- Zman Kietilipooskie
- Arvada, CO
- United States
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Government is/or soon will be outdated
Basically Government or soon will become more of an evil then it is a good. It is or soon will be become un-necessary due to the abilities of business. A governmental system can be removed with the only the judiciary system remaining. Government played a role in our lives when ethics and morality were still undefined as well a technology was still in its infancy. Now that communication has moved to the public and morality is common we have entered a new age.
edward long 100+
Zman Kietilipooskie
edward long 100+
pat gilbert 50+
Zman Kietilipooskie
edward long 100+
Zman Kietilipooskie
edward long 100+
pat gilbert 50+
You do understand that anarcho-capitalism is not anarchy?
I don't know if it is possible to achieve but Robert P. Murphy and Thomas Woods make a good argument for it. At the very least imo it should be a theoretical goal.
I might add that the reason for economics is to be able to predict (they call it Praxeology), which if nothing else is worth the price of admission as they are better at it than anyone else.
edward long 100+
I have no idea: who Robert P. Murphy, Mises, Menger, Rothbard. J.B. Turbot, Adam Smith, or Thomas Woods are; what Praxeology is; how repeated attempts to amend the constitution via legal and ethical means can be swept under the rug and forgotten; and finally, I have no idea what women want. More upon request. Case closed?
pat gilbert 50+
Fortunately Austrian economics is insanely easy to understand it is the antithesis of what Krisztian's buddy Krugman espouses. I would give it a look as it really does work.
edward long 100+
The only thing between us and ignorance is itemizing things we don't know? Ah yes, the old illusion of omniscience. By the way, I'm so old that it was the word "outdated" in the OP that attracted my deficit attention! Learn and enjoy!
John Smith 30+
Southern Somalia is an almost anarchist state with only a judiciary and competing "private sector" armies for hire, it's a veritable paradise, if genocide, hunger and abject poverty are your thing. Hunter-gatherer tribes are not and never have been anarchist: they had elected tribal councils.
"You do understand that anarcho-capitalism is not anarchy?"
Pat is right on this on: anarchism wants to abolish all authority, anarcho capitalism wants to preserve the authoritarian rules that benefit billionaires (like the right to form a limited liability corporation and transferable money) while doing away with such pesky rules that outlaw child labor and pollution.
Steven Meglitsch
I couldn't dissagree with you more. The fiscal debacles of the last decade must be proof enough of that. I know it often seems as though the representatives we elect and the governance they provide us are flawed, but in a democracy that is mostly because we allow them to be.
Your utopian idea that our lives would be better served by unfettered business than elected governent ... no way. I can't imagine any sillier principle for governance than profit. In fact, the worst aspect of the American system of government is that our elected representatives allow the interests of the rich to supercede the interests of people.
The Ayn Rand theory (yours, Zman) is that no government is the best government. Business, economy, health and welfare will regulate themselves by some magical principle I have never been able to grasp.
Now, let's look around the world and find a country that has virtually no government and see what it's like ... well, ... hmm ... In fact, I can't think of a single one in recent times. The last ungoverned societies must've been back in the paeleolithic era, before agriculture, before permanent settlement, when there were about a million people on Earth. That situation lasted for almost 100,000 years, and nothing much happened in terms of human development.
Ever since agriculture and permanent settlements took over as the human way of living, about 10,000 years ago, there has been government, some good, some bad. As the human population increased, local communities merged into larger and more compex societies and governance, too, gradually became larger and more complex. All of our modern day technologies, knowledge, wealth etc. have grown out of this progression.
From the million or so human beings that lived on Earth during the Paeleolithic we have now become seven billion. The thought that government will become obsolete as our societies and our lives get more and more complex is silly.
Krisztián Pintér 200+
Steven Meglitsch
But right from J:B:Turbot and Adam Smith in the 18th century there has been an economic fiction that capitalism in an unregulated free market will lead to a better world. Well it didn't during the Quin dynasty in China, it didn't in 18th century USA or Europe, and it won't today. A capitalist system is inherently geared at only one thing, maximizing profits by controlling the market, and that means sidestepping competition by any means.
Krisztián Pintér 200+
meanwhile i recalled that rand was not even an anarchist, she was also a minarchist. anyway, if you want to attribute a world view to someone, attribute it to thinkers, and not novelists / sorta-philosophers. if one wants to understand how can people operate without a state, one needs to read no rand, but rather the thinkers i have mentioned.
