RoR: Forum

Jim:

I am asking if one is obligated to sacrifice by providing various services to other people who not only declined to purchase those services, but who also do not recognize your own rights and may victimize you if given the chance.

Jim, you can't ask a question like this that let's you have your cake and eat it too. Which is it? Are you asking if you are obligated to help a victim declining to purchase and doesn't even want any charity from you to protect his rights? In which case no, you don't have that obligation. But now you're saying this same person intends to violate your rights? In which case he's no longer a victim, and now a criminal, and you would have a moral obligation to defend yourself.

So which is it? Is this person a victim or a criminal? You can't have a comprehensible philosophical discussion Jim if you keep vaguely defining your terms.

Post 61

Saturday, April 24, 2010 - 11:22am

Michael addressing several different people:

The assumption seems to be that the government is the default provider of these services, but that private providers would be "allowed" to compete against the government.

If we grant for now the existence of an objective code of laws (a monopoly on law), then what purpose do the government police serve?

By what right does the government provide these services at all?

I never argued the government is the default provider, they would be the default law maker, and should have a monopoly on that role.

Besides, what would it mean for the government to be the default provider that allows for competition and is funded only by voluntarily means? This so-called default provider Michael Marotta labels, is indistinguishable from any of its competitors.

(Edited by John Armaos on 4/24, 11:45am)

Post 62

Saturday, April 24, 2010 - 12:24pm

John, re post 60:

I was talking about a theoretical situation where a non-governmental organization was offering a NIOF-compliant code of law service affiliated with law enforcement and judicial services that implemented that code of law, and I signed up with all those services, and others declined all of those services.

In that scenario, someone here (I forget who) implied that these non-governmental organizations ought to be obligated to provide services to those people who declined those services if those people were the victims of a crime.

I demurred from that hypothesis, pointing out that this seemed to imply that I should be taxed without my consent to provide for this free care. I further pointed out that the victim in this situation is someone who has rejected a NIOF-based code of law, which means that if I were compelled to pay for the insurance they declined to purchase, their rejection of that code of law means that in the future they might have no problem with violating my rights and making me the victim.

In short -- I was talking about someone who was the victim of crime in the PRESENT, who might be the perpetrator of crime agsinst me in the FUTURE based on their refusal to accept a NIOF-based code of law, and pointing out the injustice of my rights being violated to help someone who abides by a criminal's code of ethics.

Post 63

Saturday, April 24, 2010 - 12:45pm

Jim:

I was talking about a theoretical situation where a non-governmental organization was offering a NIOF-compliant code of law service affiliated with law enforcement and judicial services that implemented that code of law, and I signed up with all those services, and others declined all of those services.

I'm assuming you mean this organization is following the code of law as set forth by the government, and not constructing its own code of law that would conflict with the government's code of law?

Post 64

Saturday, April 24, 2010 - 1:05pm

By the way, when I say you don't have a moral obligation to help someone, that doesn't mean you can stand in the way of someone who wishes to help. I think most people would be willing to help. And I also think it is often in your self-interests to help others who are a victims of crime that can't afford services to track down and hold those criminal accountable, since crime left unchecked is likely to have a detrimental effect on you.

Post 65

Saturday, April 24, 2010 - 1:50pm

Jim,

I said, "The government has the right to self-defense that is delegated to it by the people."

You replied, "Governments don't have rights. Only individuals have rights. Governments have powers, allegedly granted to them by the alleged consent of the subjects they claim the power to rule. And governments aren't some disembodied thing, they are composed of individuals who each assert they have various powers over other individuals, and use other individuals to coerce obedience to their commands."

The government does have rights. It has legal rights, and it has moral rights. You need to be more specific, in which case you might have said that the government has no moral rights but for those it gets from individuals. And the individuals cannot give it moral rights that they don't have. They can delegate those that they do have.

