[baddox]

> What can private insurance do for me if I am killed?

What can anything do for you if you are killed? I don't understand the relevance. You could still have private life insurance to provide for your family, but that's no different than today.

> What if I can't afford private insurance?

What if you can't afford the fees associated with litigation in the government court system? I never claimed that my suggestion would suddenly make everything fine for poor people. It's always going to be worse to have less wealth, just like it is in our current society.

> Seems like decrying a 'monopoly of violence' and replacing it with a 'vibrant violence marketplace' is quite a few steps in the wrong direction.

I don't understand how. Neither system is a utopia, but a competitive system motivated by profit would probably be cheaper (because customers like lower prices) and less violent (because violence is expensive and risky) than a government monopoly.

[sophacles]

The only reason violence is currently risky is because the government will put forth a lot of resources (more than most businesses or individuals could afford or consider prudent) to stop violence or at least punish the perpetrators. In your system, there is no reason for me not to kill someone in a slightly sneaky manner - basically as long as it can't easily be pinned on me, there is no repercussion. No one will track me down. I can just come by and kill you whenever. Oh wait, you'd pay for security. Then the security companies would start enforcing rules in their zones (remember property doesn't exist without someone there to enforce the property). Those security guys could take over the zone next door. Oh and prevent people from living. Repeat for larger and larger groups. Suddenly we have government of the feudal or warlard kind all over again. Crap.

[baddox]

That's simply not true. Fear of government involvement is not the only thing that makes violence risky. The fact that people can and often do defend themselves is what makes violence risky. Try breaking into an American farm house in the middle of nowhere if you don't believe me.

> Then the security companies would start enforcing rules in their zones (remember property doesn't exist without someone there to enforce the property). Those security guys could take over the zone next door. Oh and prevent people from living. Repeat for larger and larger groups. Suddenly we have government of the feudal or warlard kind all over again.

There are so many leaps there that need justification.

[clavalle]

>What can anything do for you if you are killed? I don't understand the relevance.

What is to keep someone from killing me to get their way? Private insurance? Are they going to go to war for me after I'm dead?

>What if you can't afford the fees associated with litigation in the government court system?

Well, if the conflict 'resolution' involves the other party resorting to violence or theft, I can turn the matter over to the into the State whether I can pay for it or not. There are hard limits placed on how far the other party can go in getting what they want.

>violence is expensive

I don't see how violence is expensive. Violence is cheap. Bullets don't cost much. Rocks are even cheaper.

In fact, violence can be very profitable. Got $10 in your pocket? Just paid for my bullet and then some. Got a $30,000 car? Well now, that should pay for a few rounds.

What you propose is a fantasy, pure and simple. And not even a very plausible one.

[baddox]

> What is to keep someone from killing me to get their way? Private insurance? Are they going to go to war for me after I'm dead?

Yes, that's the idea, although "going to war" is hyperbolic. Private insurance would be strongly incentivized to seek out and punish murderers, assuming of course that potential customers would find that service valuable. The leap from the government's monopoly on violence to a competitive alternative is no more drastic or complex than the leap from the government's monopoly on postal service to a competitive alternative. Features that customers valued would almost certainly abound, and ones they didn't care about or like would be less common. The key difference is that the competitive systems get their revenue from willing payers, while the government coerces money from every single employer.

> I don't see how violence is expensive. Violence is cheap. Bullets don't cost much. Rocks are even cheaper.

I don't mean the cost of weaponry. I mean that you have to pay thugs well, mostly because of the inherent risk I mentioned earlier. There is also risk of massive retaliation which can end up causing a lot of damage to humans and property.

> In fact, violence can be very profitable.

It can be, sure, but it's extremely expensive and extremely risky. That was my point.

[clavalle]

>I don't mean the cost of weaponry. I mean that you have to pay thugs well, mostly because of the inherent risk I mentioned earlier. There is also risk of massive retaliation which can end up causing a lot of damage to humans and property.

If that were true people wouldn't be killed over pocket change today.

It seems to me that your position is only maintainable if you take many questionable assumptions as a given -- here are a couple:

-People are rational actors. -People will operate in an environment with good enough information available to make good decisions. (This would be tough to begin with but with overlapping rules in place this could really be a crippling burden in your purely market driven world.)

Keeping just those two assumptions intact seems...improbable.

[baddox]

> If that were true people wouldn't be killed over pocket change today.

