Answering Ancap Questions
An anarcho-capitalist named “Dennis” was commenting on my blog, and we had a voice discussion.
As a follow-up to that discussion, he left some questions in a comment. I’m going to respond to his questions here.
Do you think it’s just a fluke that every civilization converged upon rules that condemn murder theft rape and assault? Doesn’t that hint at some universal underpinning in our natures? Perhaps something to do with our mirror neurons, our herd/social natures and the empathic brain regions that are required for that? (Another example being our innate sense of fairness that even babies have.)
Do you think it’s just a fluke that every civilization converged on a central authority to enforce those laws?
No, of course it’s not a fluke. Every civilization has to solve the same problems of cooperation. And every civilization solved those problems with the state. Every civilization has laws that solve problems of cooperation. E.g. the law against murder solves the prisoner’s dilemma that exists between strangers: that each might kill the other. The law allows strangers to live and work together, so it enables large-scale societies. Likewise for the other core laws, such as laws establishing property rights and marriage, etc. These solve problems of cooperation. Those laws are part of the overall package of civilization, which includes the state, written language, and math.
Humans have roughly the same emotional structure, although individuals vary. That common human nature is not “good” by your moral standards. We have the capacity for positive and negative empathy, cooperation and competition.
Human nature is selfish, and humans can often benefit by killing other humans, raping other humans, taking their stuff, etc. So, we evolved the capacity for both friendship and hatred, cooperation and violent competition. Societies have to prevent internal violence, but they project violence outward, and societies use violence to impose internal non-violence. We often cooperate to compete. War is a cooperative endeavor.
All civilizations fought wars in which they killed, raped, seized property, etc. Civilization is based on conquering land and establishing a monopoly on violence by the use of violence. War is a human universal. Society is cooperative, but we often cooperate to compete. Society doesn’t eliminate competition. It transfers it to a higher level, so we are competing as a unit with other societies or with nature. At the margins, life is zero-sum. Once an ecosystem is fully populated, one way of life can only increase at the expense of another. That applies to species, societies and civilizations.
So, my understanding of society and human nature makes perfect sense.
By contrast, yours makes no sense. You believe that people are naturally non-violent, but also that humans are violent. You believe that all humans have your moral intuitions at some level, and yet do not share your moral intuitions. You believe that people are selfish, but will not commit violence even when it is in their best interests. Or you believe that violence is never in anyone’s interest, in which case why would we need moral principles to constrain us? Your view is incoherent. Mine is perfectly coherent.
If the majority is evil scum like you suggest, itching to defect in our alleged constant state of “prisoner’s dilemma”, then obviously democracy can’t work, so I guess you favor something like North Korea? Or Stalin’s Russia? Or Castro’s Cuba? But then why do all such less-free places invariably do worse? Maybe we’re not all as dangerous and evil like you claim to be, maybe there’s something to this freedom and free-market and voluntaryism stuff? Something that makes more voluntary socities thrive more?
The majority are not “evil scum”. There is no such thing as evil. Humans are simply selfish. So, they will act in ways that they perceive to benefit themselves.
Democracy doesn’t work particularly better than other forms of governance, but not because people are selfish. It has other problems. The biggest problem is the lack of incentive to vote correctly, which is known as the Paradox of Voting.
I prefer a society that maximizes cooperation, which includes a free market. Top-down micro-management of the economy doesn’t work, because (a) people are selfish, and (b) the calculation problem (see Hayek). A free market only exists when the state imposes the rule of law. There can be no market without the state. My ideal society has a large amount of individual freedom within the rule of law.
According to you, Canada, the US, etc. are not voluntary societies. They are oppressive statist societies. And yet you say that they are thriving. By contrast, there has never been any anarcho-capitalist society. You can’t argue that the state is bad by claiming that some states are better than others.
Also, “freedom” is a spook. What matters is agency: the ability to do things. Alone in nature, there is no coercive state, but you have very little agency. You have to struggle to survive, and are often in danger. In a modern society, you can get food and shelter by working a few hours a day. You can walk down the street without fear of being attacked by animals or people. Most people are willing to trade some freedom for greater agency.
You said you would nuke any group that wants to secede from the current cartel of nation states. So I guess you strongly support a one-world government? Ie. you’re unwilling to risk having some other country on the planet that you can’t control, right? I guess the US should invade China and Russia right?
I jokingly said I would nuke your imaginary city. Of course, there is no such thing as an anarcho-capitalist city, and there never will be. A city requires a central authority to impose the rule of law. So, it’s just a silly thought experiment which deserves a silly response.
I do support world governance, because humanity has problems that require global cooperation to solve. Yes, the anarchy of nations has problems, such as war, the cost of preparing for war (prisoner’s dilemma) and tragedies of the commons. There are also global-level threats, such as asteroid strikes, supervolcanoes, etc. So yes, we would ideally have some form of global governance to create global cooperation.
That doesn’t mean I support “Eat the bugs, live in the pods”, or some other meme notion of a tyrannical NWO.
As an aside, I’ve never seen a principled argument for rejecting governance on one scale, while accepting it at another. The Alex Jones types accept the nation-state, but reject global government. What is the rationale?
Instead of murdering a peacefully seceding ancap group for fear of it spreading nuclear pollution or something, why didn’t you first consider peaceful sane ways to resolve your fears - maybe with agreements to randomly inspect each other’s places for radiation - similar to the way Iran currently allows 3rd party inspection of it’s sites? What do you think of US’s original secession from the British Empire? Do you think that bloodshed was necessary or unavoidable? You don’t think the Brits should simply have allowed Americans to peacefully opt out of their empire?
