Comment thread for Anarcho-Libertarian Coliseum debate

[K. A. Pital]

Yea, Volleyballs claims are more from the "if humans could fly on their own" category.

But humans can't fly on their own. Yet, Volleyball recommends to jump from a 100 m cliff to try.

[Oskuro]

But humans can't fly on their own. Yet, Volleyball recommends to jump from a 100 m cliff to try.

Well, in Volley-balls wolrdview, you could fly for about.... 100m

Example


Anyway, it's gravity and aerodynamics wich are the Utopia!

[Darth Servo]

And then the crash at the end would be all the government's fault.

[Rogue 9]

Since it seems so popular among market anarchists and I haven't seen Volleyball trot it out yet, maybe this essay can inject some variety into his arguments. Wouldn't make him any less wrong, but at least it'd be different.

[PeZook]

Since it seems so popular among market anarchists and I haven't seen Volleyball trot it out yet, maybe this essay can inject some variety into his arguments. Wouldn't make him any less wrong, but at least it'd be different.

Variety? It's the exact same "Well, in an anarchy people would just get along and nobody would ever fight anybody. Because, you know, there'd be no greed, no poor people, no power-hungry maniacs and no sociopaths at all. Because I say so."

[clone1051]

There's no way Voluntard is gonna respond. Surlethe completely knocked the legs out from under his argument with the last post, and I'm willing to be that we'll never hear from him again. He'll vanish back into the bowels of the internet like any other troll/idiot.

I have to say, though, that I think I see how he might have fooled less intelligent people. The way he writes, someone who knows nothing about debating, and who has not seen a direct counter-argument to his stuff, could be at least partially convinced by his drivel. He probably posted the same stuff on another forum, got people on his side, then decided that he was good enough to take on SD.net's finest. Idiot.

Just my 2¢.

[Plekhanov]

There's no way Voluntard is gonna respond. Surlethe completely knocked the legs out from under his argument with the last post, and I'm willing to be that we'll never hear from him again. He'll vanish back into the bowels of the internet like any other troll/idiot.

I have to say, though, that I think I see how he might have fooled less intelligent people. The way he writes, someone who knows nothing about debating, and who has not seen a direct counter-argument to his stuff, could be at least partially convinced by his drivel. He probably posted the same stuff on another forum, got people on his side, then decided that he was good enough to take on SD.net's finest. Idiot.

Just my 2¢.

Surlethe of course did very well but I think that it's the 1 on 1 debate format that really did for him. I get the impression that Voluntaryist is a typical internet zealot who thrives upon flame wars on hostile territory like that he started in his 1st thread here where the quantity of posters rebuting his bullshit allows him to simply ignore anything he can't deal with (which is of course a great deal) and pretend that he missed it and kid himself that he's fighting the good fight and doing well at it.

In a one on one debate though that tactic isn't available to him and without such an easy way to duck and dive his limits as a debater and above all the manifest flaws in his ideology are laid bare for all to see, regardless of how long he spends attempting to slightly rephrase his tired old assertions.

[Ar-Adunakhor]

Ha ha ha, oh wow, I think he just claimed that private ownership of public works would be profitable with that idiotic statement about privately owned oceans. This is like... Economics 101. Surprise Volley, if you can't regulate the activities in an area (like, say, fishing in a fucking ocean or overland toll-roads) then you can't profit off of it and the entire free market system breaks down. This is one of the major functions of government.

Edit: I also like how he points to the US Economy as if it's some sort of paragon of Free Market Awesome. There are no monopolies, see, (already laughable due to the pseudo-monopolies/oligopolies that are all over the place in the US) and that is entirely because of the Free Market! The fact that the government has been breaking up enormous monopolies like Microsoft for about a hundred years obviously has nothing to do with it!

[CaptainChewbacca]

The universal claim that I make is that progress, prosperity, and morality all come through mutually consentual interactions, aka free association. Government claims otherwise. You, Surlethe, in defending government, hold that progress, prosperity, and morality can come about through the initiation of force against others, and in greater amount than consent-based society can provide.

Clearly he doesn't realize Surlethe doesn't HAVE to defend government.
All he has to do is point out that V's 'universal principles' are not universal, which is pretty goddamned easy.