John Smith 30+
Unregulated capitalism as the answer to all problems is an idea from the 20th century. Ludwig Von Mises must have been a particularly heartless man since in 1900 there were still slums with abject poverty in them within walking distance from his prestigious Vienna University, a direct result of 19th century robber baron style unregulated capitalism. It's like someone who grew up in India defending the caste system.
Steven Meglitsch
Krisztián Pintér 200+
Steven Meglitsch
Krisztián Pintér 200+
John Smith 30+
But that won't be good enough for anarcho capitalists, they'll always say you haven't read enough if you don't agree with it, because they believe their theory is so perfect (make no mistake: they don't see it as the least worst system invented so far, as Adam Smith saw capitalism, but really as the flawless answer to every problem present and future, pretty much religious worship) that anyone who read it thoroughly must become hooked. It's also a debating tactic meant to make you give up, it's a bit like claiming that 1+1=5 and then saying that no one is qualified to comment on that until they've read your 863-page dissertation on why 1+1=5.
Steven Meglitsch
Krisztián Pintér 200+
and now we observe the downfall of democracies. look at greece, spain, the US. but in fact you can look around in the entire EU.
Gail . 50+
Thomas Jefferson said that it would lead to tyranny by oligarchy, and it has. (Oligarchy - government by a privileged few) As the new non-constitutional government was given all-powerful status, unless the Supreme Court intervened, government was quickly sold your rights and freedoms to the highest bidders, who would later be called the Robber Barons. The modern day Robber Barons (the military-industrial complex complete with its banksters) have become a plutocracy (government by the wealthy). As the plutocracy and the oligarchy are fast friends, we live under what is called a Plutarchy (a combination of the two).
Now to get back to your question. The USA government is already more of an evil than a good. (People from other countries can speak of their own governments)
You say that morality is common, but I suggest that you are not paying attention. IMmorality is common. Morality is nearly non-existent.
By the way, the judiciary is a form of government. It's a poor government, but a government.
Zman Kietilipooskie
Krisztián Pintér 200+
Zman Kietilipooskie
Krisztián Pintér 200+
pat gilbert 50+
Zman Kietilipooskie
And to prevent corruption we must consider the technological advantages of our world such as instant communication which give us new possibilities for control of government.
I don't want to discredit the constitution but in a new society we might need to create a new base for our world.
pat gilbert 50+
John Smith 30+
The judiciary IS a form of government and to make new laws or update old ones, as you'll have to do in a changing world (btw, many existing business concepts are arbitrary constructions: it is not self-evident that when you invest in a business you are not liable for that business or that credit default swaps don't constitute fraud, so who are you to decide current business concepts are perfect), you need a legislative branch of government. This is just besides the point that the most powerful businesses would effectively become an executive branch, one that the people don't get to vote for, you might as well sell cabinet positions to the highest bidder.
One way such a world could implode would go as follows: a bunch og big corporations pollute the environment twice as much as the environment can handle, the result will be that 80 years later the Earth will become uninhabitable, the corporations do have access to technology that could cut their pollution in half, but that costs them part of their current profit, no corporation is willing to implement the technology without all the others doing so as well, for fear of losing marketshare and profit, they also have little motivation to hold an industry conference where all the big corporations would agree to implement the technology simultaneously because a) 80 years from now all the shareholders and executives will be dead (if this causes even one corporation to not care then there can be no deal), b) the corporations don't trust each other enough and c) competitors could pop up and steal marketshare, this is where a complete government could have forced regulations, but since only a judiciary exists the Earth is doomed. Having an arbiter solves so many problems in game theory that we really can't do without one in real life.
Zman Kietilipooskie
Brining me to the Universality of ethics and morality, as we progress ethics does not change they simply become more specific, and being that ethics are almost universally agreed upon in many countries today the rule of law is obvious and simple; becoming more efficient due to the economical efficiency of the market, controlled by the public opinion. Then it comes down to the loopholes and flaws of funding and choices etcetera.
As you said the executive branch is funded by the people directly. So it is impossible for monopolies to exist when people could simply stop funding the government. The “business” is not based on any production besides Executive duties, and it is also easily replaced.
Similar to teachers the people of government will participate with minor wages as filtering the corrupt from the system. Then it goes down to the specifics of the government beginning economically efficient because it is competing in a market.
Voting on laws by the public could replace the legislative branch in our new age of technology. This is done with public popular speakers that are open to public scrutiny and are funded by public non-monetary support, and are similarly easily replacible. Then again the specifics of how they are controlled from corruption and that loops to the judicial systems observation over the public figures ethicality.