Hugo

You've telling me that morality is as subjective as a favourite colour. Would you therefore support an invasion to force a people to change their favourite colour? Had Wilson not intervened (without good cause, moreover) in WWI, there would have most likely been a negotiated peace between the belligerents, and Germany would not have suffered the humiliation of "war guilt" and of losing the war, or the suffering of reparations. Without that, the Nazis would have never been more than an extreme-fringe-lunatic party. Hindsight is always 20/20, but what I'm trying to get across to you is that fighting a war to end war or a war to make the world safe for democracy can easily have the exact opposite effect, and that violence generally breeds violence. What of Russia, Britain, Austria-Hungary, France, Serbia, etc? WWI can't be blamed on any one country. Without the USA, however, the outcome would clearly have been very different. But the only thing that sets you apart from civilians is combat. All the other stuff you are so keen to demonstrate that you do, civilians do as well. In Spring 1999, Canadian forces did intentionally bombed civilians and non-military targets in Yugoslavia, far away from Kosovo where the conflict was supposed to be going on. Here's an excerpt from the case the Yugoslavian government filed against Canada with the ICJ: I find your claim that Canadian soldiers are saintly and blameless for anything to be quite ridiculous. Canadians partook in WWII, and that was a war where no side was innocent of atrocity. Why don't you read up on the Waffen-SS before you start making absurd claims. It's an historical fact that these units were renowned for their extremely high morale, disregard for high casualties and dedication to the Fatherland. You don't even pretend to answer my question. In the Allied conquest of Europe, with NATO and the Warsaw Pact, the Marshall Plan and the Soviet equivalent, you cannot deny that the invasion of Europe was not purely motivated by freeing the nations from the Nazis but also to acquire (by force if necessary) allies and satellite states in the Cold War. Note too that Stalin had promised to withdraw from Poland, Czechoslovakia and indeed every country outside his 1939 borders in exchange for guarantees of neutrality. The fact that Britain and the USA rejected this proposal speaks to their motivations.

The source for information on India and South America is very readily available to you, Hugo. Just get your eyes adjusted to something other than the snow blindness of Iceland and look at the real world. All that in economic matters is there to be seen daily. I'll take that as a "no", then. Thanks for admitting you were wasting my time. I can now happily ignore you, knowing that my arguments are no weaker for so doing.

Try here. Scroll down to the point where he discusses pre-20th Century China. He actually makes the distinction between what you might call secondary deaths, from famine and other consequences of endemic warfare, and between actual executions. The 90-150m figure is executions. The much larger figures include deliberate famine and so forth. Again, I know I waste my time asking for a source - you never have one. Again, I know I waste my time asking for a source - you never have one. Ha ha ha! I remember when it once finally came to light that some of these "elementary history texts" of yours turned out to be, in fact, novels and works of fiction. I suppose we can assume the same here? Your "elementary texts" on Latin America are Desperado, El Mariachi, Once Upon a Time in Mexico - and if you want to get really intellectual, maybe Man on Fire? What's your source on India - the Jungle Book, and I mean the Walt Disney rather than the Rudyard Kipling version? Did Baloo the Bear give you your information, or was it perhaps Bagheera the Panther? Don't trust that Shere Khan, though, Eureka - he lies! What decline was that - the one that you repeatedly failed to prove in another thread and finally gave up when forced to admit that you were pitting novels against historical and economic texts and were getting nothing but disagreement from other posters? What's your point anyway, that when governments control less the economy goes into decline and standards of living drop? I suppose you contend that the USSR should have been a paradise of plenty and happiness compared to the relative poverty and misery in the USA, then? Go read Hans-Hermann Hoppe's work on time-preference. He makes a strong case that authoritarian government is more responsible and forward-thinking than democratic government. A democracy only has to worry about the next 8 years or so, after that, the country can go down the toilet for all they care. A king has to steward his country for his heirs.