And what is this talk about burden of proof? I manned up and admitted that the free market has a burden, but I don’t yet see where you admit that government has a burden of its own.

I'm pretty sure that the burden of government was implicit from the beginning, wasn't it?

[TC Pilot]

Take for example those who advocate communal land reform in farming. They bitch and moan about how some big rich farm owners make too much money, and there isn’t enough food to go around because there are indeed some people hungry in the streets, and the plow swingers themselves are too poor. So they advocate communal land reform. Then what happens? The government fat-cats get all the profits, the food production drops, farmers leave the communes or get imprisoned or killed, and mass starvation occurs. In china, in the USSR, in North Korea, in Cuba, and now in Zimbabwe, the same pattern happened over and over.

I'm sorry, but is this moron actually trying to argue that China would have been better off retaining the landlord class, who essentially owned their tenants and kept them in a state one would expect from the freakin' Dark Ages. Does he know absolutely nothing about Chinese history (rhetorical question, since he doesn't know any history)? I guess suffrage, human rights, gender equality, and literacy must all be sacrificed in the name of almighty free market!

Minus 1 point.

Why has the auto industry not turned into a monopoly? Why no monopolies in the airline industry, or the food industry, or the video game industry, or the insurance industry? Because competition works better, the consumers get to choose where to spend their money (and tend to spend it on more than one producer), and because when competition sags, product quality sags as well and thus provides more incentive for a new competitor to sprout up and “do it better.”

Ever heard of a man named Theodore Roosevelt? He did this thing called "trust busting." Or Senator John Sherman, author of the Antitrust Act by his name? There were exactly many airplanes, video games, or automobiles in 1900, and something called The Jungle just shows how great food (and public action against corporations) was prior to government intervention creating the FDA.

What an idiot. Minus 1 point.

Surlethe: 9 Voluntaryist: -5

[Darth Servo]

What a douche.

You are pushing back the question: Does “illustrating” a universal principle with examples count as supporting evidence, or not?

Are you being dumb on purpose? Obviously when the issue is whether the principle really is universal, the answer to your question is clearly "hell no".

Its especially bad in Valleytard's particular examples. You CAN'T show that democracies are shitty governments by showing that dictatorships are shitty governments.

But this would apply to both sides of the debate, would it not?

No, obviously since you are trying to show lack of government is universally superior. Surlethe is NOT making such universal claims. Surlethe made this as plain as day in his post and you just evade and squirm and complain.

And what of logical reasoning? We both know that absence of evidence doesn’t necessarily mean evidence of absence,

OK, this fucktard just declared he doesn't know shit about logic. Flush him.

From physics to philosophy, universal principles are replete.

Yes they are but you have failed to show your claims are among them.

You, Surlethe, are trying to hard to avoid granting me any points or conceding any of my claims, no matter how small, and you kindof painted yourself into a corner there. Even now you are still, for the most part, pushing back my questions without answering them.

Boo. Boo-hoo. Boo-hoo-hoo. Surlethe isn't taking Valleytard's idiotic assumptions without proof. You're being mean and unreasonable.

We see private oversight agencies all the time in today’s world. From consumer protection agencies to insurance companies to auditors and security companies, oversight is everywhere in a free market.

You've obviously never had to actually deal with any of these agencies.

In a state, the regulatory mechanisms of consumer choice and competition are absent.

Pure bullshit.

What I have been arguing, however, is that a free market, through its decentralization of decision making and the risk it allows to businesses aka competition (through the loss of customer base) allows for quicker identification of, and correction of, the analogous problems you describe above.

But you have not provided one shred of evidence that any of this is true. You just state that it is ad-nauseum. You really do think something like the mafia would magically disappear in your idealistic society, don't you?

“If people are basically good, then there is no need for government. If people are basically bad, then government, being comprised of people, will also be bad, and therefore not be necessary.”

Thats one of the biggest non-sequitors I've seen in years. Its also another giant black-and-white fallacy. SOME people are good. SOME are bad. The trick is making sure that the latter are kept out of government. There is no such mechanism for keeping the latter from accumulating power under your system.

Surlethe, you seem to not understand that I am doing both [attacking governments and supporting anarchy].

