Originally Posted by Brian Rush

You should first ask for a definition of "work."

I can do that. I'm genuinely interested, since you're one of the few people I've encountered who can offer a well-thought-out, well-supported (if fundamentally wrong-headed) opposition to anarchism.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

I can do that. I'm genuinely interested, since you're one of the few people I've encountered who can offer a well-thought-out, well-supported (if fundamentally wrong-headed) opposition to anarchism.

LOL -- honestly, Justin, opposing anarchism ain't that hard. "Shooting fish in a barrel" comes to mind as a metaphor . . . by comparison, opposing libertarianism is a lot harder. The idea of doing without government altogether is so crazy, so "out there," that the burden of proof is on the advocate and there's not much need for anyone to say anything. It's an interesting exercise, though, discussing matters with people who are capable of getting past the obvious and self-evident reasons why anarchism is cuckoo.

Anyway. What I mean by "works" in this context is that it suffices to keep incidences of violence, theft, and so on below a tolerable threshold. This is accomplished by deterring people from committing such actions. Exactly how such deterrence is applied depends on the individual.

Some people can be deterred from violence by an appeal to morality.

For some others, less morally upright, but sufficiently intelligent, an appeal to enlightened self-interest suffices (violence provokes a violent response, you'd do better to engage in honest trade, you get back what you give out, etc.).

For still others, neither morally upright nor very intelligent, but timid in the face of public scorn, an appeal to fears of social condemnation will do the trick.

For others still, there's the bribe: keep a record clean of violence and you'll be rewarded with a better job and other perks.

But there are always some who need to be threatened with punishment. For those people, the only argument that works is "do this shit and you will go to prison/be flogged/be drawn and quartered/whatever."

And finally, there is the category that even threats of punishment don't deter, and for whom the only recourse is to actually carry out the threats and physically confine them to protect others.

It's a fact that the majority of people do not fall into that last category. Probably a majority of people don't even fall into the last two. For most people, therefore, the coercive power of the state is not required to keep their behavior within acceptable limits. But that coercive power does provide remedies even for the behavior of scumbags, in many cases before the fact, and in the worst cases at least after the fact.

A stateless civilization, if there could be any such thing which there can't, would run into the problem of violence committed by those who cannot be deterred from it by appeals to morality, enlightened self-interest, public scorn, or bribes. The only means of controlling such tendencies that has been suggested so far, other than the authority of a state, is a market-based system of law-enforcement-for-hire. Hence the discussion above.

If we look at historical stateless societies, all of them pre- or protocivilized, we can see illustration of exactly what I'm talking about. Such societies lacked the occasional huge-scale violence that has occurred in a civilized context (e.g. World War II), but more than made up for this with a VAST increase in smaller-scale violence, from individual murder to family vendetta to tribal war. The chance of dying violently (for males especially) in a precivilized, stateless society was much higher than it was in a civilized, state-governed setting, even if we unfairly select the most violent periods of modern history to examine, such as the 1940s. And if we don't make that selection, there's simply no comparison at all.

The reason for this is pure common sense: states suppress individual and small-scale collective violence. They do occasionally engage in large-scale violence, but the net effect is a more peaceful world even so. And the large-scale violence engaged in by states is itself arguably a result of the lack of any governing power capable of restraining states themselves -- of the absence of a global state, which permits national states to behave with all of the nasty patterns of tribes, only on a larger scale.

States, in short, fulfill necessary functions, and should not and cannot be done away with. Are there problems with them? Well, duh! But anarchy is no more a solution to those problems than amputation is a cure for carpal tunnel syndrome. What exactly (if anything) would be a cure is another subject of discussion, well worth having. But most certainly anarchy ain't it.

from Matt

It's called an analogy.

Yup it is. And it seems with libertarians it all either analogies or abstract thinking. There is precious little actual discussion of the nuts and bolts of reality as it exists.

from Kurt Horner

Generational side-note: It's interesting how libertarianism is the new folly of youth.

Perhaps Matt should also cut his hair and get a job?

If that is the way you see it it certainly is not supported by facts. In the last election youth went for Obama by a very big margin. Young people are nto embracing libertarianism or anarchism in any significant numbers. I really do not care if Matt wears his hair in a mohawk or pigtails - it makes no difference to me. And I am sure when he needs to get a job, he will.

Originally Posted by fruitcake

You Liberals never fail to entertain me, that's why I keep on coming back for more.
you can't soak the rich
As the chart says, revenue as a % of GDP does not change no matter how high tax rates are.
The proof is in the pudding.
Go ahead and raise the tax rates the rich will just find a way to avoid it.