I never said anything of the sort. There are a great many mechanisms and institutions for people to take collective action. The free market is, in fact, the greatest and most efficient method yet discovered for people to take collective action, but there are also companies, families, charities, churches, clubs, unions, etc. What I reject is the only collective institution that uses coercion and violence as its sole tools: government. Fine by me. The difference is that the Canadian State will react violently to anybody who attempts to compete with Canadian policemen, firemen and soldiers. If we can grant that contract, then that assumes "we" also own everything and everyone since you can't make an agreement over something that isn't yours. How does that work? Do I own one thirty-millionth of you? In which case, nobody could take any kind of action, because you would only own one-thirty-millionth of yourself and you'd need to take a referendum for approval to use the bathroom or blow your nose. You put the horse before the cart. You assume that the development of a merchant marine created a vast increase in production. Logically, this cannot be correct. A merchant marine is only created because of expanding production at home and increased demand overseas. If there had been no industrial revolution and no increased production, all those shipyards would have either made more military ships or fallen idle. You don't buy facilities and transportation for things you don't have, nor does possessing such facilities and transportation somehow create the things they are used for. Owning a truck does not create things to put in that truck, does it? I don't know if your strawmen are born out of deceit or ignorance. Never did I argue that these societies were anarchist. I argued that where the grip of government receded, as it did in Britain, America and Italy (which your sources do not dispute, I might add) great progress was made. Basically, you're arguing against a point I never made and wasting both our time. You need to read my posts more carefully before firing off badly-aimed broadsides. It wasn't inevitable in Iceland or Holy Experiment Pennsylvania. The whole idea of "inevitability" is that it's inescapable and there are no exceptions, like death. If there are exceptions, and there have been escapes, it's not inevitable, is it? For "good" you can invariably substitute "weak", "laissez-faire" or "minimal." For "bad" you can invariably substitute "strong", "interventionist" or "controlling." You also contradict yourself. First you say that less government is better, but then that government creates an environment for progress. If that were true, more government would have to be better since it could create more of a progressive environment. If less government is better - and you admit this at first in your post - at what point does this trend suddenly and inexplicably reverse itself, and beyond what point does less government become worse? And why?

Because they depend upon customers and shareholders. The dot-com bust proved that you can't keep making a loss forever. Enron proved that a mighty giant can be felled in a matter of hours on the free market. Basically, if a company is being inefficient or doing things that displease customers (or which are likely to produce inefficiency or displeasure in the future), stockholders will pull out and invest in competitors. This produces the double whammy of reduced capital which is reduced far more relative to the competition. A company in this situation doesn't stay competitive for long and, due to lack of investment, will produce higher-priced and worse-quality goods than its competitors, and consumers will desert it - assuming they haven't anyway because of their disgust at their practices. It isn't always the case that the most money will win out. Dell, for instance, recently closed cheaper call centres in India and re-opened American ones, because consumers were unhappy talking to Indians. They don't need arbitrary fines. In the case of Enron, once news broke of the corruption stockholders deserted them as fast as they could sell. The stock was in freefall and, by the time the government even read the news, Enron was doomed as a company. The executives and accountants involved were ruined and will never work in their fields again. All the employees have to endure at least temporary unemployment. I think it would be very hard to find a harsher punishment for a company than this. I reject the notion of copyright.

But you still cannot make a case as to why. Inefficiencies will occur in a market. It is inevitable because perfect information is impossible. However, the State will create far greater inefficiencies. As I have said, the State lacks the mechanisms to ascertain what value is actually placed on the things it auctions off. Its very seizure of these things creates an artificial scarcity that will push prices higher than they would have been in a free market. Therefore, it would actually be net-welfare-decreasing for the State to auction these things off. Consider, again, radio waves. State controls have restricted the bandwidth and channels available, which drives up prices for the remaining ones. This is an inefficiency: it effectively throws away useful resources. State leasing has resulted in great inefficiencies because companies must waste resources bidding, even if they don't win. State ownership has inevitably resulted in State control, and so companies like Fox News which may deliver what the public wants are shut out in favour of companies like the CBC, which don't. This is another inefficiency: providing a service nobody wants. It is also linked to the tendency for State enterprise to favour its friends over everybody else. You may argue that none of these State inefficiencies would be the way such State control would have to be, but that is the way it has gone and the empirical evidence goes against you. Marxist theory does not hold up in the face of Soviet reality. There's no reason to imagine that the State would auction anything that it could make more money by leasing. No, I mentioned the possibilities of bundling. You're ignoring me, for some reason. If condos are governments, then so are priests, teachers, corporate managers - heck, everyone is a government, because we all buy things and hire people and when we do so, we tell them what to do. So, basically, you believe that government is indispensible because every human being is a government. Not much of an argument, is it? You're wasting my time.