Here is Rand on the subject: "The source of the government’s authority is “the consent of the governed.” This means that the government is not the ruler, but the servant or agent of the citizens; it means that the government as such has no rights except the rights delegated to it by the citizens for a specific purpose." From
“The Nature of Government,” The Virtue of Selfishness, pg. 110 (via the online Lexicon) [emphasis mine]
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You said, "The right to self-defense is an individual right. If some random person walks up to me and claims that they have the power to enforce that right of self-defense for me, and demands cash for this "service" they offer, and are vague about how they intend to go about enforcing that power they claim to have, and don't bother to ask me if I agree with all these assertions, am I obligated to accept this offer whether I like it or not?"

Look through my past posts and see how many times I put "voluntary funding" and "minarchy" in the same sentence. As to the part about the vagueness, please note that I have also specified "objective laws based upon individual rights" in many of my posts. To be objective, a law cannot be vague. I should not have to refute things I never said. You waste people's time when so much of your argument is pure strawman. Again, the important work of a proper government is creating and maintaining the structures that support property rights. Courts, police, laws, patent office, etc. These need to be stable, workable, and trusted to exist over time. As to the anarchist who whines that they don't like it... well, I'm not feeling any sympathy and I see nothing but disaster in their formulations, and fallacies in their arguments.
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I exhausted my patience. Anarchists should be required to post their anarchy nonsense in Dissent. You can't be an anarchist and an Objectivist.

It feels like a total waste of time arguing. One key argument is NEVER answered: If there is no monopoly on laws that prohibits the initiation of force, then there will be no FREE market (free of force). If there is no free market, then the structures of justice that anarchists claim will arise out of natural competition will never arise - instead there will be competition that involves force. This is what history, logic and common sense all tell us. Anarchy will always be a chaotic, bloody mess that devolves till naked force rules in nearly all situations. It will be replaced by a totalitarian government, which is nothing more than one of the warring factions becoming so powerful that they enforce their edicts against all within their area. Movement from that level of tyranny to what we have seen among nations in the last few centuries is the recognition of individual rights - one by one. The end goal is minarchy. Without that government monopoly on an objective set of laws that are based upon individual rights, mans rights are not secure and he cannot flourish.

=========Ayn Rand on "Anarchy"

"Anarchy, as a political concept, is a naive floating abstraction: . . . a society without an organized government would be at the mercy of the first criminal who came along and who would precipitate it into the chaos of gang warfare. But the possibility of human immorality is not the only objection to anarchy: even a society whose every member were fully rational and faultlessly moral, could not function in a state of anarchy; it is the need of objective laws and of an arbiter for honest disagreements among men that necessitates the establishment of a government." Taken from “The Nature of Government,” The Virtue of Selfishness, page 112 (via the online Lexicon)

=========Ayn Rand on "Competing Governments"

From the same page: "A recent variant of anarchistic theory, which is befuddling some of the younger advocates of freedom, is a weird absurdity called “competing governments.” Accepting the basic premise of the modern statists—who see no difference between the functions of government and the functions of industry, between force and production, and who advocate government ownership of business—the proponents of “competing governments” take the other side of the same coin and declare that since competition is so beneficial to business, it should also be applied to government. Instead of a single, monopolistic government, they declare, there should be a number of different governments in the same geographical area, competing for the allegiance of individual citizens, with every citizen free to “shop” and to patronize whatever government he chooses.

Remember that forcible restraint of men is the only service a government has to offer. Ask yourself what a competition in forcible restraint would have to mean.

One cannot call this theory a contradiction in terms, since it is obviously devoid of any understanding of the terms “competition” and “government.” Nor can one call it a floating abstraction, since it is devoid of any contact with or reference to reality and cannot be concretized at all, not even roughly or approximately. One illustration will be sufficient: suppose Mr. Smith, a customer of Government A, suspects that his next-door neighbor, Mr. Jones, a customer of Government B, has robbed him; a squad of Police A proceeds to Mr. Jones’ house and is met at the door by a squad of Police B, who declare that they do not accept the validity of Mr. Smith’s complaint and do not recognize the authority of Government A. What happens then? You take it from there."

