't know what they're buying and so could never associate a good product [and no one would buy such a product if there were others that did] with a particular producer. Underwriters and the various awards and recognitions books receive come to mind.

Anyway the subject of safety regulations is always hard to balance. How much is too much? That doesn't mean that "any" is too much.

The solution is for no one to play god and pretend they know the answer. It's the decision of the consumer. A 3rd party Rating agency can rate a doctor as being A, B, or C rating. Some people might prefer less qualified doctors but who can perform services cheaper, and visa versa. We don't need to collectively share a risk preference.

What ARE you suggesting?\

Already discussed.

All the examples you show are is them trying to buy out the government to make regulations in their favor and exclude regulations that aren't.

As is systemic in a system of statist regulation

I didn't make any of the claims this guy refutes in his article. His big beef seems to be that the meat packers "passed on" the price of the inspections to the taxpayers.

People shouldn't pay fees for regulating products they don't use. The cost should either be on the company or the consumers or some combination.

That's fine by me!

The cost of complying with the regulations is what harms smaller businesses disproportionately. That is why the big packers supported the bill.

Of course that's if the laws were well-written and not fuled by lobbyinst douchebags.

There's no reason to expect they won't be. Voters are systemically more ignorant, 'irrational' and apathetic than consumers.

provide a single example of actual self-regulation.

Don't have to

That's why you don't get governments to build buildings, but private contractors who are fully liable in the event of an accident.

Liable via whom? Via the courts? But the courts are run by the state, if the state is unaccountable, the courts are meaningless. Unless you want to privatize the courts.

But here, you can still sue the government for damages anyway.

That states are not completely exempt from and outside their own laws is a recent thing and is a positive one. If they were held to respect all of their own laws they would be illegal institution. What makes a state a state is precisely it's exemption from laws against extortion, forced labor, standards of property ownership, etc.

The proof to the contrary is right in the article you just linked.

Self-interested is the key here. The Government built the schools but those that mandated the construction and/or managed it had no stake in it's safety; they weren't likely sending their children to those schools and they weren't being hired by relevant society to have those schools built for them. They simply dictated that schools be built and didn't care about the results, they had no reason to.

Poorer societies will generally have lower safety preferences. Transatlantic sailing was more dangerous in previous centuries because those societies were poorer. [before you mention technology, note that humanity having the technology doesn't mean all societies have access to it, society's productive capacity determines the means and the ability to procure such 'technology', and even if SAFER technology exists, it will only become mainstream when it can be mass produced relatively cheaply.

Rich people worked in the fancy office

Hm?

And somehow "revenge" isn't ex-post-facto?

It's better than nothing, i.e. your system.

And my grandmother can beat up your grandmother, four eyes.

It sounds like you're trying to create a false dichotomy where if the state isn't managing something, no body else can.

---

There are degrees between statism and a free market. On the particular topic, either consumer regulation can be managed by the state, or it can not, If you want to show me certain gradients and their strengths and weaknesses, go ahead.

Again this is a case by case basis.

When I use apriori logic to try and make a point you demand examples, when I give examples you claim it's circumstantial evidence.

Just because I'm for a government doesn't mean I'm for everything the government does.

Are you for or are you against the state managing the regulation [specifically] the inspection of products? This isn't a thread about statelessness, this is a thread about a very specific area of state involvement.

At 11/19/10 08:10 AM, poxpower wrote:

At 11/19/10 01:57 AM, SmilezRoyale wrote:

Now when we're talking about crime that isn't financially motivated, then we can't talk about it in money terms.

The point is that committing a crime is the equivalent of buying scratch tickets as far as making money goes, yet people still do it. Even "organized" crime is filled to the brim with rank and file pea-brains who constantly get caught.

Gambling isn't financially motivated [not primarilly] it's emotionally motivated, people gamble for the thrill of it, not because they've calculated the returns and concluded that lotteries are worth the expense.

But even in this case, if you doubled, tripled, or quadrupled the price of a lottery ticket, this WOULD have marginal effects on the number of participants, people wouldn't be willing to pay the increased money for the thrill of the lottery.

If you're arguing that decreasing the profitability of crime relative to other activities doesn't reduce crime because some degree of crime will persist regardless, that's a silly argument. You can't eliminate crime entirely. You CAN reduce crime by reducing the impetus to commit it, and among the many reasons for crime, money is one of them. Some of these reasons can't be mitigated easily or at all, such as psychological disorders.

This is why periods of high unemployment often times see increases in crime.

That's because humans behave in a short-sighted, irrational fashion while economic models predict broad, long-term trends. If you applied economic theory to crimes, you'd conclude that it would die out eventually due to it being unprofitable.

Motivations for crime will always exist and so crime will never die out, as far as economics is concerned. Motivations for crime can be qualitatively analyzed [as i am doing] but not even financial motivations can be quantitatively analyzed.

High demand for illegal substances, as long as it exists, can predictably lead to criminal activities, and psychological disorders of sorts can lead to crime. Fierce ideological differences between neighboring societies can lead to crime.

good Economic analysis says that people act to achieve ends that they value, these values can be non physical [the death or injury of someone you despise is a value you will act to achieve] and non material. And whether or not you act to achieve them depends upon what your other values are and what you have to give up in order to achieve that goal.

For example, This response to you would appear completely irrational on my part. I could be playing mass effect 2 but instead I'm wasting time and energy in a writen response longer than a college freshman paper. Why am I doing it then? Because I haven't yet been convinced that you are right in this 'debate' and I don't want to appear like a cop-out by not responding. I'll sacrifice mass effect in favor of my personal pride, if you will.

Unfortunately because of my schedule it often takes longer than i would like to make good responses.

If someone wants nothing other than to kill someone else, then they will do so regardless of the consequences or cost, but fortunately most people value things like; social prestige and material wealth, and so will not chose to engage in criminal activities at the cost of surrendering these more important values. Even morality is just an internal value.

See, the difference is that the system you propose has never been observed to work anywhere while the current system does work pretty well all over the world.

My Analysis of history has been that societies are wealthier to the extent that states have abstained from trying to directly control their lives in general. Most importantly, in their ability to keep what they earn, and to trade with foreigners. Your Analysis is obviously different.

The 'it can't work because it hasn't been tried' is a fallacious argument and is irrelevant in this particular discussion because voluntarily regulation already exists in various forms [Albiet it does not exist in every industry of some national economy] I've already pointed to them.

So you need something better than "well the free market will solve it" to convince me that your solution is so great.

You need something better than "well the state will solve it" to convince me that your solution is so great."

I've given logical reasons why individualistic, voluntaryistic provision of third party regulation is more accountable than statist regulation. I've given examples of such voluntaryistic provision of regulation [As good as they can come in a statist society] I've given reasons why state regulators are more apathetic and thus why large competitors will prefer the public 'utilize' them over voluntaryistic ones and have given examples of the theory of state failings and corruption at work.

But hey, feel free to join the island nation project and see how that works out. That's probably the only way we'll ever know for sure.

I'm the one responding to the OP's comment on brand name changing and I am the one explaining why deception is more of a problem under a state [democratic or not] than under a private firm, regardless of whether we are talking about a private firm in a stateless society or a private firm operating [relatively] uncontrolled in the boundaries of a state.

if the only evidence you'll accept as being probabalistically true is a full-blown stateless society, [for merely proving the legitimacy of 'privatizing' a single facet of state control] That is your problem and your prerogative.

Food inspection isn't about you choosing to buy shitty food, it's about you being sold shitty food WITHOUT YOUR KNOWLEDGE.

Then YOU can have someone YOU think is trust worthy tell you about the product before you buy it. But I am skeptical that someone is going to actually benefit me by providing such knowledge if their agency is funded through extortions on apathetic tax payers. If they really perform their function as they should, anyone of your mindset should be willing to fund that agency.

It isn't really about you being denied access to the 'services' rendered to you by state agents, it's about individuals who don't trust the state agency or who don't buy particular products that the agency regulates not being forced to pay for something they 0) don't want 1) don't know about 2) aren't involved in 3) Don't care enough about to engage in political activisim to ensure their tax payers are spent responsibly.

People buying cigarettes in the 50s didn't know it caused cancer. The Tobacco industry has caused MILLIONS OF DEATHS. LITERALLY TENS OF MILLIONS OF DEATHS.

And?

Maybe we should.

NOW we're getting somewhere. "THIS is the dictatorial state that is CONSISTENT with the original rationale of a state. That the state knows better, can perform better, is qualitatively superior" People need to be told what to do and what to believe by a caste of superior human beings.

Democracy defeats the very purpose of a state, which was mystical to begin with. T

---

At 11/23/10 06:00 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote:

My only qualifications for an acceptable regulator is that the regulator NOT receive it's income by through taxation

So you don't care if he's 3rd party or not?

I imagine that most businesses

Yes, "most".
What about the ones who don't? What happens to them?
That's what laws are designed to deal with, not the "most" but the "few" who DON'T play nice.

The reason I don't want this task being managed by an agency that collects taxes is because any agency with an unconditional source of revenue that doesn't directly stem from the approval of those directly involved [or as directly as practicable] will have less of a reason to care about their job.

Well that is true, but it's also a way to make sure they aren't in the pockets of those they are supposed to police. It's not foolproof but it's better than the alternative.

who them selfs may stand to gain more than either party in ensuring that the company is well regulated.

Regulated by who?
The company or the state. Oh right, those two options.

And how is the tobacco case irrelevant? You clearly see the product of self-regulation. They just employed and paid inspectors and researchers who'd say whatever they wanted them to say and tens of millions of people were kept in the dark about the real health costs of their habit.

[Unregulated capitalism, meet unregulated government] Saying that the voters are ultimately responsible for keeping their government from misusing the nuclear arsenal is NOT advocating self-regulation, depending on how you define the word 'self'.

You're the one calling it self-regulation : O
And again, you're just deflecting the flaws of your system onto the flaws of government. Instead of answering the flaws with self-regulations in companies, you just whine about how you're scared that governments can blow up the earth.

It should make sense now that we've established the difference between State regulation, self regulation, and non-state-non-self-regulation. :D

I think you only did that in your own head.

This is what happens when you look at an industry as a single monolithic agency. A firm of X industry views it's competitors as more of a threat than it's consumers. The largest tobacco company wants the Gvt. To toss regulations [that it can shoulder] on it's smaller competitors, what is so strange about this?

No, your argument is bogus, that you'd take this as an example of "self-regulation" because the companies are for it.
They lost BAD in court and this is just another attempt by them to keep themselves in the game knowing they can't win against the oncoming laws against their products.

If you can't beat them, join them.

Products already voluntarily opt for their goods to be stamped by various agencies for publicity reasons,

Yes, but the stamps mean something BECAUSE IT'S ILLEGAL TO PUT THEM ON A PRODUCT IF THE COMPANIES DIDN'T GIVE YOU THE RIGHT TO.

Otherwise, you can just duplicate it. China has a whole industry based entirely around counterfeiting. They make shitty handbags / stereos and then just brand them with "Gucci" or "JVC" and send them abroad.

The solution is for no one to play god and pretend they know the answer.

God's pretty unfortunate since he gets voted in / out of office every 2-4 years. Poor little God.

People shouldn't pay fees for regulating products they don't use.

Oh boohoo

The cost of complying with the regulations is what harms smaller businesses disproportionately. That is why the big packers supported the bill.

And that is why these kinds of laws often have help and tax breaks designed towards small businesses.

There's no reason to expect they won't be. Voters are systemically more ignorant, 'irrational' and apathetic than consumers.

No idea what you base this on, especially given that it's the same people.
I'm guessing this is based on the "gut feeling" school of economics.

Liable via whom? Via the courts? But the courts are run by the state, if the state is unaccountable, the courts are meaningless. Unless you want to privatize the courts.

Not this stupid argument again. See, again, this just flat-out ignores reality. You just sit there going "man why would governments make laws to punish themselves? They wouldn't! So they must not have! Ha!".
But in reality, they are subject to the same laws as everyone else and are prosecuted and sent to jail routinely, especially considering that politics are split into parties with people on each side who'd love to send their enemies away to jail.

And yes, of course they abuse it sometimes and of course they get out of it where "normal" people wouldn't. That's a flaw of the system, but again, YOU DON'T HAVE AN ALTERNATIVE. You only complain about it and offer no solution to it.

Poorer societies will generally have lower safety preferences.

"Preference" is NOT the right word.

Rich people worked in the fancy office

Hm?

Hm what?
The society you want is one where rich people get the good stuff and poor people get the shitty, dangerous stuff, all under the "great idea" that "people shouldn't have to pay for services they don't get".

---

At 11/23/10 06:37 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote:

When I use apriori logic to try and make a point you demand examples, when I give examples you claim it's circumstantial evidence.

Yes, fancy that, your examples suck.