Then it follows that you don't lend any moral weight to either side, and to you, Allies and Axis were morally equivalent. A highly dubious assertion at best. There's plenty of evidence that the Allied governments knew about the Nazi mistreatment of Jews before 1939. Even if they weren't, the Jewish refugees could certainly have told them about it. I have to say that if Wilson had turned the other cheek in 1917, nobody would have been goose stepping anywhere, ever. Hindsight is of course 20/20, but when you wage war you unleash a terrible beast who will almost certainly turn on you at some point. But you, of course, arrogantly think that such a beast can be controlled and that the results of warmongering don't always have to be misery and death. Perhaps you can tell me how the Allies differed in fundamental principle from the Nazis, then. Once again: Group A invades all of Europe and imposes their will on it. Group B invades all of Europe, destroys Group A and imposes their will on it. Your answer just poses more questions. This does not address my point at all, and I'm just going to ignore it and hope that in your next post you will actually reply to what I have said. You mean the almost-3-million people in the government? Good for you. You're willing to defend their tyranny against the 28 million who have to suffer from it. You defend injustice, oppression and extortion. The worst of it is that you have deceived yourself into thinking you don't. You tirelessly shout slogans like a Chinese worker with his Little Red Book, singing the praises of brutes and tyrants, always ready to tell others how the robbers, the kidnappers and the murderers are doing it all for the good of their victims. That's like lining up nine men with guns and one with a baseball bat, and asking you who you'd like to fight. Again, pretend you're a Waffen SS soldier, and it all reads exactly the same.

Prof. R. J. Rummel, acknowledged by most as the definitive source on State-sanctioned murder.

Eureka, since you've basically ignored all my evidence and arguments so that you can continue to spout your preconceptions and prejudices I have no interest in discussing this with you. For more information on India, read this guy. He knows a lot more than you do. For Latin America, consult Michael Novak. I would express interest in your sources on US government (particularly the ones that claim government intervention in the economy was not, contrary to what economists say, responsible for the Great Depression and for prolonging it for ten years), but I know by now that you never have sources for anything you claim, so it's pointless. Oh, and democracy in India? The usual bribe to be given a voting card is 500 rupees. Don't make me laugh. Well, if we're going to play fast and loose with the definition of government you are going to end up in the same untenable position as Sweal and August. Not everything with authority is government. Iceland had "chieftains" too, which some ignorant people have claimed were government, but in actual fact there is nothing about them that we'd recognise as governmental. They were more service providers than anything else, like a gas or phone company. I have already told you that government by definition interferes with the private economy. We're trying to advance the discussion here, not reiterate the same things over and over again. You miss my point completely. For a long time, the North American government has been laissez-faire and minimal, and has taken very little interest in the private affairs of citizens and the economy. Compare this to Latin America, where governments have been very regulatory and very interventionist, and thus the correlation clearly is between less intrusive government and more peace and prosperity, and not vice-versa as you contend. Actually, an objective look at human history will show you that the greatest advances in human civilization happened precisely when government retreated and relaxed its controls: revolutionary America, industrial Britain, renaissance Italy etc. Societies with strong governments are invariably stagnant and stifle development - the USSR/Russia, China, etc. No, actually that was never your point. What you claimed was that China was able to resist foreign invasion because of government. It wasn't. It was able to assimilate foreign invaders because of culture. Take also the example of British desertion during the American revolution. The colonies were very libertarian and laissez-faire, government being absent from the lives of most people, and yet their culture of liberty, freedom and prosperity threatened to assimilate vast numbers of the soldiers sent to subdue them. Government does not generate culture. Private individuals do. Great literary and artistic works, for instance, are rarely (if ever) created by government institutions. I find it laughable that you would even suggest that China was "stable" with the countless wars, revolutions, rebellions and massacres that country has suffered. I don't know how you can keep a straight face when you call China "stable" and Somalia "ruled by warlords." You really draw your conclusions first and then find facts to fit them, don't you? More to the point, if you examine Chinese history you'll find that in the massacres and purges, the intellectuals and artists were invariably amongst the first to be killed. How did the Chinese State encourage culture by murdering the cultured?