There is no way to have a treaty with an “ancap group” because the ancap group has no way of enforcing the treaty on its members. A bunch of anarchists is not a society. It cannot make agreements. A big society could permit a small experimental society to exist within it, but it would require some policing by the big society. It would just be a special area with different laws. And there’s no benefit to the bigger society, so why do it?
I think the US’s secession from the British Empire was short-sighted and unfortunate, but in the long run it didn’t make much difference. After any such war, you can always say “They shouldn’t have fought at all” about the losing side, or “They should have fought harder”, but that’s just Monday AM quarterbacking.
Will you teach your kids that there is no such thing as “good” or “bad”, that they can steal and kill if they really want to, but ig to just make sure they don’t get caught? And I guess you’ll marry a similarly amoral wife, someone who doesn’t value heroism or nobility, just an amoral opportunistic girl, right? “Heroes” are just cringe fictional people, right? Just fantasy. According to you, we’re all spineless violent animals, unworthy of admiration, unworthy of freedom, right? Adam Back isn’t a hero right - you need to keep him enslaved, for his own good right?
Yes, and this is not hypothetical. I tell my kids that there’s no such thing as good or evil. I don’t lie to my kids. Yes, my wife also doesn’t believe in objective morality. This really isn’t a big deal. Being amoral is like being an atheist — it means you don’t have a delusion. It doesn’t mean you run around killing people or whatever. You live just like everyone else, and have pretty much the same moral intuitions as everyone else, but you don’t believe that those moral intuitions reflect some objective moral truth.
This seems to be an appeal to consequences fallacy, based on the false assumption that belief in morality is what prevents people from committing violence. This is not consistent with your stated belief that people have some type of “nice” or altruistic instincts, which presumably would operate regardless of an explicit belief in good and evil. But you have already said that most people support evil (statism). So again, your view is incoherent, while mine is perfectly coherent.
Morality is a delusion that collective values are objective. Collective values are tacit agreements, not objective moral facts. See “What is Morality?”.
Yes, heroes are mostly found in fiction, not reality.
We’re not “spineless violent animals” — that’s your moralizing rhetoric. We’re animals, and thus selfish and have the potential for violence. We’re not magical beings.
Adam Back is not a hero, no. He’s just another selfish human being doing his thing.
Doesn’t bitcoin throw a wrench in your tire spokes? Every gov opposes it, it undermines statism, it’s purely voluntary and peaceful, it’s spontaneous organization. Somehow people are mysteriously converging on the most ancap money - the most voluntary money - the hardest soundest money - it’s anarchic organization and it’s thriving.
No, bitcoin doesn’t pose any problem for my worldview. It’s a meme asset with no practical uses. It doesn’t function as money any more than Tesla shares. Even if it did, that doesn’t contradict anything I believe, or pose any problem of explanation. I never said there can’t be spontaneous organization. Lots of things emerge bottom-up. Language is a much better example than bitcoin. And of course bitcoin doesn’t undermine statism. That’s absurd. States aren’t collapsing because people can buy and sell tokens on the internet.
It's disappointing that you still keep your strawman, I thought you learned something from our part2 chat. Ancaps arent against laws as you keep repeating, we just want ones that represent the preferences of people better, ones that are more accountable. This is why free markets always perform better, and we merely extend that principle into the realm of governance / dispute resolution.
ReplyDelete"Civilization is based on conquering land" ... that's an oxymoron, a contradiction. Civility: the act of showing regard for others [syn: {politeness}]
"War is a human universal" ... so is empathy and cooperation, obviously we have the capacity for both.
You "forgot" to mention my point about how no human society turned out to be like the Klingons - no society promoted theft and rape and murder. This is evidence that there is something universal about the prohibition of those things.
"You believe that people are naturally non-violent" ... "Or you believe that violence is never in anyone's interest" ... absurd strawman, I never said anything even remotely like that.
"You believe that all humans have your moral intuitions at some level" ... so do you. As you said in this post, humans also universally have a sense of empathy and an instinct to cooperate. This is why you were unable to properly give evidence of people who would be shamelessly willing to kill or rape - you had to absurdly invent your own bad guys, you even resorted to larping as one when you threatened to nuke a Liberland/Galt's Gulch type city. Such monsters dont really exist (ignoring extremely rare brain-damaged individuals).
"There can be no market without the state" ... sloppy language. It's all about the details. What exactly does there need to be a monopoly with? Even with universally proscribed things like murder, you can have a plethora of ways to administer justice, ranging from rehabilitation to the death penalty, so why assume that a monopoly service provider is required? Nevertheless, for the sake of simplicity to avoid theorizing about the insanely complex ways societies might solve every individual problem, everyone should be satisfied with having "micro-states", city-scale citadels, but no larger. This way we can have the simplicity of territorial monopoly AND choice/consent. That's all ancaps ever wanted - the option to opt-out and go our own way if irreconcilable differences ever arise. This was Ayn Rand's Galt's Gulch.
Dennis: "We (Ancaps) just want ones (law) that represent the preferences of people better, ones that are more accountable."
DeleteSo what is your meta-ethical theory(ies)? Are you saying that you / ancaps are Utilitarians? And if so, then what type of Utilitarianism?
Dennis: "No society promoted theft and rape and murder."
Also Dennis: "Taxation is theft, and government is slavery."
Maybe you never said that "people are naturally non-violent" or that "violence is never in anyone's interest", but you keep trying to promote your Ancap utopian ideology where Ancapistan would purportedly have little to no violence. What we're trying to get through to you is that violence will never go away. At the minimum, force is still needed in order to enforce the laws that you desire.
