[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.

[ricardobeat]

Organized crime, drug dealers, etc. often kill people for small offenses, "honor" crimes, ratting out, snooping or just for fun. Haven't you seen any mafia/yakuza movies? Real life is much, much worse.

[baddox]

Drug dealers in the form you're talking about can only exist when there is drug prohibition, and it's highly unlikely that a society based on polycentric law would prohibit drugs. The economics of a lot of organized crime also can be explained government.

[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.

[clavalle]

>A document empirically does not have authority over government

No, but people agreeing to the tenants of the document do. This would be no different in your proposal only there will be exponentially more documents (agreements) to keep track of.

> and voting is not a realistic way to keep government accountable to the people.

Voting is not the only way to keep government accountable (legal action being another -- revolution or threat of revolution being yet another, civil disobedience etc, etc.), but as far as a basic way to make sure government will reflects the governed's will, voting does a decent job. The evidence for this is that more extreme and direct action is relatively rare...at least in the West.

>An individual simply has no recourse to everyday government injustices (like taxation or prosecution for drug possession).

Taxation is an injustice? How so? I don't find it to be unjust. I get a lot of value, personally, from the taxes I pay. And drug possession? I personally don't feel that drugs should be considered contraband but many people have. Those laws are changing, however, through voting no less, as public opinion shifts.

>If you insist that government represents the people, fine, but it's still tyranny of the majority/plurality.

I live in the United States. It is a Republic. This means that while most laws flow from the majority and everyone must live under those laws the rights of minorities are protected. Thus tyranny is held in check. Also, minority and majority are fluid terms. They are not so much tied to an individual as a gross bloc, but to individual opinions held by those individuals regarding the laws, rules and regulations under consideration. The same person will find themselves in the majority on some issues and the minority in others. In short, individuals often don't find their will wholly repressed by the rules of the majority. Also, the rules tend to be slow to change and cannot be applied arbitrarily. This is opposed to a tyranny where the rule is absolute, arbitrarily applied and make no room for unassailable rights.

[baddox]

> Taxation is an injustice? How so? I don't find it to be unjust. I get a lot of value, personally, from the taxes I pay.

Then pay the government voluntarily. I would have no problem with that. The problem is with taking people money when they aren't okay with it. I consider threatening someone with violence unless they pay you money to be unjust, which I don't think is that bizarre of an opinion.

> I personally don't feel that drugs should be considered contraband but many people have.

The error you're making is trying to represent government action as something voluntary or up to personal opinion. Just like with taxation, you say that you don't consider drugs contraband, but many people do. That would be fine if it was left at that. The problem is that the group people who do consider drugs to be contraband have implemented a vast organized system of violence against the other group. I don't have a problem with the difference in opinion. The problem is with the violence.

> I live in the United States. It is a Republic. This means that while most laws flow from the majority and everyone must live under those laws the rights of minorities are protected. Thus tyranny is held in check.

Did you go to public schools in the USA? I did, and I was repeatedly taught that as well. Later, when I actually looked into it myself, I realized it's simply not true. The USA government was founded in an attempt to create one of the smallest centralized governments in history, and in a relatively short period of time it has grown into one of the largest centralized governments in history. Just because a legal document, your school, and you yourself say that rights are protected doesn't mean they are.

> The same person will find themselves in the majority on some issues and the minority in others. In short, individuals often don't find their will wholly repressed by the rules of the majority.

Sure, no one is "wholly repressed," but that's a pretty low bar. I would prefer that no one be violently oppressed by the majority at all.

> This is opposed to a tyranny where the rule is absolute, arbitrarily applied and make no room for unassailable rights.

Have you followed the legislation, ongoing attempted legislation, and executive action regarding the "war on terror" in the past decade or so? American citizens have been assassinated in drone strikes without any pretense of legality. Alleged criminals or "terrorists" have been tortured and detained indefinitely without being charged. Prominent political leaders have explicitly said that the rule of law does not apply to people who are considered by the government to be a threat to the government.

[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.