If you don't know about Somalia, please don't try to talk intelligently about it. Blackhawk Down is not an accurate source for information. Why don't you read this link, which is an article written by Jim Davidson, VP and CFO of the Awdal Roads Company, who has lived and worked in Somalia? It doesn't matter. You never made that part of the question. Well, apart from all the violence in Jammu-Kashmir (which India claims is part of India), not to mention the terrible corruption which is now a virtual way of life, the complete paralysis of the government which is the only way the economy keeps going, the wanton violence and intimidation by police and other government agents, etc. I think you'll find that the most civilized, peaceful and prosperous parts of India are those where government is either uninterested (increasingly few) or has been bribed to get out of the way. I think you assume that both come from the same starting-point. This is not so. Africa has always been very culturally divided along tribal lines and has never been united on an inter-tribal scale. The divisions in Indian society are more horizontal (the caste system), but the subcontinent as a whole has been a fairly culturally homogenous area for a long, long time. The Mauryan Empire covered almost all of India in only 400-100 BC, whereas Africa has never been culturally united. Even the present-day nations that exist have only been around since the abandonment of the colonies, 60 years at the most. That's a lot less than 2100-2400 years! I think you would be better off comparing Latin America to North America. Both were colonized at about the same time, both began to achieve independence at about the same point (USA in 1789, Brazil in 1825, Mexico in 1820, Colombia in 1819, Nicaragua in 1821, Peru in 1824, Argentina in 1816 etc.), both had plentiful natural resources (Latin America actually has more natural resources, and has been involved in less destructive wars to boot), but Latin America has always had big, strong governments whereas North America has not (at one point the Massachusetts government actually dissolved due to lack of interest, and for a few decades after Independence, US government spending did not top 3% of GDP). North American society today is a lot wealthier, and a lot more stable and peaceful than Latin America. Clearly, government is not responsible for this, in fact, the evidence strongly corrolates to a lack of government. Iraq had very strong government institutions, so what are you talking about? The government in Iraq controlled everything. The Americans are trying to use some of those institutions. Again, you are woefully uninformed. Do some research on the Danish Jews and on the Otkazniks, please. I won't tell you about them because I'm growing tired of having to do your research for you. You should take the time to find out facts before you try and make arguments based on them! Read it again. Between 3 and 5 times the population of Canada, in China, was put to death in cold blood - execution - by their governments, having committed no crime. This is quite apart from casualties of war and famine. This is people being marched out by the police or army into the village square and beheaded. It's pretty much a Chinese tradition for the government to slaughter the people. But I thought the whole point was that governments protect us from the violence of invasion? Does it really matter if you get beheaded by an agent of your own government, or somebody else's? To me, the "protection" the Chinese government has offered from foreign invaders is laughable given that the Chinese people faced a far, far greater threat from their own government than any invader could threaten. Besides, your very point assumes something ridiculous. China was able to assimilate and Sinofy the Mongol invaders because they were a highly cultured, urbane, and civilized people with lots of creature comforts, art, etc. and to a Mongol used to living in a yurt and living off yaks that probably sounded great. You assume, however, that the Chinese government created all of this culture and civilization. Quite apart from the speciousness of that point, if it was true, why did it not collapse once the Mongols became the government? I put it to you that this culture was created by the Chinese people themselves quite independently (in fact, in spite of) the government who, it seems, tried quite hard on many occasions to slaughter the Chinese people, scholars, artists, and everyone else who created all of this.

No. Just as a grant of monopoly generally leads to stagnation and price-gouging, so a monopoly on violence leads to extortion. Consider how many laws there are on the books today that really punish no transgressions nor avenge any victims, but just serve as glorified shake-downs for the State: motorcycle helmet laws, speeding/drunk driving laws, drug laws, zoning laws, minimum wages, labour regulations, trade protectionism etc. In all of these cases there's no victim and no rights-violation. Well, don't let me stop you making them. But without seeing them I have no more reason to believe they exist than I have reason to believe a large pink elephant is standing behind me.

It's a PDF document. Sorry, I should have stated that when I posted it. If you follow this link and just search the page for "Celtic" you should be able to find the same document. Well, I suppose the argument is that an anarchist society can solve any problem that government is purported to solve, and as government is inherently violent, surely it would be better to do without government if we could - which, apparently, we can? This is true, however, it can offer insights into how a truly anarchist society might solve various problems by examining societies which have solved those problems by market rather than political means, albeit still having a recognisable government.

Not yet. Somalia still exists. Anyway, the fact is that all States will eventually collapse and die, and if you compare the length of existence of anarchist societies to State ones you will find that anarchist societies beat out most of the States. No, it isn't. Switzerland, for instance, hasn't been invaded in a long time because of geographic location. Russia has not been successfully invaded (ever, I think) because of the difficulty that the severe climate poses to military campaigning and supply lines. Japan was not invaded until 1945 because of freak weather conditions. Your point is dead wrong. This is especially visible when you consider that most conquering nations will simply take over and use existing governmental structures in conquered territories. The British in India used Indian princes as their mechanism for government. The Romans did much the same in their empire, as did the Mongols, the Nazis and so forth. If an organized military fails, a nation-state with a government has no more lines of defence against an invader. On the other hand, anarchist societies pose a serious problem for an invader. Assuming that the feat of arms is successful, one has no existing government to take over and must build one from the ground up in the face of a hostile populace unused to taking orders and to authority. In the anarchist society, also, the population themselves is the army, and an invader can look forward to a very long period of guerrilla resistance. The British in Ireland, the Nazis in Yugoslavia and the USA in Iraq or Vietnam (amongst many others) could all tell you that a long-drawn-out and determined guerrilla resistance is a most undigestible mouthfull. On the other hand, China is also a country where the various Chinese States have exterminated vast numbers of Chinese people. In between the Han and Qin dynasties (about two hundred years before Christ), half the Chinese population was killed. Between the Han dynasty and the Three Kingdom period, 85% of the Chinese population was killed. Between the Sui and the Tang dynasties, two-thirds of the population was killed. Between the Song and the Qing dynasties, the population was again culled by about 85%. Between 1626 and 1655, the population was again cut by about 70%. These are just a few of the more notable examples. In 1681, almost the entire province of Kwangtung was executed after a rebellion. The Teiping rebellion in the 19th Century may have cost up to 40 million lives. During the Nein rebellion, 70% of the province of Anhwei was killed. This isn't even counting the slaughters committed under Mao Zedong. Your contention that China has somehow survived against violence and that Chinese governments have protected their society from violence would be funny if it were not for the fact that somewhere between three and five times the modern population of Canada had been murdered in cold blood by various Chinese "governments". I'm not saying you're hard-hearted or indifferent to slaughter, just that you're ignorant.

So, Thelonius, essentially you contend that we need a government because it is somehow the right of men to live at something "other than a subsistence-farming hermit with a nuclear arsenal" level, but then tell me that all rights are just opinions, and that is just your opinion. I ask who died and made you God, so that your opinion is the correct one and needs to be forced on others by violent means? If this were not the case you should really have no objection to the nuclear-hermit state of affairs, because you've told me that your opinions are really no more substantial than your favourite colour. I like the colour blue, however, if you like red I'm not advocating forming a government to ensure that everyone chooses blue. Who says it is a waste? You may, but those who 'waste' such resources do not feel it is a waste, and it is their effort and capital going in, so, who made you overlord of their labour and possessions? So what? Why is this bad? If these transmitters are too costly to justify against the probable return then they won't be built anymore. If they are built, then that means the probable return is worth the investment and risk, therefore, there's no inefficiency here. Firstly, because there is nothing to indicate that this bidding process will not cost the winning bidder any less than it would have cost him to build a costly transmitter. Secondly, because the State being what it is, it's most likely that it would just sell the wavelength to its sycophants. Think CRTC and Fox News. I'm getting very annoyed with this. Don't just postulate wild ideas and expect me to accept them. Prove it, make an argument, cite an example, but don't tell me we could feed the world if we mined all the cheese out of the moon. There isn't any cheese in the moon! In future, if you put up any wild and unsubstantiated gross assumptions I will simply ignore them. It isn't worth my time constructing a rebuttal to what is effectively a non-argument. I told you how these problems could be resolved. I'd appreciate it if you'd review and reply to that answer. What if the general interest is incompatible with minority rights, liberty, etc? What if the majority support a government that exterminates Jews (and, as Murray Rothbard noted, all governments need majority support, even if it's just grudging resignation)? The trouble is that once government intervenes in the economy it becomes a player in the economy. Even providing a legal framework is a service and is an intervention. The trouble is that the government is the only player allowed to use violence, and as such will distort and even shut down markets in order to favour itself. Consider that if you dare compete with Canada Post you are a criminal.

So, you are claiming that a society with a government has never been invaded and conquered, then? To claim that we need a government is to claim that government supplies a necessary something that anarchy cannot. And if you are claiming that that something is invulnerability to war, invasion and conquest, clearly, you are very, very wrong. This is a link on the Irish/Celtic anarchist society. Celtic anarchism was more anarcho-syndicalist or communist than anarcho-capitalist, the latter system is better illustrated by Iceland. You can find more examples here.

What actually makes those inefficiencies is the lack of a price mechanism. Government enterprises funded from tax dollars cannot see how much people are buying at a given price because the "price" they see is $0 (like healthcare). Therefore, they cannot ascertain how much people actually value what is provided and supply is not matched to demand. Inefficiency results in either overproduction or underproduction. Healthcare currently suffers from severe underproduction, which produces shortages and queueing. Some Soviet industries suffered from overproduction, factories producing goods that would never be consumed. In either case the outcome is not the best possible allocation of resources. Waste is occurring. In enterprises where the government charges on a per-useage basis rather than from tax funds (e.g. Canada Post), the problem is that since government has a monopoly on the service (it's a criminal offence to deliver a letter in Canada unless you work for Canada Post), customers are forced to consume at the price the government sets, and again, government does not know how much consumers truly value the service because the price is not allowed to change in accordance with demand, which means, again, supply is not matched to demand. There is also no incentive to make the enterprise more efficient, explore new technology, or anything else which is why, unlike pretty much all other consumer goods and services, the price of postage hasn't really dropped in the last 50 years. Monopoly status means you can charge what you like since the only alternative is nonconsumption. How? Gross assumptions again. I hear far too many fictitious scenarios and lofty goals without the slightest grounding in reality coming from statists. Get your head out of the clouds and stop wishing that government could actually do something efficiently. It never has and never will. It ended with the English invasion. All anarchist societies have been destroyed by foreign invasion.

Then why do you contradict yourself? Why don't you believe your own ideology? As I've said before, if you can't take yourself seriously why should I? In short, yes. You can't just say something is yours and hey presto, it is. Do some more research on the concept of homesteading, please.

What actually defies credence is setting up an institution capable of indulging the worst excesses in human nature and imagining that this institution will protect us against those excesses.

Since you had not heard of them before I mentioned them, I wouldn't be too hasty in comparing them to contemporary nation-state societies if I were you. Actually, the best way to make money is through mass-marketing, not niche-marketing. A police company would want to provide the best service to the masses rather than the elite, because there's more money in the former. A thread in which this was proven can be found here. The USSR was a living proof that government-run enterprise is all-around worse than private enterprise at providing goods and services, in quality, quantity and price. Government-run industries are just little pockets of Soviet culture. Good - so you admit your proposition that government is useful for providing services and performing research is weak? Then they would have formed a government. Historian Franz Oppenheimer has found that this is, in fact, invariably the way governments are formed: one group conquers another and entrenches themselves as an elite to rule over the conquered. Right, now I can't do anything about these people because they're called politicians, judges and policemen. At least under anarchy I would have some kind of defence, and I might have a private police force to protect me. Right now, there's really nothing I can do to stop the privations of the government. That doesn't even make sense. How does one group having the power to commit violence free everyone from violence? If I alone have the power to fart in an elevator, does that free everyone else in the elevator from having to smell it? At the time they existed, no nation-state with a government could boast of doing anything better. What anarchist societies could boast, however, was that rulers would not go on murderous rampages and pogroms amongst their people, nor would they levy peasants to form armies and go fight their petty squabbles with other nobles. Again, completely ignorant of historical fact like anarchist Ireland, which existed as a very harmonious and rich society (economically and culturally the richest in Europe) for a thousand years without breaking down at all. Compare to the USA, whose "wise" government caused society to break down in 85 years, or Russia, whose society had broken down twice in the 20th Century alone (three times if you count the provisional government) despite being run at all times by a strong and authoritarian State, etc.