Post 66

Saturday, April 24, 2010 - 5:02pm

Steve, I notice that Jim and Michael for that matter are not prepared to defend the anarcho-capitalist position that there should be no monopoly on law. They seemed to have conspicuously dropped that argument in favor of strawmans "oh you just want to forcibly tax people!" "oh you just want some people to have dominion over others" "oh you're just a socialist". And they extend this strawman to Tibor Machan's arguments as well. At no time do they actually defend the idea of "competing laws" because they keep confusing a "monopoly of law" with a "monopoly of service", as if you couldn't possibly have a monopoly of law with your choice of police protection and court arbitration service.

Post 67

Saturday, April 24, 2010 - 6:04pm

John, I agree. Jim has explicitly argued for competing governments in an earlier thread. Michael argues that laws exist prior to or without government and that the government isn't needed.

I refuse to use the name "anarcho-capitalism" since it is a contradiction in terms. If you have anarchy, you don't have capitalism, and if you have capitalism you certainly aren't suffering under anarchy.

Rand has said it, and many of us here at RoR have said it: anarchy is a floating abstraction because it is a belief (fantasy) in some state alleged to provide more freedom than minarchy, yet it is a 'freedom' that is disconnected with any mechanism, or any concrete aspect of reality that would actually make freedom possible. Magical freedom.

Post 68

Sunday, April 25, 2010 - 3:57am

JA: Steve, I notice that Jim and Michael for that matter are not prepared to defend the anarcho-capitalist position that there should be no monopoly on law. They seemed to have conspicuously dropped that argument in favor of strawmans ...

Not true, John. First of all, you will find that I cited many examples of competing legal systems and parallel legal systems. I pointed out that we all live comfortably with them here and now.

You know full well how the market treats monopolies and what it takes to keep one. You say that there could be competing protection devices such as alarms and gates (as there are today) and competing arbitration providers (as there are today) but that in your imaginary world, the state monopoly on law (unlike a state monopoly on steel) would not require police power to enforce it.

Just operationally, how would that work?

(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 4/25, 4:13am)

Post 69

Sunday, April 25, 2010 - 9:59am

Michael,

I don't understand you. Why are you asking how a monopoly on laws could be maintained? We have a monopoly on laws right now, and in nearly every country on Earth. The government passes laws - other organizations cannot pass laws that conflict or compete with the laws passed by the government. You and Jim can form the Anarchists Secular Society, and then can pass a law that says there are no such things as intellectual property rights. Then you could make copies of Atlas Shrugged and sell them - without paying any royalties. You will find out that the "law" the Anarchists organization passed is only a law in your imagination and it conflicts with real law and it is rejected. No competing laws. It is childish to purposely equivocate on the meaning of "law." We all know that you know what a law is in the context of our discussion of anarchy. Is your next argument going to be that there are laws of nature and because we don't control them, there can be no monopoly of law?

Or are you trying to point out that to maintain a monopoly requires force? Because it does. If the laws are objective and based upon individual rights, then the monopoly that is being forced upon people is that they cannot violate the rights of others.

You said, "You know full well how the market treats monopolies and what it takes to keep one."

In the absence of one single set of objective laws you don't have a FREE market. 'Free' meaning free of force, fraud or theft. That means your market has force competing side by side with choice - and that doesn't work. If force is a permitted method for transactions, then, to that degree choice is driven out of the market. A monopoly of objective laws are the prerequisite for freedom - including the conditions for engaging in free trade - i.e., a free market.

Post 70

Sunday, April 25, 2010 - 12:21pm

John: "I'm assuming you mean this organization is following the code of law as set forth by the government, and not constructing its own code of law that would conflict with the government's code of law?"

I'm saying that this organization would act as a defacto private "government" (the underlying articles that began this thread argue over whether there can be a truly private government -- I'll leave that issue unresolved) that, since it operates in an entirely non-coercive manner based on an objective code of laws derived from the NIOF principle, refuses to acknowledge the authority of any other group claiming to have governmental control over the organization's citizen-subscribers.

