Response to something Iain posted in Matt's journal
I think you meant overestimated my morality. You're right, my own moral code prevents me from harming others like that. However, Joey the crackhead is another story all together.
I read Molyneux's article. I'm probably overly-cynical because I'm not a libetarian, but there do seem to be some gaping holes in his logic. Maybe you can enlighten me on a few points.
"A central lesson of history is that States are parasites which always expand until they destroy their host population."
Maybe I was too high when they taught that lesson. He must be talking about inward expansion, because outward would destroy other populations instead. I'll use the example of industrial Britain, because it happens to be what I'm forced to study these days. I can guarantee to you that life was a hell of a lot worse for the general population during industrialisation before the government expanded into the realm of workplace control. Maybe libertarians like yourself want the option to send your 8 year old to work in a textile mill for 14 hours a day, but most would concede that the Factory Act was a benefit to society. In any case, I'm unaware of any society in all of history that has been destroyed by its own state. Certainly segments of society have been viciously assaulted occasionally, but an entire society destroyed by its own state? That's like snake eating itself: at a certain point it becomes impossible.
"The idea that the State is capable of solving social problems is now viewed with great skepticism...since it fails at everything except increasing its power..."
Yes, increasing its power. And other minor things like eradicating polio and landing on the moon.
"Most of these amazing intrusions into personal liberty have occurred over the past 90 years...State predations are now so intrusive that they have effectively arrested the forward momentum of society, which now hangs before a fall. Children are poorly educated, young people are unable to get ahead..."
This is just straight-up bullshit. Children are better educated today than they were 90 years ago by any rational standard. States force parents to have their children educated because if they didn't, a lot of parents would put them to work instead. Proven lesson of history, I guess Molyneux was high during that one. Young people are unable to get ahead? Where do they want to go? I'm in Europe for a year on a mix of minimum wage employment (thankfully there is a law mandating a minimum wage) and government money. Young people think they are unable to get ahead because they expect a standard of living which is ridiculously above that which was available even 40 years ago, forget before the modern nation-state.
"There is no example in history of a State being permanently reduced in size."
RUSSIA.
"Everyone, of course, realizes that civil war is a rather bad situation, and so it seems likely that the DROs would consider alternatives to armed combat."
The funny thing about "everyone" is that not everyone thinks the same thing. Usually the people that start civil wars don't view them as a bad situation, because they assume they're going to win, and enforce their superior system. The other side, and the people stuck in the middle, don't have a choice.
"However, to go to the extreme, perhaps the worst has occurred and Stan has been unjustly fined a million dollars due to DRO corruption. Well, he has three alternatives. He can choose not to pay the fine, drop off the DRO map, and work for cash without contracts."
Stan can just not pay the fine! Makes sense, since there aren't any laws to prevent this. Sure, his shitty credit rating will bar him from any meaningful contracts in the future. But hey, fuck it! Maybe Stan's got bigger problems. Cancer, a hit-squad after him, he's 92, or he's just flat-ass broke. I know I'd rather just not pay a fine and have shitty credit than go a million dollars into debt.
"However, if Stan is an intelligent and even vaguely entrepreneurial man, he will see the corruption of the DRO as a prime opportunity to start his own, competing DRO..."
With what money!? Maybe Stan can just pull a million dollars out of his jacket and move on. Most of us, however, would be too broke to get fries with out burger, forget go start our own competing agency. What's going to insure the possibility of free entry into this market? What prevents the DRO's from colluding to crush new entrants?
"Stan’s third option is to appeal to the contract rating agency. Contract rating agencies need to be as accurate as possible, since they are attempting to assess real risk."
Who pays them? Stan? He's fucking broke. The DRO's? That would be a bit of a conflict of interest. Everybody together? Sounds like taxation to me.
"The first is the challenge of reciprocity, or geography. If Bob has a contract with Jeff, and Jeff moves to a new location not covered by their mutual DRO, what happens?...Just as a person’s credit rating is available anywhere in the world, so their contract rating will also be available, and so there will be no place to hide from a broken contract save by going ‘off the grid’ completely..."
Until DRO's in one area decide to act as haven's for ill-gotten money. What makes him think a DRO would act more reponsibly than the Cayman Islands?
"The second problem is the fear that a particular DRO will grow in size and stature to the point where it takes on all the features and properties of a new State. This is a superstitious fear, because there is no historical example of a private company replacing a political State."