Assuming that everyone owns the pillar of atmosphere above their house. How far up does it go? Into the stratosphere? Into geostationary orbit? Is the placement of satellites a violation of the property rights of a homeowner directly below? Do you seriously think a private court would entertain such claims of rights-violations without some express entitlement, by which I mean e.g. the ownership of an air corridor by one airline that was being used by another airline without the former's consent? Think of it as pollution. One anarcho-capitalist thinker defined pollution as the transmission of harmful matter or waves to the property of another without consent. If the flight path is so low that it is causing a harmful effect to the homeowner, he should be able to sue and rightly so. On the other hand, an aircraft passing overhead at about 35,000 feet (the cruising height of most airlines) does not pose reasonable harm to anybody and a lawsuit against it is unlikely to be entertained. In any case, since the atmosphere is currently unowned we are looking at homesteading to establish ownership and it is likely that airlines rather than homeowners would do the homesteading. The homeowner is likely to be defined as owning his house and the land on which it stands, and rather than extend his property into orbit it's much easier to require that whoever owns the land and atmosphere around and over him not violate his property rights in his house and land. As this is the most likely solution by far, I think your notion that homeowners would own a column of atmosphere possibly hundreds of kilometers high and your objection to the problems this would pose is, in fact, a strawman. What's "collective"? There's nothing that we actually all share equally, therefore, when you talk of collective solutions what you really mean is solutions that benefit some individuals more than other individuals - which puts a very different spin on things. This is why you have satellite decoder cards and advertising. Think of a problem and I guarantee you that some smart entrepreneur, in a free market, will solve it. It's an arrogant fallacy to think that if you can't think of a solution that means there is no solution. It's a very similar fallacy to believe that a few dozen bureaucrats would come up with a better solution than the 30 million minds in Canada or the 6 billion minds in the world. What cases? Again, a vast assumption of something by no means proven. What of the third solution? Why is granting exclusive ownership to one institution forever and in all eternity a good idea? Think of media control in the USSR. What was intended to be for the good of the people ended up being for the good of Communist Party apparatchiks, much as the CBC has become a tool of the Liberal Party.

Here is the link, and here is an extract: Assuming that the people on the ground also automatically own the airspace above them. It might not be so. Airplanes can also find alternative routes. Airlines might also bundle their flight patterns, buy the property along their routes and then sell it again with the clause that their aircraft will be allowed to fly over it in perpetuity. Then you said: To which I replied: You didn't seem to have a further reply. Quite simply, there's a whole herd of erroneous assumptions in your argument. Firstly, you assume that some kind of evil could arise through full property rights. That is not established. Then, you assume that government is able to correctly divine the "greater good" and so override property rights in the event that said rights were not producing an optimal outcome. This is not established either. And thirdly, but definitely not in the least, there is your assumption that there is some objective standard of good, achievement or benefit that government can work towards on our behalf. Before you can establish these things I see no point continuing with an argument based on unproven premises. Or should we talk about what we could use the moon for if it were made of cheese? But you've already told me that you don't believe there is any point or substance to safety of interaction and that the law of the jungle, the strong dominating the weak, is the only reality of life. So what is the point of this self-contradictory gambit?