Are you for or are you against the state managing the regulation [specifically] the inspection of products?

Definitely for.

Gambling isn't financially motivated [not primarilly] it's emotionally motivated, people gamble for the thrill of it, not because they've calculated the returns and concluded that lotteries are worth the expense.

You think people commit crimes "for the fun" too?

You CAN reduce crime by reducing the impetus to commit it, and among the many reasons for crime, money is one of them. Some of these reasons can't be mitigated easily or at all, such as psychological disorders.

Poverty is indeed something that causes crime. For instance, poverty that is caused by the accumulation of wealth by a small minority of people.

This is why periods of high unemployment often times see increases in crime.

And why, when the rich get too rich, people revolt and heads roll.

good Economic analysis says that people act to achieve ends that they value

Yes, I am smart enough to figure out offer and demand on my own, even of intangible things!
!!!

Unfortunately because of my schedule it often takes longer than i would like to make good responses.

That's why I keep my replies short, to save you time.

My Analysis of history has been that societies are wealthier to the extent that states have abstained from trying to directly control their lives in general.

From what I've seen you select the facts of history that agree with that conclusion and exclude those that don't.
You have a pretty black and white view of it where you've decided that the government must be wrong because it's wrong ON PRINCIPLE to rule by force.

And from that, you don't care about whatever situations of abuse arise from a lack of regulations or whatever ups redistributing resources or issuing currency can provide, you just ignore that and instead point to horrible things like corruption, incompetence, wars and so on to try and make your case.

The 'it can't work because it hasn't been tried' is a fallacious argument

I'm not saying it can't work, I'm saying it's never worked.
I'm not saying you DON'T have magic powers, I'm saying you never demonstrated that you do.

See?

We know governments works to the extend that they at least got us this far.

Then YOU can have someone YOU think is trust worthy tell you about the product before you buy it.

Like who?
No one is an expert on that many things and no one knows that many experts ( or ... any experts ).

If they really perform their function as they should, anyone of your mindset should be willing to fund that agency.

I am willing to fund it, through taxes.

People buying cigarettes in the 50s didn't know it caused cancer. The Tobacco industry has caused MILLIONS OF DEATHS. LITERALLY TENS OF MILLIONS OF DEATHS.

And?

And how would they have ever found out under your system?

---

At 11/23/10 07:39 PM, poxpower wrote:

At 11/23/10 06:00 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote:

My only qualifications for an acceptable regulator is that the regulator NOT receive it's income by through taxation

So you don't care if he's 3rd party or not?

There's a distinction between what I think would occur and what I would not necesarilly OPPOSE. If Coca Cola tries to earn consumer trust by inspecting its own products, the act of doing so isn't inherently aggressive against any individual. But I do not think that this would OCCUR for the same reason most people, if you ask them, wouldn't trust Tobacco company's rating them selfs.

If this sounds strange, let me put it this way. Without the government to force people to drive cars instead of horses, do you think that we would have the endemic of everyone in cities and suburbs riding around on horses with manure everywhere? Or is the fact that cars are safer, more comfortable, and more durable sufficient to solve this non-problem.

That is why I imagine third party regulators will dominate, even if 'self regulation' isn't explicitly prohibited. I don't have to oppose the riding of horses to believe that cars will dominate the overwhelming majority of personal travel. [Cars or buses or w/e]

Because I don't advocate a central plan that is IMPOSED upon all citizens regardless of circumstances, I can only say what system is most probable to occur, [and why apocalyptic scenarios are systematically less probable] But if you had asked me in 1980 how i thought the Free market would deal with the delivery of first class mail, I wouldn't have predicted the emergence of an e-mail system we have today. I don't mandate that third party inspectors exist, but I have good reason to believe that they will.

And if I, as a consumer, had to make purchasing decisions and was aware of the fact that Big brother wasn't taking care of it, I would choose a third party inspector over a self-inspection.

Yes, "most".

I try to avoid using absolutes, that's why I don't use the word "All companies". Even statists have to admit that their 'laws' are presumed to protect people in 'most' cases, not all; the word presumed being KEY here. I'm still waiting for your explanation as to why we should be content with assuming the congress is managed by angels. Prevention will occur more often in a free society, and failures either on the part of the firms or of the third party inspectors will be dealt with more quickly.

There's no such thing as absolute prevention, and so don't pretend that the state provides it.

Well that is true,

Collecting taxes doesn't preclude them from being bribed, I can't figure out how you got that idea.

who them selfs may stand to gain more than either party in ensuring that the company is well regulated.

Regulated by who?
The company or the state. Oh right, those two options.

There you go again. this is silly. That's right, those are the only two things that exist on this planet. the other tens of millions of Americans don't actually exist, they can't be factored into the equation.

And how is the tobacco case irrelevant?

It's irrelevant because "Self-Regulation" is irrelevant. It's only relevant to you because you imagine that either the state takes up the responsibility of regulating a company, or the company 'regulates itself' and it's a free for all.

You're the one calling it self-regulation : O

You're the one claiming there are no alternatives to the two.

You're just deflecting the flaws of your system onto the flaws of society. instead of answering the flaws with state regulation of companies, you just whine about how you're scared that some company is going to put lead in your sandwich and only a solution from ON HIGH [a plane of existence that does not exist]

From now on I will ignore any arguments you put forward that assume 'self-regulation' for the same reason I would ignore any arguments put forward that assume universal horse-riding.

No, your argument is bogus, that you'd take this as an example of "self-regulation" because the companies are for it.

Products already voluntarily opt for their goods to be stamped by various agencies for publicity reasons,

Yes, but the stamps mean something BECAUSE IT'S ILLEGAL TO PUT THEM ON A PRODUCT IF THE COMPANIES DIDN'T GIVE YOU THE RIGHT TO.

It's the company's responsibility to make sure people are not forging their lables. For the same reason it's would be the Government's responsibility [and the citizens, to an extent] to make sure that people are not PRETENDING to be police officers or government inspectors.

They've got more at stake than the state, the only benefit they have of the state doing it is that the costs are put on the taxpayers.

However, since this thread isn't about a complete abolition of state monopoly of law. This isn't completely mutually exclusive from what I am advocating, and SOME free marketers feel the Government is responsible for preventing instances of fraud. [note this is not the same as arbitrarily deciding what is safe and what is not and preventing people from buying those things that fail their standards]

I can either go into another 10 page topic on law, or say that the state **is** responsible for protecting people from instances of fraud. Of course if the state did limit itself to that function, It would receive my relative endorsement. But I question whether political pressures could keep the state from expanding it's role and harming consumers, and whether they can even perform that role effectively.

God's pretty unfortunate

...And therefore?

Oh boohoo

Bah Humbug.

And that is why these kinds of laws

Such as? Are you pulling this out of your ass or are you an expert on the tax laws?

There's no reason to expect they won't be. Voters are systemically more ignorant, 'irrational' and apathetic than consumers.

No idea what you base this on, especially given that it's the same people.
I'm guessing this is based on the "gut feeling" school of economics.

I've already discussed it in previous threads. It's a prisoners dillema scenario where the intangible benefits of a single individual being informed about politics is not worth the time it takes to be informed. I don't study these issues because I think my knowledge will have a discernible impact on the outcome of an election. Whereas the individual benefit of being informed about personal contracts is not diluted across the voter base, and so there is a discernible benefit in 'being informed'

Liable via whom? Via the courts? But the courts are run by the state, if the state is unaccountable, the courts are meaningless. Unless you want to privatize the courts.

Not this stupid argument again.

And your anecdotal impression of 'reality' ignores logic . You admitted unaccountability in Government construction, now you're contradicting yourself by defending the accountability of the courts. People, even in government, won't be as predatorial to eachother as they can get away with simply because most people have a certain level of sentimentality.

"Preference" is NOT the right word.

It is. Some people are in perpetual fear of death and other people enjoy putting their lives in incredibly [stupid] danger. There is no universal quantity of desired safety, it IS a preference.

I shall now proceed to accuse you of wanting the poor to suffer under your system of statism because you already know subconsciously that a monopoly on law and the enforcement of it benefits the powerful at the expense of the weak.

Take THAT poxpower, you're a tool of the rich and I am no longer obligated to refute your points any further.

---

At 11/23/10 07:39 PM, poxpower wrote:

At 11/23/10 06:37 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote:

When I use apriori logic to try and make a point you demand examples, when I give examples you claim it's circumstantial evidence.

Yes, fancy that, your examples suck.

Your examples suck.

People don't accept historical examples as true until they accept the premises that make such an interpretation of reality possible. You can't convince someone that the bread and wine served during christ isn't the metaphorical or even real body and blood of christ by showing them a chemical analysis.

the LOGIC behind an idea is more important than the so-called 'facts' surrounding it. There is an infinity of 'facts', all of which can be arranged and interpretted in ways that contradict one another. The "fact" that Roosevelt ended the great depression contradicts the "fact" that it was the longest depression in american history. And with each of these 'facts' comes a series of sub 'facts' which need to be analyzed in terms of their importance and relevance to the whole.

I interpret the length of the great depression on the rigidity and propping up of wages. Someone else can interpret it as a failure of the government to sufficiently stimulate the economy with deficit spending and artificially low interest rates.

these interpretations may be based on other facts, which would then be based on other facts, but ultimately it comes down to a PREMISE of unconditional truth. That is why I don't bother looking for as many cases of government failures and private sucesses to prove that the free society can function, because it won't conform with the person I am arguing with unless I deconstruct and reconstruct their premises.

Information is interpreted based on the logic [or the frame, or the bias, whatever you care to call it] that molds the mindset of the interpreter.

____________

Pox: A state is needed to regulate the evils of private companies

Smilez: The state has no reason to care about the needs of consumers

Pox: Too bad you have no alternative

Smilez: Voluntarilly funded third party regulators solve the incentive problem and individuals who don't benefit from their services don't have to fund them.

Pox: They can be bribed

Smilez: So can state agents, and there's better reason to believe the state will be bribed given it's monopoly and near-guaranteed existence.

Pox: You're just trying to deflect criticism from your 'self regulation' system by criticizing the state.

Smilez: I never claimed that voluntary third party inspection was self regulation', and my point was to make a relative comparison.

Pox: Because you have no alternative

_____________

And it goes on in circles. Because you are obviously BEGINNING with the premise that 'Government is good' everything that you spew forward can more or less follow from that premise. I don't assume any class of human beings is inherently more angelic than any other.

Definitely for.

Good, problem solved.

Gambling isn't financially motivated [not primarilly] it's emotionally motivated, people gamble for the thrill of it, not because they've calculated the returns and concluded that lotteries are worth the expense.

You think people commit crimes "for the fun" too?

If we're talking about a crime of passion, then they are probably motivated by the desire to inflict pain on another human being, in the same way people get utility out of humiliating or dominating each other. It's just a matter of degree. Gambling and murder don't strike me as being motivated by the same internal desires.

Poverty is indeed something that causes crime. For instance, poverty that is caused by the accumulation of wealth by a small minority of people.

I see what you did there.

Anyway, i'm not going down that rabbit hole...

http://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1207 180

good Economic analysis says that people act to achieve ends that they value

Yes, I am smart enough to figure out offer and demand on my own, even of intangible things!
!!!

Reread your sentence and tell me how I should make sense of it.

I act to attain something, i must value it. That's the axiom. It doesn't say anything about quantifying the number of utils you get out of doing something as opposed to something else; value can't be quantified in those terms.

That's why I keep my replies short, to save you time.

You keep them anecdotal and backhanded, You're responses aren't thoughtful, and by making them short and vague you WASTE my time trying to figure out what you mean and what EXACTLY is going through your head when you read my responses.

My Analysis of history has been that societies are wealthier to the extent that states have abstained from trying to directly control their lives in general.

From what I've seen you select the facts of history that agree with that conclusion and exclude those that don't.
You have a pretty black and white view of it where you've decided that the government must be wrong because it's wrong ON PRINCIPLE to rule by force.

I don't believe in morality, I don't believe it's Wrong to do anything. I don't believe the Holocaust was 'wrong' by any cosmic law. I also don't believe in 'Right'.

I believe in causes and consequences. I believe the consequences in having presupposition faith in an institution and giving it powers that the rest of society does not share produces outcomes most people would regard as undesirable. Among them, lower relative and absolute standards of living, level and cost of education, healthcare, etc.

But this is more general than specific. You wouldn't have as easy a time arguing with me If I came across as a friedmanite or some minimal statist, so you couldn't turn every call for abolishing a single state program into a discussion about the need for state monopoly on law in general. If TheMason made a thread advocating the privatization of the post office, you couldn't get away with asking who would stop the mail delivery agencies from killing their customers with anthrax and then proceed to backpedal across a discussion about several different state programs.