Empathy isn't necessarily a universal human trait. Have you ever heard of neurodivergence and/or autism? Many neurodivergent and/or autistic people lack cognitive and/or emotional empathy.
You mentioned "Galt's Gulch". So do you identify as an Objectivist (a follower of Ayn Rand's philosophy)?
> So what is your meta-ethical theory(ies)?
DeleteThere's no such thing as "meta ethics". There are subjective preferences, and there are universal norms (morality), and the only logically coherent universal norm is the NAP (non-aggression principle).
> Are you saying that you / ancaps are Utilitarians? And if so, then what type of Utilitarianism?
No, we are principled moralists. Or in other words, sane, logically coherent. It's fortuitous that conformity to logic also tends to provide the best practical results.
> Dennis: "No society promoted theft and rape and murder."
> Also Dennis: "Taxation is theft, and government is slavery."
Cultural narratives oppose theft. Statists awkwardly cringingly deny that they are stealing. Again, no culture promotes theft. The word "taxation" was specifically created as a propaganda term to obscure the theft. The absurd concept of "a social contract" was similarly awkwardly invented to make it seem consensual. People are ashamed of theft.
> Maybe you never said that "people are naturally non-violent" or that "violence is never in anyone's interest", but you keep trying to
promote your Ancap utopian ideology
There is nothing UTOPIAN about not stealing from your neighbours. And ancaps don't deny the human capacity for evil - that's precisely why we think creating an artificial unaccountable monopoly of violence is an insane idea - it will incentivize this evil potential within us.
> where Ancapistan would purportedly have little to no violence
Ancaps aren't against violence - we're against the *initiation of violence* against innocent people. Retaliatory violence is okay. However, as people slowly evolve to respect truth more, to be more logical (eg. ancap), it's reasonable to expect overall levels of violence, retaliatory or initiatory, to decrease. That is the long-term trend of human history that we're on.
> What we're trying to get through to you is that violence will never go away.
Absurd strawman. Ancaps fully appreciate the potential for violence.
> At the minimum, force is still needed in order to enforce the laws that you desire.
No shit. You really have an absurd strawman view of ancaps. Didn't you read, in my comment, how I suggested that we ought to allow for citadel-states? Ancaps would be perfectly fine with "violently enforced monopolies" *within a city*. Because the option to opt out is quite reasonable in such a situation, and thus there is a semblance of consent / voluntariness.
> Empathy isn't necessarily a universal human trait. Have you ever heard of neurodivergence and/or autism?
Autists have empathy too, lol. Obviously there are degrees. But we all have the neural machinery for empathy. We all have mirror neurons.
> Many neurodivergent and/or autistic people lack cognitive and/or emotional empathy.
False. They just arguably have less of it. And I'm even skeptical of that difference. I think lots of people are just good at faking having it. Every statist, for example, has very little of it - if they're willing to violently steal from me, for example, or willing to violently cage me if I don't obey them (and am not hurting them).
> You mentioned "Galt's Gulch". So do you identify as an Objectivist (a follower of Ayn Rand's philosophy)?
Galt's Gulch was an ancap citadel. Ayn Rand, like Axolotl here, and Yaron Brook, are super cringe when pretend like they're completely different from ancaps. We're a cunt hair different from each other. Yaron Brook even admits that taxes should be voluntary, and that people should be allowed to opt out. That's ancap. We all respect rationality, private property, contracts and the rule of law.
"There's no such thing as "meta ethics". There are subjective preferences, and there are universal norms (morality)"
DeleteYes, there is. This is Philosophy 101. Morality is obviously not a universal norm since nobody can agree on what's "moral". It is impossible for morality to NOT be based on subjective preferences. BG already explained this in his blog post "What is Morality?".
"we are principled moralists."
No, you're not. There are dozens of moral topics that Ancaps will disagree on, whether it's abortion, veganism, animal rights, children's rights, rainwater rights, intellectual property rights, pollution laws, the penalties for breaking the laws, the death penalty, when democracy is valid (if ever), whether private property is based on labor or original appropriation, what the age of consent should be, the legality of blackmailing, the legality of open-carry, the consent laws for releasing audio recordings between two or more parties, if drunk driving should be legal, if pitbulls should be banned, if it's ethical to have children without their consent, if it's okay to indoctrinate children, what counts as indoctrination, what counts as deception, and so on.
"the only logically coherent universal norm is the NAP (non-aggression principle)."
With all the examples that I've given and then some, it is clear that Ancaps can't agree on what constitutes a violation of the Non-Aggression Principle. Also, when BG asked you in the recording at 70:49 what would happen if there are 20 people on a deserted island but only enough food to feed 10 people, you responded by saying: "There is an overlap between a degenerate hell-hole in a situation where we're all starving. At that point of time, yeah, fuck rights." When you said this, it seems that you've conceded that the NAP is not a viable option in the thought experiment that BG asked you about. And if that's the case, then what you said in the recording contradicts what you've written here (that the NAP is the only logically coherent universal norm). If the NAP was truly a universal moral norm, then it would still apply in the thought experiment that BG asked you about, but it doesn't.
"The word "taxation" was specifically created as a propaganda term to obscure the theft."
Taxation is not theft. Taxation is legal, and theft is illegal. BG already explained this in the recording.
"Ancaps fully appreciate the potential for violence."
If that was true, then you wouldn't have argued that people would naturally find a peaceful resolution once the population reaches the environment's carrying capacity, as you tried arguing at the end of your first voice debate with BG. You said that everybody would just choose to have fewer children, when it's far more likely that people will start fighting each other to compete for resources in an effort to avoid starvation, as history has repeatedly shown.
