Re: Mayoral race
Daniel C. Burton (dan@antispam.autobahn.org)
8 Feb 1998 23:49:14 GMT
Kevin Dempsey Peterson <peterson@ocf.Berkeley.EDU> wrote in article
<Pine.SOL.3.96.980207213344.12231E-100000@apocalypse>...
> On 8 Feb 1998, Daniel C. Burton wrote:
>
> >Kevin Dempsey Peterson <peterson@ocf.Berkeley.EDU> wrote in article
>
> >> Now, if "give small businesses and neighborhoods precedence over big
> >> businesses" didn't mean, "the evil capitalists are out to enslave us,"
I
> >> would go for that. A city policy to (say) give a construction job to
a
> >> local contractor rather than a national company is a good thing, and
if
> >> you don't like it, "vote with your feet."
> >
> >No, it's not. Such policies provide unnatural incentives for
inefficient
> >forms of production at the expense of ones that produce things of value
to
> >society. This creates a discourages the creation of wealth on a local
> >level, which rests of the greatest creation of value possible.
Ultimately
> >this damages the local economy, because, though it might encourage
> >production, it could be the wrong kind of production....
>
> Protecting local (small) businesses at the expense of large chains is
> economically inefficient on a large scale, but good for other reasons.
> I can find books at Cody's that I can't find at all in Thousand Oaks,
> whcih has only chain bookstores. Local businesses have the aditional
> advantage that more of the wealth stays in the area. Profits from Joe's
> Garage are spent in local businesses, while profits from Pep Boys are
> spent by the shareholders out of the area.
Whether or not the money stays in the local area is irrelevant. Money is
merely a means of exchange. The creation of wealth stems from producing
the most valuable things possible, so that they can be traded for the most
other valuable things possible. A local economy that creates a few things
of great value and instantly uses the money made from doing so to buy
desired items from outside the area is in much better shape than one that
produces lots of things nobody really values and barely trades with the
outside world. In the latter case, money may turn over 30 times before it
leaves the community, but it doesn't matter because there's not much to be
made in the first place.
If local resources (labor and capital) were not going into inefficient
enterprises, they would be going into ones sustainable by the free market,
ones that produced even more value and brought even more money into the
community. Maybe they would even be going into large, successful chain
businesses and bringing money into the community from the outside.
In your example with the bookstores, if there really was a demand for rarer
books that the large stores don't carry, there would be small local ones to
supplement them. Otherwise, fulfilling your desire for this merchandise
comes at the expense of other things of even more value to other people --
namely whatever else could be done with local resources.
> >And people will "vote with their feet." Specifically, local businesses
> >will flee to other areas.
>
> I respect the right of idiots in groups, in addition to idiots
> individually, to do stupid things. Over protective economic policies
> ruin the economy. Slight incentives may (I'm not sure) have benefits
> which outway the incentive to be inefficient.
The incentives are themselves incentives to do things that are inefficient
in fulfilling the desires of society. This can result in nothing but
inefficiency.
> >I don't care if there are other localities available to move to. Doing
so
> >is not without cost. Nobody should have the right to take peoples'
money
> >and subject them to such policies on any level of government, no matter
> >where they are.
>
> I disagree. When I moved to Berkeley and signed my lease, I agreed to
> play by the local rules. If a private protection agency owned an area
> of land, and sold perpetual, transferable leases to land in that area,
> on the condition that the leasee obey the laws handed down by that
> protection agency, then it's a legitimate government, and can do
> anything provided for in the contract. We don't have an explicit
> contract with the city, but I do think we have an implicit contract.
> The question is what it says. I don't think we have even an implicit
> contract with "the United States", so it's more or less irrelvent what
> it says.
The legitimacy of anarcho-capitalist protection agencies only stems from
their ability to protect our liberty better than anything else available.
The moment one of them became a government (which is more likely than not
after about 300 years), all their legitimacy would be gone and no
protection agencies would be better than any at all. It would be time for
another political revolution.
Besides, the odds of an anarcho-capitalist protection agency ever being
able to obtain all the land in a large metropolitan area through legitimate
means are so astronomically low that we might as well not consider it.
Even if there was only one agency in an area, which in and of itself would
be almost impossibly unlikely if there had ever been at least 5 or 10, it
is still increadibly unlikely that everyone in the area would accept the
terms of a protection agency at all. With about 100,000 people, it's more
likely than not that somebody, somewhere in the middle of the city, would
choose not to buy into the system and just stock up on some heavy
artillery.
Even if the few people who didn't choose to sign up couldn't manage to
protect their land from theft, they would still be the ones with the moral
claim to it. That's why it's extremeley unlikely that something like a
city government could ever have the kind of moral claim you say.... And
even if it did, it would be beneficial to break it up for practical
reasons.
The real legal standing of cities, is in fact quite different from what you
say. They are merely extensions of the county, given authority by charter,
and the county is itself merely an extension of the state, the only
independent body of government at work. The deed for land is in fact a
deed for real and sole ownership with all the protections of the
constitution. A city may not seize private property for public use with
any less just compensation than any other level of government.