And, if you think about it, a group that has seized the moral high ground and does not initiate force upon anyone else in any situation -- why would they regard any other code of laws based on various levels of coercion as legitimate? There might be other organizations also offering a coercion-free code of law services, but those two or more organizations would not be in substantial conflict, since if you start from the same principle of non-initiation of force, you always wind up with essentially the same code of laws, with minor differences in how to implement it.

Clearly, for such a organization to get away with acting in this way, they would either have to have a substantial portion of the population enrolled, or have substantial firepower at their disposal, to prevent being taken over by other groups / governments that recognize the validity of coercion.

Oh, and agree entirely with your post 64.

Post 71

Sunday, April 25, 2010 - 12:47pm

John: "Steve, I notice that Jim and Michael for that matter are not prepared to defend the anarcho-capitalist position that there should be no monopoly on law. They seemed to have conspicuously dropped that argument in favor of strawmans"

This misstates my POV. I am arguing a more subtle position -- I am arguing that, absent an Orwellian worldwide total police state, it is impossible to have a complete monopoly of law, because there will always be outlaws, pirates, anarchists, rebellions, and other dissenting groups that refuse to accept the legitimacy of the dominant group asserting a monopoly of law.

So, unless you have a government that exerts total mind control of its subjects, some dissenters will reject that assertion of a monopoly. Hell, even when you print up a code of laws, and appoint people to enforce that code of laws, various people in the various parts and levels of government will enforce different codes of law in practice by willfully interpreting the law the way they want it to be. Do you think the Second Amendment means the same thing in Arizona that it means in DC? Do you think that Sheriff Arpaio implements the same code of law as other sheriffs in Arizona? Does a slew of sharply divided 5-4 SCOTUS decisions over the same seemingly unambiguous constitutional language evoke images of everyone agreeing what even the most unambiguous language actually means?

So, what I am saying is that an anarcho-capitalist code of law service that recognizes this inability to actually achieve a complete monopoly, would simply ASSERT a monopoly of law ONLY for its citizen-subscribers, and defend that monopoly of law for its citizen-subscribers against anyone who would try to act coercively against those subscribers.

That is, rather than asserting an unachievable monopoly of law OVER everyone in a geographic area that in fact can't actually be maintained, an A/C organization might assert an achievable monopoly of law ON THE BEHALF OF consenting subscribers in a geographic area (a geographic area that conceivably could extend over the entire earth, given enough firepower to back up this assertion.)

Post 72

Sunday, April 25, 2010 - 12:56pm

Steve: "We have a monopoly on laws right now, and in nearly every country on Earth."

No we don't. See post 71. What we have is an asserted monopoly of laws that, when you ignore the assertions and look at what is actually implemented, turns out to be considerably less of a monopoly than people in government imagine or pretend it to be.

This interesting article in the most recent issue of the Journal of Libertarian Studies:

http://mises.org/journals/jls/22_1/22_1_1.pdf

goes into the underlying degrees of anarchy that seethes below the surface of what is asserted to be a monopoly of government.

Post 73

Sunday, April 25, 2010 - 2:00pm

Michael:

Not true, John. First of all, you will find that I cited many examples of competing legal systems and parallel legal systems. I pointed out that we all live comfortably with them here and now.

This is a strange argument to abandon the status quo of monopoly law, when you define the status quo as competing legal systems. Do you mean to undermine your own arguments?

You know full well how the market treats monopolies and what it takes to keep one. You say that there could be competing protection devices such as alarms and gates (as there are today) and competing arbitration providers (as there are today) but that in your imaginary world, the state monopoly on law (unlike a state monopoly on steel) would not require police power to enforce it.

Just operationally, how would that work?

Another strange argument, as this presumes your proposal of competing laws is not from the imaginary world, and that somehow without any rational explanation could operationally work.

Post 74

Sunday, April 25, 2010 - 2:08pm

Jim:

This misstates my POV. I am arguing a more subtle position -- I am arguing that, absent an Orwellian worldwide total police state, it is impossible to have a complete monopoly of law, because there will always be outlaws, pirates, anarchists, rebellions, and other dissenting groups that refuse to accept the legitimacy of the dominant group asserting a monopoly of law.