And from that, you don't care about whatever situations of abuse arise from a lack of regulations or whatever ups redistributing resources or issuing currency can provide, you just ignore that and instead point to horrible things like corruption, incompetence, wars and so on to try and make your case.

The 'it can't work because it hasn't been tried' is a fallacious argument

I'm not saying it can't work, I'm saying it's never worked.
I'm not saying you DON'T have magic powers, I'm saying you never demonstrated that you do.

See?

We know governments works to the extend that they at least got us this far.

Then YOU can have someone YOU think is trust worthy tell you about the product before you buy it.

Like who?
No one is an expert on that many things and no one knows that many experts ( or ... any experts ).

If they really perform their function as they should, anyone of your mindset should be willing to fund that agency.

I am willing to fund it, through taxes.

And how would they have ever found out under your system?

How were the various failures and scandals of the two wars in the middle east found out? Because some individual or group of individuals got their hands on the information and leaked it [almost illegally] to the public.

---

At 11/25/10 03:25 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote: That is why I imagine third party regulators will dominate

But the question is: will your stuff be safer if there's is a threat of punishment behind the inspection, or not?
The short term profits that can be gained by skipping inspections is just too tempting not to consider and if there's no backlash, the incentive becomes even bigger?

And if I, as a consumer, had to make purchasing decisions and was aware of the fact that Big brother wasn't taking care of it, I would choose a third party inspector over a self-inspection.

If you could.

I'm still waiting for your explanation as to why we should be content with assuming the congress is managed by angels.

No one ever said that. You keep stabbing at this straw man where you say people who support the idea of governments believe its current members are just and intelligent.

Prevention will occur more often in a free society

Ok, I call bullshit on that.
There's a myriad examples. Take cars for instance. In China, the regulations on car safety are extremely lax and as such, their cars are shitty and fold like they were made of tinfoil when they crash. They're completely free to make cars as safe as they want, but they don't do it, because it's expensive and their target consumers are poor.
As a result, deaths occur.

This is across the board from building safety, food safety, hunting/fishing quotas and so on and so forth.

I don't buy your "in the free market, there will be more self-regulation" claim, it seems to be patently false.

Collecting taxes doesn't preclude them from being bribed, I can't figure out how you got that idea.

But in what system are people bribed more do you think?

You're the one claiming there are no alternatives to the two.

Well present it already.

It's the company's responsibility to make sure people are not forging their lables.

Oh yeah, how does that work exactly? By magic?

For the same reason it's would be the Government's responsibility [and the citizens, to an extent] to make sure that people are not PRETENDING to be police officers or government inspectors.

Yeah the government can arrest you for that, what's a company gonna do? Yell at me?

Such as? Are you pulling this out of your ass or are you an expert on the tax laws?

Government inspectors are paid by taxpayers, they are a way to alleviate the costs of food safety for small businesses, or else they'd have to pay for inspectors and lab tests out of their own pocket, which many couldn't do.
Plus you can put that stuff into your tax deductibles anyway, as it is part of a cost of running your business.

The only times when this really truly hurts the small guys that I can think of is when the standards for safety / health are just too high to match for them and it would cost too much to modernize their equipment/ buildings/ methods.

Whereas the individual benefit of being informed about personal contracts is not diluted across the voter base, and so there is a discernible benefit in 'being informed'

Right I'll grant you that.

And your anecdotal impression of 'reality' ignores logic .

How can it ignore logic if it's happening??

You admitted unaccountability in Government construction, now you're contradicting yourself by defending the accountability of the courts.

Again it's not in absolute terms. There's many levels of governments. China, for instance, is one of the worse. They are corrupt and unaccountable. Others are much better in that respect.

You can't deduce that it's "illogical" for governments to police themselves, and therefore "prove" it won't happen when in reality, IT DOES HAPPEN, they DO get caught and they do get sent to jail by the very justice system they are a part of.

In a government that is elected, there is far less of an incentive to write dictator-style laws like Kings used to do. If you're going to be King for life, why would you put in laws that can be used to dethrone you? But if you're elected, then to some extend you do want laws that allow you to take down other elected officials if they break the rules since you won't be there forever and when you leave, you don't want to be defenseless.

At 11/25/10 04:00 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote:

the LOGIC behind an idea is more important than the so-called 'facts' surrounding it.

But that's the thing, you suck at it.
You consider everything in simple, black and white absolutist terms and ignore reality when it contradicts what you think would "logically" happen.

There is an infinity of 'facts', all of which can be arranged and interpretted in ways that contradict one another.

You have INTERPRETATIONS and THEORIES maybe.

That is why I don't bother looking for as many cases of government failures and private sucesses to prove that the free society can function, because it won't conform with the person I am arguing with unless I deconstruct and reconstruct their premises.

But at the end of the day, history says you're wrong.
Your society model never happened anywhere for any length of time despite your claim that it is the most effective one we could have.

The modern world is constantly evolving towards bigger governments and more regulations and yet the quality of life keeps on improving with it despite this. The first world countries on the planet with the biggest governments have the highest standards of living.

You just sit around thinking of reasons for why governments couldn't work, yet they do.
Maybe you're wrong?

And it goes on in circles. Because you are obviously BEGINNING with the premise that 'Government is good'

I start with the FACT that governments WORK.

If we're talking about a crime of passion

We're not.
The mob doesn't deal in "crimes of passion".

And how would they have ever found out under your system?

How were the various failures and scandals of the two wars in the middle east found out?

We're talking about tobacco here.

---

My thread is a great success!

...please carry on

---

sorry for the super late response, college finals and 2 papers to write. Plus the length of this response.

Sorry for the late response, I'm still struggling to get my finals work done.

But the question is

You mean besides company bankruptcy [with no expectation of a bailout or 'limited liability' in court]?
If the malefaction is a result actions by particular individuals not necessarily representative of the entire company, of A Class action lawsuit, [done in a statist or non state court] can attempt to bring legal penalties on those individuals. Odds are that the stockholders of the company would gladly black ball negative elements in their company if it helped them save face with the now skeptical public.
That being said, I don't see anything criminal about selling a dangerous product provided the company isn't outright lying about its products. If that's what you mean. A kitchen knife can kill you if you misuse it, so can fast food. That being said, if a company can make something safer for zero to a reasonable increase in price, and advertise it as such, and there is a demand for increased safety, that company will profit [in the broad sense of the term] by its actions.
To-day, individuals in corporations that commit things that if non-corporate private individuals did would be illegal are often times protected in the sense that the corporation is treated as a 'legal entity' where no single individual is liable for the company's actions.

The short term profits that can be gained by skipping inspections is just too tempting not to consider and if there's no backlash, the incentive becomes even bigger?

Unlikely. You have a public that presumably doesn't take the company's word at face value [no social expectation that big brother is handling the problem] and the company in question is operating amongst several other companies, all of which would jump on the opportunity to expose some internal scandal that would transfer said company's market share to them. Under state regulation, it's simply a matter of bribing the *single* agency that has been imposed to 'solve the problem'
It's similar to asking if the short term profits that can be gained from NOT buying homeowners insurance is worth it. Even when the probability of a home disaster is low they will still purchase the insurance and take measures to reduce the risk of fire, even if it costs money to do so, because no one is going to tempt fate with the possibility of seeing their entire house destroyed from some catastrophe without any insurance.
Except in the case of regulation, you have people who are actively trying to determine if a company is committing wrong doings.

If you could.

Right. You're going to have to forgive me for trying to avoid absolutes. I prefer 'probably and improbably' to 'always' and 'never'. You can't prove with 100% certainty that the world won't end tomorrow, but you can prove beyond a reasonable doubt. I can't prove free markets will prevent every business wrong-doing imaginable in the same way you can't prove states can. I can only show why one is systemically more likely to achieve positive results than another.

No one ever said that. You keep stabbing at this straw man where you say people who support the idea of governments believe its current members are just and intelligent.

As far as I can see [and if I am missing something, please inform] We either trust the state's coercive regulators on the grounds that the 1) staff is **more** inclined to 'moral' behavior 2) the [interested] public has **more** direct control over the state agency and the incentives to exercise said control, OR, we don't trust the state's coercive regulators.

Prevention will occur more often in a free society

Ok, I call bullshit on that.
There's a myriad examples.
As a result, deaths occur.

Which is why private automobile company in the United States are rarely willing to sell them on the American market.
http://money.cnn.com/2007/07/02/autos/jd power_on_chinese_cars/index.htm
"Auto safety standards in China are not nearly as strict in China as they are in the U.S., and Chinese car companies don't face the specter of massive personal injury lawsuits in their home nation, said J.D. Powers's Humphrey."
So again, it's not the inspectors, it's the lawsuits.
Why I Imagine unsafe cars are sold in China
A little Gem I dug out of the article.
"Just passing won't be enough, though. Today, cars sold in the U.S. routinely get at least four out five stars for front in side impact safety when tested by the federal government's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Most also get top ratings from the privately funded Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, which has tests that are tougher than the government's."
You are right in the sense that if people are poorer, their safety preferences will be lower. This is a vicissitude of life, not something particular to a free society.

I don't buy your "in the free market, there will be more self-regulation" claim, it seems to be patently false.

Because?

But in what system are people bribed more do you think?

When there are fewer people, or rather, fewer agencies to bribe. And of course it's not merely bribing the inspectors, it's also bribing those that frame the agency [as was the case in the 1906 bill]

Well present it already.

"Pox: A state is needed to regulate the evils of private companies
Smilez: The state has no reason to care about the needs of consumers
Pox: Too bad you have no alternative
Smilez: Voluntarilly funded third party regulators solve the incentive problem and individuals who don't benefit from their services don't have to fund them.
Pox: They can be bribed
Smilez: So can state agents, and there's better reason to believe the state will be bribed given it's monopoly and near-guaranteed existence.
Pox: You're just trying to deflect criticism from your 'self regulation' system by criticizing the state.
Smilez: I never claimed that voluntary third party inspection was self regulation', and my point was to make a relative comparison.
Pox: Because you have no alternative"

---

Are you trying to fit the mould of my assessment of you're arguments?

Oh yeah, how does that work exactly? By magic?

There are two ways I imagine that it could be done, not necessarily mutually exclusive from one another.

1) Brand producers themselves investigate possible forgeries and inform customers via television, radio, internet, etc, of the forgeries and how they can tell their products apart from others.
There is one area where government agents have an incentive to prevent forgeries of products, and that is in the case of counterfeited money. I recall receiving mail from the USG on such money and how to identify it, I imagine it would work in a similar fashion. The key difference is consumers have no reason to want to buy products that aren't actually of the brand name they are accustomed to.

2) Consumer protection groups can perform a similar function

3) Brand producers can also encourage retail sales owners to be honest about what products they sell to their consumers in terms of brand integrity by threatening to withhold franchises if they don't investigate their own purchases / if they are caught selling falsely branded products. If a supermarket was caught selling a forged brand product the brand producer can repudiate them and effectively destroy their reputation.
My theories GUARANTEE nothing, just like your [non] argument that, 'the state will solve it' Guarantees nothing. If you say that my argument assumes that the brand producers will be able to 'catch' malefactors, I will say that your argument assumes the state can 'catch' malefactors, bring charges against them, and win against them in a trial against private lawyers.
Motives are more important than means in this case. Producers care the most if someone is trying to free ride on their reputation, consumers care second, retail sales owners will also care by proxy, since selling fraudulent goods doesn't benefit them nearly as much as it does the free-riders, and if it harms their reputation and the state cares the least. As far an argument of economic theory is concerned, assuming that the state is going to solve the problem involves MORE assumptions, as far as I am concerned, since you're placing control of the solutions in the hands of a single, utterly indifferent, agency.

However, from a 'minimal' state position, which most free marketers take, this question is largely irrelevant since copying someone's brand name constitutes fraud by most legal systems I know of, and thus would fall under the preview of state action. A Ron Paul or a Milton Friedman would support state courts legally punishing the kinds of acts you describe.

But that is NOT to be conflated with deciding what methods of production are proper and compelling all consumers and producers to accept that mold or be arrested / executed.

Government inspectors are paid by taxpayers, they are a way to alleviate the costs of food safety for small businesses, or else they'd have to pay for inspectors and lab tests out of their own pocket, which many couldn't do.

Complying with inspections is a variable cost, i.e. the price tag varies with the volume of what is produced. Consumers can be content with fewer inspectors in a smaller business because there is less content to be inspected.

Complying with state controls {'regulations'} is more often than not, a FIXED cost, and so harms smaller businesses disproportionately. For example, a business paying for a 250,000 dollar license to operate.

If you want to know about some of these I might suggest you check out the cases that this law firm does for such small businesses. [they also do some first amendment stuff]
http://www.ij.org/economicliberty: Plus you can put that stuff into your tax deductibles anyway, as it is part of a cost of running your business.