Have you ever seen those silly but humorous cartoons were one character tries to get the better of another but perpetually fails?
Elmer Fudd vs. Bugs Bunny is a classic example.
When I think of Liberals *trying but failing* to soak the rich I can't help but enjoy a good laugh.
Keep on trying!

Mike Alexander (Mikebert) has answered this question several times. High taxes on the rich supress economically-damaging bubbles because it encourages the rich to invest their wealth back into the real economy to get it away from the taxman, when taxes on the rich are low the rich blow all the money on speculative Wall Street bubbles.

Originally Posted by Kurt Horner

If there's a plan, that implies some kind of enforcement of said plan. In which case, you don't have anarchy, you have statism. The whole point of anarchism is precisely the idea that the overall social system doesn't need to be planned -- that order is spontaneous.

Perhaps what you really mean to ask for is not the "plan" for anarchism but a description of what such a society might look like.

People coming up with plans is part of that spontaneous order. To forget that people's own decisions and plans as individuals and collectives are part of the system themselves results in a flawed model. One of those decisions said collectives can make if they pissed off enough make is decide to pillage the houses of the rich and confiscate their wealth and leave those rich people hanging dead from a tree.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

I think you're underestimaging human bloody-mindedness.

Knowing my gut reaction to my friend's rape ("If I ever see the f*cker that did it I'm impale the f*cker on a pole..."), I know you are correct. When extreme emotions come into the picture reason and pretensions of voluntary civility get thrown out the window, replaced by lynch mobs, revenge-killing, and blood feuds. That is why the state prevents me under thread of punishment if I kill my friend's rapist in a angry rage, because that same rage also fueled racist lynchings and the wrongful punishment of innocent people.

I'm not a normally violent person. That something could provoke me to literally lynch someone, rights of due process be damned, says something.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

Anyway. What I mean by "works" in this context is that it suffices to keep incidences of violence, theft, and so on below a tolerable threshold. This is accomplished by deterring people from committing such actions. Exactly how such deterrence is applied depends on the individual.

And every single proposed method-of-doing-things under the market-anarchist heading includes all manner of those deterrences, up to and including the "do [name of socially-undersireable act] and get [name of violent response]."

So you're not criticising a real aspect of the hypothetical anarchist worldview.

A stateless civilization, if there could be any such thing which there can't, would run into the problem of violence committed by those who cannot be deterred from it by appeals to morality, enlightened self-interest, public scorn, or bribes.

Yes, as do stated-societies; as do all societies composed of persons that have been, are, and will ever be (so far as any reasonable predictor might be able to guess). Again, you're not hitting on anything even remotely surprising or controversial in anarchist thought.

The only means of controlling such tendencies that has been suggested so far, other than the authority of a state, is a market-based system of law-enforcement-for-hire.

It's just the most widely-talked-about these days. The core of the anarchist worldview is that no one system would (could) be imposed, and that any possible technique of getting that particular job done could (and would) be tried out. And the more successful strategies would thrive, while less-successful ones didn't.

It's been even proposed among anarchists that what you say might be right (we are nothing if not open to the possibility that we don't know it all -- another characteristic more fundamental to an-archists, a-gnostics, and the like, than to the Beleivers with whom they disagree). That, widespread counter-evidence and reason to the contrary, the state might actually be the superior mode for people to deal with each other under the current realities of society. The main problem with things as they are today, then, is that statism is not the victor-by-trial or even victor-by-evidence, but the victor-by-Faith.

Let systems freely compete -- and that means primarily helping people understand that such competition is fundamentally legitimate and even beneficial.
Anarchists aren't afraid of statists. We're confident that your system won't win out. And the terror of us that statists like hm (sad to say, Brian, you're hardly characteristic of your co-believers) evince only helps support our confidence...

Originally Posted by Odin

I'm not a normally violent person. That something could provoke me to literally lynch someone, rights of due process be damned, says something.

Answer me this, then (remembering, you were the one who decided to turn this personal).

What at all would be wrong with the person who did that to your friend paying for it with their life?

And if it would be appropriate for the person who did it to pay with their life, what moral difference would it make which particular individual (with the obvious exception being your friend herself, who certainly has the most direct rights in the issue) called the payment in?

I would argue that what the statist mentality has done is damage you. You know right and wrong, the same as does any other good person, but you have been conditioned to mistrust your own moral sense, and substitute the moral sense of -- some other party.

There is no guarantee exactly what would happen to that guy in a stateless situation -- except to say that whatever happened would be in accord with the norms of the community (theoretically, the same as what you have now). If the community disapproved of him paying with his life, then individuals would be restrained from making him so pay by the threat of sanctions -- same as now.
But the difference would be that the moral reasoning of the community would be just that -- the reasoning of the community. Not inherently superior, nor a replacement for your (again, perfectly good) moral reasoning. And if the community were wrong in a way abhorrent to you, you would be absolutely free to pass your own judgement, reject them, and find or make a community who you did not find abhorrent.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

Answer me this, then (remembering, you were the one who decided to turn this personal).

What at all would be wrong with the person who did that to your friend paying for it with their life?

And if it would be appropriate for the person who did it to pay with their life, what moral difference would it make which particular individual (with the obvious exception being your friend herself, who certainly has the most direct rights in the issue) called the payment in?

I would argue that what the statist mentality has done is damage you. You know right and wrong, the same as does any other good person, but you have been conditioned to mistrust your own moral sense, and substitute the moral sense of -- some other party.

There is no guarantee exactly what would happen to that guy in a stateless situation -- except to say that whatever happened would be in accord with the norms of the community (theoretically, the same as what you have now). If the community disapproved of him paying with his life, then individuals would be restrained from making him so pay by the threat of sanctions -- same as now.
But the difference would be that the moral reasoning of the community would be just that -- the reasoning of the community. Not inherently superior, nor a replacement for your (again, perfectly good) moral reasoning. And if the community were wrong in a way abhorrent to you, you would be absolutely free to pass your own judgement, reject them, and find or make a community who you did not find abhorrent.

Oh, I have no problem with the monster getting the death penalty, the problem is ignoring due process. Even scumbags deserve a fair trial. I had no right, especially given my emotional state, to be judge, jury, and executioner. The lynch mob mentality leads to innocent people, unpopular minorities especially, getting killed (a relevant example: black people getting lynched because they were accusing of raping white women).

Originally Posted by Odin

Knowing my gut reaction to my friend's rape ("If I ever see the f*cker that did it I'm impale the f*cker on a pole..."), I know you are correct. When extreme emotions come into the picture reason and pretensions of voluntary civility get thrown out the window, replaced by lynch mobs, revenge-killing, and blood feuds. That is why the state prevents me under thread of punishment if I kill my friend's rapist in a angry rage, because that same rage also fueled racist lynchings and the wrongful punishment of innocent people.

I'm not a normally violent person. That something could provoke me to literally lynch someone, rights of due process be damned, says something.

All too true.

Remember how everyone felt on 9/12/01? Here on the T4T Forum, everyone, even uber-liberal Eric Meece, were practically calling on George Bush to nuke the entire Middle East into oblivion.

regarding the prestigious higher institution of learning - The Von Mises University:

the Lew Rockwell page that Matt linked starts with this

Thanks to Revi N. Nair for transcribing this talk from the 2004 Mises University.

I asked about the college degrees that were available at Von Mises University and Matt responded with this

Don't be an asshole. It's a week-long program.

I have never heard of an university which did NOT give degrees in a field of study but merely limited itself to week long programs. So who indeed is the asshole here - the person who asks the question about a supposed "university" which turns out to be no more than a seminar center or the "university" or person who falsely bills it as a "university" when it clearly is not?

Originally Posted by Justin '77

Answer me this, then (remembering, you were the one who decided to turn this personal).

What at all would be wrong with the person who did that to your friend paying for it with their life?

I'll answer this. It would deny that person the opportunity to experience remorse, make restitution and redeem themselves. It is also not necessary to kill the person in order to protect the rest of society from the possibility of them raping again. Prison is sufficient. Finally, killing would allow us to indulge our baser human motivations; i.e., vengeance. We've found ways to keep the scumbags away from the "good guys" without having to kill them. Let's use those methods.

Originally Posted by Child of Socrates

I'll answer this. It would deny that person the opportunity to experience remorse, make restitution and redeem themselves. It is also not necessary to kill the person in order to protect the rest of society from the possibility of them raping again. Prison is sufficient. Finally, killing would allow us to indulge our baser human motivations; i.e., vengeance. We've found ways to keep the scumbags away from the "good guys" without having to kill them. Let's use those methods.

Except... lots of people are raped, in prison. My guess is that the perpetrators are people who were rapists before they were incarcerated. If death isn't appropriate, solitary confinement certainly is.

