Down with Every government earth!

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Have you not heard of "Lebensraum" with regard to Hitler and WW2?

Macbeth

There's never actually been an anarchist communist society in the world before. I wouldn't neccessarily say that there's any anarchist society in existence. The closest there is to one at the moment is Christania, and there, the society is run democratically without a layered system which most countries abide to

Yes, and to be honest, the Nazis were mostly zealous nationalists. To say that they were motivated by a purely economic reason is questionable.

Anarchy is ultimate freedom.
Freedom to live!
Freedom to love!
Freedom to rape.
Freedom to murder...

OK then, I will claim that there is some optimal middle ground. Is that so outlandish? That some middle area in between complete socialist fascism and law of the jungle yields the best results? I mean, even the version of anarchism to which you subscribe does involve some sort of system of laws, however bizarrely established, so the difference between us isn't that one of us is fully consistent and one is wishy-washy in the middle, but rather that we have drawn lines in the sand at somewhat different spots. You haven't given any particularly compelling reason why your line is at a better spot than mine, and I doubt you could as you probably haven't even bothered to check where mine is.


If there is any government function that can be completely privatized, education is it, but I doubt that even education would be best off completely in private hands; it is considered a merit good with positive externalities so at least some level of subsidization makes sense. (And now you are going to reject the notion of externalities or some such nonsense) As far as what requires central control; show me a private organization building the Interstate Highway System, or the Aqueduct. Go back and watch the Monty Python clip from page 2.


OK, so one group is subsidized at the expense of others. So? Any system that you have will benefit some people and screw others. That's what happens when finite resources have to be allocated to meet infinite wants. Not everyone can have what they want. Culture generally is independent of government, yes, but the government has subsidized a number of cultural institutions. Ever been to the Smithsonian?

Well, I think the issue I was trying to bring up was the fact that you already *wanted* change in the education system. I don't even remember though as I've slept since then. Orwell, I haven't bothered to check because even you don't seem to have any realism, and because you usually end up becoming an apologist for the current order anyway.


The entire notion of a merit good is terrible in my views(I mean of course issues other than purely economic considerations, as I think you do when invoking the term), thus saying that education is one is questionable. In any case, from what I've heard, the positive externalities stop after elementary school. In any case, your prediction is wrong on that matter, particularly given that education does not seem particularly prone to externalities in the first place.

Well, to be honest, historically there was a private railroad builder, who was actually very successful. http://mises.org/story/2317#1 which is somewhat similar, as this was an infrastructure issue of the past. If railroads can be privately built, I do not see why other projects could not be built.


Well, the issue is that the subsidy is not pareto efficient, nor is there any reason to assume it is kaldor-hicks efficient, so I don't see how it is justifiable, thus your argument based upon it is flawed, including the apologetics for it.

So? That doesn't mean the government should subsidize cultural institutions, including the Smithsonian.

How does my wanting change in the educational system invalidate my point? Reform rather than annihilation is an incorrect approach? I'm not an apologist for the current order so much as I am an apologist for the idea of order. Chaos doesn't jive with me all that well. I promote the current order only as better than the alternatives you put forward, not as being better than all alternatives that could be put forward. That's a subtlety you seem not to grasp.


OK, so you reject the concept of a merit good while I accept it. You haven't given a very good reason for why you consider it a flawed concept. The externalities of education largely consist in having a greater portion of the population able to perform useful tasks, such as scientific and technological innovation.


I skimmed the article, and it seems pretty sloppy as well as horribly biased, and we both know that mises.org is not a place to go for impartial information. The railroads were massively funded by government, and likely would not have been completed without that funding, and if they were they would not likely have been done so efficiently. Russia tried to allow the free market to work in the development of their railroad system, and the utter suckiness of their railroad infrastructure is widely considered to be one of the major factors behind their failing at World War One. And the Interstate Highway system display a level of coordination and planning that simply would not have been feasible on that scale for any private organization.


I doubt either of us are interested enough to make a detailed study of this, but it quite possibly is kaldor-hicks efficient. Certainly not pareto efficient, but the notion of pareto efficiency really has very limited applicability anyways. Also, if I choose to operate outside strict economic methodology (and why not? such methodology doesn't always yield consistent results, so could be regarded as worthless in applications that are disputed) I could simply regard some items, such as education, to be a priori more important than others and subsidize on that basis.


So, you want to get rid of the aqueduct, sanitation, roads, public order, irrigation, the wine, education, and public health, because ASIDE FROM THAT, what have the Romans ever done for us?