No, you're not. You're simply pretending that any flaw in government constitutes automatic proof of the superiority of anarchy. The same stupidity creationists invariably try to pull.

I am spending plenty of time supporting free markets, especially with all your objections to it that I respond to.

Mindlessly repeating "Duh, thats a problem for governments, not free markets" does not constitute support for anarchy. Thats just burying your head in the sand.

Additionally, you already conceded (to some degree) the effectiveness of free markets when in a previous post you said that you think that a good society is one with some free market and some government.

What a dumbass. Another black-and-white fallacy. Acknowledging that the two together works better than just one of them does not in anyway constitute a concession that ONLY the other will be best of all. There are VERY FEW (if any) straight lines in Economic trade offs. Why do you insist there is one here?

Is that not already a concession by you that free markets, in some significant degree, are a viable and even preferable method of social organization?

They're viable when regulated. There is zero evidence they would be so with no supervision.

Why has the auto industry not turned into a monopoly? Why no monopolies in the airline industry, or the food industry, or the video game industry, or the insurance industry? Because competition works better, the consumers get to choose where to spend their money (and tend to spend it on more than one producer), and because when competition sags, product quality sags as well and thus provides more incentive for a new competitor to sprout up and “do it better.”

Bullshit. There are no monopolies in those industries because the GOVERNMENT MADE IT ILLEGAL.

A tragedy of the commons situation, like the one above, is a result of unregulated access to a finite resource.

And thus we need government and you ADMIT that a free market will NOT provide such regulation. Concession accepted.

He continues to cite examples he thinks support his side while hand-waving away examples that don't with "thats the government's fault". If we'd adopted my above proposal, Valleytard would have just forfeited.

[Wyrm]

My commentary:

You are pushing back the question: Does “illustrating” a universal principle with examples count as supporting evidence, or not?

Simple answer: No. You have to prove the general principle. Illustration only drives the point home.

You, Surlethe, are trying to hard to avoid granting me any points or conceding any of my claims, no matter how small, and you kindof painted yourself into a corner there. Even now you are still, for the most part, pushing back my questions without answering them.

Simply put: all of your 'questions' boil down to "GUBERMENT BAD!!!" This has nothing to do with the subject at hand, which is for you to prove "VOLUNTRISM BETTER!!!" All the examples you have been presented in debates with others clearly demonstrate that, as bad as you claim goverment to be, voluntrism is even WORSE.

Surlethe, this is a strawman. I’ve noted repeatedly that a free market does not create any “absence of oversight” and that, in fact, competition and consumer choice act as kinds of oversights, along with the fact that in a free market there is plenty of room to develop oversighting bodies that people will pay for to obtain their services. We see private oversight agencies all the time in today’s world. From consumer protection agencies to insurance companies to auditors and security companies, oversight is everywhere in a free market.

Again, what is preventing people from taking the oversight they have over this free market and twisting it to their advantage out of selfishness? Intrinsic goodness? It only takes one prick to spoil a party. Long term self interest? Very much lacking in all but the most forsightful of individuals, which your free market requires everyone involved to achieve.

The universal claim that I make is that progress, prosperity, and morality all come through mutually consentual interactions, aka free association. Government claims otherwise.

You have yet to show this. Given what I've seen out of real people, I doubt that you can even show this in principle, unless you resort to assumptions absolutely no one will grant you.

You, Surlethe, in defending government, hold that progress, prosperity, and morality can come about through the initiation of force against others, and in greater amount than consent-based society can provide.

How cute. Strawman of Surlethe's position. Here's a hint: Arguing against voluntrism ≠ defending government.

I'm tired now. Shutting this down here.

[Patrick Degan]

To continue the vivisection:

The universal claim that I make is that progress, prosperity, and morality all come through mutually consentual interactions, aka free association. Government claims otherwise. You, Surlethe, in defending government, hold that progress, prosperity, and morality can come about through the initiation of force against others, and in greater amount than consent-based society can provide.

Note how shitwit's propensities toward strawmandering and hasty generalisation have not diminished in the slightest. He continues in his idiotic and doctrinaire caricature of government as thug instead of what is known in the Real World (a place Volleyball evidently has no awareness of) as the mechanism by which a society's interaction can be refereed by a set of objective rules which are held binding upon all its members.