"Ancaps would be perfectly fine with "violently enforced monopolies" *within a city*. Because the option to opt out is quite reasonable in such a situation, and thus there is a semblance of consent / voluntariness."
Ancap citadel-states are impossible because they would fail to resolve tragedies of the commons and prisoner's dilemmas. Moreover, what if a child doesn't consent to living within the hypothetical ancap citadel that their parents are making them live in? Are the ancaps just going to make the child continue living with their parents in the ancap citadel?
"False. They just arguably have less of it."
Citation needed.
"Galt's Gulch was an ancap citadel."
Okay, but you didn't answer my question. In particular, I'm asking if your ethical philosophy has been influenced by Ayn Rand or Objectivism in any way.
"According to you, Canada, the US, etc. are not voluntary societies" ... that's not according to me, that's just the definition of the word ... countless things are done without my consent.
ReplyDelete"And yet you say that they are thriving" ... Canada/US are only thriving relative to other less voluntary shitholes ... not relative to how much better things could be if people were more coherent and less evil. We could have had fusion power by now and quantum computers in addition to flying cars, Ross would be a free and productive man, Assange too.
"By contrast, there has never been any anarcho-capitalist society" ... what does that even mean. 99% of our daily interactions are ancap .. aka voluntary interactions. Moreover my family comes from a tiny village that didn't even have plumbing or electricity until a few decades ago ... I think they did literally everything themselves. There were no police or authorities, effectively.
"Most people are willing to trade some freedom for greater agency" ... Obviously. Ancaps are all about socializing and free trade and free markets. The loner hermit libertarian alone in the woods, is your absurd strawman of the libertarian man.
"A city requires a central authority to impose the rule of law" ... Ancaps support that. This is another example of you strawmanning. Ancaps love law, love rules, and appreciate the benefits of centralization, where it's appropriate.
"Tragedies of the commons" ... seem to be a bigger issue for statists than ancaps. Private property solves such tragedies best. For example, in eastern Canada they had an abundant cod fishery for hundreds of years until the gov stepped in with quotas ostensibly to try to manage this "tragedy of the commons", and they predictably fucked things up and the fishery quickly collapsed. Statism's inherent evilness attracts only the most evil scum to the top, which inevitably leads to metastsizing corruption. Statism incentivizes the worst in people with very short term thinking - just the length of a political term - so the evil scum who get to such disgusting positions of power exploit things as much as possible and leave the next people to clean up their ever-increasing messes.
Near the beginning of the debate in the first voice recording, you claimed that the "Finder's Keepers" homesteading approach to property rights (also known as the Original Appropriation Theory of Property (OATP)) was the only "fair" approach to property rights. But this is obviously incorrect. There is absolutely nothing "free-market", "voluntary", or "consensual" about homesteading. Homesteading is basically "fuck you, got mine" when it comes to owning and possessing/occupying land. Ancaps keep repeating that there's millions of square kilometers of unclaimed land out there, but they all ignore that not all land is created equally. An acre of land in Antartica is obviously not worth the same as an acre of land in Manhattan, and if you were really concerned about "fairness" as you claimed to be, then everybody should own the Earth's land equally. Georgism accomplishes this by allowing people to privately possess land (which completely Tragedies of the Commons regarding land), while simultaneously using Land Value Taxes to achieve fairness (equal ownership of land) and boost economic efficiency. All other taxes are abolished under Georgism.
DeleteUnder Kinsella's OATP, people would not obviously not have equal access to land, the third factor of production (*Land*, Labor, Capital) since ownership of private property is determined by homesteading. If people do not have equal access to all three of the factors of production, they are destined to also be poor / impoverished as well. That seems quite dystopian, but apparently you don't see anything wrong with that. This is yet another reason why a state is necessary in order to enforce free markets, assuming that you want a society that maximizes economic production.
Instead, the better approach to property rights is the Georgist Theory of Property (GTP). It is similar to the Labor Theory of Property, except that it has the caveat that everybody owns land equally:
1. Every person owns themself.
2. Every person thus owns the labor that they produce.
3. Every person thus owns anything produced by their labor.
4. People can trade things that they create with their labor for things that other people create with their labor.
5. Land and natural resources are not created by labor, but land and natural resources are necessary in order to be productive (because it's one of the three factors of production: land, labor, and capital).
Conclusion: Everyone should have an equal right to land and natural resources in order to be productive. Everyone should have collective ownership of land and natural resources because they did not create the land.
And unlike the disastrous OATP, the GTP has rigorous economic reasoning to back it up. Georgist societies would easily become significantly more prosperous than Ancap OATP societies:
Land Economics and Ground Rent - Part I: David Ricardo's Law of Ground Rent: https://i.redd.it/9k859zxnfqp41.jpg
Land Economics and Ground Rent - Part II: Speculation and Idle Land: https://i.redd.it/lnkq7l9zc0v41.jpg
Land Economics and Ground Rent - Part III: Mortgage Debt and Lending: https://i.redd.it/rs6i06y3so851.jpg
"So yes, we would ideally have some form of global governance to create global cooperation" .... notice how you talk like an ancap/voluntaryist now with your peaceful cooperation talk. What happened with your original portrayal of societies as being violent conquerors and monopolists? The question that I asked you was why the US shouldn't violently conquer China and Russia right now too, before they build up even bigger armies?
ReplyDelete"As an aside, I've never seen a principled argument for rejecting governance on one scale, while accepting it at another" ... the principle is respecting the needs and desires of individuals as harmoniously as possible. Also, to beat a dead horse, ancaps love governance ... we oppose *involuntary governance* aka. slavery.
