Felix Ungman wrote:
>
> on 2001-08-11 17.17, Mike Lorrey at mlorrey@datamann.com wrote:
> > I frankly oppose living near individuals who think its fine to outsource
> > their self-defense needs. Outsourcing ones self defense is the FIRST and
> > greatest step to serfdom. If your right to life is inalienable, the
> > responsibility for the individual to defend that life themselves is
> > similarly inalienable. Delegation of self-defense is enslavement. This
> > is the most important ethic of libertarianism, which many overlook. They
> > think 'ooooh, self-ownership is great', but think that the
> > responsibilities entailed can be subcontracted. Not so.
>
> I'm puzzled by this. I'm not sure what's bad with delegation, certainly not
> independence, as you still need to rely on your local weapon dealer. True,
> government monopolies tend to produce inefficient or bad service, and surely
> the police force is probably no exception. But in a free market, you would
> be able to delegate wisely.
The problem, of course, is with concentrations of force and dependencies
on large concentrations feeding a tendency toward monopolization of the
market of force.
Governments come about specifically because of this blind spot.
Individuals too squeamish to do their own dirty work empower
amalgamations of force through security subcontracting that can
overwhelm other individuals who are not so inclined.
In a purely economic transaction, there is no force involved in the
transaction, so both parties can walk away without fear of recrimination
impacting their ability to continue existence. In force transactions,
those without means equal to the opposing party will always lose if the
opponent calculates a positive benefit to using force to violate the
free market. As soon as a person hires a large group to exert force for
them, all parties the person deals with are no longer operating in a
free market, nor is the person operating in a free market with respect
to the large group they have hired. If the large group mandates that its
clients be unarmed, then they are totally at the mercy of the large
group.
Vinge dealt with some of these issues in his story "The Ungoverned", but
I don't think that he represented them properly or accurately, but a
better treatment, IMHO, is H. Beam Piper's novella "Lone Star Planet"
(also serialized as "A Planet for Texans"), and to a lesser degree, its
accompanying novella, "Four Day Planet".
Because the libertarian system revolves around self ownership, and self
responsibility, the defense of the self, by the self, is of greater
importance than any other imperative in society. Without it, a
libertarian society will generally evolve toward greater concentrations
of power in force monopolies, as has occured here in the US.
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