Originally Posted by Roadbldr '59

Except... lots of people are raped, in prison.

Which says everything about the attitudes that are held toward the incarcerated.

Originally Posted by Odin

Mike Alexander (Mikebert) has answered this question several times. High taxes on the rich supress economically-damaging bubbles because it encourages the rich to invest their wealth back into the real economy to get it away from the taxman, when taxes on the rich are low the rich blow all the money on speculative Wall Street bubbles.

So basically that means
the government cannot collect any significant more tax revenues with higher income tax rates because the rich will simply just re-direct their money into other areas of the economy that are exempt from such taxation. using your own words here: "get it away from the taxman"
That would explain this chart then.
yes / no ???

Interesting theory.
I have a small favor:
--- Give me one example of the rich directing money into an asset class that counts as "economically-damaging bubbles."
--- Give me one example of how the rich can avoid taxes by "invest their wealth back into the real economy".

Originally Posted by fruitcake

So basically that means
the government cannot collect any significant more tax revenues with higher income tax rates because the rich will simply just re-direct their money into other areas of the economy that are exempt from such taxation. using your own words here: "get it away from the taxman"
That would explain this chart then.
yes / no ???

No. You have a very incomplete picture when you only look at the top rate and ignore the other factors. The middle class pays most of the taxes, because the middle class is large. You can get a lot of tax money by freezing the brackets and personal exemptions for a few years, and then watch as inflation moves people into higher brackets. If, at the same time, you eliminate the top bracket, it makes no difference. You merely shifted the tax burden down the economic ladder.

The best measure is to look at the taxes paid by quintile or decile. Even that fails to account for changes in the Gini Index, but it's better than your chart.

Originally Posted by fruitcake

... Interesting theory.
I have a small favor:
--- Give me one example of the rich directing money into an asset class that counts as "economically-damaging bubbles."

We can start with tulips and run all the way through the derivative mess we're trying to survive now. how about the oil speculation that held fuel prices up in the face of excess supply over the last few months? Speculation is basically a net drain on the economy.

Originally Posted by fruitcake

--- Give me one example of how the rich can avoid taxes by "invest their wealth back into the real economy".

In the 1950s, companies limited distribution of gains by reinvesting in R&D and plant upgrades. We even built real things like highways, though that's not he question you asked. In short, we've been living on that legacy for 40 years, and it's exhausted.

Originally Posted by Odin

Oh, I have no problem with the monster getting the death penalty, the problem is ignoring due process. Even scumbags deserve a fair trial. I had no right, especially given my emotional state, to be judge, jury, and executioner. The lynch mob mentality leads to innocent people, unpopular minorities especially, getting killed (a relevant example: black people getting lynched because they were accusing of raping white women).

See, this is what I mean by being conditioned to ignore your own moral sense. You had/have the same right as any other person encountering a wrongdoer -- after all, you are just as much a part of the society which condemns his actions as is any other person.

Due process doesn't mean anything in fact (you could parse the words, or look into any amount of legal precedent -- either way gives the same results). It just indicates that punitive or retributive actions should be taken with regards to the sensibilities of the community. It neither says, nor claims to say, a damn thing about right or wrong. The concept of division of judge, jury, and executioner you made is also a procedural norm, not a moral one.

(and the claim that 'scumbags' deserve a trial of some sort is a fairly severe mis-statement. Accused scumbags deserve a fair chance to refute the accusations against them. Scumbags-in-fact only deserve the same thing the rest of us do -- to experience the consequences of their actions.)

Originally Posted by Roadbldr '59

Remember how everyone felt on 9/12/01? Here on the T4T Forum, everyone, even uber-liberal Eric Meece, were practically calling on George Bush to nuke the entire Middle East into oblivion.

Honestly, I remember that there were a couple of us who very quietly urged people to step back from batshit-frenzy and think before they did something stupid. Not that anybody actually listened, or anything...

Originally Posted by Child of Socrates

I'll answer this. It would deny that person the opportunity to experience remorse, make restitution and redeem themselves.

Here, I agree with you. The only person who can really make the call on that one is the person who had been wronged. Let them determine the exact type and amount of restitution they need to be made whole, or if restitution is impossible and the offender simply needs to be put down like any other irredeemable animal.

No one but the wronged party can really know the extent of the damage done.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

And every single proposed method-of-doing-things under the market-anarchist heading includes all manner of those deterrences, up to and including the "do [name of socially-undersireable act] and get [name of violent response]."

No, as a practical matter, they don't. You can always SAY "do X and you'll suffer Y," but without a state -- or something else capable of exerting authority (whatever the heck that might be) -- the threat is empty. There is nothing to back it up with.

Yes, as do stated-societies

Yes, I did say they would "run into" that problem, didn't I? Indeed that is a universal; my bad. I should have said: they would have no effective way of dealing with the problem when they ran into it.

That is NOT a universal.

The core of the anarchist worldview is that no one system would (could) be imposed, and that any possible technique of getting that particular job done could (and would) be tried out. And the more successful strategies would thrive, while less-successful ones didn't.

No, that's not the core of the anarchist worldview. It's not absence of one single method. It's absence of one single authority, which means in effect absence of any authority, period (since competing authorities mean, in practice, none). A state system is perfectly capable of trying out various methods, and often does. In fact, arguably it would be better at this than a stateless system, since it could make an effective decision about which methods worked better.

You make a similar error below:

another characteristic more fundamental to an-archists, a-gnostics, and the like, than to the Beleivers with whom they disagree).

Characterizing non-anarchists as "Believers" is ridiculous. If anything, acceptance of the necessity of the state is not a sign of dogmatic belief but of its absence, since only a deny-all-reality conviction that the way it should be is the way it is, can justify anarchism in any way, shape or form. (The only flaw in this tidy dichotomy is that not all dogmatic political ideologies are anarchistic; Marxist-Leninism for example is equally rigid and reality-denying.)

But the main mistake you're making is to equate political authority with intellectual authority, as if unlimited free action had the same benefits as unlimited free thought. And especially, as if those who oppose unlimited free action, also automatically oppose unlimited free thought.

If you just look around with an open mind at the overwhelming majority of people who accept the necessity of the state, you will of course see that they include quite a large number of free thinkers and advocates of free throught, free speech, and a free press, as well as (admittedly) some people who think otherwise. But then, if you look at things with an open mind, free of your own immune-to-self-challenge ideology, then you will abandon anarchism as the obviously unworkable pipe dream that it is.

Anarchists aren't afraid of statists. We're confident that your system won't win out. And the terror of us that statists like hm (sad to say, Brian, you're hardly characteristic of your co-believers) evince only helps support our confidence...

Our system has already won out, Jason. As I said, there is not one real-world example of a stateless civilized society. Every single bit of real-world evidence, without one single exception, supports the inevitability of some sort of state in a civilized culture. There is absolutely no reason to entertain any shred of doubt about the future existence of the state, assuming that we continue to live in a civilized society. And the only reason that anyone fears anarchists at all, is that they equate them (wrongly for the most part) with bomb-throwing terrorists. That is, they don't fear the victory of anarchism (which they know is impossible), but rather the damage that some people may do in the futile quest for that victory.

If anarchists don't fear those who accept the reality and necessity of the state, well, there's no reason why they should, but that's not the same as saying they have any chance of success in achieving what they say they desire.

Whcih in my opinion is a species of self-deception, because I don't think that the victory of anarchism is really what most anarchists want. Rather, I think that most anarchists want to play with ideas and ideals in a kind of quasi-mathematical pure-thought mode, divorced from any necessity of conforming to practical reality. Anarchism is a form of political pure mathematics. Hence your own argument that reality can be described in terms of logical deduction from prior axioms, which is as dogmatic, inflexible, and reality-defying a position as the doctrines of the Catholic Church, which are reasoned in precisely the same way.

Very well said Brian.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

See, this is what I mean by being conditioned to ignore your own moral sense. You had/have the same right as any other person encountering a wrongdoer -- after all, you are just as much a part of the society which condemns his actions as is any other person.

Due process doesn't mean anything in fact (you could parse the words, or look into any amount of legal precedent -- either way gives the same results). It just indicates that punitive or retributive actions should be taken with regards to the sensibilities of the community. It neither says, nor claims to say, a damn thing about right or wrong. The concept of division of judge, jury, and executioner you made is also a procedural norm, not a moral one.

(and the claim that 'scumbags' deserve a trial of some sort is a fairly severe mis-statement. Accused scumbags deserve a fair chance to refute the accusations against them. Scumbags-in-fact only deserve the same thing the rest of us do -- to experience the consequences of their actions.)

Accused scumbags facing a lynch mob don't get a chance to refute the accusations against them.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

It's news to me that Western commercial law operated in the absence of a state;

Whoa, hold on. Obviously the law merchant was administered within the geographic territory of states, however that law was not administered by the those states.