"The Alex Jones types accept the nation-state, but reject global government. What is the rationale?" ... the smaller the scale, the more responsive and representative the gov.
"There is no way to have a treaty with an ancap group because the ancap group has no way of enforcing the treaty on its members" ... false. Just to provide one potential solution, things can be held in escrow by a third party to ensure cooperation.
"I think the US's secession from the British Empire was short-sighted and unfortunate" ... you said Quebec should be allowed to secede in our part2 chat ... and that even commies should be allowed to experiment, away from us. I'm not sure why you say US independence was short-sighted - it clearly worked for them, they're freer and better than us Canadians.
"This is not consistent with your stated belief that people have some type of nice or altruistic instincts" ... I said we have mirror neurons and empathic brain regions. Homo sapien is a social animal. We also evolved logic which helped us become the apex predator, which makes us bristle when we encounter contradictions. So for example, saying "it's okay for me to kill you but not for you to kill me" rubs us the wrong way. All these very real phenomenon converged to form the social construct we now call "morality".
You avoided my question about parenting. If your kids came to you with a well thought out plan to kill someone safely, or to steal someone's fortune safely (maybe via a clever bitcoin hack), how would you handle that? Would you tell them "daddy personally subjectively wouldn't do it, but heck, if you two really think you can get away with it and you really want to, go right ahead!"
It's weird how you "forgot" everything I said about bitcoin in our part2 chat. Are these old notes or something? It's like we never even had the chat. The "bitcoin wrench in spokes" referred to your assertion that we need a violent hierarchical monopoly to have money. I also gave you a few examples of how bitcoin IS being used as money right now - you can buy lambos and houses and countless other things directly with it, right now. I also explained how all monies are essentially memes; gold is "just a meme" too. Money is a socially agreed upon standard of accounting, and bitcoin is the best one - the hardest one, the most incorruptible one.
"States aren't collapsing because people can buy and sell tokens on the internet" ... it's one of the reasons. A huge reason. It's the first time in human history that individuals can store their wealth safely. This is huge. Future generations will chuckle at your short sightedness and small mindedness. you sound like the nay-sayers when the internet was in it's nascency.
The most important take-away from our part2 chat was that "the state" is nothing more than our peers, or family, our friends, us. You often make it sound like some abstract thing with a mind of it's own. I remember telling you that YOU play a role in how things turn out. YOU have a say in all this; whether we adopt the SchwabCoin meme or the bitcoin meme for money; whether Galt's Gulch (Liberland) can be allowed to try it's more consent-respecting more free-market experiment, etc. This is all kinda a self-fulfilling prophecy.
"Why the US shouldn't violently conquer China and Russia right now too, before they build up even bigger armies?"
DeleteIf the US was 100% guaranteed to win a war against China and Russia with few losses, few casualties, and no negative consequences, then the US should conquer both countries since it would improve the US's geopolitical calculus. However, Russia and China are armed with nukes, so that's the first and most obvious reason why no one wants the world's superpower to start a war with another nuclear power. The second reason is that a war would not have the popular support of the people, in large part because the West has adopted a humanistic ideology that is at odds with reality.
Power is self-justifying, and any means to attain power is justified if it works, but you have to be pragmatic about applying it in real life.
"Involuntary governance" is an oxymoron. There are no rules outside of humans creating rules and enforcing via the threat of force. BG already explained early on in the first debate why there is no such thing as a "voluntary society". You can re-listen to the recording if you'd like.
"the smaller the scale, the more responsive and representative the gov."
So? A global government is still necessary if you want to resolve critical game theoretical problems on a global scale, lest you and everybody else on Earth face potentially catastrophic consequences. Even if you are insistent that there should be no global government, a de facto government will arise instead. The current de facto global government consists of the UN, the United States's power and influence, China's power and influence, and other international organizations. It would be better to burn the UN to the ground and organize a new global government that would be more apt at regulating and resolving conflicts between the world's nation-states.
"I'm not sure why you say US independence was short-sighted - it clearly worked for them, they're freer and better than us Canadians."
That depends on your definition of freedom and your values. Americans may have somewhat more freedom than Canadians, but they aren't happier than Canadians, are they? In many other ways, Canada is better than the US, depending on what metrics and criteria you use. If the US didn't declare independence from the British Empire, I'd imagine that there would be a much larger Canada that has a fusion of American and Canadian values and influences since nearly all the immigrants who migrated to the United States during the 1800s and 1900s to make it what it is today would've migrated to the Super Canada instead.
"If your kids came to you with a well thought out plan to kill someone safely, or to steal someone's fortune safely, how would you handle that?"
I would stop them from doing that because not only could they face severe legal consequences to doing those things if they get caught, but I could potentially be held legally liable as well if it was revealed that I knew that they were going to break the law and that I didn't do anything to stop them. Society is also built on cooperation, so if my children are doing things to break that cooperation, I would want to stop them because that would be at odds with my values. But I know that they would never do that because it would be at odds with their values, not worth the risk of getting caught, and they would be happier going through the Power Process to make a living instead (see Industrial Society and Its Future to understand what the "Power Process" is). Even better, a Eugenostate with a state-run Eugenic Population Control program would select for people who would have little to no interest in committing crimes.
> Tax evasion is one of the main uses for bitcoin.
