I've been thinking about the question of "Bugs in Anarchy" for a while
now... I've had a half-written e-mail in my outbox on the topic, and I
figured that now would be as good a time as any to rewrite it and post
it.
One interesting question is: "Would anarcho-capitalism result in
government?" David Friedman answers this objection from the
perspective of an economist, and describes a potential situation in
which the mafia decides to start its own government.
"What about the possibility of the mafia getting its own protection
agency? In order for such a firm to provide its clients with the
service they want -- protection against the consequences of their
crimes -- it must either get the other protection agencies to agree to
arbitration by a court that approves of crime or refuse to go to
arbitration at all. In order to do the first, it must offer the other
agencies terms so good that their customers are willing to be stolen
from; as in the previous case, this reduces to the thief bribing the
victim by more than the amount stolen, which is improbable. If it
refuses to accept arbitration, then the mafia's protection agency
finds itself constantly in conflict with the other protection
agencies. The victims of theft will be willing to pay more to be
protected than the thieves will pay to be able to steal (since stolen
goods are worth less to the thief than to the victim). Therefore the
noncriminal protection agencies will find it profitable to spend more
to defeat the criminal agency than the criminal agency could spend to
defeat them. In effect, the criminals fight a hopeless war with the
rest of society and are destroyed."
Certainly THIS plan, to win immunity from all crimes everywhere by
bargaining with or crushing all who would oppose them, is hopeless.
But the wanna-be-gov't need not fight a war against the world. You
might expect that they'd simply conquer as large an area as they think
they could reasonably control, and reach equitable arbitration
agreements with the other neighboring agencies. If the other agencies
happen to have the same idea, then you get a world consisting
of... say... hundreds of nation states.
And rather than try to get their clients perfect immunity from the
consequences of committing any crime whatsoever, they might only try
to get immunity from certain crimes of limited scope, like, for
example, stealing only a fraction (or even a majority) of its clients'
property, rather than all of it. Or stealing more from a clearly
delineated minority than from the majority.
Finally, Friedman counts on the assumption that your taxes and freedom
are worth more to you than they are to me. But if I'm not taking away
very MUCH freedom, many people would be willing to trade it away to me
in exchange for money or other services; they could even trade away
their right to leave such an arrangement if I sweetened the deal
nicely. This is more likely if I have a lust for Power (in and of
itself, rather than as a means to an end) or if the people don't care
about their freedom very much.
Especially in light of the fact that all of this is the actual result
from an original state of nature, why wouldn't anarcho-capitalism go
the same way?
>From this perspective, it looks like the only ways to get to
anarcho-capitalism is the first place are:
1) some kind of technological advancement(s) that would make
government significantly harder than it is today, like strong
ubiquitous cryptography, cheap fast space travel coupled with
functioning biospheres, uploading, which in turn may be counteracted
by technological advancement(s) which could make government easier,
like ubiquitous surveilance, long range weaponry, and neurohacking.
2) a strong ubiquitous yearning on the part of just about everyone
everywhere for freedom, a desire which has no precedent in human history.
-Dan
-unless you love someone-
-nothing else makes any sense-
e.e. cummings
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Oct 02 2000 - 17:37:11 MDT