This is why a free society is evil. (fwd)

[Ray Dillinger]

On Sun, 17 Dec 2000, Jim Choate wrote:

<Lots of stuff, which I'm snipping...>

>> I have long felt that we could comfortably shrink government 
>> if open markets were established to help settle such conflicts. 
>
>Open markets don't settle conflicts, they barter goods. 

And most conflicts are over goods, if you think about them 
that way.  The tree is property, which encroaches into the 
volume near a neighbor's house.  Conflict arises because it 
was never spelled out in the first place who owned that 
volume.  If it had been, the choices are simpler and less 
ambiguous: get out of it, buy it, sell it, or charge rent 
on it.

The factory is property, which encroaches into air quality. 
Conflicts arise because it was never spelled out in the 
first place who owned the right to what quality of air.
The factory owner shouldn't be looking at legislation, per 
se; instead he should have to buy pollution rights on the 
local market, competing against other factory owners for 
the relatively small amount of contamination people have 
agreed to sell.

Et cetera. All of this assumes that there is some means 
of transfer pricing stuff, some means of enforcing contracts, 
and a defined, extensive, set of property rights. 

>> That's if you're civic minded, I suppose.
>
>You suppose? So even you're not sure if it will work or not? Is that
>correct?

Total anarchy?  Hell no, it won't work.  Whatever gave you the 
idea that I thought it would?  What I've been talking about is 
minimal government.  The interesting question, to me, is what is 
the SMALLEST amount of government interference required to build 
a functional society?  

I believe that sufficient government to enforce property rights 
and freely entered contracts is absolutely required.  That is not 
a total anarchy, and I do not want to live in a total anarchy.  
It is however, a minimum possible government -- and looks a lot 
like what most so-called 'anarchists' mean when they're talking 
about anarchy.

I also believe that this "minimum possible government" would not
in general build as successful a society as a government that 
appropriated enough power to make sure that education were 
available to everybody, and that there was a communication and 
transportation infrastructure that everybody could use, and which 
ruthlessly busted monopolies (whether on goods or on labor) into 
small competing fragments.


>Why would an anarchist accept 3rd party arbitration? 

To avoid death.

>How is this any
>different than 'government'? 

It's different because it's chosen.  If the guy doesn't want to 
go to an arbitrator, he can choose to go to war with his neighbor, 
and run the risk of getting killed, either by his neighbor or by 
his neighbors' friend or family.  In a society with laws and courts, 
you generally don't have a choice about that.

>If the arbitration doesn't conform to some
>sort of principle and standards then it's arbitrary and nobody with half a
>click of a clue will agree to arbitration with no principles or standards
>available. Anarchy was meant to prevent just this sort of situation.

Huh?  Anarchy *is* the absence of standards(laws) as far as I 
know.  Arbitration or dispute settlement of some kind has to 
happen regardless of whether there are standards.  So, in an 
anarchy, dispute settlement has to happen in an unprincipled 
way because there are no standards available. 

Anarchy doesn't prevent this; it directly causes it!  Your point 
about only idiots going voluntarily into an arbitration not bound 
by laws is valid, of course, but A, the alternative is probably a 
shooting war that they are trying to avoid, and B, if we are talking 
about people who have apparently chosen to live in a society where 
laws are unavailable, they're probably not too bright anyway.

>And what happens if one or more of the parties, excluding the arbiter,
>decide that neither want to comply? How does the arbiter enforce it?

The arbiter probably doesn't.  If they don't want to comply, they 
just start shooting.  But see the earlier point about a desire to 
avoid death.  That's why they'd have come to an arbiter in the
first place.  Failure to abide by the decision would subtantially 
increase risk of getting killed.  Being in violation of an 
arbitration would probably substantially increase your risk of 
going unavenged if you got killed, too, while increasing the 
risk of a vengeance killing against you in the event that you 
won the shooting war.


				Bear