} I have never found such a problem. The ones you name above are quite
} trivially solved by assigning private property rights in clean air and
} healthy oceans to individuals, and letting the market trade itself
} into equilibrium; basic A-C 101.
Duh. If assigning property rights was so easy in those domains, they'd
probably have been claimed already. What's a good oceanic solution?
Squares or cubes of territory? Not very useful. Schools of fish? That
would be more useful, if you could track and identify schools. I don't
know how they behave; if two schools merged, life would be difficult.
And suppose global warming from carbon emissions _is_ a problme --
what's the A-C solution?
National defense has seemed hard too.
} The "steps along the way" argument is not without merit, and I am
} sympathetic to libertarians who, for instance, advocate a flat tax or
Alternately, one might want to make life under the state as unpleasant
as possible, to maximise the incentive to change.
I'm feeling far more anarchist since reading Friedman essays last
night. Assuming all of his analysis is correct, the missing link of
such advanced economics and game theory seems to be why gov'ts exist, if
they're so nasty. I have two ideas for possible proofs; one is that
gov't is necessary for at least one function, such as group defense, and
once the mechanism is established it spreads via public good problems.
(Well, I doubt anything happened that particular way. But it shows why
we'd never have escaped.) The other would be that we started with gov't
for any reason you want, say as an outgrowth of tribalism, and escaping
is a very hard public good/Schelling point problem.
In case people are confused, my ideas have for years been a
superposition of wanting to be an anarchist and doubting its
feasibility. So when I argue with an anarchist, I back minarchy, and
when I argue with any statist, I back anarchy.
That's quantum philosophy. :)
-xx- Damien R. Sullivan X-) <*> http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~phoenix
There's something in my garden, it's been there for a week.
I tried to feed it crackers, but that only made it squeak.
I tried to wash its scaly head, but all it did was cry,
So I think I'll put it back to bed, and sing it a lullaby:
A monster's lullaby: