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Frost

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Re: How do you enforce Anarchy?
« Reply #15 on: July 21, 2009, 11:18:47 PM »

libertylover

Do you only let in members to a territory who swear an oath to maintain it as an anarchist territory?

No, anyone can come in, but they would need representation from a Dispute Resolution Organization to do any business with others represented by DROs(pretty much everyone).

What if they won't swear to the anarchist oath, are you going to bar their entry?

He(lets call him Joe) doesn't need to swear an oath, he would need to sign a contract with a DRO to do business, i.e. buy food.

If people attempt to form a gang do you deport them?

By agreeing to the DRO contract Joe would be agreeing not to initiate violence or knowingly be a member of an organization that does so. Restitution would be extracted from Joe as per his contract.

Who deports them if you have no government?

Deportation would not be forced on Joe. If he leaves it will be on his own initiative because he is tired of the increasingly lengthy periods of time he is spending working for the DRO in order to pay restitution to his victims.

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libertylover

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Re: How do you enforce Anarchy?
« Reply #16 on: July 21, 2009, 11:35:15 PM »

MacFall said:
"Actually, the Icelandic gošorš system, the Irish tśatha under the Brehon laws, the Pennsylvanian Quakers, and the American frontier were far more anarchic, as they had no monopoly state to organize them."

I mean no disrespect or am I saying anyone is stupid.  With all the examples of past anarchistic societies you have to admit something destroyed them or they would still be operating today as anarchist societies.  And there would be a heck of alot of people from this forum making plans right now to immigrate there.  My question is how does an anarchist society prevent their own end?  Surely in your examples of past anarchist societies people were well armed to defend their societies so why did they fail?  Shouldn't the Lakota if they want this form of society have a plan to keep whatever cause previous societies to fail from happening to them?

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libertylover

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Re: How do you enforce Anarchy?
« Reply #17 on: July 21, 2009, 11:42:40 PM »

libertylover

Do you only let in members to a territory who swear an oath to maintain it as an anarchist territory?

No, anyone can come in, but they would need representation from a Dispute Resolution Organization to do any business with others represented by DROs(pretty much everyone).

What if they won't swear to the anarchist oath, are you going to bar their entry?

He(lets call him Joe) doesn't need to swear an oath, he would need to sign a contract with a DRO to do business, i.e. buy food.
.........

Who enforces the DRO contract and makes Joe pay for his violations.  Aren't contracts and oaths similar in that you make a legal promise to another? 
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Diogenes The Cynic

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Re: How do you enforce Anarchy?
« Reply #18 on: July 21, 2009, 11:53:18 PM »

What happened with the ancient Greeks was that every time they had a local government fall apart, they would live without one for a while untill a dictator came out of the woodwork.

An Anarchic system is predisposed to being abused into becoming totalitarian.
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Frost

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Re: How do you enforce Anarchy?
« Reply #19 on: July 21, 2009, 11:56:13 PM »

Who enforces the DRO contract and makes Joe pay for his violations.  Aren't contracts and oaths similar in that you make a legal promise to another?  

I highly recommend Stefan Molyneux's free audio book Practical Anarchy, and the book previous to that in the series Everyday Anarchy.

The DRO would remove the funds from his bank account as authorized by the contract. If he lacked the funds to fully pay restitution the DRO would require him to work for them, in a job determined by his skills, until the victim is fully paid. It would not be necessary to use physical force against Joe unless he was completely irrational or mentally ill. In a society where reputation, formalized by the DROs, is everything you simply cant afford to wrong someone and not properly compensate them.
« Last Edit: July 22, 2009, 12:02:35 AM by Frost »
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MacFall

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Re: How do you enforce Anarchy?
« Reply #20 on: July 22, 2009, 12:02:05 AM »

Those societies were anarchic, not anarchist. The latter denotes an ideological feature which may be lacking in a society without a formal government.

In the case of the Icelandic free state, the Althing (sort of a high court for the gošorš, which were competing legislative and judical companies, so to speak) set the number of gošorš. That placed a legal barrier to entry into the market for defense and dispute resolution. I say that the gošorš system was anarchic because the gošorš did not have to obey the Althing - they simply did because of tradition and social convention.

Because there was a lack of free entry, the system was corruptible. And when the Holy Roman Empire arrived with conquest in mind, they found that they had a fixed number of gošorš to deal with. Bribe a few here, threaten a few there, and it all falls apart. Had the Althing not set a limit on the number of gošorš, or had the gošorš ignored the Althing, Rome would have found the system incorruptible. Because as soon as a gošorš was bribed or threatened into enforcing Roman law (specifically the tithe, which at the time was a land tax that was in fact far more than 10%), another would have taken its place in the market, and all their customers would have left. As it was, the customers of the gošorš crowded into the few left that would protect them, but by that time Rome had absorbed the other gošorš into their political system along with the Althing, and instituted a land monopoly through the tithe.