How strange. This is a complete misunderstanding of what monopoly law means. It is not some crimeless utopia, it is the codification of moral principles that sanctions retribution for crimes committed. It is not meant to be an abolishment of crime, but an answer to it. E.g., what do we do if someone steals a loaf of bread? Do we execute him? Do we give him a trial and demand the accuser prove his case? And to prove his case based on what standard of proof? What is the appropriate punishment for the crime?

To say that all of these questions can just be answered by any arbitrary means is to mean that rights aren't actually something that can be objectively derived from reality, but is rather just something that is defined by whim.

(Edited by John Armaos on 4/25, 2:41pm)

Post 75

Sunday, April 25, 2010 - 2:35pm

Jim:

I'm saying that this organization would act as a defacto private "government" (the underlying articles that began this thread argue over whether there can be a truly private government -- I'll leave that issue unresolved) that, since it operates in an entirely non-coercive manner based on an objective code of laws derived from the NIOF principle, refuses to acknowledge the authority of any other group claiming to have governmental control over the organization's citizen-subscribers.

And yet, if you had two private rights protection agencies with all of the noblest intentions to what they do, suppose they have a disagreement? You might answer that they would themselves enter arbitration to settle the dispute between them, which means they are now acting under a monopoly of law. The point is, a monopoly of law that is a codification of moral principles that sanction retribution for crime is only possible with a monopoly, because the alternative is arbitrarily choosing laws that would conflict with one another, which is an admission by anarchists that they actually don't believe in any objectively arrived at moral principles.

Post 76

Sunday, April 25, 2010 - 3:16pm

Jim: "I am arguing that, absent an Orwellian worldwide total police state, it is impossible to have a complete monopoly of law, because there will always be outlaws, pirates, anarchists, rebellions, and other dissenting groups that refuse to accept the legitimacy of the dominant group asserting a monopoly of law."

In the absence of a civil war, or a nation-wide breakdown of order, what we see here in the States and in most other nations, are governments - mixed- economy, socialist, communist, etc. Your argument is that there is only anarchy, because it is in the minds of some people, therefore it exists, therefore we have competing systems. I can't believe you would trot that out like a serious argument.

Until you have another government-like organization making an above-board, serious and substantial effort to compete in putting out a set of laws and enforcing them in the same geographical area, the monopoly stands.

Isn't there some corner of your mind that is trying to tell you that these hair-splitting, strained arguments are a sign that you need to go back and examine your premises? Isn't there something that feels uncomfortable, like when you hear a religious person argue that life begins a the moment of conception and therefore the full set of human rights should apply at that point? (That false argument actually seems more rational than this business of there is no monopoly of laws because some people don't obey them and some people don't believe in them. Isn't that kind of like if we quit believing in magic, Tinker Bell will die?)
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p.s., I've read the article. I don't have much respect for the author, and I'm sad that he is teaching at a university.

Look at the poor quality of his reasoning:

He starts of by redefining political authority: "I define political authority as 'the right of making laws with penalties of death, and consequently all less penalties . . . and of employing the force of the community, in the execution of such laws.. . .'"

So, if some country had a constitution that prohibited the death penalty they would never be a political authority? It isn't promising when the person knows no better than to define by non-essentials. One assumes that when he uses the word 'right' he means a moral right - but he provides no indication of where the right comes from. That is probably handy down the road where he chooses to veer into moral relativism.
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He states, "A legitimate government is one whose claim to authority is freely granted or accepted by the vast majority of the population under its rule."

Not a very clear thinker. His standard here is relativism - the opinions of the majority. North Korea may well be a legitimate government by his definition - we would have to find a way to poll the inhabitants to find out. But neither Bush nor Gore could have been the head of a legitamate government since neither could be said have been freely accepted by a vast majority of the population. On the other other hand, Obama had a vast majority as had Chavez and at one time, Castro.
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Post 77

Monday, April 26, 2010 - 7:25am

Steve: We don't have a monopoly of a code of laws in the U.S. in implementation, even if on paper that is what is purported to be the case.