My claims are universal principles. Does the real world not work in universal principles? I think its obvious that principles are everywhere in the real world, and if one wants to determine optimal actions, they better well figure out what those principles are. Conservation of matter/energy? Cause and Effect? Mathematics? Good and evil? Are these things not based on principles? Are they not relevant to the real world?

The shitwit obviously imagines we will be impressed by his pretense at profoundity.

If, for the sake of argument, I were to assume that this charge against anarcho-libertarianism is true, then what makes you think it would not also be applied to your side? What makes you think that a government run by men who control the fate of all their subjects would not also be susceptible to the problems you describe, if not even more so?

I'm afraid I've lost count of the number of times shitwit here has repeated this same tired hasty generalisation of government —ALL governments— as holding monolithic, absolute control over the lives of the people, and that the only conceivable relationship of a government to the nation is ruler/subject. This is not universally true of governments in the Real World (that place Volleyball has no familiarity with); a fact he might have known if he hadn't slept through his civics classes in high school, which shitwit here evidently did. Notice also how shitwit simply continues to duck the challenge of answering one basic question: which is what ensures that his "voluntary" society will even work for a tiny march of time before those who simply decide to take everything they want procede to do exacty that —unfettered by laws or law enforcement, which would not exist except entirely as private concerns whose services would go to the highest bidder. I must again point out how this proposed Voluntaryist mechanism utterly failed to protect the defenceless in the days of the Old West, when railroad and mining companies could and did hire "regulators" to drive farmers and sheep ranchers off their own land if the company wanted it, and did so under the cover of law enforcement which was little more than quasi-legal thuggery in the absence of a strong territorial government to enforce proper law.

The truth is that imperfect information and imperfect men and imperfect resources are a fact in any social system. From a complete commune to a total lazziez-faire society, you will always, always have the imperfect pulleys and frayed ropes and uneven woods (to use your analogy again). Humans are not perfect, resources are not perfect, information is not perfect, and none of it ever will be.

The only problem here with shitwit's argument is that the only way his sort of "society" can work is the same conditions under which Communism is supposed to work: in a perfect world with perfect people behaving perfectly. In the Real World (that place Volleyball has no familiarity with), human imperfection is the very reason we have laws in the first place: they define the boundaries of human conduct.

The difference is that in a competitive and open system, there exist superior means of identifying and correcting mistakes. If someone provides a sucky product, or works like a lazy ass, he will be susceptible to the dissatisfaction of his customers, who will take their business elsewhere.

The history of the Gilded Age (late 19th century America) destroys shitwit's argument completely. In the absence of any form of antitrust law, monopolies and trusts formed for the exact purpose to fix prices and eliminate competition, and the customers had little to no recourse as the monopolies became the only game in town. Literally so in mining company towns in which every transaction was controlled by the company and acted to keep the miners in perpetual debt to the company. There was no place to take one's business elsewhere. Only when the Federal government put its foot down and enacted laws to make trusts and monopolies illegal and the full weight of the government was put behind the enforcement of those laws did this situation come to an end.

A tragedy of the commons situation, like the one above, is a result of unregulated access to a finite resource. If the fishing areas were privately owned, then they would in fact be regulated. The owner of the ocean territory would charge for fishing permits and set catch limits that would protect his supply of fish so that it would not be over harvested and as a result he would be able to reap continued profits from having a renewable and regulated supply of fish to sell to the catchers.

The Real World (that place Volleyball has no familiarity with) example of the oil industry and its propensity to suck dry the oil fields they own destroys this argument completely. He also charmingly presumes that the supposed owner of a fishing territory would even allow other fishers access instead of either running off small competitors to ensure his 100% exploitation of the fishing grounds or impose terms on the permits which make it nearly impossible for an independent to realise any real profit in what would amount to a very unequal sharecropper arrangement —as any number of Real World (again, that place Volleyball is unfamiliar with) examples in both history and contemporary times of large corporate farming can point to, such as the United Fruit Company and the large California citrus and lettuce farms which operate through exploitation of low-wage migrant workers attests.

This is similar to the logging industry, where privately owned forests are the best maintained, and the tree replanting is conducted by the loggers themselves.

