Careful.

Reading the kind of screed published by academicians could rot your brain in strange ways, even tho you are immune.

And "political science"? I never could understand how some Dull Spark could put those two words together. What's scientific about politics, altho science has become grossly political...but probably always was.

"We must please the King with our science
or we won't get nice new toys to play with."

What passes for political science in the US is merely the discussion - under the guise of democratic legitimacy - of how to best use other people's property for their own good.

Guess what my next class is for the spring semester?

Public finance.

*groan*

Lovely theory . . . but the problem with letting everyone take individual responsibility for their defense is it's impossible for one man to stand up to 1000 men who've combined to take his property. So you have to either accept that your life can be snuffed out at the whim of any band of thugs, or combine with others to have an effective mutual defense. And if you pick the latter you've created a government.

Mr. Gallagher, the crucial difference between a free-market defense agreement and the national defense from a government is that the FMDA is 100% voluntary to the extent the contractual agreement allows whereas what you get with the state is not. That means you choose to help pay and support the former and you are threatened with coercion to pay for the latter.

Furthermore, a private defense agency (as they're typically called in anarchist literature), does not exist to conquer others, steal their property, or impose its rules on them. Sure, in a free society immoral actors will exist who are going to leverage their freedom to hurt the peaceful. However, it is in every person's interest to keep those destructive activities down to a minimum, so the people, property, and "good" PDAs affected by the "bad" PDA won't tolerate that behavior without consequences. And given that war is an expensive endeavor the maintain for any meaningful length of time and the actors in that conflict won't be subsidized with tax money and inflation, it is more than reasonable to assume such conflicts won't last long and won't occur that often.

Even a "good" PDA has no constraint against becoming a government other than the willingness of its members to altruistically eliminate threats while a large number of free riders benefit without contributing. History and human nature show that's not a stable situation. The most idealistic PDAs would weaken as more supporters become free riders--and the least idealistic would extract the resources they need to destroy the others. PDAs would quickly become feudal overlords by another name.

We've done worse than feudalism, but I still prefer a republic.

Mr. Gallagher, the restraints on good PDAs from becoming tyrannical are fundamentally no different from the restraints on good valets from collecting all the cars handed to them over an hour and shipping them elsewhere for sale: justified retaliation on the part of the victimized and market reputation. Given any human desire, there will be a market for fulfilling it, good or bad. Therefore, anyone in this system I speak of who is wronged by these "good gone bad" PDAs won't be limited in any way of either contracting with another or building their own good PDA to establish justice. Once the bad PDA has made it clear they exist to plunder, its reputation will collapse and the bulk of the reliable sources of revenue loved by all companies (the repeat customer) will dry up. Yes, this predicates a considerable level of respect for and the assumption of the general goodness in most people. I am happy to make that assumption.

I don't see a huge free-rider problem at all. Roughly speaking, the society could be classified three ways: those who decide to handle life, liberty, and property (LLP) defense on their own; those who contract with PDAs to handle their LLP defense; and those who want to benefit from LLP defense without paying for it. Since the umbrella coverage provided by government agencies wouldn't exist, you'd have to positively acquire coverage by a PDA to have it. Fraud can't be ruled out, of course, but no economically-minded PDA will rush to the rescue of a stranger unless the PDA is compensated for their services.

What about a scenario where the majority of a neighborhood has excellent PDA protection? Well, obviously criminals might think twice about violating someone's rights in such a place. Thus, the minority of households who holdout and don't get PDA protection can free-ride off the impression of good security. I'd say a few things about this. First, free market prices would quickly reflect the inequities in this situation, changing the incentive structure over time to compensate for the different security scenarios. For example, in a community of 100 houses, 99 are covered by contractual PDA protection and one is not. That holdout's house's value to others is now much higher than it would have been without the secure environment. People *will* pay for the perception of security, and they will pay more. Thus, even in situations less extreme than this, the people not contracting with PDAs won't be getting off without additional costs completely. I certainly don't see significant numbers of free riders coming into existence because every criminal will have some tipping point where the threat of justice implied by percentage of homes protected by PDAs is outweighed by the opposing lesser threat of the resulting percentage of individual homeowners defending themselves and their property on their own.

That sets up a rough market equilibrium where institutional entities like insurance companies and PDAs can refine and calculate their potential liabilities and costs with even more clarity. Over time, I'd say the mechanisms of the free market solve most of the problems that would exist in the short run.

This is not to say such a society would be utopian. I don't believe in such things. I recognize and admit free societies would suffer from crime just like unfree societies do and would have a whole different set of unexpected problems crop up that unfree societies may never have to deal with. But I'd still prefer my vision to what we have now.

"Mr. Gallagher" is a bit more formal than I'm used to--most folks go with "Karl".

Once the bad PDA has made it clear they exist to plunder, its reputation will collapse and the bulk of the reliable sources of revenue loved by all companies (the repeat customer) will dry up.

Well, that's the thing about plunderers. They don't need the consent of their "customers" because they've either disarmed, enslaved, or killed them all. This also leaves the victim without funds to hire a new protector other than by becoming an "asset" of the protector. By your definition all the current governments in the world exist to plunder and they're not in danger of collapse.

Karl, I've disabled HTML code in my comments. You'll have to denote a quote without italics.

"Well, that's the thing about plunderers. They don't need the consent of their "customers" because they've either disarmed, enslaved, or killed them all."

This isn't necessarily true and I disagree with the assumptions behind this. In order to be as effective as you say it is, this plunderer would literally have to silence, enslave, and kill everyone who didn't get with the program. People talk, escape, leave clues, and otherwise find ways of communicating with others to get the word out. Indeedn, the PDAs protecting the neighbors of people plundered would have a strong incentive to find out what happened and who did it to prepare for potential problems in the future. There would absolutely be a market for information on active bands of marauding PDAs gone bad. This means little to the people already ruined or killed, I'm aware, but it means a lot to those concerned with their security.

"This also leaves the victim without funds to hire a new protector other than by becoming an "asset" of the protector."

True...if the victim manages to escape with his or her life to tell the story AND doesn't have a job unaffected by the plunder AND has zero bank or investment accounts to access AND has no remaining property away from the site of plunder to sell AND has no relatives or friends willing to help out AND can't raise money through charity AND isn't able to sell his or her information to a good PDA or network of good PDAs. Ultimately, if all that (and more, I can't predict everything, of course) fails, then it is possible the victim would have no wealth to pay for protection.

"By your definition all the current governments in the world exist to plunder and they're not in danger of collapse."

You are correct, I do believe that. Why governments do not routinely collapse is due to a variety of reasons. The two primary reasons I'd cite are:

1. Having trained and well-armed law enforcement and military services on hand to maintain power. The threat of coercion is the principle method of keeping power.
2. Convincing majorities of the population that the government deserves to exist and in fact provides a net benefit rather than a net harm. The institutions supporting the government's existence (99.999% of all institutions, I'd say) perpetuate this unchallenged assumption and entrench it to the point where even bringing up the subject of anarchy is considered unbecoming.

Karl, I must take the time here to thank you for the discussion. Far, far too often the folks who disagree with me are rude, insulting, and dissmissive of my arguments. You have proven to be a pleasant exception.

You're quite welcome. I've never like anarchy but haven't been able to express why in a precise fashion. This is useful for fleshing that out. You're becoming the test-reader for my work-in-progress "Why I'm Not an Anarchist" essay. :-)

So, on the subject of plunderers. They're not going to hide their activities--a reputation is useful for their activities. Projected into modern terms one of their advertisements might look like this:

"VISIGOTHS INCORPORATED is coming to [AREA] on [DATE]. An Early Bird Opportunity is now available for residents who want to sign on as VI clients. Clients will receive VI protection under the following conditions:

1. 50% of all portable wealth will be turned over to VI upon signing.
2. 25% of all income will be paid to VI.
3. No weapons or other possessions forbidden by VI policy may be retained by clients (weapons turned over will count toward the 50% in item 1).

VI clients meeting physical and psychological standards may apply for employment with VI.

[AREA] residents refusing VI clientage will be subject to the following penalties:

1. Execution, torture, or rape
2. Being forced to witness the execution, torture, or rape of spouses, children, or other connections.
3. Confiscation of all property and exile from [AREA].
4. Enslavement (as manual laborer or concubine).

Further details are available on the VISIGOTHS website at [URL]"

So anybody receiving that ad has a decision to make--surrender (or join VI) or fight. Assume some research verifies that VI has both the firepower to overcome the existing local PDA and a history of committing atrocities. For young single men the choice is simple--a vow of death before slavery (you, and me at your age), or eagerness to sign up as a VI enforcer and get some of the plunder (how many guys in your high school were in this category?). For guys like me with families to protect it's tougher.

There are cultures that would kill their children rather than see them enslaved. They're not around any more. I'm not a member of one. I want to get my children the best life I can. If the only option is a lousy one, I'll take what I can get and try to improve it. So how does my decision making work?

Ranking the options from best to worse goes like this:
1. Fighting and winning means passing freedom and wealth onto my kids.
2. Surrendering lets me save my kids' lives but not much else.
3. Fighting and losing gets my whole family killed.

So fighting is the best option *IF* we can win. But that means getting help, since VI has accumulated enough force to take out our neighborhood militia. Just asking for volunteers probably won't cut it. As stated above, if I'm in New Jersey when VI attacks you're not going to help out. Even if we got a bunch of volunteers a "pick-up" team wouldn't be very effective against an experienced attacker. So we need to find an organization with firepower at VI's level and convince them to join in.

That's going to be expensive. Full-time troops and hardware to support them don't come cheap. So they're unlikely to do much charity work. Hiring them will cost real money. Now Paladins Unlimited is willing to do limited term fee-for-service contracts, but that would suck up a lot of our cash and when we ran out VI would come in again as soon as PU leaves. So that's just postponing option 3 instead of avoiding it. There'll be another bidder for our contract, Feudalism Restored. FR's contract is a kinder, gentler version of VI's. Limited self-defense, lower taxes, imprisonment or exile as punishment for non-payment, and a list of specific rights for clients. That would get us a permanent force to keep VI away. Assuming that FR can win--if they fight and lose that just gets us option 3 with even more pissed-off Visigoths.

Athenian Democracy Associates didn't bid on the grounds that we're too far from their operating area for them to help us, but they did send some useful manuals for training and organizing armies. That might let us stand up to VI on our own.

So what are the choices now? Fight on our own, sign up with FR, or surrender to VI. If we can stand off VI on our own, great. Otherwise I'll take FR as the better option *IF* I think they can win. If not, then I take VI's deal.

Now, that's me in a vacuum. What my neighbors think also matter, because they'll have to chip in to hire FR or actually come out to fight if we take the militia option. We'd need an overwhelming majority to agree to one to make it work. Splitting down the middle gets us a militia too small to win and FR staying away because we didn't meet their price. If there's no consensus, going with VI starts looking much more tempting.

VI can also keep us from forming a consensus by offering special deals to particular people. If someone calls up and says "Hey, want to be your local block monitor for VI? Tell us if your neighbors are cheating on their taxes and we'll cut yours in half. Plus you can be the local VI rep." Being big man on the block would be pretty tempting--more money, social status, able to deflect nasty stuff to someone else. Then we've got the prisoner's dilemma (or stag hunt) aspect of the situation, in that the first man to sign up with VI gets a good deal, the last one gets the worst. So unless you're *convinced* all your neighbors will stand up to VI the rational choice is to be the first betrayer.

So that all boils down to most of the town acquiescing to VI's takeover, a few dying horribly or running away, and VI having more money and recruits to equip the army to go after the next town. That's how the Dark Ages worked.

So how did we escape that, and how can this method be applied in a libertarian framework?

When I bought my house I wasn't getting all rights to it. I "own" this property, but mineral rights stay with the developer, the town's kept the right to build structures larger than a certain size, etc. So what I really bought was the right to occupy a single-family home on that land, with the other rights held elsewhere. Still a good deal for what I'm paying. But let's consider how rights for a parcel of land can and have been divvied up in the past.

In particular, when the USA bought the Louisiana Purchase, what rights were transferred? People owning houses in New Orleans kept them. Same for the early prairie settlers and their farms. So no basic property rights were transferred. What Jefferson bought was the "security rights" for all those pieces of property. The owner of the security right--and the US gov't has that for my property--holds the right to enforce military and police control over that piece of land. When the Philippines were granted independence the security rights for those islands were transferred to the new government. If you want to be solely responsible for your own security, you have to live somewhere where you own the security rights to your own land.

Not that the USA's going to sell. But say we have a Collapse and the US government disappears. What's going to happen? We could just pull PDAs together as you discussed above, and non-joiners could be a hole in the middle of the PDA's service area. But that makes for an ugly situation. Anybody under the PDA's jurisdiction who felt like throwing rocks when drunk could go to the Outlaw house, and if the Outlaw family took retaliation the PDA would be obligated to sort it out. Worse would be if the Outlaws decided to preempt by attacking a bunch of drunks congregating just outside their property line. Messy. On the larger scale, uncontrolled areas like that are easy plunder for the Visigoths, letting them build up their strength before tackling the serious PDAs. Sensible PDAs would cooperate to keep the plunderers from getting too strong, part of that being not letting easy loot lie about.

So it would be worth the PDA's while to say "we want to buy the security rights to your property." Any new customers would have to sell their security rights and would have to be contiguous with the current coverage. PDAs would be driven to expand until all security rights are held by a well-defined organization, which would be a government regardless of the name. And that's exactly the situation we have now. Not having to regularly repeat that cycle is a valuable benefit that existing government provide.

Karl, I lack the time to properly respond (isn't it annoying how being at work can do that to you?), so I'll have to delay a more detailed response later, perhaps tomorrow. I do love the way you framed your response! It makes discussion much easier.

However, I will say that your desire for a reasonable level of security and protection from outside force (one I share) does not mean you or anyone else has the right to a portion of my property or anyone else's. That is my critical issue and I cannot be swayed from it. Any solution proposed must first clear this hurdle.

Can you accept being required to yield some property as a condition for being allowed to live in an area owned by the taxing organization?

It isn't a "taxing" organization if you can choose to pay the tax without fear of having the organization's agents kick in your door at night and cart you off to jail for failure to pay for their service you don't want.

If I wanted to buy a home somewhere and the current landowner wanted a monthly as part of the purchasing deal (the deal being a package arrangement where security services are provided for the neighborhood as a whole with no holdouts) and assuming the amount was reasonable in my opinion, I'd have no problem with it.

The key is the voluntarism of the system. If I lived somewhere and an organization just showed up and demanded payment for security services, I'd view it as no different as the threats they intend to defend me against. Similarly, if I was completely decided upon one specific spot to live and a condition of ownership was the purchasing of security arrangements, I just might decide to go for it.

So, yes and no. :)

"It isn't a "taxing" organization if you can choose to pay the tax without fear of having the organization's agents kick in your door at night and cart you off to jail for failure to pay for their service you don't want."

As you say, it's about choice.

In regards to that, last I heard the private fire department
in Scottsdale, AZ has a subscription plan for their services
which covers one automatically.

Those that don't sub and have a fire will have the fire
extinguished and then they're billed a one-time charge.

I doubt that those who refuse to pay in the latter case
would end up in jail or having their checks tapped for
payment.

Seems a PDA could be run in a similar fashion.

Oh, I can see a voluntary organization working fine in a vacuum. But when it has to compete for its survival against another group the free-rider problem will weaken it. So it's a lovely theory but won't survive in the real world unless something's sheltering it.

As for the voluntarism of taxes--you can stop paying taxes to the USA any time you want. Just go someplace else.

Karl, apologies for taking so long to respond. The holidays are tough on my free time.

I will not deny the free-rider problem's significance, but my contention is a society abscent a government would actually suffer from the problem *less* than a society with a government. All services would be provided on a mutual basis with the consent of all parties involved. Subjective and context-specifit contractual obligations take care of the rest.

Whereas with a government providing defense services, a system of justice and punishment, etc., you have entire segments of society getting by without paying for anything or getting discounts for services identical to those others get. For example, an American can easily skip past the sales tax system and income tax system for years and still get the full range of benefits as other taxpayers enjoy. Children and the eldery routinely get breaks and loopholes. Even if we wanted this hypothetical super-minimalist government to tax everyone equally and without special preference, you have the problem of the parts of society who rarely need those services getting hit with the service fees for the parts of society who routinely use them. It isn't fair to charge me for the police, fire, military, and court costs that some drunk jerk in El Paso, some rapist in New York, some arsonist in Seattle, or terrorists in Washington, D.C. incur. Why must I be threatened with jail and property seizure for their actions?

Taxes are literally voluntary. I can ask my employer to stop withholding a percentage of my income and just not send a check to the IRS in April. I can buy all my goods and services from the black market or make them myself. I can simply ignore the property taxes imposed on my house and plot. I can find people willing to invest my money and avoid capital gains taxes. I can never get a driver's, hunting, fishing, business, or other type of license. I can do all of these things and get away with it for years. But at some point, warrants will be written for my arrest and the quality of my life will drop as I have to evade them.

Moving elsewhere? I cannot think of a hospitable place to live on this planet that would not cause the same troubles as I just outlined. The hyper-dense web of interconnected taxes, international law enforcement organizations, and real time communications have made being a determined tax avoider significantly difficult if not ultimately impossible. But I should not be forced to do that in the first place. No one owns me and by extension, no one owns my property. My claims of ownership supercede the claims of ownership the state routinely exercises in the forms of taxes and regulation. I won't be chased around the globe to live free.

I'll be extremely busy the nest few days, so I'll address your larger post above during January. Happy holidays!

"All services would be provided on a mutual basis with the consent of all parties involved. Subjective and context-specifit contractual obligations take care of the rest."