Cities can merge, expand their borders, split up, and do other things with
permission from the county, that places people in jurisdictions they did
not consent to be in. They can also do things like imprison people for
possession of alchohol, violating curfews, etc., which no private party can
ever demand as violation for breach of a contract -- self-ownership is
non-transferable. The worst they could do is fail to hold up their end of
the bargain -- kick you off the property they let you use -- and collect
monetary compensation for breaches in excess of this. But in fact, cities
don't even have the authority private parties would have -- they can't
banish people. As a government agency they are bound to respect the
freedom of assembly and movement on both private and public property.
An anarcho-capitalist protection agency that turned into a government as
you said, would also not be a democracy. It would be a for-profit monopoly
that would do things that made sense in terms of maximizing its profit. It
would care about the vitality of the local economy. A democratic city
governement with unlimited authority doesn't even do something as good as
that -- it succumbs to special-interest pressures that benefit a few at the
expense of the vitality of the entire region.
> I've got an essay kicking around in my mind that might clear some of
> this up (or at least provide a better defined point of argument). I'll
> have to try to get it written. The main idea is that people don't have
> any rights, but agree to a government because it is efficient.
That's funny. I wouldn't agree to something as inefficient as a
government. Oh well, everyone's entitled to their own opinion.
> I really
> don't like the idea of anarchy (even with protection agencies) because
> it doesn't provide a moral basis for saying what power a protection
> agency has over people who are not clients, and where its power to
> enforce its contracts ends, such as, Can clients leave the area where a
> protection agency is active (possibly competing with other agencies)
> when they own money to the protection agency? Can the protection agency
> legitimately enslave them for failure to pay?
The moral basis isn't provided by the system. It's already there whether
it's adhered to or not. The reason anarcho-capitalism is good is that it
produces a moral state of affairs.
Practically speaking, such questions would be settled by the fact that it's
less profitable to enslave and rob people than it is to protect them. A
protection agency would only have whatever power over non-clients it could
enforce. If it tried to steal from them, there would be other protection
agencies ready to jump in and protect them from this, because protecting
other people fosters positive long-term relationships, whereas stealing
from people only fosters animosity and distrust. Even a lone man with a
gun is not someone you want to mess with if you're smart because you can do
a lot more damage through force than it costs to buy the force in the first
place. One angry non-client with a rocket propelled grenade launcher could
probably do more damage to your assets than he even owns in assets.
As far as going outside the area where your agency is active is concerned,
since lots of people like to travel, it would probably make arrangements
with other agencies in other regions pretty quickly. And of course, if it
tried to PREVENT travel, the agencies in the other regions would be eager
to jump in and help people circumvent this.
You have to remember that there would be no government to enforce
contracts. The protection agencies would have to do it themselves, and
other agencies would not want to honor ones that kept potential customers
captive to their competitors. Practically speaking, you could not enslave
someone for failure to pay, because it's more profitable to serve a free
man than to own a slave, and if you won't do this, someone else will -- and
they'll stand up for their right to do so with the threat of force.
... We really have to invite David Friedman back here to speak again.
> Some things I'm still not sure of:
> Do people have any inherent (natural) rights, or are rights only a
> relic of government?
My current take: No, and they're not a relic of government either. Rights
come from society itself, not government or nature. An ethical system is
merely a set of rules for interaction between members of society, and it
gains its authority by its ability to continue providing us with what we
value over the course of history. This is not just in the immediate
consequences of its rules, but also moral conclusions created by more fully
developing its ideas in the future.
This is the general framework I use in evaluating systems of morality.
It's sort of "will this empower us or enslave us?" except I have to
consider how society may develop these ideas in the future too -- and I
usually take a very pessimistic view of what might happen.
The only thing I know I can really rely on is a framework of ideas that has
continued to empower us for centuries, the framework that grew out of the
voluntary exchanges of merchants long before contracts were on paper or
backed by governments. The handshake of a deal agreed upon is something I
know will endure for centuries without spawning tyrrany or bloodshed.
All my other rules, therefore, stem from the question, "What do we need to
do in order to protect voluntary interactions?" and my current answer is
"Get rid of as much of government as possible until it doesn't even exist."
> Is "the right to govern" a legitimate right to tie to (real) property,
> or can the right to govern only arise from the voluntary agreement to an
> explicit contract?
I would say that the right to govern does not exist at all because
government is characterized by a monopoly of force -- something that nobody
should have the right to establish and which in any case makes any explicit
contract of submission suspect. (It is more likely chosen because of
threats than by voluntary choice.)
> Does acceptance of and participation in a form of government imply
> agreement to the nebulous social contract?
No, it means participating in government helps you achieve your goals. The
only thing a social contract isn't is in fact a contract. It's not a
contract because it's offered under coercive circumstances, and even if
it's never explicity agreed to, it's assumed anyway.
Maybe there are certain inherant moral responsibilities people have, but
this certainly doesn't qualify as a contract -- and these responsibilities
really have to be inherant. They can't be some kind of implicit agreement.
I would put respecting other peoples' choices at the top of the list.
> In the absense of government, do people have a right to nothing, a right
> to everything, or a right to certain things (this last is the natural
> rights idea)?
> Is there any method of establishing a government which will have a
> legitimate claim to exert coercion over residents of an area who have
> not explicitly agreed to obey that government?
Perhaps if it does the best job of protecting people from private force and
the private force would be worse than the government force -- but the
moment the government becomes worse it loses its legitimacy.