The tśatha in Ireland lasted for more than five centuries. What put their system to an end was Oliver Cromwell, in the 1660s, who brutally conquered the Island by sheer, overwhelming force. But it is worth noting that for the entire time that the tśatha existed, Britain (and earlier, Scandinavia) had been invading and occupying Ireland, and had been unable to conquer it. So stateless Ireland, as resource-poor as it was and with a far lower population than its enemies, withstood half a thousand years of constant aggression before falling.

Pennyslvanian anarchy lasted for 16 years before Penn managed to install a government which would successfully collect taxes. And that worked because the Quakers dispersed and went elsewhere, allowing newer and more compliant settlers to take their place. Had they stayed in Pennsylvania, things would have been quite different.

The frontier lost its freedom simply because the people there believed in government, despite the fact that they lived without it for so long. They were bribed in some cases - the government promised them protection from Indians and outlaws if they'd pay taxes (a promise which they broke), or the government would give them land and resources if they'd incorporate (a promise which they broke), etc. In some cases the Federal government just moved in and forced incorporation, and the residents, lacking any firm philosophy of liberty, just let it happen.

So perhaps the answer to your question of how anarchy will be enforced is that there must be an explicit rejection of the state from the belief system of the people. The state must not only be abolished in reality, but also from the minds of those who cast it off. And I think that is not a hopeless cause. No other stateless society has had the understanding of liberty that we have now, though the Quakers came close to expressing it. Lysander Spooner, Benjamin Tucker, and (later) Murray Rothbard all came after the end of the latest experiment in true liberty - the American West - fell under the control of the Federal government.

But we have their ideas now, and ideas don't just go away. Rest assured that the next free society, once established, will not go quietly into the night as have its predecessors.
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libertylover

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Re: How do you enforce Anarchy?
« Reply #21 on: July 22, 2009, 12:04:48 AM »

The DRO would remove the funds from his bank account as authorized by the contract. If he lacked the funds to fully pay restitution the DRO would require him to work for them, in a job determined by his skills, until the victim is fully paid. It would not be unnecessary to use physical force against Joe unless he was completely irrational or mentally ill. In a society where reputation, formalized by the DROs, is everything you simply cant afford to wrong someone and not properly compensate them.

But what if you are innocent and the DRO makes the wrong call based on fraudulent testimony manufacture to impoverish Joe?  It happens in our courts today so it is a pretty good bet it could happen in future DROs.  Is someone presumed innocent until proven responsible in this system?
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MacFall

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Re: How do you enforce Anarchy?
« Reply #22 on: July 22, 2009, 12:06:01 AM »

Would you patronize a company that did not presume innocence, or have firm evidenciary procedures? I'm sure you would not. So why assume that your neighbors would?
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Frost

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Re: How do you enforce Anarchy?
« Reply #23 on: July 22, 2009, 12:15:26 AM »

But what if you are innocent and the DRO makes the wrong call based on fraudulent testimony manufacture to impoverish Joe?  It happens in our courts today so it is a pretty good bet it could happen in future DROs.  


It's not a utopia. It's just better, much better.

Is someone presumed innocent until proven responsible in this system?

Someone is treated as stated in their contract. If innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt is the standard you are willing to accept then only sign a contract with that standard. If enough of the people demand a standard then DROs will offer and respect it. The best standard would be determined by market forces. A DRO with a standard so high that its customers could hardly ever be found guilty would find themselves without reciprocal agreements necessary to do business from other DROs. A DRO with too low a standard would find itself without customers.
« Last Edit: July 22, 2009, 05:14:57 PM by Frost »
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libertylover

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Re: How do you enforce Anarchy?
« Reply #24 on: July 22, 2009, 12:20:14 AM »

MacFall good answer on the historical question I will have to mull it over.  

Your second answer may be one of the reasons ebay and pay pal are losing customers and vendors.  Complaints get posted, accounts frozen with no evidence of their validity.  So anyone with an axe to grind can buy something and make all sorts of false claims.  But on the other hand ebay and paypal continue despite these flaws.  I suppose a DRO could abuse customers and stay in business if they dominate the market.   But like ebay other companies will come nipping like Amazon and Craigslist.
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BobRobertson

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Re: How do you enforce Anarchy?
« Reply #25 on: July 22, 2009, 10:27:55 AM »

So in implementing something fundamentally different from the state, we have only to gain.

Funny thing, in one of the few online discussions concerning "institutional aggression" vs. "no institutional aggression" that didn't devolve into name calling and bald assertions of insanity, that was exactly the result.

The general consensus was that, regardless of the theoretical problems that "might" occur without the state, not having a state for however long that condition lasts would be an improvement.

What I find interesting is that the objections to not having a state do come up, continuously, and they're always the same: Nothing will stop someone from taking over.

As if that's not exactly what we have now?

As if every "state" that might arise must, for some unstated reason, be worse than what we have now?

The State, as we know it, perpetuates itself by the same mechanism by which chattel slavery was perpetuated past its point of economic inefficiency: Government externalizes its costs.

A private defensive agency cannot do that. The entirety of its costs must be born by its subscribers. War is very, very expensive.