Big businesses tend to prefer regulation be paid for by taxpayers rather than themselves or consumers precisely because tax payers will, on average, care the least about regulations for goods they don't buy or of things which they have virtually no knowledge of.

And your anecdotal impression of 'reality' ignores logic .

How can it ignore logic if it's happening??

This is an epistemological discussion worth a topic in of itself. As far as 'reality' goes, there exists an event, and then the human's interpretation or 'model' of the event. Perceptions of reality are analogs and are described in terms of what we know is true/logical.

This is not to say that a reality exists independent of sense perception, but all descriptions of reality are by nature interpretation. If a person's logic is faulty, their description of reality is too, even if they perceive the same events as a logical individual, the causal relations and the analog descriptions they will use will be faulty.

The more abstract the 'fact' the more liable it is to error because broader truths necessarily involve more unknown content and more causal relationships, our brain has to fill in the gaps and thus uses presuppositions.
For example, the anecdote that 'the new deal ended the depression' is immensely abstract, 'this object is a pen' is even more concrete.
In a Nutt shell, the way you perceive reality is contingent upon what you already believe. A child who is taught from ages 7-18 that 'the government is a socially beneficial institution' or 'god exists and performs miracles' will interpret and describe events in the world TAKING THOSE PREMISES into account. The best chance you have at arriving at truth is to build up a logical structure from things you know are axiomatically true, and THEN looking at 'facts' in terms of their most concrete and non-arguable characteristics, 'in 1929 the stock market fell by...'

I'm not taking about interpretations of sense perception, you, poxpower, never sensually perceived anything you hear on the news aside from pictures and first person audio. Everything else is someone else's NARRATIVE [which, because there is an infinity of discrete facts about a topic, will omit certain information based upon what they think is most relevant] which you in turn perceive and develop your own narrative.

Assuming that everything written in a news article or in a history textbook is a fact is as childish and naive like assuming that the causal relationship between prayer and medicinal healing as given in a sunday school text book is a fact. It's a NARRATIVE, built on premises.

---

At 11/25/10 04:00 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote:

You consider everything in simple,

Already discussed.

There is an infinity of 'facts', all of which can be arranged and interpretted in ways that contradict one another.

But at the end of the day, history says you're wrong.

History is not an anthrop, it doesn't 'say' anything. This sentence is just an analog for your subconscious argument that "my understanding of events and their causal relationships suggests your theory of political economy is wrong.

Your society model never happened anywhere for any length of time despite your claim that it is the most effective one we could have.

The modern world is constantly evolving towards bigger governments and more regulations and yet the quality of life keeps on improving with it despite this. The first world countries on the planet with the biggest governments have the highest standards of living.

Except for that blip in the early 20th century when most states became totalitarian.
And that blip in the 90's when most societies deregulated.
Correlation does not equal causation.
And even if it did, you would be wrong.
http://www.heritage.org/index/
Look pox, FACTS, the FACTS show freedom leads to wealth.
Obviously not, the only thing that can bridge otherwise unrelated bits of sense data is logic.
I don't care about 'narratives' [which people often call 'facts'] I care about the premises behind what makes them seem logical.
http://fringeelements.info/post/57900550 7/positivism-vs-a-priori
Same idea.
Zimbabwe [statist] didn't "Work" Botswana did.

And it goes on in circles. Because you are obviously BEGINNING with the premise that 'Government is good'

I start with the FACT that governments WORK.

Something you consider true that is used to build up a logical structure is a premise. You wouldn't induce from the number of prisons in the united states that 'government is bad', you're belief in government was not an induction from events that you experienced, only a particular narrative. You can increase the detail about historical events, for instance, rothbard's historical narrative about the which gives you a completely different understanding of 'the facts' and 'the history' [Vastly more detailed than what]
I took a history class given by Tom woods on the great depression, it gave a different narrative on the 'history' and the 'facts' based on an arrangement of information which, like the high school text book. Wood's narrative was more thorough and [unlike the text book history] explained the flaws in the textbook's narrative aside from erecting its own narrative.
And this is why history is still debated. There are infinity of facts and no way to know causal relationships simply by induction, especially when there are no constants like in the natural sciences.

The mob doesn't deal in "crimes of passion".

Look, either money is a motivation for crime, or it's not. If money isn't the motivation, explain the context of the crime and I can tell you whether or not decreasing financial incentives are probably going to have an effect.
Saying "Not all crimes are motivated by money" is Bullshit, it's true, but it's bullshit in that it doesn't TELL me anything. It's like me telling you 'not all businesses are bad and therefore shouldn't be regulated' Is bullshit, it's true, [the first part at least] But it TELL you anything about what the relationships are and how that knowledge can be applied.
If the mob makes money by selling drugs, prostitution, and gambling operations, it's profiting on the fact that those crimes are illegal, money IS A FACTOR. And the legalization of those things would have an effect.

How were the various failures and scandals of the two wars in the middle east found out?

We're talking about tobacco here.

The answer is the same.

---

At 12/12/10 12:57 AM, SmilezRoyale wrote:

That being said, I don't see anything criminal about selling a dangerous product provided the company isn't outright lying about its products.

Which they have done....
So...
What now?

The short term profits that can be gained by skipping inspections is just too tempting not to consider and if there's no backlash, the incentive becomes even bigger?

Unlikely.

What do you mean? There's tons of cases.
Shit just take the melamine in milk in China or how some drug companies are basically shipping drug testing abroad to get it done faster so they can sell toxic products here.

Or do you mean that if there were no governments, people wouldn't get duped somehow because they're all be savvy costumers??
Which is patently absurd on its face. Do you know what kind of market magnet therapies have around the world? Or acupuncture? People pump hundreds of billions a year around the globe into pseudoscience and you're trying to make be believe that they'd take the time to investigate if their milk doesn't have unsafe levels of cow piss?

I can only show why one is systemically more likely to achieve positive results than another.

But again you're just constantly dodging the final point on this: what do you do in your system when you DO get conned and screwed?

If there's no cops around and no retribution to be taken, you have nothing.
A guy can start a pyramid scheme and vanish into thin air and you have nothing on him whatsoever.

I don't want to hear anything about "blabla the state can't prevent this blabla".
WHAT YOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUR solution?

We either trust the state's coercive regulators on the grounds that the 1) staff is **more** inclined to 'moral' behavior 2) the [interested] public has **more** direct control over the state agency and the incentives to exercise said control, OR, we don't trust the state's coercive regulators.

We used to trust them because they were transparent and the media was supposed to look at them and keep them under watch.
We were supposed to be able to police the policemen but they've corrupted the system by convincing people that secrets keep them safer.

Now they're calling for the death of Julian Assange and for laws to make it illegal to film cops. What a fucking joke.

So again, it's not the inspectors, it's the lawsuits.

It's both.
The job of inspectors is to prevent bad products for going out so that you don't have to resort to a lawsuit because someone died.

You are right in the sense that if people are poorer, their safety preferences will be lower. This is a vicissitude of life, not something particular to a free society.

Yes but your society creates a large chunk of poor people who get no help.
It's basically economical eugenics. If you're poor, fuck you and die.

I don't buy your "in the free market, there will be more self-regulation" claim, it seems to be patently false.

Because?

Because they don't do it even if the threat of lawsuits, violence and economic backlash. They constantly push for more lax regulations on everything and pretty much every place on the planet that has an economy that starts to boom is rife with corruption and shitty unsafe products, as were the USA and Europe at the start of the industrial revolution.

But in what system are people bribed more do you think?

When there are fewer people, or rather, fewer agencies to bribe.

Well one seems like more to bribe than 0. Infinitely more.

Smilez: Voluntarilly funded third party regulators solve the incentive problem and individuals who don't benefit from their services don't have to fund them.

Ok and that's different from governments how?
??
Its' the same fucking system that is exactly as open to bribing except it has no actual acting power behind it other than bad publicity.

---

At 12/12/10 01:01 AM, SmilezRoyale wrote:

1) Brand producers themselves investigate possible forgeries and inform customers via television, radio, internet, etc, of the forgeries and how they can tell their products apart from others.

That's terrible.
Next time you go to the grocery store, count how many items you're buying and then ask yourself "do I want to look each of these up online to see if they're genuine and safe?".

2) Consumer protection groups can perform a similar function

But have no actual power to stop dangerous products.

If a supermarket was caught selling a forged brand product the brand producer can repudiate them and effectively destroy their reputation.

That sounds like something that works for an extremely rare number of cases.

I will say that your argument assumes the state can 'catch' malefactors

It can PUNISH them.
You can't.

You're basically being asked "what do you do about a crime?" and you answer "well there would be less crime" and "well you're not preventing all the crime right now anyway!"

A Ron Paul or a Milton Friedman would support state courts legally punishing the kinds of acts you describe.

Well good then.

But that is NOT to be conflated with deciding what methods of production are proper and compelling all consumers and producers to accept that mold or be arrested / executed.

Yeah, it is. If your method results in deaths/ injuries, you can be arrested and executed.

Complying with state controls {'regulations'} is more often than not, a FIXED cost, and so harms smaller businesses disproportionately.

Unless, as I've just said, IT'S PAID FOR.

Big businesses tend to prefer regulation be paid for by taxpayers

everyone in any business tends to prefer that.

In a Nutt shell, the way you perceive reality is contingent upon what you already believe.

I'm sorry but the examples I bring up aren't usually up for interpretation in this way.
At all.
Also I'm glad you enjoyed your first philosophy classes!

History is not an anthrop, it doesn't 'say' anything.

Yeah, observe:

"I can jump from this building and live"

"Ok but that's never worked before"

"Pah, what can the past tell us? It's all subjective and anecdotal! HYYYYYYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH H *splat*"

http://www.heritage.org/index/

What am I looking at here?

Look pox, FACTS, the FACTS show freedom leads to wealth.

I think the 20th century has given us a hint of how much state control is too much state control and how much is too little.

Something you consider true that is used to build up a logical structure is a premise.

Yeah we pretty much know that countries with governments work.
And we pretty much know that societies with no governments haven't prospered for any length of time and surely not in any level close to what their government counterparts could do.

So.
Yeah you can sit there all day long pretending like that means nothing but most people would think "you know what? There might be something to this government idea".

Look, either money is a motivation for crime, or it's not. If money isn't the motivation, explain the context of the crime and I can tell you whether or not decreasing financial incentives are probably going to have an effect.

I told you that given economic theory, there wouldn't be things like the mob because being a mobster is not profitable. The mob is basically a pyramid scheme and yet THERE IT IS, THRIVING.

In fact, pyramid schemes also thrive. If I were to ask you "how is your system going to prevent pyramid schemes?", rather than answer honestly with "it can't and wont" you'd go "well there wouldn't be any because it's so stupid and unprofitable, people would just realize this and stop feeding into them AND ALSO, THE GOVERNMENT! ARRRR!!!

How were the various failures and scandals of the two wars in the middle east found out?

We're talking about tobacco here.

The answer is the same.

Really? Lawsuits is what made people find out about the middle east?

---

I should have responded to this earlier. Regardless of whether you respond to this or not [which I imagine you will] I won't make a second reply, so you can claim victory on the topic if you care. I'm just sick of discussing this.

At 12/12/10 03:14 AM, poxpower wrote:

What now?

If there is an explicit [as in the case of a product with a warning label] or implicit [as in the case of a steak knife that most people with an iota of intelligence can recognize as being potentially dangerous] understanding that the product is dangerous, there is no need to speculate about what would happen. Governments to-day do not prohibit the sale of every item that has a CHANCE of hurting or killing someone. And people, idiotic as they are, are killed by misuses of products. [or deliberate misuse in the case of suicide]

I don't see why taxpayers have an obligation to keep people from doing stupid things to them selfs [and themselfs only] for the same reason I don't see why taxpayers have an obligation to keep people from committing suicide.

Have you ever bought a steak knife in a store before? You know that there are no regulations that I know of that [can or could] effectively keep you from accidentally impaling yourself with that knife. That's the kind of scenario we're talking about.

Another example I would be frozen foods. The labels all tell you that you shouldn't consume the foods before heating them as specified on the label. The company is telling you that the products are dangerous if handled improperly. [You may disagree, but the dangers in this context seem less a case of cutting corners and more of a case of practical necessity] There's nothing sinister about this.

What do you mean? There's tons of cases.
Shit just take the melamine in milk in China or how some drug companies are basically shipping drug testing abroad to get it done faster so they can sell toxic products here.