The logging industry does this only because the law says it must do. Laws against slash-and-slash timber harvesting (which devastated entire forests in brief spans of years) were passed starting in 1911 on both state and federal levels. By contrast, in the Real World (that place Volleyball has no familiarity with) a completely unregulated logging industry in southern Africa has failed utterly to subscribe to our little shitwit's theory of voluntary mutual consent and enlightened awareness of future needs and has instead expanded the Sub-Saharan desert by wiping out entire forests in just the stretch of a decade. The steady disappearance of the Brazilian rainforests is another such example of how an unregulated logging industry actually operates in the Real World (that place Volleyball has no familiarity with, of course).

In the cod moratorium example above, the fish stock got so low because the oceans were not privately owned and not adequately regulated. Only when the government finally imposed limits on fishing (or an outright ban), which should have been enacted far sooner, did the fish stock start to recover. The Canadian cod debacle is an example of government management of a finite resource being insufficient to maintain an adequate supply of the resource. It is an example of how the lack of private ownership of a resource resulted in a lack of regulation and led to its overuse.

No, it's an example of what happens when a "hands off" policy toward the actions of industry is followed instead of proper regulation and resource-management. The reasons why the shitwit's theories would not work in any Real World (that place Volleyball has no familiarity with) have already been delineated.

But in response to this I pointed out that, absent of Stockholm syndrome,

I think my bullshit detector just exploded.

consumers who are used to having choice over a given product or service will fight any attempts to monopolize it. If people are used to a certain kind of freedom or self-determination, trying to remove it by force will only result in that consumer base taking up arms in response, and usually winning.

Notice how shitwit here proceeds in utter cluelessness as to how a lack of regulation and a hands-off approach to business —conditions which should have favoured freedom and self-determination in the marketplace, according to shitwit— failed to prevent the rise of monopolies during the Guilded Age. But then, we've already determined that our current chewtoy flunked history as well as civics in high school.

And I also pointed out that advocating government for fear of a government forming in its absence, is no argument for the legitimacy of government. Its like advocating the murder of everyone lest they somehow become murderers. It is a defeatist argument: “Hey, we are all running the risk of being enslaved, so let’s just find a slave master to prevent that from happening.”

No, it is a strawman. A trite, boring, and rather obvious strawman which was no more clever when Ayn Rand trotted it out and gets less clever with each repetition by successive generations of Randroids and poseurs railing against a society while never having to worry about living in the world that would result from that society's sudden absence.

[K. A. Pital]

...competition and consumer choice act as kinds of oversights

Good god. The boy is lost!

[Zixinus]

Again, he's pretty much just repeating himself the same arguments with the same flaws and using the "you are rubber, I am glue" tactic over and over again.

[Wyrm]

I think this will be an easy win for our man. All he needs is a closing argument on how Volleyball has failed, failed, FAILED to adapt his responses to actual arguments and instead falling upon the broken record.

Go get 'im, Sur!

[Darth Servo]

How many times has "only the rich will have the essentials in Valleytard's society that everyone is able to enjoy with a government" been pointed out to this retard? Police, courts, schools, roads, libraries...

[The Yosemite Bear]

phones, hospitals, schools....

[Terralthra]

I think this sums up the debate best:

Now, there are several key assumptions your argument makes. The first, and most important, regards the free market. You assert, essentially, that in the absence of oversight, all interactions will satisfy the assumptions economists make regarding the free market.

Surlethe, this is a strawman. I’ve noted repeatedly that a free market does not create any “absence of oversight” and that, in fact, competition and consumer choice act as kinds of oversights, along with the fact that in a free market there is plenty of room to develop oversighting bodies that people will pay for to obtain their services. We see private oversight agencies all the time in today’s world. From consumer protection agencies to insurance companies to auditors and security companies, oversight is everywhere in a free market.

Now, this looks sorta like he's answering Surlethe's point, because he uses a lot of the same words Surlethe does, and comes to a pseudo-relevant answer. The problem is that he apparently misread (either deliberately or accidentally) what Surlethe's point actually was.

The exchange, in summary, in Voluntaryist's mind:
Surlethe: "How will the free market have any oversight in the absence of government?"
Voluntaryist: "The free market exerts its own forms of oversight, cf. all these examples."