He needs to stop citing history because he knows shit-all about it. Ever heard of company towns? Mining companies in the 19th century used to own the mine, all the tools used in it, the houses in town, the school, the store, everything. They controlled the credit of the workers and by extension their families. They had their own private militias to enforce their whim. How different is that from a state?
Molyneux is overlooking (probably intentionally) the painfully obvious reason that a company has never grown into a state: because the states don't let them! Corporations only governed by profit margins, through the DRO's, would be much more frightening than they are today.
"First of all, if any DRO can take over society and impose itself as a new State, why only a DRO? Why not the Rotary Club? Why not a union? Why not the Mafia?...in the final analysis, if society is so terrified of a single group seizing a monopoly of political power, what does that say about the existing States? They have a monopoly of political power."
Here Molyneux is telling us that there's no tangible difference between a society run by existing States and one run by the Mafia. He needs to rotate living a year in Canada with a year in Zimbabwe until he understands the difference.
"Roads, sewage, water and electricity and so on are also cited as reasons why a State must exist. The problem that a water company might build plumbing to a community, and then charge exorbitant fees for supplying it, is equally easy to counter. A truck could deliver bottled water, or the community could invest in a water tower, a competing company could build alternate pipes and so on."
Ok, so lets look at the water problem. Fees for using the water pipes are too high. So we truck in bottled water? Not only is bottled water going to be more expensive, trucking it in will be mostrously ineffective and environmentally damaging. On top of this the cost of trucking it in will be raised by the road fees (let's hope they're not exploitative as well!) Not all communities are big enough to afford a water tower, and some are too large for that to solve anything.
The alternate pipes solution brings me to another point, which also applies to roads and power lines. You only need one! One road from A to B. Having competing roads trying to undercut each other for cost is a waste of raw material, not to mention space. What happens when road companies start offering monthly passes? Then you need a map to remember which roads you can drive on for free, and you better hope they go to your destination, because fees on the other roads are higher for members of the competition. It's all a pretty pointless exercise.
"A lumber company cannot buy woodlands from the State, just the right to harvest trees. Thus the State gets a renewable source of income, and can further coerce lumber companies by enforcing re-seeding. This, of course, tends to promote bribery, corruption and the creation of ‘fly-by-night’ lumber companies which strip the land bare, but vanish when it comes time to re-seed. Auctioning State land to a private market easily solves this problem, because a company which re-seeded would reap the greatest long-term profits from woodland, and so would be able to bid the most for the land."
He's right about the current system, but hopelessly optimistic about his own. What I see happening is this. The land is auctioned to a private company, which moves in and cuts down all the trees for lumber. Then, they sell the land to a development agency to build some suburbs. The lumber company folds, and the owners and stockholders go home with pockets full of cash. His problem is that he expects the companies to think long term, when in reality corporations rarely think more than 5 years ahead due to constant shareholder pressure for profit.
"Also, it should be remembered that, in the realm of air pollution, governments created the problem in the first place. In 19th century England, when industrial smokestacks began belching fumes...the farmers took the factory-owners to court...Naturally, the capitalists had gotten to the State courts first...The free market did not fail to solve the problem of air pollution - it was forcibly prevented from doing so through State corruption."
Let's be clear: industrialism, not governments, created the problem. All the government did was ignore it. The court's decision was not an isolated one, and corruption can't be blamed for a general policy of non-intervention. The irony is that the British government before WW1 was very reluctant to involve itself in new areas, which allowed pollution to spiral out of control.
"If the aforementioned group of homeowners is afraid of pollution, the first thing they will do is buy pollution insurance, which is a natural response to a situation where costs cannot be predicted but consequences are dire."
Um, no. Pollution, unfortunately, is something the vast majority of people wouldn't hand a penny over to prevent. Molyneux talks about people downwind from a factory because you can almost picture the scenario playing out as he sees it. In reality, most pollution doesn't visibly impact individuals. Companies dumping into the ocean aren't going to be facing irate DRO's, because no one is going to take out clean ocean insurance. How can you have global warming insurance? It affects everyone, and thousands of factories contribute to it.
"The idea that society can only survive in the absence of a centralized State is the greatest lesson that the grisly years of the Twentieth Century can teach us."
Well, it also taught us that if you strip away the state completely, you have Somalia. As fun as feudal warlords are (not to mention the imposition of radical Islam!), I think I prefer to live somewhere with federal law.
"Whatever the risks involved in dissolving the central State, they are far less than the certain destruction which will result from its inevitable escalation."
Certain destruction! Jack Layton's diabolical plan revealed...the blood tax!
Hey Matt, sorry for laying a massive egg in your journal. Once I read this article, I just had to rip it up like a virgin on prom night.