Anecdotes are not arguments. Either give me a SPECIFIC case where I can examine a few of the infinite number of facts that you are omitting from this discussion. [Because]

Let's imagine you were trying to sell the idea of reorganizing society with a single corporation being granted a monopoly of law and the violent enforcement of it over an enormous geographic area containing 300 million strangers. Is it anecdotal evidence of my saying 'Abuses of state power are endemic and therefore we can induce that a monopoly corporation being granted a monopoly of law and the enforcement of it over a geographic area is suboptimal'? Is the Bernie madoff case proof positive that the SEC should be abolished, because in spite of it's immense powers and in spite of forewarnings it failed to prevent the scam from maturing to the level that it did? How about the failures of the TSA?
Or are these cases proof of the failure of the free markets because in America we don't have MORE state control over these industries? Does a nation have to let a state completely absorb all social functions before ANY social problems are blamed on statist instead of freedom?
Furthermore, I can understand arguing against a free market talking about things that COULD happen in the absence of a state monopoly regulator, but It reaches a new level of absurdity when the arguments consist of pointing to examples that **are** happening under a state. The validity of the induction ASSUMES that the only reason that these problems are occurring is because there simply isn't enough state power, which renders the entire process of induction a circular logic.

These questions can't be answered by looking at 'facts' and making inductions without first having some theory of how things work.

Or do you mean that if there were no governments, people wouldn't get duped somehow because they're all be savvy costumers??

Under a state, the incidence of maintaining responsibility on the part of the monopoly state organization falls on the voters, without the state, it falls on only the parties engaged in the contracts of buying and selling. If the production of women's underwear were monopolized by the state, the quality assurance by consumer interest would be passed from the affected consumers to the mass of voters.

If the protection of quality is NOT dependent upon the savvy-ness of voters, then some other factor must be pointed to and elaborated.

Secondly, as noted prior, the veil of state protection changes individual behavior. When we assume someone is taking care of a problem, we're less inclined to take steps on our own to fix it. This can be harmless or even beneficial if the assumption is grounded in personal experience, but is extremely problematic when the Government slacks off and people who criticize its monopoly are derided.
The SEC / Madoff scandal comes to mind, also, [albeit more indirectly] the two state-franchised credit rating agencies.

To put it bluntly, individuals necessarily have less power over their congressman [and by extension, the ultimate product of their legislation] than they do over their own contracts.

Which is patently absurd on its face. Do you know what kind of market magnet therapies have around the world? Or acupuncture? People pump hundreds of billions a year around the globe into pseudoscience and you're trying to make be believe that they'd take the time to investigate if their milk doesn't have unsafe levels of cow piss?

People pump trillions of dollars a year into wars, corporate welfare, and politically motivated scientific research. And you're trying to make me believe that people would take the time to investigate if their Governments are spending their money responsibly. And even if they knew, which many of them do, actually do something to stop them. That's not to deflect the issue, but to make a comparison. States practice an enormous degree of quack medicine with public policy, the difference is whether the cost of such quack medicine is imposed only on the fools that believe in it, or on anyone regardless of whether they accept or reject the medicine.

This kind of argument seems as strange as blaming the free market for not making everyone reject the existence of God sufficiently quickly. Or better yet, blaming the free market for my inability to convince you that having a monopoly corporation make the decisions for everyone is a bad idea.
If people actually believe a particular quack medicine works and reject evidence to the contrary, it is not the same as selling a car where people would reject evidence from the IIHS that said car was dangerous and that safer cars for roughly the same price were available.

People buy a great deal of merchandise about god because they believe in god. And the free market will supply religious bobbles to the extent that it is demanded because people actually want these things.

If there was a demand for companies making unsafe cars, if people WANTED unsafe cars and rejected all arguments against unsafe cars, then companies would supply unsafe cars precisely because there was a demand for them.

Shifting the paradigm away from mysticism is a matter of being able to express ideas in an open forum as clearly as possible. Atheism or Non-theism is gaining ground today over mysticism because of the internet and the fact that the internet is NOT [yet] legally cartelized like television and radio.

It also seems to contradict the entire idea of a democratic state. If an entire society believes that a particular mode of medicine 'works', it's odd to imagine that the system you endorse is going to breed anti-quack-medicine-minded bureaucrats. But again you've increasingly given me the impression that what you want is not democracy, but enlightened oligarchy.

---

I can only show why one is systemically more likely to achieve positive results than another.

But again you're just constantly dodging the final point on this: what do you do in your system when you DO get conned and screwed?

If it's a matter of fraud, then [because the topic is not about the necessity of state courts] a class action lawsuit, and you can use those police guns you like so much to punish the evildoers. I personally don't think state courts have a reason to punish companies the way I describe, and as such minarchist legal systems could never materialize.
But yes, I believe in law [not necessarily state law] and because punishing violations of contract is a tradition that has existed for thousands of years and continues to exist even in state legal orders, there is no problem here. Unless you believe that state courts can't handle cases of fraud, then there is no problem here.
So there is your ex-post-facto regulatory mechanism. And since the
If the contract involved warnings, then there is no way you could call it being 'conned'. If I sell you a car stating that there is a high probability you will need to replace the tires because they tend to break often, you are not 'conned' if it turns out that the wheels break while driving them, stupid, yes, conned, no. Repeat this scenario with a contract that guarantees the quality of the wheels, then you have been conned, and you can sue me for violating a contract.
But I have no obligation to pay taxes to prevent people from making stupid decisions like stabbing themselves with kitchen knives or drowning in their own swimming pools in spite of the implicit or explicit warnings.

A guy can start a pyramid scheme and vanish into thin air and you have nothing on him whatsoever.

Again, the only reason Madoff got as far as he did is because of the SEC's incompetence. I'm tempted to say that it's because of people

We either trust the state's coercive regulators on the grounds that the 1) staff is **more** inclined to 'moral' behavior 2) the [interested] public has **more** direct control over the state agency and the incentives to exercise said control, OR, we don't trust the state's coercive regulators.

We used to trust them because they were transparent and the media was supposed to look at them and keep them under watch.

The state has the legal authority to withhold information from the public under the guise of national security, it also has the power to define what freedom of access to government information means and entails because they have given themselves the power to interpret the law. They have the power to regulate television and radio media through the FCC by deeming certain content inappropriate and shutting down channels that reveal controversial information about them. They are law makers, not law takers.
In order for this scheme to work, you have to believe that the state can 'regulate' itself, because with the power of the state comes the power to control and[by extension] manipulate th
Regardless, you are simply describing the role of third party regulators [the media in this case] in Government decision making. The difference between the media and actual third party regulators is that in the latter case, the producers do not have the power to 'regulate' [.i.e. control ]the institutions that are supposedly keeping them in check. You also have not vaulted the ignorance problem of voters versus consumers on the 'demand side' of the equation.
And the very idea that the government is responsible for regulating television and media stems from the same logic that holds it an acceptable regulator of other products; ironically.
They are law makers, not law takers.

We were supposed to be able to police the policemen but they've corrupted the system by convincing people that secrets keep them safer.

But there's no reason to assume any RATIONAL individual would regulate their own government.

Now they're calling for the death of Julian Assange and for laws to make it illegal to film cops. What a fucking joke.

Again, it's downright childish to assume people will grow up in a society believing that the government is a responsible regulator of EVERYTHING [except of mediums of communication] and then believe that the government shouldn't regulate communication, discussion, and the flow of ideas. These things are, after all, subject to the same theoretical horror stories that lead the government to control all products and services. [fraud and so forth]

The idea that the responsibility of government hinges upon the golden pillar of freedom of discussion and of information, i.e a total free market of ideas, contradicts everything you've said about ignorant individuals, mystics who believe in quack medicine, frauds and so forth. The idea that the government should persecute Julian is entirely CONSISTENT with your philosophy of good government.

So again, it's not the inspectors, it's the lawsuits.

You are right in the sense that if people are poorer, their safety preferences will be lower. This is a vicissitude of life, not something particular to a free society.

Yes but your society creates a large chunk of poor people who get no help.

I contend people will be wealthier if they are freer, the poverty argument is a separate issue and so I could just as easily say that YOU'RE society creates a larger chunk of poor people [we call them today the underclass] who get no help. But such a statement would be off-handish and would not elucidate anything new.

I don't buy your "in the free market, there will be more self-regulation" claim, it seems to be patently false.

I don't buy the idea that a government could regulate every aspect of production and consumption and then keep its hands off information. It defies logic and present conditions confirm that such notions are unrealistic. I don't buy the idea that "in the state, there will be more self-regulation" because it seems to be patently false.

Because?

Because they don't do it even if the threat of lawsuits,

You're narrative of history, not mine.

But in what system are people bribed more do you think?

When there are fewer people, or rather, fewer agencies to bribe.

Well one seems like more to bribe than 0. Infinitely more.

This is why I can't keep this discussion any more. When you start TELLING ME what my positions are, and then debating them. [We call this a straw man] I

Implicit in this comment is the idea that 1) on the free market there will be no third party regulators 2) I believe that there will be no regulators on a free market and do not care. Since the no. 2 is obviously false, you believe that 1) is correct you haven't argued for it.
I'm trying to get you to elaborate how a state as a monopoly is supposed to defy logic by operating, essentially, autonomously, and at the same time achieving social goals in spite of this power and autonomy. You're argument consists of Using a statist historical narrative that presupposes the very thing it is trying to prove, that the state is a social institution
Your argument is only valid if you take the role of telling me what my positions are, the discussion can go no farther because I am not going to defend positions you give me. You know I don't hold that position and so it's obvious you're not trying to convince me of anything, you're just trying to be snarky.

---

Smilez: Voluntarilly funded third party regulators solve the incentive problem and individuals who don't benefit from their services don't have to fund them.

Ok and that's different from governments how?
??
Its' the same fucking system that is exactly as open to bribing except it has no actual acting power behind it other than bad publicity.

This tells me that you don't understand what a state is. The state is a single agency with the power to MAKE, INTERPRET, and ENFORCE it's laws of it's own creation. It is entirely desensitized to the effects of it's actions [economically and very often even legally] What makes a state a state is precisely the fact that you have no choice in it's decisions aside from 1) moving to another state 2) killing yourself.

I cannot choose to have the FDA tell what i should buy for my own safety or not. I cannot choose to ignore the FDA's decisions even if I disagree with them. I cannot choose to put my money in an alternative agency that I believe is less corrupt.
And no, I cannot get anything done by electing a representative that doesn't even read the legislation.

---

At 1/3/11 12:49 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote:

Smilez: Voluntarilly funded third party regulators solve the incentive problem and individuals who don't benefit from their services don't have to fund them.

Ok and that's different from governments how?
??
Its' the same fucking system that is exactly as open to bribing except it has no actual acting power behind it other than bad publicity.

This tells me that you don't understand what a state is. The state is a single agency with the power to MAKE, INTERPRET, and ENFORCE it's laws of it's own creation. It is entirely desensitized to the effects of it's actions [economically and very often even legally] What makes a state a state is precisely the fact that you have no choice in it's decisions aside from 1) moving to another state 2) killing yourself.

I'm wondering, how is that different from a big company? If a company offers a law & police service, and becomes so popular that they one day state "You aren't allowed to live in area 15 without paying for our services. If you do so, you will be prosecuted under our law", what choice do you have but to 1) move away, 2) killing yourself, 3) overthrowing the corporation, (which seems identical to how you'd act against a government).

I used to think that corporations and governments were different because governments were "official" somehow, with their laws and military and everything. But the power of governments isn't written into the universe. They rely on the people's support just as much as any corporation does.

So, in short, why doesn't government count as just another corporation?

I cannot choose to have the FDA tell what i should buy for my own safety or not. I cannot choose to ignore the FDA's decisions even if I disagree with them. I cannot choose to put my money in an alternative agency that I believe is less corrupt.

You cannot ignore the call of a corporation which owns the area you live in either. How would it be different? I'm genuinely interested in this!

---

At 1/4/11 06:38 AM, Drakim wrote: If a company offers a law & police service, and becomes so popular that they one day state "You aren't allowed to live in area 15 without paying for our services. If you do so, you will be prosecuted under our law", what choice do you have but to 1) move away, 2) killing yourself, 3) overthrowing the corporation, (which seems identical to how you'd act against a government).

Who is going to support that kind of law?

Legal agencies will be law TAKERS, not law MAKERS. They rely on customers buying their services for their income.

If a company tried acting super-aggressive like this, most people are going to abandon it in favour of an agency that is actually interested in protecting them and their community, not in extorting funds from it.

A government can do this though, because payment is involuntary/income is not dependant upon performance. This allows government to act arbitrarily ie not in response to actual demand on a market.

I used to think that corporations and governments were different because governments were "official" somehow, with their laws and military and everything. But the power of governments isn't written into the universe. They rely on the people's support just as much as any corporation does.
So, in short, why doesn't government count as just another corporation?

A state can be defined as a law MAKING organisation. It's laws don't come about as a way of supplying demand. All they need is for people to support the institution of a state (and by 'support' this could merely mean paying your taxes and keeping quiet) and then by proxy any law they want to make will be supported (unless there's a revolution). If you broke it down for people and said "okay you need to give us a few thousand dollars so we can fight this war on drugs", I think you'd find that support for prohibition would decline dramatically.