Orwell, you aren't arguing right for a person who wants reform. You are defending the status quo, a status quo that you *agree* to fail. And you are promoting a system that *is* decentralized. The only thing you are doing is perhaps regulating it and having the government intervene economically. Chaos doesn't jive with most people, that's why we won't have it. In any case, I do think that your arguments should not be so dodgy, because I know you are rejecting in favor of a specific system and rejecting for specific reasons.


Not really. Most of the population *isn't* able to perform scientific and technological innovation, and to suggest that this is an externality is rather well... wrong. The externalities of education mostly come from socialization, which reduces crime rates.


Not *that* sloppy, and duh, it is biased. Orwell, other articles talk about government funding for railroads, it brings up the low quality of those railroad in that they were only created to get the government funding, and little else. Russia also never had a free market to speak of, so to say that Russia tried seems ridiculous, as you are arguing that a country that maintained feudalism until it became communist was using the free-market. In any case, cliometric analysis really does not see much economic change due to railroads, although this is possibly the same phenomenon as we see with computers today. Also, stating that there is a large amount of large scale coordination doesn't mean we need the same highway system, after all, the issue with the matter is that coordination and planning for a highway system, is not the same as that needed for an economic system, and the latter is what is important.


I don't see how it would be Kaldor-Hicks efficient, a small number of people go to the museum, but a large number of people pay for it, beyond what that small number of people would even be willing to pay if they were the supporters. In any case Orwell, the notion that you can operate out of economic methodology is more akin to saying "Well, I want to be able to say *whatever* I want, and have no criticisms". Economic analysis is necessary to have any foundations to what you say, otherwise you are just chasing leprechauns.


Well, I think we don't need Romans to have some of those. Heck, I think that our current education system is problematic due to government interventions throughout it, including the subsidization of the signal of college, as I see that as increasing credentialism. And a number of actions in the health care sector do increase the costs of health care and make it less effective.

how about the social control structure that government was founded on: religion?


that certainly has a more far reaching effect than any government and, in fact, governments (almost all of them) still use and manipulate religion today to achieve what they wish.

I am not worried about me controlling myself; I am worried about the ability of others to control themselves, and how their bad behavior may affect me.

Didja ever read "Lord of the Flies" ...? Consider the average school and the amount of bullying that goes on there. Now remove the adults and the limited, imperfect ability they have to reduce bullying. Isn't that an anarchist's dream?

I think that Libertarians are anarchists who recognize that mobs can get pretty savage.

To some degree, We ALL are.

Exactly.


Well, depending on the case, it could be a dream for the bullies in one, but in another case it could be a nightmare for them, if the punishment is made by a lynch mob.

well I too wonder about this, something that I wonder is how justice would be made, when it comes to trials to determine culpability of a suspect, and related stuff, I mean, a lynch mob, the way we have seen, would never bother to empirically determine wether an accused is guilty of a crime or not. Not saying that lynch mobs would be necessarily the case, but I wonder. That's one issue I ask how justice would work in an anarchist sysem, and how much of that would be changed as how currently is.

I tend to relate Anarchism with Utopian Socialism or any other utopian society, in the sense that it seems to be an utopic ideology mostly.

As anarchy fell on Somalia, tribal clans and local militia took control. It was more like the emergence of little city states, IMO, which is much better than the prevailing situation worldwide. It still doesn't change the fact that tribal laws were enacted, and that militia provided security. It wasn't anarchy per se.

After reading that, however, I must say that I do agree with Leeson in many ways.



Anyway, I'm not going to argue about this, as arguing is pointless. The resistence towards an end to monetary slavery is no difference to the resistance against slavery only a few centuries ago.

All truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident. - Arthur Schopenhauer

Peace.

Yeah, but my observation is that the stronger, more aggressive individuals tend to lead the mobs. Sometimes, the mob will dump a bully because they see him as a total jerk, but more often as not, one bully is replaced by another.

Right, and it can easily be argued that Somalia isn't what people are talking about with anarchy.


Well, no, it is quite different, as I have yet to see people who "resist monetary slavery" who actually show a good level of knowledge about the workings of the monetary system, this is unlike the slave system, where it seemed that support or disapproval tended to fall upon grounds of benefit from the system to some extent.

Isn't one argument for governments the fact that they are such large complex organisations that this guarantees a certain stability because laws they pass can not be overturned simply because someone's rhetoric sways a crowd one afternoon?

Their very size is a kind of safety catch.

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