Fuck, I really should have spent all that effort working on my essay.
I read Molyneux's article. I'm probably overly-cynical because I'm not a libetarian, but there do seem to be some gaping holes in his logic. Maybe you can enlighten me on a few points.
"A central lesson of history is that States are parasites which always expand until they destroy their host population."
Maybe I was too high when they taught that lesson. He must be talking about inward expansion, because outward would destroy other populations instead. I'll use the example of industrial Britain, because it happens to be what I'm forced to study these days. I can guarantee to you that life was a hell of a lot worse for the general population during industrialisation before the government expanded into the realm of workplace control. Maybe libertarians like yourself want the option to send your 8 year old to work in a textile mill for 14 hours a day, but most would concede that the Factory Act was a benefit to society. In any case, I'm unaware of any society in all of history that has been destroyed by its own state. Certainly segments of society have been viciously assaulted occasionally, but an entire society destroyed by its own state? That's like snake eating itself: at a certain point it becomes impossible.
"The idea that the State is capable of solving social problems is now viewed with great skepticism...since it fails at everything except increasing its power..."
Yes, increasing its power. And other minor things like eradicating polio and landing on the moon.
"Most of these amazing intrusions into personal liberty have occurred over the past 90 years...State predations are now so intrusive that they have effectively arrested the forward momentum of society, which now hangs before a fall. Children are poorly educated, young people are unable to get ahead..."
This is just straight-up bullshit. Children are better educated today than they were 90 years ago by any rational standard. States force parents to have their children educated because if they didn't, a lot of parents would put them to work instead. Proven lesson of history, I guess Molyneux was high during that one. Young people are unable to get ahead? Where do they want to go? I'm in Europe for a year on a mix of minimum wage employment (thankfully there is a law mandating a minimum wage) and government money. Young people think they are unable to get ahead because they expect a standard of living which is ridiculously above that which was available even 40 years ago, forget before the modern nation-state.
"There is no example in history of a State being permanently reduced in size."
RUSSIA.
"Everyone, of course, realizes that civil war is a rather bad situation, and so it seems likely that the DROs would consider alternatives to armed combat."
The funny thing about "everyone" is that not everyone thinks the same thing. Usually the people that start civil wars don't view them as a bad situation, because they assume they're going to win, and enforce their superior system. The other side, and the people stuck in the middle, don't have a choice.
"However, to go to the extreme, perhaps the worst has occurred and Stan has been unjustly fined a million dollars due to DRO corruption. Well, he has three alternatives. He can choose not to pay the fine, drop off the DRO map, and work for cash without contracts."
Stan can just not pay the fine! Makes sense, since there aren't any laws to prevent this. Sure, his shitty credit rating will bar him from any meaningful contracts in the future. But hey, fuck it! Maybe Stan's got bigger problems. Cancer, a hit-squad after him, he's 92, or he's just flat-ass broke. I know I'd rather just not pay a fine and have shitty credit than go a million dollars into debt.
"However, if Stan is an intelligent and even vaguely entrepreneurial man, he will see the corruption of the DRO as a prime opportunity to start his own, competing DRO..."
With what money!? Maybe Stan can just pull a million dollars out of his jacket and move on. Most of us, however, would be too broke to get fries with out burger, forget go start our own competing agency. What's going to insure the possibility of free entry into this market? What prevents the DRO's from colluding to crush new entrants?
"Stan’s third option is to appeal to the contract rating agency. Contract rating agencies need to be as accurate as possible, since they are attempting to assess real risk."
Who pays them? Stan? He's fucking broke. The DRO's? That would be a bit of a conflict of interest. Everybody together? Sounds like taxation to me.
"The first is the challenge of reciprocity, or geography. If Bob has a contract with Jeff, and Jeff moves to a new location not covered by their mutual DRO, what happens?...Just as a person’s credit rating is available anywhere in the world, so their contract rating will also be available, and so there will be no place to hide from a broken contract save by going ‘off the grid’ completely..."
Until DRO's in one area decide to act as haven's for ill-gotten money. What makes him think a DRO would act more reponsibly than the Cayman Islands?
"The second problem is the fear that a particular DRO will grow in size and stature to the point where it takes on all the features and properties of a new State. This is a superstitious fear, because there is no historical example of a private company replacing a political State."
He needs to stop citing history because he knows shit-all about it. Ever heard of company towns? Mining companies in the 19th century used to own the mine, all the tools used in it, the houses in town, the school, the store, everything. They controlled the credit of the workers and by extension their families. They had their own private militias to enforce their whim. How different is that from a state?