There is no organization of individuals which routinely kill people over pocket change, is there? Obviously, single individuals can and do commit nearly any physical act you can conceive of. That doesn't mean that all acts are affordable to deploy on a massive scale, especially when you're worried about earning a profit.

I chuckled at your assumptions, because they apply equally (or I might argue, more so) to a challenge of the desirability of government. Remember, what we call "government" is really just a bunch of people that society recognizes as the sole legitimate purveyors of violence—that's the only difference. The only change I'm proposing is for society to recognize no individuals as the sole legitimate purveyors of violence, rather than a select few. The fact that people irrational and ignorant is all the more reason to not allow any of them to become the sole legitimate purveyors of violence.

[ricardobeat]

> There is no organization of individuals which routinely kill people over pocket change, is there?

Yes, there are. Frequently over nothing at all.

[baddox]

Please explain. The government is the only one I can think of.

[clavalle]

>Remember, what we call "government" is really just a bunch of people that society recognizes as the sole legitimate purveyors of violence—that's the only difference.

Wrong. They are a group of people acting within a common framework of rules. These rules constrain their behavior, especially violent behavior. Part of this framework works to ensure no one person, small group or even large sub-group can act independently of these rules.

>The only change I'm proposing is for society to recognize no individuals as the sole legitimate purveyors of violence, rather than a select few.

This opens violent action to anyone who cares to engage in such behavior by whatever rules they see fit.

>The fact that people irrational and ignorant is all the more reason to not allow any of them to become the sole legitimate purveyors of violence.

I disagree. I think this is a fine argument for having a common set of rules for violent action agreed upon and enforced by as many people as possible. The irrational and ignorant will be held in check according to the common rules by everyone else with that responsibility.

[baddox]

I would argue that your characterization of government is the promise of utopia that critics of anarchy (I use that term very broadly to simply mean lack of a state) always claim the anarchists are proposing. It is simply not reflected in reality. A document empirically does not have authority over government, and voting is not a realistic way to keep government accountable to the people. An individual simply has no recourse to everyday government injustices (like taxation or prosecution for drug possession). If you insist that government represents the people, fine, but it's still tyranny of the majority/plurality. If the government doesn't represent the people, then it's government tyranny.

[rprasad]

> In fact, violence can be very profitable.

It can be, sure, but it's extremely expensive and extremely risky. That was my point.

Violence is only risky because government makes it risky to commit violence.

Reality does not bear out your claims that turning everything over to private parties would magically solve the violence problem. In fact, places like Somalia and every conflict in Africa and the Middle East are strong evidence that violence would increase tenfold without a strong government. In contrast, the places with the lowest levels of violence are frequently places like Singapore or Europe with the highest levels of government.

[baddox]

> Violence is only risky because government makes it risky to commit violence.

Not true. Government law enforcement obviously contributes, but the tendency for people to defend themselves (and for third parties to intervene against perceived injustice) is the primary source of risk.

> In fact, places like Somalia and every conflict in Africa and the Middle East are strong evidence that violence would increase tenfold without a strong government.

I'm glad someone finally mentioned Somalia. Unfortunately, your beliefs are incorrect, and are in fact the opposite of the truth. See http://rkba.org/libertarian/maccallum/MacCallum-Somalia98.ht... and http://www.peterleeson.com/Better_Off_Stateless.pdf .

[rbarooah]

Those are interesting pieces, and I feel as though my time was well spent reading them.

I can't see what they have to do with this argument though. The first one is basically a speculative essay with little to support its ideas, interesting though they are.

The second one is more rigorous, but it seems to me that it works against your argument.

It contends that Law and Order is provided by Xeer, Somali customary law, which is a tribal artifact that has developed over centuries, and depends on people being recognized as having loyalty to a tribe because it makes the tribe responsible for harms done its by members to other tribes. Thew piece also states that although private courts exist (funded by successful businessmen), Shari'a courts perform an instrumental function in creating legal order.

Both pieces also state that the Somali central state, when it existed, was weak, rampantly corrupt and never successfully displaced these tribal and religious institutions.

All this really seems to be saying is that, just like everywhere else before the emergence of the nation state, Somalia was governed by tribal law and religion. In the case of Somalia, a functioning nation state never really emerged, and so it fell back to tribal law and religion.

This turns out not to be as bad as the failing central state, or the horror stories portrayed by the mainstream media, but although falling back to tribalism and religion might not be as bad as the media portrays, it hardly seems like a model for how to improve on what we have.