A private legal agency is a law TAKING organisation. They sell a basket of laws which they believe most accurately reflects the preferences held by the particular region they operate in, and at a price that will yield the best profit based on costs/customers.

They can't say "Okay we're banning marijuana in this town" if the town doesn't support such a law, and this is for two reasons. Firstly, if this law is not popular, then you're going to lose customers because their demands are not being satisfied. Secondly, if the law doesn't have operationally universal support (ie universal enough to be easily enforced, say ~%90 or so), then enforcing this law will become too costly.

You cannot ignore the call of a corporation which owns the area you live in either. How would it be different? I'm genuinely interested in this!

Property ownership will be different.

Today the state claims vast tracts of wilderness it has never touched or improved upon as its "property", and they can do this because they have the necessary ideological support, and so by proxy this is supported.

In a stateless society, property norms will be different. They will vary from region to region, but basically I imagine they'll be quasi-lockean, in that you will need to have to work on a piece of land for a certain time period in order to "own" this property. A corporation therefore can't just claim huge chunks of land by fiat the way a state can. If they tried to claim that they know "own" a certain town and everyone has to pay for living there, then they'll lose all their customers, and the force cost of suppression to go house to house to try and collect "taxes" would be too great.

---

At 1/4/11 07:22 AM, SadisticMonkey wrote:

At 1/4/11 06:38 AM, Drakim wrote: If a company offers a law & police service, and becomes so popular that they one day state "You aren't allowed to live in area 15 without paying for our services. If you do so, you will be prosecuted under our law", what choice do you have but to 1) move away, 2) killing yourself, 3) overthrowing the corporation, (which seems identical to how you'd act against a government).

Who is going to support that kind of law?

Legal agencies will be law TAKERS, not law MAKERS. They rely on customers buying their services for their income.

And if they ever become so powerful they can maintain a monopoly, overstep and force their way the world government will punish them right?
oh wait D:

In a totally free society, I don't see what would prevent corporations from being just as evil as governments. A corporation that claims to own a continent is just as hard to escape as a government.

If a company tried acting super-aggressive like this, most people are going to abandon it in favour of an agency that is actually interested in protecting them and their community, not in extorting funds from it.

Just like I can just go find a government that does things the way I want it? I truly don't see the difference here. If a government can tax me under the threat of imprisonment then why can't a corporation do the same?

A government can do this though, because payment is involuntary/income is not dependant upon performance. This allows government to act arbitrarily ie not in response to actual demand on a market.

Whatever thing or aspect that a government has that lets them get away with this, why can't a corporation just do the same?

I used to think that corporations and governments were different because governments were "official" somehow, with their laws and military and everything. But the power of governments isn't written into the universe. They rely on the people's support just as much as any corporation does.
So, in short, why doesn't government count as just another corporation?

A state can be defined as a law MAKING organisation.

So what prevents corporations from becoming law making organizations when they are powerful enough? If all that's needed is merely for the market to not favor them, why doesn't that work with governments?

It's laws don't come about as a way of supplying demand. All they need is for people to support the institution of a state (and by 'support' this could merely mean paying your taxes and keeping quiet)

And a corporation that maintains total order over a large part of the planet will be different how?

and then by proxy any law they want to make will be supported (unless there's a revolution).

I see what you mean by this, but I don't see why this is a problem only for goverments. If the corp police come knocking on your door with guns, telling you to pay your corp tax or be shot, are you gonna pay up or die?

The only way to stop that sort of thing is a revolution, overthrowing the corporation. You can't just start your own corporation and win by the market because they will fucking kill you first.

And as I see it, there is no way to prevent this from happening. The only power you have in a free society is "to vote with your money", which is essentially a power we have today under our governments (if 100% of the population went against a government it would fall instantly) and it isn't enough to bring down abusive governments.

Essentially, what's the difference between a dictator in Africa ruling a patch of land from a corporation ruling a patch of land and stifling all rivals with their power?

A private legal agency is a law TAKING organisation. They sell a basket of laws which they believe most accurately reflects the preferences held by the particular region they operate in, and at a price that will yield the best profit based on costs/customers.

Oh, now I think I'm starting to understand. You mean that if an organization oversteps that boundary, it's more accurately classified as a government rather than corporation despite not being a traditionally rooted country?

They can't say "Okay we're banning marijuana in this town" if the town doesn't support such a law, and this is for two reasons. Firstly, if this law is not popular, then you're going to lose customers because their demands are not being satisfied. Secondly, if the law doesn't have operationally universal support (ie universal enough to be easily enforced, say ~%90 or so), then enforcing this law will become too costly.

You can't know that. You can't just say that it will be "too costly" and say that thusly the problem will not come about. There might very well be a situation where enforcing unpopular policy pays off in the long run, and then we are totally screwed.

You cannot ignore the call of a corporation which owns the area you live in either. How would it be different? I'm genuinely interested in this!

Property ownership will be different.

Today the state claims vast tracts of wilderness it has never touched or improved upon as its "property", and they can do this because they have the necessary ideological support, and so by proxy this is supported.

Anybody can do this if they have enough power, be it military or economically.

In a stateless society, property norms will be different. They will vary from region to region, but basically I imagine they'll be quasi-lockean, in that you will need to have to work on a piece of land for a certain time period in order to "own" this property.

No, that's totally wrong. In a stateless society there will be no such "time period" or anything of the like. Who the fuck would enforce such things? The only thing that will mean ownership of land is if you have the power to maintain ownership of that land. Otherwise somebody might just come and take it, and they wouldn't be "wrong" to do so.

A corporation therefore can't just claim huge chunks of land by fiat the way a state can. If they tried to claim that they know "own" a certain town and everyone has to pay for living there, then they'll lose all their customers, and the force cost of suppression to go house to house to try and collect "taxes" would be too great.

Indeed. They would claim large patches of land, people would be pissed, and the situation would go out of control and the corporation would have no way to actually enforce their law, no matter how much they claim that the land is theirs.

But what if the corporation is big and powerful? What if it actually possesses the power to control land? in a stateless society, there is no such thing as a max limit or roof for how big a corporation can become. In our society, we have antitrust laws which prevents a company from becoming too big.

Especially with the arrival of destructive technology, I see it as a real possibility that a corporation could own a landmass with absolute control. What are you gonna do when the coporation has nukes? Vote them away with your money? lol. They could send you to slavery camp if you aren't spending your money in the "right way".

---

I'll respond to this only because it's a different issue, and, well, you're not as antagonistic in discussions as Poxpower.

First, note that the discussion on the difference between states and non state agencies was not concerning private versus public law per-say. At least not in this conversation. My comment on the power of states to create, interpret, and enforce their own laws is related to the problem of what poxpower believes serves to "regulate" States. The Media, Constitutions, and the courts.

the constitution and the courts cannot protect citizens against the state to a large extent because the state has by it's own nature granted itself the right to interpret it's own laws. It is truly baffling to me when someone caricatures advocates of the free market as being people who want businesses to regulate them-selfs, and then when asked about the regulation of government, advocate what is CLEARLY self regulation when the role of punishing state violations of law and justice is left to the state itself.

And for similar reasons, there is a circular logic in 1) thinking that the state is a legitimate regulator of the media 2) Believing in this legitimacy on the grounds that it can be trusted 3) Trusting the state because one perceives that the media will regulate the government even when the FCC has the power to shut down any station, largely on a whim.

Now, What separates a state from a non state agency is precisely what you yourself mentioned; it is LARGELY a matter of perception ["official" isn't really a proper classification, maybe the pretense of "officialdom" is a better term] And the state rests primarily on faith like that of any Church. Nationalism, Socialism, public education, media, misguided and unfounded presumptions of popular control of government through popularity contests, etc, continually enforce the idea that the state as an institution is somehow sacrosanct and above the problems of the rest of society. This belief can be as simple as resignation.

It's true that there is a military which could suppress rebellions, and while it is true that people would gradually cease paying taxes if there was no enforcement. People do not pay taxes purely because they view themselves as slaves under duress. If you don't believe me consider the different views society has toward 1) Tax Evaders 2) runaway slaves.

It doesn't matter if people like the government or not. There is a huge difference between saying that "Bush/Obama is a bad president" and saying that you don't believe that the state as it exists is a legitimate social institution. Even the tea party is filled with rhetoric about "sound constitutional government" and thus believes in the government as an institution, even if it never has [and never will] meet it's expectations.

The faith keeps people paying taxes with little resistance needed, which allows the state to raise taxes. The tax revenue and the perception of legitimacy allows it to do things that lack even majority support. For example, while the Iraq/Afghan wars/Obamacare lack majority support, that doesn't keep Americans from paying taxes which DO support these things. Liberals pay taxes and thereby tacitly support american empire in the middle east, and conservatives pay taxes to finance Obama's "Socialist" domestic policy.

I do not believe that a private company could ever achieve the kind of, frankly, downright fanatical support that States have today. Nobody believes that a private company should have the power to do what Governments do merely for the fact that they aren't themselves Governments.

But more importantly is the issue of the land claim, and this is relevant and key to understanding the difference between a state and non-state legal order. The state claims territories it hasn't touched, even if a company could get everyone in an area to agree to it's services, this doesn't stop people from going off the grid [this is not the same as going into the wilderness, I am talking about building a neighboring community outside the]

The issue of whether a company could become a state has bothered me, but I consider This scenario significantly less likely than 1) A foreign state invading an already statist area and making itself the new state, and imposing unpopular laws 2) The US military launching a coup d'etat and making itself the state. The reason for this is that the US military already has a much greater capacity to rule a country by force, significantly more than a private company could amass.

because Keep in mind that when people pay for services, if a private company builds its arms up too heavily people are liable to switch to another agency.

Also keep in mind that, concerning non-state agencies, Legal agencies and defense agencies are not necessarily one in the same.

Finally, if you believe that a state CAN form, de-novo, and maintain itself by force alone, then it seems highly illogical to engage in political discussion at all. After all, if it IS true, then you and I have no power to make the congress do very much anything aside from what they already planned on doing. We would also see the most stable governments resorting to force as often as possible, but this is not the case. We know that governments rely very heavily on propaganda and collective pathology, we also know that states that rely heavily on force are often very unstable.

However the topic of this thread was *not* about defense,

---

At 1/4/11 11:53 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote: ...what is CLEARLY self regulation when the role of punishing state violations of law and justice is left to the state itself.

Except that your own audacity in thinking that the state is self-regulatory is based on the idea that the "state" per se is a singular organism that works in coordination to promote it's own existence/agenda/expansion. Elsewhere that might be true, but in the US it certainly isn't. For that very reason we have built a tiered system of federalism and separation of powers to ensure that they are always in conflict. Two (main) warring parties keep each other in check, State government and Federal government are separated to ensure a certain level of polarization. Judicial-Executive-Legislative split each have warring loyalties that keep them honest. The media and NGO watchdog groups (both for- and non-profit), as well as grassroots movements can change the direction of government rather rapidly. No the system doesn't work as ideally as I have simplified here, but it is fallacy to say that the self-regulation of government is the same as the self-regulation of corporations.

See, this is the biggest problem a lot of the people in these discussions have: they assume that the State only acts like a state when it's convenient to their point, and like a corporation in areas where it's convenient to their point. The reverse is also true in the fact that people who are opposed to corporation-ism (rather than for "statism" whatever the hell that even means) who see corps as acting like corps and states where it is convenient to their own argument.

...when the FCC has the power to shut down any station, largely on a whim.

That may have been true 10 or even 5 years ago before the internet exploded and blogs and social networking became wholesale purveyors of news and information. The FCC is scrabbling at "net neutrality" trying to keep it's hold on things and is losing (though the latest coup they got by getting wireless communication under their scope may prove immensely important)... and hurray for that. The less control anyone has over the media the better.

...misguided and unfounded presumptions of popular control of government through popularity contests, etc, continually enforce the idea that the state as an institution is somehow sacrosanct and above the problems of the rest of society.

I was with you until this bit of dramatization and spin.

...believes in the government as an institution, even if it never has [and never will] meet it's expectations.

When your own philosophy has only shown us the exact same thing, how can we ever even say it is better, especially when it's never actually been done?

Liberals pay taxes and thereby tacitly support american empire in the middle east, and conservatives pay taxes to finance Obama's "Socialist" domestic policy.

Well, yes... the whole majority rule thing is part of our whole thing. And yet I can't see how having private corps provide the same services running under any different circumstances. I, as a member of my bank, do not get to weigh in on every loan they make, nor every investment. If they do bad things, they are doing it with my dollar, but as long as the good outweighs the bad I will stay with them... the same goes here for taxes and the government. Until the actions of the government weigh more bad than good, my taxes will continue to fund them. Once the balance tips, then you can go into things like protests and withholding of taxes, and grassroots movements, and revolutions to change what is wrong. Obviously the tipping point with each person, and their own hot-button issues, will be different, which is how things like the Tea Parties and class-action lawsuits and million-man marches happen. Something wrong resonates, the people respond and it gets changed.