It seems like you're arguing that the state provides order even in those areas where its laws do not extend -- which seems unlikely, or at least in need of defense.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

Also, commercial law applies to a self-selected community, governing only areas in which they are inclined to voluntary cooperation. I have never said that voluntary cooperation can't possibly work under any circumstances, ever. I have said that it can't possibly work under all circumstances, always.

Further down-thread, you define "working" as:

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

What I mean by "works" in this context is that it suffices to keep incidences of violence, theft, and so on below a tolerable threshold. This is accomplished by deterring people from committing such actions. Exactly how such deterrence is applied depends on the individual.

Of course, as we know, this test is not infrequently failed by societies that have a state. It seems odd to condemn a theoretical anarchist society for failing to provide order at all times when states themselves don't pass this test. Why the double standard?

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

They are, and one would certainly expect them to pay more for their representation as a result; however, this actually would result in the market legal system being dominated by representatives of scumbags, because they would be raking in the most money from the richest clients (who tend disproportionately to be scumbags).

The preponderance of rich scumbags in the present is a product of the fact that significant wealth is primarily the result of connection to the state. Also, the fact that some people pay more does not necessarily imply that business caters to them at the exclusion of others. Ten people paying $10 is better than one paying $50. The ratios have to be right. (You may counter that the business will sell to both markets, but this can only occur so long as the mass market is largely unaware of the injustice.)

Also, having a legal system that favors rich scumbags is not exactly some new problem that would crop up under anarchy. (See the double standard argument above.)

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

The whole point is that you are never going to get honest people and scumbags to agree on an arbiter when they have a dispute, unless there is a coercive authority (such as the state) threatening a worse alternative to the scumbag if he doesn't.

Certainly a coherent legal system would be reciprocal. I.e. the purchase of legal defensive services implies a consent to arbitration. You'd be violating your user agreement. I'm sure you'd ask what the penalty is at that point. There are many options -- use of force by the arbitrator service is one option, but mostly unnecessary. Simply advertising that someone has refused arbitration would quickly close a lot of doors. All but the most determined anti-social types would relent at that point.

A far more likely failing is bribery of arbitrators. But this too, is not exactly unheard of in state justice systems.

Now, do I think force plays a role in a functioning social system? Yes. But does it need to be initiated -- or done in response to someone's clear attempt to refuse peaceful means of dispute resolution? I think the latter is more than sufficient to maintain order.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

Not at all, because the name "club" is misleading. It's not a club. It's a business that represents scumbags, much as criminal lawyers often do,

Er . . . (see above)

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

Anyway, no one is arguing here that states aren't potentially dangerous, or that restraints on their activities aren't appropriate. I'm arguing strictly against the idea of abolishing them altogether. Fire is dangerous, too, and safeguards on fire are appropriate as well, but I wouldn't abolish it.

Well, given that your definition of "state" is so flexible as to encompass my understanding of many proposed anarchies, you've reduced anarchism to a sort of maximal civil liberties position.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

That's what I believe. That's also what history suggests, since they are confined to precivilized, small-group societies. There are no real-world examples of civilized societies without states (no, medieval Iceland is NOT an exception, because it was protocivilized, not civilized).

Not that I want to debate what was and wasn't an anarchy, but certainly social groups in Viking Iceland exceeded Dunbar's number. And the sum total of merchants in late medieval and early modern Europe vastly exceeded 150, even in a single city.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

Then all property claims are illegitimate, because they all take the form of violent assertion, even though the threat of violence may be several steps in the background.

I don't see how you can maintain this assertion in light of your (much) earlier post describing universal concepts of personal possession. As soon as you allow for the concept of ownership in anything then you have a moral justification for defense against theft. The initiator of force is the thief in that case. Or are you going to take back your earlier statements about possession?

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

It does need to be the same third party for all disputes of the same kind, though.

No, not even that. There just need to be (some) generally agreed upon ideas regarding how those types of disputes get resolved. You need concepts like case precedent, but you don't need any particular arbitrator, set of arbitrators or even a single arbitration agency. I.e. the laws are more important than the judges.

On your broad definition of "state":

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

Necessarily so! Consider that we apply the term to the kings of ancient city-states, to their democratic or republican equivalents, to empires, to Hitler's or Stalin's dictatorships, to a modern representative democracy, to a medieval absolute monarchy or feudal aristocracy, to a constitutional monarchy . . . there are a lot of different things that fall into that category, so the definition has to be broad.