Anarchist societies have been historical facts. Anarchist Ireland survived for about a millenium, anarchist Iceland for a few centuries. Both were destroyed not by internal strife but by foreign invasion - a fate that has befallen a great many nation-states and is not a particular vulnerability of anarchism. I would say that it is statism that fails to take into account human nature. Government grants arbitrary power, and those attracted to government will therefore be those with a lust and desire for such power, which generally does not accompany such graces as compassion, tolerance and so forth. This is why all governments grow in size and in power and allow progressively less freedoms and liberties than before. This is also why all socialist/communist regimes end up as tyrannical dictatorships. The minarchist, libertarian USA corrupted itself to become the bloated, power-hungry Leviathan it is today. Canada was much the same: a State that was often thought to be more libertarian than its southern neighbour is now a distinctly socialist big-government country. There was a recent thread on policing in which I argued that private police forces were more effective and more efficient than State ones. There is no need for government to provide either law and justice or policing. Ha! What cloud-cuckoo land do you live in? The road system works effectively? Every major city suffers gridlock at least twice daily, not to mention the two-dozen potholes I dodge on my way to work every morning (and it has been three years now since my city government promised "immediate action" on potholes). The garbage system is effective? Where you in Toronto last summer (or was it the one before)? And if you think that the water and sewerage systems are effective, tell that to the citizens of Walkerton. No, the original concept (TCP/IP) was designed by DARPA. The overwhelming majority of what you understand to be the Internet is the product of free enterprise. You will find that with most things that have had a huge impact on human life, mass production, the steam and internal combustion engines, the telegraph and telephone, the internet, railroads, radio, heavier-than-air aircraft, etc. that the bulk of the work is done by free market forces. Where government gets involved it is generally a hindrance - laws against greater efficiency, laws against new technology, laws that outlaw jobs, etc. The only reason why an offender has somewhere else to go now is because of government-created public space. If there were no public space and everything was privately owned, ostracism would be effective. The only way a monopoly can do that is if it is guaranteed a monopoly (potential competition being as effective as actual competition), which means violence and coercion, and the only institutions that do or ever have exerted a monopoly by violence have been governments and organized crime (the latter with far less success).

Can you name me a democratic government that actually had the support of the majority of the people? Even FDR's greatest electoral victory netted him the vote of about 21% of the populace. It's the case that democratic governments still serve a minority, albeit a larger one than that served by autocracies. Even what you claim were true, since when does a majority automatically make the right and ethical decisions? What about when the majority of Americans believed that blacks should be enslaved to them? Did that make it right? If we accept that the majority is still fallible, why does that make government by the majority a good idea? I fully realise that you aren't contending any of these things, I'm just curious to hear your views, because you explain something about democratic governments but not about the morality behind them.

What cases are these? I would like to hear them. It is your habit to assume that there are some areas where government intervention is essential, without ever stating what those areas are or how the intervention is necessary. I will say that the primary mechanism by which anarcho-capitalism operates is the non-aggression principle. Other ones are possible but the NAP is the only one which is logically defensible, all others rely on a double-standard or self-contradiction. Of course, this is not to say that people have not embraced nonsense theories in the past, however, truth is on the side of the Rothbardian definition of rights. I've already been over this a few times now in the "Hugo's Defence of Anarchy" thread and the "Tyranny vs. Freedom" thread, so I'm not going to repeat myself - interested parties can review those threads.

That's not true. The Law Merchant operated by ostracism. Think of it this way: if you gain a reputation as a liar and a cheat, nobody will deal with you or sell you anything. Your life will be pretty miserable. You'd better hope you own some land and are happy with subsistence farming. A modern example is credit ratings. You can bilk your creditors, but word gets around and your reputation is tarnished. With a bad credit rating, you'll find it impossible to get a house either with a mortgage or by renting, to buy a car unless you pay cash, to get a decent job, to have any services like cable TV or a telephone line, etc. Therefore, it's in your interests to honour your contracts. The power of government can be used against you in this instance, but most collection agencies and creditors will actually settle in private courts these days. The power of ostracism is very great, but noncoercive. Is it better to grant one Mafia don a monopoly? That's effectively what government is. But it is not a mistake to say that markets do not need government because some markets exist without government. There are very few free markets in Africa. Most goods and trade are controlled and monopolised by coercive thugs. Actually, China and India are quickly liberalising their societies and releasing vast swathes of life from governmental control. The USSR was unwilling to do this and ceased to be a functioning society. Ironically, in India and China the society functions best where government is either uninterested in the proceedings or where government can be bribed to get out of the way. Those areas of life where the State remains highly interventionist are the most stagnant and regressive parts of the society.