But more importantly is the issue of the land claim, and this is relevant and key to understanding the difference between a state and non-state legal order. The state claims territories it hasn't touched, even if a company could get everyone in an area to agree to it's services, this doesn't stop people from going off the grid [this is not the same as going into the wilderness, I am talking about building a neighboring community outside the]

So is your complaint in the difficulty of being "off the grid?" Because you can do that now without doing the shack in the wilderness... people have constructed their own communities that live completely outside of "the man." So I don't see how this is even an issue. It almost seems like you want your cake and to eat it too, by having all the benefits of the current USA status but none of the bothers, instead of finding a way to make your own idea work in the world we have: i.e. that of states.

because Keep in mind that when people pay for services, if a private company builds its arms up too heavily people are liable to switch to another agency.

Why would they? That company would be the best-suited to enforce the policies that you have bought in to... it seems to me like they would snowball in power. Any company that could not compete in militaristic ways could easily be shut out of competing in monetary ones. How does a non-statist address the issue of power imbalances? All I have yet heard is that competition will level the playing field... but no discussion on HOW that might happen.

---

At 1/4/11 08:25 AM, Drakim wrote: they ever become so powerful they can maintain a monopoly, overstep and force their way the world government will punish them right?
oh wait D:

A monopoly over where? Do you really think that they'll ever make trillions of dollars through selling goods and services? Because you're gonna have to have that kind of budget to have any hope of maintaining a 100% marginal (that is, maintained purely through violence) state over a territory remotely as large as America.
The best they could hope for is maybe a decent sized town, but people will just leave. If you want to say that they'll forcibly prevent people from leaving, okay, but they've essentially created a prison, which prevents further production, and so they can only steal what the people already have.
Oh and the majority of these inmates will have guns, so good luck going door to door to collect taxes.

In a totally free society, I don't see what would prevent corporations from being just as evil as governments. A corporation that claims to own a continent is just as hard to escape as a government.

No. They could never, ever become wealthy enough to have fire-power comparable to the US government. And supposing they somehow did, states are not maintained through force.
They are maintained through ideological support, and force on the margins.
No one is going to view this ownership as legitimate, as so you're going to have near universal opposition, and so a civil war. even if they have enough fire-power to defeat everyone, they'ree ssetnially destroying what they're trying to own and control, and so it's not going to be a good investment.
Oh, and did I mention that there will be a bunch of other defence agencies fighting against the megacorp (because "we saved everyone" makes for brilliant publicity)?

Just like I can just go find a government that does things the way I want it?

Except they're all the same (in this regard), and you're an individual, not a huge chunk of the total population.

I truly don't see the difference here. If a government can tax me under the threat of imprisonment then why can't a corporation do the same?

because no one will agree with this law. they're going to have to pay thousands and thousands of soldiers to go door to door to risk their lives trying to collect taxes. Yeah, the current army has to pay thousands of people to risk their lives, but people join the army for mainly ideological reasons, not money, and so troops aren't paid huge wages for risking their lives. Oh and state armies pretty much have blank cheques.
This is going to cost millions of dollars, if you can find people willing to do it at all, and people can just say put all their money into gold and secretly bury it in their backyard and claim that they're poor or something. They might take their car or whatever valuables they can find, but without voluntary compliance, their simply wont be a steady stream of income to justify the MASSIVE investment necessary to establish this kind of power.

And of course, me and a bunch of my friends could all go in the same house and shoot anyone who tries to collect taxes. You think waging war at every house you get to is a good way to make money? Hell no.

Further, examples of where force has been used to establish power have all happened under a state, and so it was a matter of taking over an existing power structure. this is significant because populations comply with these new states because they still view the state as necessary, even if they disagree with the specific government.

Whatever thing or aspect that a government has that lets them get away with this, why can't a corporation just do the same?

That thing is ideological support, which the corporation won't have. People dislike big coroporations now, and I imagine they will more so without a government to "protect them".

So what prevents corporations from becoming law making organizations when they are powerful enough?

It's not a matter of power. Force is only used on the margins. Do most people not commit murder simply because they fear imprisonment? Of course not.

If all that's needed is merely for the market to not favor them, why doesn't that work with governments?

Because government don't operate within the market. If you're dissatisfied with them, you can't stop paying for their services. You can say you can just leave, but this is far too much of a hassle, especially compared to simply buying services from someone else (as opposed to changing your entire life).

And a corporation that maintains total order over a large part of the planet will be different how?

Why would people support a corporation?

The majority of people view the state as necessary and beneficial to their well-being.
Corporations are profit-driven and at the slightest sign of aggressiveness people will get worried. They know a corporation isn't interested in protecting them for the sake of protecting them.

I see what you mean by this, but I don't see why this is a problem only for goverments. If the corp police come knocking on your door with guns, telling you to pay your corp tax or be shot, are you gonna pay up or die?

Good luck doing this for an entire population.

And besides, imagine if the state had to physically collect your wealth. Everyone would just hide it, even WITH their general support for the state.

And as I see it, there is no way to prevent this from happening. The only power you have in a free society is "to vote with your money", which is essentially a power we have today under our governments (if 100% of the population went against a government it would fall instantly) and it isn't enough to bring down abusive governments.

yeah there's no way a corporation will ever hope to achieve anything remotely resembling the power of the state, let alone the ideological support.
And you're thinking of this only as "megacorp vs. the people". What about all the other firms who stand to lose from being under the control of the megacorp? What about all the corporations competitors who stand to gain from saving millions of people?

Oh, now I think I'm starting to understand. You mean that if an organization oversteps that boundary, it's more accurately classified as a government rather than corporation despite not being a traditionally rooted country?

No, that's not it.
Think of prices. Technically, a firm can set whatever price they want, but they're not price makers. Customers are. You can set your prices at $1,000,000 for a loaf of bread, but the REAL price is what people are willing to pay for it (ie supply and demand). Hence, firms are price takers.

Similarly, law is simply the intersubjective consensus if a certain population regarding permissible behaviour. In order to get as many customers as possible, a legal agency sells a basket of laws they believe most people will agree with, much in the same way firms price things at what they believe people are willing to pay for them. A legal agency can technically come up with whatever law they want to, but unless it's demanded people won't buy it. THIS is what is meant by law taking/making.

If you want to claim that some megacorp will come along and force their own laws, well this is pretty much them declaring war, and without a guaranteed source of income like taxation, good luck with that. Oh and if you manage to win, there's no existing government power structure to take over, so you're going to have to start enforcing things at an individual level.

You can't know that. You can't just say that it will be "too costly" and say that thusly the problem will not come about. There might very well be a situation where enforcing unpopular policy pays off in the long run, and then we are totally screwed

Like I said, this is ultimately a declaration of war, which is extremely costly on a free market, and extremely risky.

---

Anybody can do this if they have enough power, be it military or economically.

No, it's NOT FORCE. It's ideological. People are fine with the state doing this. I imagine they'll have a general "get fucked" attitude to a corporation trying it.

No, that's totally wrong. In a stateless society there will be no such "time period" or anything of the like.

That's actually how things worked in stateless regions of colonial America.

Who the fuck would enforce such things?

Law-taking legal agencies seeking to satisfy the demands of consumers.

The only thing that will mean ownership of land is if you have the power to maintain ownership of that land. Otherwise somebody might just come and take it, and they wouldn't be "wrong" to do so.

No, that would be illegal.

But what if the corporation is big and powerful? What if it actually possesses the power to control land? in a stateless society, there is no such thing as a max limit or roof for how big a corporation can become. In our society, we have antitrust laws which prevents a company from becoming too big.

Corporations as they exist today are an invention of the state, and are ultimately as large as they are precisely because of the state. Anti-trust laws are either a way of political point scoring, or to help out politically connected friends.
In a stateless society, corporations would struggle to be as big as they are today, let alone as big as an actual state. Corporations use the government to pass a bunch of "regulations" to keep competition out and so they make more money. On a stateless society, they can't so this. Since law is almost universally demanded, there are huge profits to be made, and so the market is going to be saturated with competition.

Oh, and I've heard it proposed that there would likely be a law about the market share of a particular legal agency. For example, the law might be that no single agency can have more than 50% of all customers. All of the smaller agencies have an incentive to promote this law for obvious reasons, and because people will be afraid of big corporations the way you are, it will likely be popular and so the big corp will have to go along with it or lose customers. All the smaller corporations have to do is some scaremongering about a "monopoly" and people will panic. If the big corporation refuses to abide by this law, this will just confirm what the other companies said.

Especially with the arrival of destructive technology, I see it as a real possibility that a corporation could own a landmass with absolute control. What are you gonna do when the coporation has nukes? Vote them away with your money? lol. They could send you to slavery camp if you aren't spending your money in the "right way".

What use does a corporation have for nukes?

Corp: "Obey us or else we'll use our nukes"

People: "fuck that, get the fuck out"

Corp: *uses nuke*
"ahah, we sure showed them...well we kind of destroyed all of that city's wealth, and when you add it all up that actually put us at a loss..but yeah we showed them!"

Anyway, in the future, there will be briefcase nukes, and so corporations will be the least of your concerns.

---

At 1/5/11 05:41 AM, SadisticMonkey wrote:

No, that's totally wrong. In a stateless society there will be no such "time period" or anything of the like.

That's actually how things worked in stateless regions of colonial America.

If so, only because they had the power/support to actually maintain it. I can't honestly believe you think this is somehow written into the fabric of the universe. Any sort of land ownership in a free society will merely be because nobody else who has the means to take your land has come yet. Maybe they never will, but don't make up some sort of story about how things are neatly gonna fall into these concepts you have.

Who the fuck would enforce such things?

Law-taking legal agencies seeking to satisfy the demands of consumers.

So then you do agree that it only exists because somebody is enforcing it, not because it's fair or right or anything like that. Land ownership will work because legal agencies will lend their support in exchange for money. If a bigger corporation comes along or the legal agency goes down you will no longer have that support for land ownership. There is no "time period" bullshit, that's only fluff that can be added when you already have control and order over the area.

The only thing that will mean ownership of land is if you have the power to maintain ownership of that land. Otherwise somebody might just come and take it, and they wouldn't be "wrong" to do so.

No, that would be illegal.

There is no such thing as illegal in a free society.

When Germany occupies Norway durring the second world war, they obviously took control and "decided" that their occupation was okay according to the now new Norwegian government.

But it's still universally recognized in the world community that it was not a valid occupation (Norway was trying to be neutral), and also admitted to such by the current government of Germany. People have an ideological belief that we have a certain officialdom (thanks for the word btw Smilez) to law and such, with human rights and the soverty of countries.

This does not exist in a free society. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but in a free society you simply cannot state that something is illegal. You can at best say that something is illegal according to those currently in control. I know this is really the reality of our state solution too, but people don't think of it that way, and their belief gives the system power.

But what if the corporation is big and powerful? What if it actually possesses the power to control land? in a stateless society, there is no such thing as a max limit or roof for how big a corporation can become. In our society, we have antitrust laws which prevents a company from becoming too big.

Corporations as they exist today are an invention of the state, and are ultimately as large as they are precisely because of the state. Anti-trust laws are either a way of political point scoring, or to help out politically connected friends.
In a stateless society, corporations would struggle to be as big as they are today, let alone as big as an actual state. Corporations use the government to pass a bunch of "regulations" to keep competition out and so they make more money. On a stateless society, they can't so this. Since law is almost universally demanded, there are huge profits to be made, and so the market is going to be saturated with competition.

I've heard this a lot, and even seen a few examples of government making corporations larger, but I don't have any specific reason as to believe that in a free society corporations would naturally be smaller. The arguments you are putting forth are horribly theoretical and ideological, and I just can't bring myself to accept them solid ground that it would not happen.

In my mind, I can way too clearly imagine what happens in a free society once a security corporation has nukes and military might. They become a government, and people wouldn't resist because they want to be left alone and live in peace, and they would be willing to pay a 20% tax instead of dying in battle against tyranny.

Oh, and I've heard it proposed that there would likely be a law about the market share of a particular legal agency. For example, the law might be that no single agency can have more than 50% of all customers. All of the smaller agencies have an incentive to promote this law for obvious reasons, and because people will be afraid of big corporations the way you are, it will likely be popular and so the big corp will have to go along with it or lose customers. All the smaller corporations have to do is some scaremongering about a "monopoly" and people will panic. If the big corporation refuses to abide by this law, this will just confirm what the other companies said.

That's all fine and danny, until you realize that the security corporation and newspaper corporations can be bribed and even owned behind the scenes by the very companies you say they will assault.