Delete@Dennis, You wanna know what else are great uses for bitcoin and crypto? Scams, ransom, hacking attempts, human trafficking, et cetera. By making transactions anonymous, yes there are some good people who gain freedom from the government, but what you're overlooking is that there are always at least two sides to every moral action. When transactions become anonymous and untraceable, you also make it easier for criminals and evil-doers to get away with their bad deeds and immoral acts. And as more and more companies, individuals, and governments become more accepting of cryptocurrencies, they are also becoming more accepting of these criminals' nefarious and untraceable means of collecting money. And you support that apparently. Crypto does have some advantages, but your perspective on cryptocurrencies is very one-sided.
> This is huge. Future generations will chuckle at your short-sightedness and small mindedness. you sound like the nay-sayers when the internet was in it's nascency.
Yeah, sure. The Internet totally hasn't had any negative effects on society whatsoever. You're being one-sided again. With the Internet also came the Dark Web, a popular hub for criminal activities. The Internet is also causing ideological extremists like yourself (an Ancap) to congregate together, and the rise of these radical ideologies is a contributing factor to the fall of people's faith in the current democratic society and the rising instability of our culture and society. Social media may not be worth the costs that it has had on society. And of course, the Internet is responsible for the spread of lots of fake news and misinformation all over the world. In many ways, human societies would be better off if the Internet was never invented.
Why should we expect the growing popularity and adoption of cryptocurrencies to be any different? Cryptocurrencies might do some good for society, but they will also undoubtedly cause some predictable harm as well. Stuff like this becomes more obvious when you reject the concept of a Universal Good or a Universal Evil, and it's just one of many reasons why it's so illogical to believe in an Objective Morality, or "universally preferable behavior" as you call it. There is no such thing because every cause and every action has both an upside AND a downside. It just depends on the perspective you're viewing the cause/action from.
Dennis, there are hundreds to thousands of different jurisdictions and sub-jurisdictions that you could move to if you don't like the laws that come with living where you are in Canada. With so many options for "opting-out" available to you, how could you reasonably argue that it's not possible for you to opt-out of the laws that you live under today? I don't see how Ancapistan would be any different. If Ancaps can't even be satisfied with migrating to a different jurisdiction with different laws when there are at least hundreds to choose from, this suggests that Propertarianism and the freedom to migrate somewhere else (or opt-out as you say) won't be sufficient for resolving every human's moral disagreements with one another.
ReplyDeleteOf course, you're assuming that all, most, or some of them would each do their best to conform with their own versions of the NAP, but it's not clear how you could even guarantee that each Ancap-citadel would try to follow the NAP in the first place, especially since Ancaps can't agree with each other on what counts as a violation of the NAP, much less since an Ancap society has never existed (and never will).
However, since people cannot universally agree on what does or does not count on aggression, I would argue that in a way, this world already has exactly what Ancaps are asking for. If you disagree with the Canadian version of the NAP, then you can migrate to the United States and live under the American version of the NAP instead. If you still don't like that, then you can also choose to opt-out for the Mexican NAP, the Japanese NAP, the Australian NAP, the German NAP, the Mongolian NAP, the Nigerian NAP, the Swiss NAP, and so forth. If you just do some researching, you can probably find a legal jurisdiction that has a decent interpretation of the NAP that you're looking for.
> Dennis, there are hundreds to thousands of different jurisdictions and sub-jurisdictions that you could move to if you don't like the laws that come with living where you are in Canada.
DeleteFalse. Dishonest. You were already made aware of Liberland and in an earlier comment you were unsure whether they should be allowed to opt-out and do their own thing. Assange also disproves this.
> I don't see how Ancapistan would be any different.
We actually respect the idea of consent and would actually support real opt-out options.
> However, since people cannot universally agree on what does or does not count [as] aggression
We can. Everyone already basically agrees that theft fraud rape and murder are wrong. There are a very few rare edge cases, but 99% of morality is already commonly agreed upon, albeit incoherently many times - because people are opportunistic and try to cheat. The goal is to pressure people to be more coherent. Taxation is theft, for example. We shouldn't let people get away with such obvious cringe delusions / incoherence / irrationality / cheating.
I'm not being dishonest at all. You just don't like it when your Propertarian Ethics are being used against you because you don't have a coherent ethical philosophy. Even if we did live in an Ancapistan world that was even remotely similar to what you think it would be like, you would just tell people who don't like one or more of the laws of living within their microstate / citadel that they are always free to "opt-out" and move somewhere else. But when I tell you to do the same thing in the world that we live in, you claim that you don't want to move somewhere else. Liberland and Assange are irrelevant here. As if you could ever guarantee that your Ancap microstates wouldn't also outlaw succession.
DeleteYou're also wrong that Ancapistan would support opt-out options because you'll never get even 5% of the world's population to agree to Ancapitardism (because it's inanely stupid and at odds with people's moral intuitions). Even then, every Ancap microstate would be destined to fall apart since they would be incapable of solving classic game-theoretical problems relevant to society's functioning. And even if said microstates did manage to survive somehow, the nation-states of the world would easily crush any breakaway states with their militaries due to geopolitical realities. No reasonable person would ever believe that an Ancapistan state would be able to exist on Earth.
> The goal is to pressure people to be more coherent.
If you were rational, then you would understand that morality necessarily has to be dependent on perspective. Another thing that you would realize is that the OATP is an economically inefficient and anti-free-market basis for property rights compared to the Georgist Theory of Property (GTP).
> I'm not being dishonest at all.
DeleteYou really are. You dishonestly pretend like options to opt-out currently exist while simultaneously proclaiming that they shouldn't exist. You either don't respect the concept of consent or you're larping as a dangerous animal - I'm not sure which is worse.
> You just don't like it when your Propertarian Ethics are being used against you
"Propertarian Ethics" appreciate the concept of consent. "Propertarian Ethics" would permit the existance of Liberland, a tiny unclaimed unowned peaceful island community. What we currently have are amoral apes (or rather, apes who PRETEND to be amoral) who are getting away with tonnes of shit because of opportunistic pussies like you.
> because you don't have a coherent ethical philosophy.
Ancaps have that. We don't force people to do things against their will. We don't initiate aggression. We really value consent. That's very coherent.
> Even if we did live in an Ancapistan world that was even remotely similar to what you think it would be like
It would look almost exactly as it does now, at least for the first few decades, just with more options and competing services. After all, it's simply what the market wants. If the market wants ape-like theft and retardation, as we have now, that's what it'll get. If it wants (IF YOU WANT) sanity and peaceful voluntary interactions, that's what it'll get. You had the option to promote the latter in a recent comment here, and you stupidly (pretended to?) choose the former. So be it. Enjoy your self-fulfilling dystopia.
> you would just tell people who don't like one or more of the laws of living within their microstate / citadel that they are always free to "opt-out" and move somewhere else.
There's tonnes of land just outside the citadel border, just outside private property borders. This wouldn't be a big deal if people were sane (ancap). There is no shortage of unowned land.
> But when I tell you to do the same thing in the world that we live in, you claim that you don't want to move somewhere else.
Liar. You said you'd prevent secession. You said Liberland shouldn't be allowed to exist. Ancaps currently are migrating to the "best of the worst options", the Free State Project in New Hampshire for example, but that's not good enough - that's like friends in prison (unjustly imprisoned) having a fun card game together, but they're still in prison. You support this prison. You're a horrible person, or maybe just doing a good job larping as one.
> Liberland and Assange are irrelevant here.
You're sooooo dishonest, it's cringe. Liberland exposes the lie behind the statist mantra "if you don't like it, you can always leave." ("If you try to leave we'll kill you.") Assange exposes how the US (it's globalist handlers) controls the world, every square inch of land. (Assange is not a US citizen, but the global police claim jurisdiction over him.)
> As if you could ever guarantee that your Ancap microstates wouldn't also outlaw succession.
What does that even mean. In a sane world that actually respects property rights, the dissenting land owners already own their land, they can do whatever they want on it, only constrained by whatever contracts they voluntarily opted into when joining the citadel. Moreover, there is a vast vast amount of unowned land just outside the citadel's private property borders.
> You're also wrong that Ancapistan would support opt-out options because you'll never get even 5% of the world's population to agree
What does THAT mean? You'll spend your hard-earned money to pay for a foreign offensive war to crush a peace-loving startup community?
> to Ancapitardism
DeleteMhm ;). What's your philosophy? Add -tardism to it.
> (because it's inanely stupid and at odds with people's moral intuitions).
Humans arguably have more of a moral intuition towards voluntary cooperation than conquest, as I mentioned in earlier comments, and in the un-recorded part2 of my debate with Axolotl. This is why, for example, we don't have any Klingon-like societies. This is why even babies have an innate sense of fairness and property rights.
> Even then, every Ancap microstate would be destined to fall apart since they would be incapable of solving classic game-theoretical problems relevant to society's functioning.
Cringe. I noticed Axolotl also repeated this cringe phrase before. I hope he learned enough to stop doing that now. You have no idea what you're talking about. There are a million ways to resolve "the prisoner's dilemma" - dictatorship (as you propose) is just one potential gay option - a really shitty option since if the king defects, you're fucked. "The tragedy of the commons" is best solved by private property, since involuntary evil centralized options tend towards corruption. This is what happened with Canada's east coast cod fishery after the gov stepped in to start "managing" that resource.
> And even if said microstates did manage to survive somehow, the nation-states of the world would easily crush any breakaway states with their militaries due to geopolitical realities.
You mean the reality that you're a nasty piece of shit? Or are you referring to OTHER boogey men, not you? Who exactly would crush us?
> No reasonable person would ever believe that an Ancapistan state would be able to exist on Earth.
David Friedman is an eminently reasonable person. He has a phd in physics. He even wrote a book "The Machinery of Freedom." What do you have?
> The goal is to pressure people to be more coherent.
If you were rational, then you would understand that morality necessarily has to be dependent on perspective.
Perhaps, it's dependent on a common perspective on reality. For example, if someone believes in a God that simply asserts homos are evil, there is no hope for reconciliation, we can't coexist with such people. More importantly, one (or both) of us are wrong. This does not mean that morality doesn't exist. (Morality, if it exists, is universal and objective, by definition.)
> Another thing that you would realize is that the OATP is an economically inefficient and anti-free-market basis for property rights compared to the Georgist Theory of Property (GTP).
I'll reply to your "OATP" stuff, which you mentioned in another comment, later. Thank you for finally providing some actual alternative proposal. Georgism. LOOOool. So you think it's more fair and sane, more in line with our moral intuitions, for King George to rule the entire planet, arbitrarily, to allocate land according to his whims. :D. It's totally wrong and absurd for peaceful individuals to emborder unused land, but totally fine for George to do it. Genius. I've argued with you Georgists before. Ouch. Were you always so spineless and broken, willing to give up your autonomy to King George? Did you always think you and your friends were so pathetic and useless that you couldn't figure out land allocation peacefully on your own? You needed some daddy, some big brother, some George to do it for you retards? You really think George is better and wiser than you? Pathetic.
You believe that literally everybody who disagrees with you is "evil", which explains why you are utterly incapable of understanding other perspectives and forming a rational philosophy. You can't even be bothered to read BG's essay "What is morality?", even though it would take you less than 20 minutes.