I can't see that solving the free-rider problem. In the scenario above, say you helped me fight off Visigoths, Inc. and I signed a contract obligating me to help you fight off similar threats. But when Huns Ltd. come knocking on your door I accept a bribe to stay home. Then you're dead, I'm richer, Huns Ltd. will help protect me against retaliation, and I get a bad reputation--a net gain for me, a total loss for you, a profitable transaction for Huns. Contractual obligations aren't useful unless somebody's enforcing them. That takes something with the power of a government.

Karl, your example suffers from too many assumptions and the primary one is an anarchist society free from government and free to persue free market economics wouldn't be able to come up with new and unique solutions to arising problems. A short paper by Robert Murphy at the Ludwig von Mises Institute demonstrates simple ways such a society could defend itself from an even greater threat than the one you propose: an actual marauding state sending 200 bombing aircraft over its border ( http://www.mises.org/journals/scholar/Murphy6.pdf )

1. I choose to help you successfully fight off VI ('cuz I'm nice?)
2. You choose to sign a contract swearing to help me in the future (as payment?)
3. HL comes around and offers you a bribe to not intervene and you accept (news of HL's arrival doesn't spread through the community at large?).
4. HL wipes me out (I have no other defense arrangments?), you profit financially and in short-term security, and HL contiunes on doing its thing (no concerned good PDAs recognize the danger and team up to take it out?).

You are correct: contracts make little sense unless they are enforced. But you don't need a government to enforce them. Such a service, like any service, can be provided by a free market of needy consumers and profit-oriented businesses. Government's only special power is that of legitimized coercion, which is how it comes to obtain the means to enforce contracts within it's boundaries. While it may be practical in many instances, it still constitutes coercion and therefore makes it no fundamentally different from VI.

More tomorrow.

Regarding the free-rider problem, I don't think you adequately addressed the arguments I made last month. They are:

1. In an anarchist society, people would be free to purchase security/contract protection if they decide they want it.
2. A neighborhood/city is very likely to have a vast majority of the individuals within it covered, because coverage makes good sense.
3. However, in any free system there will be holdouts. Some may think the value of coverage is worth the prices currently charged, while some may think they can free-ride off the perception criminals will avoid violating his/her property because it's in a heavily-covered area.

BUT, those holdouts have costs of their own to pay, and one of them would be higher prices for their real estate due to that very perception of getting something for nothing. Another example might be increased costs or difficulties in buying insurance and obtaining warranties if the business thinks the holdouts' situation makes it more costly for them to replace an item or pay a claim. Free-riding of that passive nature will not be costless and cannot be continued indefinitely before something bad does happen and the owner is screwed.

Furthermore, no rational PDA/insurance/contractual/etc. protection agency is going to cover those who are not paying customers. If a holdout is burglarized or assaulted and attempts to file a claim with the dominant agency (or whichever he thinks will be the most likely to give him service), why would the agency give him a second glance once it was discovered he isn't a customer of theirs? I foresee PDAs doing things like giving their customers yard signs and window stickers to deter potential criminals, and those holdouts who fabricate their own may get by for a while...assuming the PDA doesn't send periodic inspectors around to check on its clients and places of significant neighborhood coverage. Free-riding of that fraudulent nature just isn't going to be a big problem.

And again, I say free riders are a MUCH larger problem under a government system since so many are screwed by taxes in order to provide for the defense of a few, everyone has individualized needs and they are obscured and warped by the blanket government coverage, and whole segments of society who don't contribute to government protection revenue get coverage.

Karl, it's been so long since we last had a chat! I'm glad to see you're posting our discussion in good faith ( http://www.livejournal.com/users/count_zeroor/101176.html ). You probably won't be happy to hear it, but my position has not changed since spoke; if anything, it's become more entrenched.

Zeroor, if you have any questions regarding the free market anarchist position, feel free to ask. It stands out in considerable contrast to the standard communist/socialist position, primarily due to it's full endorsement of private property. As such, I don't think what's happening in New Orleans qualifies as the anarchy I propose. The disaster down there is better described as lawless, respectless chaos. The anarcho-capitalist would tell you (before your object to the "lawless" bit!) that you do not need a government to have law and order. You do need a culture that respects the rights of others, and it is clear to me that culture did not exist enough in that city.

Then again, a snarkier person than I might also add that the very existence of government denotes a dilution of respect for individual rights in the first place. :)

Oh, this was a useful and education discussion for me. Unfortunately after the holiday break I got too busy to continue it. Not that either of us would change our minds, our premises are too far apart. But this is a good reference for comparing the positions.