A company might simply divide itself into two diffrent brands to avoid detection that they have 80% of the market. The newspaper reassures us that it's merely rumors. The rivaling newspaper saying differently suddenly busted by the police because they were breaking local laws, having tons of drugs and illegal weapons.

Everybody is ignorant and happy.

Especially with the arrival of destructive technology, I see it as a real possibility that a corporation could own a landmass with absolute control. What are you gonna do when the coporation has nukes? Vote them away with your money? lol. They could send you to slavery camp if you aren't spending your money in the "right way".

What use does a corporation have for nukes?

You have no idea

Corp: "Obey us or else we'll use our nukes"

People: "fuck that, get the fuck out"

*Corp nukes city A*

Corp: Obey us or you will die like city A

People: TAKE MY MONEY!

I am way too cynical about the human spirit to think that a free society could ever work. People are cowards, not heroes. Human are weak and fragile. The only reason we manage to do anything violent like war is because we use brainwashing techniques and conditioning on soldiers to make them unafraid of dying. Random people without such effort can at best form a religious mob which will spread as soon as the tear gas comes out.

Corp: *uses nuke*
"ahah, we sure showed them...well we kind of destroyed all of that city's wealth, and when you add it all up that actually put us at a loss..but yeah we showed them!"

Think long term, not short term. Obviously using a nuke is not profitable short term. But if a city isn't going to give into your demands, what use do you have for it anyway? Nuking it won't cost you anything but a nuke, and all other cities will obey from now on.

Anyway, in the future, there will be briefcase nukes, and so corporations will be the least of your concerns.

A police guy with a briefcase nuke and a pistol comes to collect taxes from your house. If his heart stops beating, the nuke goes off.

You might be thinking, that isn't profitable, just a few people will resist and they will lose more money than they collect. But I can reassure you, after a single tax collector explodes, 100% from then on will collect taxes. People aren't these brave heroes who say "give me liberty or give me death" they are cowards and weaklings, and they will gladly pay a reasonable tax to just be left alone.

---

At 1/5/11 01:11 AM, Ravariel wrote:

At 1/4/11 11:53 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote: ...what is CLEARLY self regulation when the role of punishing state violations of law and justice is left to the state itself.

The media and NGO watchdog groups (both for- and non-profit), as well as grassroots movements can change the direction of government rather rapidly. No the system doesn't work as ideally as I have simplified here, but it is fallacy to say that the self-regulation of government is the same as the self-regulation of corporations.

I don't deny that activists can change politics, but that for reasons relating to rational ignorance and rent seeking, narrow interests will always have a decisive advantage over the 'general public' And so the systemic tendency is for the law to benefit small groups of the few at the expense of the 'diluted' many.

Elections are weak regulators if at all. In the best of circumstances, a duopoly.

- Rational ignorance keeps voters from having any reason to make informed decision
- The state regulates it's elections and establishes rules of competition.
- High 'startup' requirements for taking office [Elections cost millions of dollars]
- the fact that competition can only take place during certain intervals

It is extremely easy for a politician to break many if not virtually all of their campaign promises and if you sit down and think about the way that elections REALLY work, it shouldn't surprise anyone. If the new tea party congress decides to go 180 degrees on it's platform [if it had one] and go full-on-Statism, who are their constituents going to vote for in the next election? The democrats?

Very few believe that two mega-corporations competing against one another is sufficient to call a particular market 'regulated'.

As far as the federalism issue, I agree that having 50 relative autonomous political units would provide an increased degree of competition for managerial competence, certainly better than a unitary state. But the advocates of state run or state regulated this or that generally are not calling for individual states to adopt policies that, by virtue of their success, would be adopted by other states.

And of course if the fidelity of a state is trusted on it's level of competition with other states, then the rational conclusion would be to advocate the greatest practicable level of devolution of power. And relative to our current predicament I would endorse this.

This is a generalization that may not apply to you or to any school of thought that you adhere to, but as a generally true statement, the advocates of expanded state power, while sometimes localists or nationalists, generally favor centralized power to the greatest territorial extent. i.e. Government that is both intensively and extensively large.

Chronically high incumbency rates in spite of low approval of congress suggests the model of democratic regulation is a farce.

In short, i would say that the statistical fears about Corporations consolidating not only logically applies to states, but has fairly clearly shown to be the norm as far as the history of states and of the US Federal state in particular. The 150 year trend in US History has been for power to be concentrated in the hands in the federal unit vertically-wise, and in the power of the executive horizontally-wise.

I don't follow. What are you treating as corporation as and what

If by corporation you mean non-state agency? Usually when people say 'corporation' they mean it in a prejorative way, likewise with the word 'state'. "Government" and "public" are usually the terms used for a positive connotation.

...when the FCC has the power to shut down any station, largely on a whim.

That may have been true 10 or even 5 years ago

I couldn't agree more, and The internet might make Governments more responsible. I don't deny that. But to the extent people believe it's the Government's job to 'regulate the media' [under whatever pretenses] is the extent to which the idea of media regulation of government is pure mysticism.

When your own philosophy has only shown us the exact same thing, how can we ever even say it is better, especially when it's never actually been done?

No modern examples of pure statelessness exist, but I still object to this as a valid argument. If i argued for a minimal state, the next closest thing to a state, I could easily argue that no 'pure' minimalist state existed, [Some i have met make that line] I wouldn't consider it any less reasonable to argue that the apparent INABILITY of a state to remain minimal as being proof that a minimal state is not something that should be advocated for. But i don't think those objections would be raised against me if i Did start falling back on minimal statism. That a style of governance was tried and failed in the past seems more objectionable than a system that has 'never actually been done'

Well, yes... the whole majority rule thing is part of our whole thing. And yet I can't see how having private corps provide the same services running under any different circumstances. I, as a member of my bank, do not get to weigh in on every loan they make, nor every investment. If they do bad things, they are doing it with my dollar, but as long as the good outweighs the bad I will stay with them... the same goes here for taxes and the government.

The Bank's power to make lousy decisions [ignoring the whole 'too big to fail' nonsense] is hedged in ways a national state simply is not.

Private subscriptions are generally "aterritorial", and so the decisions of my neighbors doesn't impose involuntarilly nearly as much upon an individual as it does under statism.

What makes it necessary for people to have these massive revolutions to change what may eventually become a stone solid-third rail of politics [Remember the days when the republicans wanted to abolish the dep. of education?] is the fact that these issues are taken out of the hands of individual choice.

Individuals cannot 'opt out' of social security in the same way they can switch between insurance companies and banks [and of course competition between these agencies is restricted by state action] Unless you want to abandon your friends, family, culture, language, job, and much of your property and move to another country.

This problem would be less-so if states were geographically smaller and did not hassle immigrants, but obviously it's not in the incentive structure of states to advocate such a thing. So i have to do it for them. The best alternative, in my mind, is for the provision of goods and services to be non territory based, whenever possible. Otherwise the territories should be small.

This video kind of summarizes my idea.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DR-qLB-XM hU

To answer your last question, 'No', I don't want the benefits states have to offer. As far as I know there are no communities in the United States, except for a few odd ball cases like Indian reservations and amish communities, cannot opt out of state services, regulations, and taxes. If they exist I would be interested in knowing of them. But as far as i know you cannot leave the system without considerable trouble.

I don't think people should have to live in the wilderness and separate them selfs from the benefits of the division of labor, someone of this condition is no more 'free' than convict on the lam is free.

Why would they?

If an individual refuses to pay taxes to fund state services, the state kicks down the individual's door and arrests them. Private companies don't do this to non-paying customers, they simply stop providing the service or good to the customer, and nobody considers it legitimate for them to do otherwise.

---

At 1/5/11 08:15 AM, Drakim wrote: If so, only because they had the power/support to actually maintain it. I can't honestly believe you think this is somehow written into the fabric of the universe.

I don't. I don't believe in "rights". I mentioned that example to demonstrate I wasn't pulling the concept out of my ass.

Property ownership laws will vary from place to place. You might even have communist towns. I'm just saying that this will likely be a common system.

Any sort of land ownership in a free society will merely be because nobody else who has the means to take your land has come yet. Maybe they never will, but don't make up some sort of story about how things are neatly gonna fall into these concepts you have.

People being able to keep their shit is something that will be almost universally demanded, and so companies have a massive financial incentive to satisfy these demands. Non-legal/defence businesses have an incentive to ensure this happens as well, because a stable, free economy is the most business friendly environment.

not because it's fair or right or anything like that.

I never claimed otherwise.

If a bigger corporation comes along or the legal agency goes down you will no longer have that support for land ownership.

I'll just call another legal agency. They will protect me from theft because they need to maintain order, and because letting theft happen is bad for your reputation. And before you start, look up dominant-assurance pacts if you want to know why this doesn't mean no one will buy protection.

There is no such thing as illegal in a free society.

yeah there is...people don't want theft, and so legal agencies all sell a system of law that says theft is illegal, because saying theft is legal means you won't have customers, and so law is determined in the same way prices are.

When Germany occupies Norway durring the second world war, they obviously took control and "decided" that their occupation was okay according to the now new Norwegian government.

Firstly, a state army whose funding is limited only by the wealth of an entire nation is going to be far more powerful than any corporation ever could be. Secondly, they took over the existing power structure of government in order to establish their control, They weren't creating a state from scratch. Huge difference.

This does not exist in a free society. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but in a free society you simply cannot state that something is illegal. You can at best say that something is illegal according to those currently in control. I know this is really the reality of our state solution too, but people don't think of it that way, and their belief gives the system power.

There aren't "people in control." You can't just make laws that no one wants, because you'll lose all your customers. And the idea that corporations will magically become tens of times larger than their current size, even in the face of more competition is COMPLETELY FUCKING RETARDED, so drop it already.

I've heard this a lot, and even seen a few examples of government making corporations larger, but I don't have any specific reason as to believe that in a free society corporations would naturally be smaller.

That's because you're an economic illiterate. People like you are forever complaining about the republicans helping out the corporations and such, and so then we say okay let's do the opposite of this..and then you claim this will help the corporations. for fucks sakes.

The arguments you are putting forth are horribly theoretical and ideological, and I just can't bring myself to accept them solid ground that it would not happen.

That's extremely rich of you to say given that YOU YOURSELF said that you don't have much of an understanding of economics.

In my mind, I can way too clearly imagine what happens in a free society once a security corporation has nukes and military might. They become a government, and people wouldn't resist because they want to be left alone and live in peace, and they would be willing to pay a 20% tax instead of dying in battle against tyranny.

Over what area though. You think companies in other regions of the world are happy with an insane corporation waving nukes around? Hell no. They will just say "try anything and we'll just nuke YOU".

And what is stopping people from fleeing?

What is stopping people from putting their wealth into gold and hiding it, thus preventing them from taking wealth?

IF some sort of currency is being used, and the mega corp comes into the possession of massive amounts of it, investors will bail and the currency will become worthless. In what way will corporations be able to steal WEALTH?

Everybody is ignorant and happy.

So basically you're the only person in the world who is extremely afraid of corporations. Oh okay.

Corp: Obey us or you will die like city A

Again, a company that goes around nuking places isn't going to last long.

The only reason we manage to do anything violent like war is because we use brainwashing techniques and conditioning on soldiers to make them unafraid of dying. Random people without such effort can at best form a religious mob which will spread as soon as the tear gas comes out.

because other defence agencies will magically disappear.

A police guy with a briefcase nuke and a pistol comes to collect taxes from your house. If his heart stops beating, the nuke goes off.

yeah, because people are going to walk around wearing nukes...pfft.

Anyway, once nukes become that compact and easy to make, random lunatics (muslims et al) blowing up the world is more of a problem than malicious corporations.

You might be thinking, that isn't profitable, just a few people will resist and they will lose more money than they collect. But I can reassure you, after a single tax collector explodes, 100% from then on will collect taxes. People aren't these brave heroes who say "give me liberty or give me death" they are cowards and weaklings, and they will gladly pay a reasonable tax to just be left alone.

What's stopping me from nuking their headquarters, if nukes are so available

also fuck you because you ignored a ton of my points which were very important

---

I find this attitude among you and other posters to be very disturbing. You talk as if it's a matter of course that free market capitalism is the only path to success, no exceptions. Anybody who claims otherwise is simply uneducated, as it's basic economy 101. I live in a near socialist country and it works pretty damn fine, so I can't help but to wonder if you have some sort of loyalty to this system that won't allow you to considerer anything else, quite akin to what we find in Soviet Russia.

Now that I got that off my back, please understand I'm not angry. >< I'm enjoying this conversation, and the reason I didn't reply to all your points was exactly that, I had nothing to say back, because I found you mostly right or convincing. Oh, and I didn't mean to make it sound as if I was accusing you of being brainwashed.

But anyways, I'm way over my head on this one, so I think I'll take my leave. Thanks for the conversation.