Well, then it would also apply to means of governance not yet devised -- which is, I think, what anarchists are really getting at.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

However . . . Anarchist systems uniformly are incapable of enforcing rules on the unwilling, and it is argued that this is unnecessary.

That is not an accurate assessment of anarchist thought. The existence of anti-social behavior requiring a violent response is not being ignored. The argument is that existing forms of governance (termed the "state") engage in far more violence than is necessary to keep in check the tiny minority of sociopaths and, moreover, that the state has a vested interest in exacerbating sociopathic behavior in order to bolster the perceived need for its existence.

Assuming you accept that assessment of anarchist thought, you could argue that anarchists actually advocate a very, very diffuse state utterly unlike any that presently exist (using your definition of the state). In which case my response is: OK, sure.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

I probably should add that the population cannot be self-selected.

We should probably get cracking on that border wall right away then . . .

Self-selection is only a problem if the person attempting to switch jurisdictions is presently the party to a dispute. I agree that this is problematic. But, in some cases ability to evade the law is a feature, not a bug. Take for example, draft evasion to non-extradition countries.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

I see no evidence of this at all. <Of diminishing returns to predatory behavior>

Really? The level of acceptable brutality in modern society is notably lower than that of a century ago and considerably lower than a millenia ago.

Originally Posted by Kurt Horner

Whoa, hold on. Obviously the law merchant was administered within the geographic territory of states, however that law was not administered by the those states.

It seems like you're arguing that the state provides order even in those areas where its laws do not extend -- which seems unlikely, or at least in need of defense.

All areas in question were governed by states, which created a climate of law and order on which the commercial structure was built. The fact that there exist areas of life (I would actually say most areas of life) that do not require the immediate attention of the government does not argue that government is not needed.

Of course, as we know, this test is not infrequently failed by societies that have a state.

Actually the failure is infrequent, and when it happens almost always the cause is the breakdown in government authority, as for example in the French First Republic, or (to a lesser extent) in the U.S. in this saeculum's late Awakening and early Unraveling. And when that happens, the problem is addressed by a strengthening of government authority (e.g. Napoleon) or a correction of government dereliction of law-enforcement duty.

There is every reason to believe that the test would be failed, not merely frequently, but constantly, without any authoritative body capable of even attempting to meet it.

The preponderance of rich scumbags in the present is a product of the fact that significant wealth is primarily the result of connection to the state.

The preponderance of scumbags among the rich, not only in the present but in all periods in which there ARE rich, is primarily the result of the fact that the desire to become rich is one facet of scumbaggery. As is the desire for power. These are not noble motives and those who are motivated by them are usually not noble people.

Arguably, government is to blame in the sense that without it there would be no civilized economy and hence no rich people at all, thus no rich scumbags. Scumbags would still exist, but they would not be able to become rich ones. And so actually none of the hypotheticals I offered above is realistic. In the absence of the state, there would be no market lawkeeping institutions and so no flaws thereof, because there would be no civilization. We would all be living the kind of precivilized or protocivlized life which is all that can survive in the absence of the state. But the hypotheticals, although unrealistic, are useful in illustrating why that is so.

Also, the fact that some people pay more does not necessarily imply that business caters to them at the exclusion of others.

You're reversing my logic. I was arguing rather that the fact this hypothetical business was catering to scumbags exclusively (or at least mostly) would result in their being paid more by said scumbags, not vice-versa.

Also, having a legal system that favors rich scumbags is not exactly some new problem that would crop up under anarchy.

It is a far more severe problem of that sort than anything that exists today. Almost all of the pathologies of the state would be worse under anarchy than they are under the state -- if, that is, civilization were possible in the absence of the state, which it's not. The only exception that comes to mind is war, and even that's not really an exception, because of the fact that a stateless, precivilized or protocivilized society would be at war over very much of its territory and population almost constantly, and at sub-war levels of conflict even when technically at peace. We know this because in the past, when such societies existed, it was the case. The death toll as a percentage of the population would be much higher in such conflicts than in even the worst, most horrendous civilized wars. We know it would be, because we know it was.

Certainly a coherent legal system would be reciprocal. I.e. the purchase of legal defensive services implies a consent to arbitration.

No, it implies only a consent to be protected by armed force and to pay for same. That's what would happen. If you have a situation in which that's not allowed to happen, then you have enforceable rules, which means you have a state.

A far more likely failing is bribery of arbitrators. But this too, is not exactly unheard of in state justice systems.

