That Guy wrote: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.
Once again assuming that there will always be an alternative vendor, and there are never any barriers to entry. This is really quite tiresome.
Bankruptcy (or insolvency) is a powerful correctional tool that you will find in spades in a free market.
Notice the weaseling that he does here: "Bankruptcy (or insolvency)". One has to remember that in a Voluntaryist society, there is no protection for debtors, no option to file bankruptcy. Instead, if you fall down, your options are to categorically refuse to settle the debt and thereby risk persecution by "private security companies" (you know, the leg-breakers) which you can't afford but your loanshark probably
can, or you can submit to permanent debt peonage, which, in a society driven by self-interest, the owner of your debt has absolutely no reason to ever let you escape. I wonder how a voluntary society would deal with usury. Probably V-tard would pretend that rampant Mafia-style usury was a desirable market result.
In the cod moratorium example above, the fish stock got so low because the oceans were not privately owned and not adequately regulated.
(!)
Let us not even consider the logistical considerations of
owning the oceans, and the complete insanity that would result vis-a-vis shipping and transportation. Just breeze right past that immense problem.
Hint: that’s why “tragedy of the commons” has the word “commons” in it. It is a problem for “communal” systems, where something is publicly owned and not privately owned.
A brilliant idea. Therefore the best solution to pollution is for sections of the atmosphere to be wholly owned by private entities. They will protect their capital resource from pollution, and will certainly never exploit their control of an essential resource. After all, if you don't want to pay the rates they charge, you can go breathe their competitors' oxygen!
It is true that different governments claim different levels of authority on their subjects. But what dies not differ between these governments is that they all claim to have the power to grant or restrict certain liberties and freedoms as they see fit. All governments operate on the (believed) a priori principle that they have final say on you and what you can or cannot do, and anything they forbid themselves to exercise control over is from the kindness of their hearts, not because of some concession that they never had the right to control that thing in the first place.
Why does he assume complete alienation between ruler and ruled? His conception of government is unaccountably perverse, because he assumes that there is absolutely no exchange or intercourse between the people who govern and those who are governed. There is no room in his philosophy for nations based on legalistic principles, instead society is entirely based on discrete transactions between self-interested parties. This is why he hates governments; to him the government is nothing but another self-interested party which happens to get unfair advantage in negotiations because it is a government. He has absolutely no conception of the myriad socio-political structures, which have existed for millennia, dividing the unregulated self-interest of actors
in government from the business of government.
e.g. he has no conception of the purpose of laws, because in his mind the government would just create and rescind laws as suits its purpose. He has no explanation, for example, of how a private individual can make civil suit against the government--that is, use one facet of the government (civil court) against another (say, the EPA). In his conception of government this should never ever happen. For Voluntaryist, there is no such thing as a nation of laws, there is only a nation of people, some of whom have unfair advantage because they are part of government.
Finally, this brings to my mind a really serious foundational flaw in his conception of society. Given his stated position that actors invested with government powers (i.e.. monopoly on force) will tend to exploit this monopoly for personal gain, he is obviously of the opinion that self-interest will tend to exploit whatever advantage is available. Why does this fundamental ethical conflict magically go away when there isn't a government? By his own logic, nothing about (exploitation-prone) human nature will have changed, it's only that the collective authority that is now invested in governments will be "decentralized", and power deriving from law will be replaced by power deriving from personal advantages--individual wealth, personal connections, brute physical prowess, etc.
But in response to this I pointed out that, absent of Stockholm syndrome, 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. How many times throughout history has (sorry, another Bible reference) David felled Goliath?
This is asinine and ultimately self-defeating. If we assume that people will recognize a monopoly forming, and if we assume that they will band together to fight monopolization of a good or service, and if we assume that government is nothing but a monopoly on coercion
then how the fuck did government monopolies on force emerge in the first place?
This is a bit of an important question, I think, and I'd love to see him answer it. Heads up to Surlethe on that.
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.
Once again arguing that all governments are exactly equivalent, in spite of being called on it dozens of times. Seriously, what a fucking dunce.
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?
Clearly it can't have anything to do with the extensive body of law that prevents such monopolies from forming.
The internet
You mean ARPANET? Yeah, thank God the government has never interfered with
that thing.
Jesus Christ, this guy has such crippling myopia. His inability to recognize that which he personally owes to society and government extends to
everything--he can't recognize the integral role that government plays in creating conditions that allow the free market to succeed.