DeleteSince you referred to Henry George as "King George", I just have to point out the irony that your private property system is more akin to the Divine Right of Kings since you're arguing for unequal rights to land and unequal rights to be productive. Once again, homesteading is "Fuck you, got mine. I have a divine right to this land, and you don't" (even though I didn't create the land with my own labor).
Regarding Georgism and the cluster-fuck that is the OATP, moral arguments are not real arguments. Anybody can make moral arguments against literally anything from this or that perspective. Since you're too fucking stupid to notice it, the arguments in favor of Georgism are primarily ECONOMICAL, not moral. I sent you these economic explanations, but you haven't bothered to even glance at them:
Land Economics and Ground Rent - Part I: David Ricardo's Law of Ground Rent: https://i.redd.it/9k859zxnfqp41.jpg
Land Economics and Ground Rent - Part II: Speculation and Idle Land: https://i.redd.it/lnkq7l9zc0v41.jpg
Land Economics and Ground Rent - Part III: Mortgage Debt and Lending: https://i.redd.it/rs6i06y3so851.jpg
If you want to have a serious discussion about Georgism, you need to read the economics infographics first. They only take 10 minutes each, and I'm not going to waste my time arguing with a retard who doesn't understand economics (You, Dennis).
If you actually bothered to read Henry George's Progress and Poverty, you would find that he spends hundreds of pages writing about the economic problems that are a result of anti-Georgist policies before he ever introduces his proposal for Land Value Taxation and a Citizen's Dividend at the very end of the book. You cannot rationally reject Georgism without offering an alternative solution to the problems that Henry George outlined in his book before he introduced his own solution. Where are YOUR solutions to preventing Canada's housing crisis, the real-estate market crash of 2008, and the impending Chinese real estate market crash before they could ever happen??? You don't have any because you're a fucking moron.
We have tirelessly explained to you multiple times while your definitions for "voluntary society", "good", "evil", "consent", "force", "private property", and so forth are illogical. But you haven't done jackshit to question your assumptions and re-evaluate your beliefs. Because once again, everybody who agrees with Dennis is "evil" and their ideas are not worth consideration (according to Dennis). Only Dennis can be correct about anything regarding philosophy, ethics, or politics (also according to Dennis).
Dennis, you are literally the most batshit-stupid retard I have ever encountered the Internet. Go fuck yourself, Dennis. You deserve the difficult life you've set up for yourself by rejecting nature and reality.
*everybody who disagrees with Dennis is "evil"
DeleteYou consider US secession from the British Empire to have been short sighted? What are your reasons?
ReplyDeleteWe need to do a round3. I heard your debate with Riya, and a few key points were missing, which I thought I addressed in round2, but you forgot or didn't remember or something.
ReplyDeleteSure, I can talk sometime next week. Busy this weekend.
DeleteTomorrow?
DeleteYeah, that would probably work, depending on the time. Ping me on skype and we can set it up.
DeleteRound 3: http://dennisn.mooo.com/guest/pubstuff/2022-10-06-morality-ancap-axolotl-part3.m4a 38min, 22mb
DeleteBetter audio version here: https://www.spreaker.com/user/blitheringgenius/dennisbabbles
DeleteYou can download if you want a copy.
@Blithering, My audio version is a lot better, and less than half the size of your reencoding (22mb vs 53mb). Not only did I not re-encode the original source audio, but yours has hum/noise. (I think you tried to artificially make your volume higher than mine :P. It was balanced in the original. (Unlike in round1, where your audio somehow overwrote (not simply talked over) mine.))
Delete@ZeroContradictions, I think you're the "Georgian" guy? ... you do realize that Axolotl is a libertarian, right? You should try to debate him and see if you can convince him that your globalist-communism is the way to go, instead of the free market, for land allocation and everything else you want centrally managed by a remote bureaucracy. Maybe try using his (too-)oft-used "pRiSonEr'S dILeMma" and "tRaGeDy oF tHe cOmMonS" against him. Good luck.
DeleteBG agrees with you that a global central bureau should dictate how much land each of us are allocated, that mandates all of us to be allocated the exact same amount of land, that prohibits the sale of "one's own" land?!?
DeleteI'll read your blog post asap. I'm eager to find out how tf a free market in land is anti-free-market! I'm very curious to see what pretzel-contortions your mind did to arrive at that conclusion.
Oh woops, I was getting you confused with another commie ("Georgian") in ##libertarian in irc.libera.chat. You should join that channel and debate with him (search_social), and explain to him why you're the real "Georgian" and why he is confused and wrong. (Although I'm pretty sure "Georgianism" is a lot more than land-taxes -- we already have those.)
Delete(Regarding the "market rate" for land, and land assessment, the same can be said for human beings, aka. slavery. YOU have a "market rate" too. I can "assess" your value too. Anyways, I'll have a look at your article.)
wrt the audio quality, I did a separate recording as a backup, and it sounded much better to me (less compressed, and I could equalize the volume). The quality of skype recordings seems to vary. You can use whatever recording you want, ofc.
DeleteAs for land tax, I believe in the more general concept of natural resource taxation, which would include land. I think it is the ideal form of taxation, because it doesn't punish productive activities, such as labor, adding value, buying/selling, etc. There are other reasons too. Natural resource taxation could be provide a principled basis for bootstrapping market prices. It would incentivize the efficient use of resources. It would regulate the use of common resources such as air and water.
DeleteI'm not really a libertarian. I understand how markets work (unlike most libertarians), and how society works in general, and I want a well-functioning society. I think most economic activity is best organized through markets, but markets require the state and some important services must be provided by the state.