Now that is actually a debatable point. The free market does arguably have its own forms of oversight. Whether they are as successful as a governmentally-regulated free market, etc., are all points to bring up. Unfortunately, the exchange actually went something like this:

Surlethe: "How can you guarantee that this society with no regulation or oversight whatsoever will look or act anything like a free market?"
Voluntaryist: "The free market exerts its own forms of oversight, cf. all these examples."

That's called "begging the question." It's a fallacy.

[Zixinus]

I also don't see why would such companies exist. Insurence companies would be mob extortion as you have no reason to trust them in the first place. "Security companies" will be merchenaries that will betray you. And consumer protection agencies? Don't make me luagh.

[The Yosemite Bear]

What the only time a monopoly was brought down by people refusing to purchase his services was in the case of the slumlord Boycott, from which we get the term. basically all of the bar keepers refused him service, and he complained to the courts and got slapped with fines and was forced to clean up his act. Yes the only sucessfull free market oversight of abuses still required government intervention.

[PeZook]

What the only time a monopoly was brought down by people refusing to purchase his services was in the case of the slumlord Boycott, from which we get the term. basically all of the bar keepers refused him service, and he complained to the courts and got slapped with fines and was forced to clean up his act. Yes the only sucessfull free market oversight of abuses still required government intervention.

His claim is even more ridiculous when we consider a monopoly on an essential service. How will people "force" ACE SECURITY to not threaten and extort them? Pay a small upstart which will get firebombed within 24 hours from their triumphant launch? Heaven forbid ACE learns you paid their competitor after they deal with him. Or maybe "the people" will start a guerilla war against every power-hungry security company every time it's about to become a monopoly?

Or let's say power. Are new companies going to build their own 2 billion USD nuclear power plants and challenge a city's monopoly in order to offer cheaper electricity for all? Or maybe some intrepid inventor will violate physics create a zero-point energy generator because of the might of market pressure?

[bilateralrope]

Ha ha ha, oh wow, I think he just claimed that private ownership of public works would be profitable with that idiotic statement about privately owned oceans.

I wonder how he thinks people will decide who gets to own the oceans, or any government owned property, during the transition away from governments. If he has even thought about that point at all.

[Darth Wong]

I think this sums up the debate best:

Now, there are several key assumptions your argument makes. The first, and most important, regards the free market. You assert, essentially, that in the absence of oversight, all interactions will satisfy the assumptions economists make regarding the free market.

Surlethe, this is a strawman. I’ve noted repeatedly that a free market does not create any “absence of oversight” and that, in fact, competition and consumer choice act as kinds of oversights, along with the fact that in a free market there is plenty of room to develop oversighting bodies that people will pay for to obtain their services. We see private oversight agencies all the time in today’s world. From consumer protection agencies to insurance companies to auditors and security companies, oversight is everywhere in a free market.

Yes, it does cut to the heart of the matter, and it's a lie as usual. The kind of "oversight" he describes here is not actually oversight. It's only ratings guides.

When a company has done something really illegal, like dumping toxic waste in your river, you don't go to Consumer Reports magazine; you go to the EPA, or you attempt to sue them in a government court which can compel them to appear or pay. That's because Consumer Reports has no real power to do anything to the company other than write articles complaining about their toxic waste dumping, which nobody will care about unless they live in the immediate vicinity of the dumping.

[J]

Surlethe, this is a strawman. I’ve noted repeatedly that a free market does not create any “absence of oversight” and that, in fact, competition and consumer choice act as kinds of oversights, along with the fact that in a free market there is plenty of room to develop oversighting bodies that people will pay for to obtain their services. We see private oversight agencies all the time in today’s world. From consumer protection agencies to insurance companies to auditors and security companies, oversight is everywhere in a free market.

Because Moody's, Fitch's, and Standard & Poor's did such a great fucking job of rating bonds and other investment securities, up to and including colluding with the investment banks to rubberstamp whatever fraudulent rating the banks want. They effectively functioned as "buy a ratings" agencies for the investment banks, does JPMC need some junk bonds rated as AAA investment grade so they can swap them for Treasuries via the TSLF? Sure, no problem, head over to Moody's and hand them a $10 million bribe, presto, those junk bonds are now certified as prime AAA investment grade. Not only can it happen, it's already happened. Some oversight.