Point in case: The second amendment.

On paper, the code of laws says this applies everywhere within the geographic borders of the U.S.: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

And yet this is an example of what some government officials, who have taken oaths of office swearing to uphold this code of laws, are doing:

http://www.rr.com/news/topic/article/rr/9009/11077431/Ohio_man_arrested_as_Obama_leaves_NC_faces_hearing

You can walk into a gun store in rural Vermont in the morning, and try to buy a fully automatic weapon, and find that you can't do that, even though this code of laws above says you can. So you settle for buying what many people consider a scary-looking "assault weapon", with magazine, sniper scope, etc. Now, you can walk around the street in rural Vermont that morning openly carrying that gun without getting arrested or hassled, because the local enforcement of gun laws in rural Vermont are relatively close to complying with the code of laws spelled out in the Second Amendment, some of the best in the nation.

But, take that gun and drive a few hours into DC, and try walking around a crowded street openly carrying that "assault rifle", and you'll find your ass in jail really fast. And if you compound that error by trying to carry that gun through a TSA checkpoint at the airport, or worse yet, to the grounds outside the White House or Congress and looking through the scope at the places where national politicians hang out, and you'll find yourself in a world of hurt, as the Ohio man above found out.

This is not a monopoly of a code of law.

The Democratic Party dream is to move much closer to a monopoly of a code of law. They'd love to have the federal government run everything, and reduce state and local governments to figurehead organizations. Are you on board with that? Or would you prefer the more anarchical structure spelled out in the U.S. constitution. The dream of communists is even closer to that direction -- they'd love to have a one-world government, with the same code of laws everywhere. Are you on board with that, even if the starting point for that government is a minarchical state like what we had in the late 1700s in the U.S.? Do you really think that one-world government would not eventually turn into a tyranny, due to the lack of competition that the present anarchical international structure affords?

So, no, Steve, I am not at all comfortable with a REAL, full-on monopoly on the code of laws worldwide. That would wind up being an Orwellian nightmare. My gut feeling rebels against such an awful notion. I vote against that vision everytime I fill out a ballot, and I bet you do too.
(Edited by Jim Henshaw on 4/26, 7:33am)

Post 78

Monday, April 26, 2010 - 8:01am

John, thank you for your post 75. I think I understand your POV. I don't agree with your logic that we have to have a monopolistic code of laws, though, and I've elaborated on why not in my previous post. I'm comfortable with the notion of having a "monopoly" of laws that apply to a self-selected group of anarchists banding together, and a similar "monopoly" for a group of minarchists banding together, and yet another "monopoly" for socialists banding together.

If I understand your logic, I think you would agree that that could work, if the three (or more) groups lived in geographically separate regions.

You might even go further along this line, and say that it could still work if the world splintered into a huge mass of tiny city-states, each with its own code of laws, as was the case a few centuries back before the rise of nation-states.

Carrying it to its logical extreme, would you agree with the notion that this could work if this splintered into a network of really tiny city-states, some the size of, say, fenced-off individual house lots, with the code of laws pertaining to each of those tiny properties posted on the outside for anyone entering the property, and with all those tiny city-states subscribing to a certain identical codes of law all banding together under the umbrella of a corporation administering that code of laws?

Isn't that anarcho-capitalism?

If not, why not? Isn't that the logical outcome of your assertion that you can have more than one worldwide monopoly on the code of law, so long as each "nation" has a monopoly on its code of law within a defined geographical region? Why would you assert that it works for large geographical regions, but deny that it could work for smaller and smaller and smaller regions?

If you deny that it could work at the level of individual home lots, but assert that it does currently work at the level of a nation, then at what size of a geographical region would you specify that it would stop working? Where is the cutoff? Why is the cutoff at that size, and not higher or lower?

Post 79

Monday, April 26, 2010 - 9:41am