Molyneux is overlooking (probably intentionally) the painfully obvious reason that a company has never grown into a state: because the states don't let them! Corporations only governed by profit margins, through the DRO's, would be much more frightening than they are today.
"First of all, if any DRO can take over society and impose itself as a new State, why only a DRO? Why not the Rotary Club? Why not a union? Why not the Mafia?...in the final analysis, if society is so terrified of a single group seizing a monopoly of political power, what does that say about the existing States? They have a monopoly of political power."
Here Molyneux is telling us that there's no tangible difference between a society run by existing States and one run by the Mafia. He needs to rotate living a year in Canada with a year in Zimbabwe until he understands the difference.
"Roads, sewage, water and electricity and so on are also cited as reasons why a State must exist. The problem that a water company might build plumbing to a community, and then charge exorbitant fees for supplying it, is equally easy to counter. A truck could deliver bottled water, or the community could invest in a water tower, a competing company could build alternate pipes and so on."
Ok, so lets look at the water problem. Fees for using the water pipes are too high. So we truck in bottled water? Not only is bottled water going to be more expensive, trucking it in will be mostrously ineffective and environmentally damaging. On top of this the cost of trucking it in will be raised by the road fees (let's hope they're not exploitative as well!) Not all communities are big enough to afford a water tower, and some are too large for that to solve anything.
The alternate pipes solution brings me to another point, which also applies to roads and power lines. You only need one! One road from A to B. Having competing roads trying to undercut each other for cost is a waste of raw material, not to mention space. What happens when road companies start offering monthly passes? Then you need a map to remember which roads you can drive on for free, and you better hope they go to your destination, because fees on the other roads are higher for members of the competition. It's all a pretty pointless exercise.
"A lumber company cannot buy woodlands from the State, just the right to harvest trees. Thus the State gets a renewable source of income, and can further coerce lumber companies by enforcing re-seeding. This, of course, tends to promote bribery, corruption and the creation of ‘fly-by-night’ lumber companies which strip the land bare, but vanish when it comes time to re-seed. Auctioning State land to a private market easily solves this problem, because a company which re-seeded would reap the greatest long-term profits from woodland, and so would be able to bid the most for the land."
He's right about the current system, but hopelessly optimistic about his own. What I see happening is this. The land is auctioned to a private company, which moves in and cuts down all the trees for lumber. Then, they sell the land to a development agency to build some suburbs. The lumber company folds, and the owners and stockholders go home with pockets full of cash. His problem is that he expects the companies to think long term, when in reality corporations rarely think more than 5 years ahead due to constant shareholder pressure for profit.
"Also, it should be remembered that, in the realm of air pollution, governments created the problem in the first place. In 19th century England, when industrial smokestacks began belching fumes...the farmers took the factory-owners to court...Naturally, the capitalists had gotten to the State courts first...The free market did not fail to solve the problem of air pollution - it was forcibly prevented from doing so through State corruption."
Let's be clear: industrialism, not governments, created the problem. All the government did was ignore it. The court's decision was not an isolated one, and corruption can't be blamed for a general policy of non-intervention. The irony is that the British government before WW1 was very reluctant to involve itself in new areas, which allowed pollution to spiral out of control.
"If the aforementioned group of homeowners is afraid of pollution, the first thing they will do is buy pollution insurance, which is a natural response to a situation where costs cannot be predicted but consequences are dire."
Um, no. Pollution, unfortunately, is something the vast majority of people wouldn't hand a penny over to prevent. Molyneux talks about people downwind from a factory because you can almost picture the scenario playing out as he sees it. In reality, most pollution doesn't visibly impact individuals. Companies dumping into the ocean aren't going to be facing irate DRO's, because no one is going to take out clean ocean insurance. How can you have global warming insurance? It affects everyone, and thousands of factories contribute to it.
"The idea that society can only survive in the absence of a centralized State is the greatest lesson that the grisly years of the Twentieth Century can teach us."
Well, it also taught us that if you strip away the state completely, you have Somalia. As fun as feudal warlords are (not to mention the imposition of radical Islam!), I think I prefer to live somewhere with federal law.
"Whatever the risks involved in dissolving the central State, they are far less than the certain destruction which will result from its inevitable escalation."
Certain destruction! Jack Layton's diabolical plan revealed...the blood tax!
Hey Matt, sorry for laying a massive egg in your journal. Once I read this article, I just had to rip it up like a virgin on prom night.
Fuck, I really should have spent all that effort working on my essay.