In state justice systems, while bribery of arbitrators does happen, it's illegal. In a market justice system without a state, it would not be illegal because in effect nothing would or could be. It would therefore be a constant.

Now, do I think force plays a role in a functioning social system? Yes. But does it need to be initiated -- or done in response to someone's clear attempt to refuse peaceful means of dispute resolution? I think the latter is more than sufficient to maintain order.

It does not matter for purposes of the present discussion. A system of laws based around the idea of "noninitiation of force" (if that were not fallacious -- never mind; we'll assume the fallacy's accuracy for sake of argument) is perfectly compatible with a state. In fact, you have slipped now from arguing an anarchist position to arguing a libertarian one. That's a different discussion.

Not that I want to debate what was and wasn't an anarchy, but certainly social groups in Viking Iceland exceeded Dunbar's number.

Then I shall set aside Dunbar's number, which as I do not entirely understand the concept functions here as a verbal trap, and instead repeat what I originally said: a state is a requirement for civilized life. Civilized means, originally, "living in cities." It implies a concentration of population.

I'm using three related terms here, civilized, precivilized, and protocivilized. A precivilized society has a forager-hunter economy, lives in small family-related bands, and has no formal governing structures. A protocivilized society has an agrarian or pastoral economy, lives in tribal groups, and has some formal governing structures but not a "state" properly so called. A civilized society has an agrarian or industrial economy, lives in cities, and has formal governing structures that amount to actual states.

By this concept, medieval Iceland was protocivilized, not civilized. That's all I meant to say. If "below Dunbar's number" does not say that, then I retract my agreement with it presented earlier.

I don't see how you can maintain this assertion in light of your (much) earlier post describing universal concepts of personal possession. As soon as you allow for the concept of ownership in anything then you have a moral justification for defense against theft.

Moral justification is irrelevant for purposes of the present discussion. As a purely objective observation, the creation of property requires the initiation of force. Whether that is morally justified is a separate question.

The initiator of force is the thief in that case.

No. The initiator of force is the public (assuming general agreement about the right of ownership) which threatened violent response to unauthorized use of property. The thief is engaging in responsive, not initiatory force.

If what you're saying is that the thief is, nonetheless, morally in the wrong, then I agree, but that's a different statement and it doesn't change which force was applied first. Force applied for morally justifiable reasons remains force just the same.

No, not even that. There just need to be (some) generally agreed upon ideas regarding how those types of disputes get resolved.

Without the authority of a state, it would need to be universally, not generally, agreed. And that is impossible.

Well, then it would also apply to means of governance not yet devised

It could, conceivably. If we were having this discussion in the 12th century, the idea of a representative democracy would be a yet-untried means of governance radically different from the feudal aristocracies and hereditary monarchies that prevailed at the time. But it is still a state.

That is not an accurate assessment of anarchist thought. The existence of anti-social behavior requiring a violent response is not being ignored.

As a practical matter, yes, it is. The presentation of a pipe-dream solution that requires unrealistic manifestations of human behavior is the practical equivalent of ignoring the problem.

The argument is that existing forms of governance (termed the "state") engage in far more violence than is necessary to keep in check the tiny minority of sociopaths and, moreover, that the state has a vested interest in exacerbating sociopathic behavior in order to bolster the perceived need for its existence.

The argument goes beyond this to claim that the state should be abolished. Agreement with both of the above does not logically entail this, but without this, you don't have anarchism.

Really? The level of acceptable brutality in modern society is notably lower than that of a century ago and considerably lower than a millenia ago.

I don't see how that argues against my position. Actually, I see it as arguing for it.

You cannot have a civilization without stores of wealth that can be used for public works projects. These wealth stores need to be managed and protected, and from that you have the origin of the state. And thus Brian is correct in saying that anarchism is incompatible with civilization, because civilization requires wealth stores managed by a centralized authority. In modern Western society those wealth stores are tax revenues and profit.

IMO I am getting the feeling that anarchism is impractical at best, fantasy at worst. It aims for an impossible goal, or at least a goal that is not compatible with civilization. I even detect the same seculaized Judeo-Christian eschatological thoughts of a perfect future with perfect, infinitely good individuals following the Final Victory Over Evil that pervades ALL Western utopian ideas ("If the evil state were destroyed then people would be good and society perfect.").

A more reasonable goal is not the dismantling of the state, but with making the state open and responsive and with clearly-defined prerogatives, Karl Popper's "Open Society".