As Roderick Long puts it so well in his "Answers to 10 Objections to Anarchy":
http://mises.org/mp3/MU2004/Long2.mp3
http://mises.org/etexts/longanarchism.pdf

(paraphrased from memory) "Which is fine until you get your bill. Here's the part for basic protection, legal defense subscription, etc, and then here's the premiums to cover spying on people to see what they're doing in their bedrooms, violent conquests, etc. Maybe there are people who are that dedicated, but when people see the bill they may think, well, is it really worth it to pay this much?"

Thanks, MacFall, you put the case very well. Regardless of how "dangerous" private criminals might be, the effects of private criminals pales to vanishing compared to the destructive effects of the state.

But again, it's not like this objection hasn't been put forward before:

"There are some troubles from which mankind can never escape. . . .
 [The anarchists] have never claimed that liberty will bring perfection;
 they simply say that its results are vastly preferable to those that
 follow from authority....
 As a choice of blessings, liberty is the greater; as a choice of evils,
 liberty is the smaller. Then liberty always says the Anarchist. No use
 of force except against the invader."
 --- Benjamin Tucker

To object to "anarchy" because it won't be perfect is to raise a huge straw-man argument. Nothing in human associations is perfect, as the existence of the legal procedure called "divorce" demonstrates perfectly. That's why business contracts have adjudication and penalty clauses.

I can't remember which Mises.org professor in which talk says this, but I think it deserves to be repeated:

   All I'm saying is that for any given population, they are better off without a coercive state than they are with one.

If Roderick Long's talk isn't convincing, if "The Market For Liberty", "The Voluntary City", "For A New Liberty" and the other well-worn anarchist discussions are unconvincing, then maybe you really do have a new objection that no one has heard of.

So far, every objection I've seen revolves around someone (or group) getting away with doing what no private person could do and not be labeled as "anti-social" and universally rejected.

Those raising these objections do not say why anyone would continue to do business with them. Why their "subscribers" would not kill those who came to tax them. Why those same "subscribers" could not, or even would not, subscribe to different defensive agencies to defend them from the taxmen.

Now I have no doubt that some agency might try it some time, but without the legitimate authority to initiate force, nothing protects them from retaliation, peacemeal as their agents are killed off by irate "subscribers" when they come to collect their fees, or wholesale in response to a wholesale assault on their part.

Private security agents today far outnumber "police", filling the very real need of actual protective services that government police do not provide for anyone other than the politicians who employ them. If the police vanished tomorrow....nothing. There would be very little change in how people deal with day to day issues.

And those who are presented as too stupid to know what to do without Big Mommy Government to tell them? That's just another market opportunity.

Some self-help titles from anarchic North America: "Private Protection for Dummies" "Liability Insurance for Dummies" "Don't Panic! You're Just Being Sued."

That's not even bringing up the various voluntary civic groups that already exist, such as churches, clubs and charities, that already help their members and neighbors without resorting to government coercion. There is no reason to assume that the basic human motivation to associate with other people on mutually beneficial grounds will change.

Sure, that means that the Free Masons will continue to exist, but without the institution with the monopoly on legitimate coercion to infest and wield, they're just another bunch of guys who get together and dress funny, no different than the Society for Creative Anachronism.
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Terror Australis

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Re: How do you enforce Anarchy?
« Reply #26 on: July 23, 2009, 03:21:43 AM »

Isn't the internet an example of anarchy???No one is ruling it yet........imagine if they tried the hackers would destroy it lol.

The internet is the most decentralized entity on earth.

The government is the most centralized entity on earth....

I have never been scared in my life that the internet would come and destroy my life ....there is your answer  :D.
« Last Edit: July 23, 2009, 03:26:09 AM by davehollis »
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libertylover

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Re: How do you enforce Anarchy?
« Reply #27 on: July 23, 2009, 05:18:58 AM »

This is one problem I see and it has nothing to do with one system being better than the other.  I have been a Libertarian my entire political life and after 25 years plus fighting the good fight.  I am just now flirting with the idea that an Anarchic system couldn't be any worse than the growing oppressive government we currently have.  But I am painful aware that there are many who refuse to see government as an oppressive system. 

A large entrenched majority can't see the harm in 51% of people dictating to the other 49%.   The difficulty is convincing people that forcing others to go along with any agenda is the real problem and not the agenda which happened to win the vote.  But time after time the losing side will rail against the winning agenda as though their agenda is the better solution.   

I still have tinges of doubt because of the potential of a might always making right in an anarchic system.  Not that we don't already have that going on now.    What hope would a private individual have to proving damages to a DRO against a polluter?  Considering our government with its unlimited funds has a difficult problem doing it.   And how do you extract restitution from a destitute person for any crimes or damages they may inflict?   I can see how someone who has something to lose will behave but what of the people who have nothing to lose?
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Terror Australis

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Re: How do you enforce Anarchy?
« Reply #28 on: July 23, 2009, 06:14:08 AM »

This is one problem I see and it has nothing to do with one system being better than the other.  I have been a Libertarian my entire political life and after 25 years plus fighting the good fight.  I am just now flirting with the idea that an Anarchic system couldn't be any worse than the growing oppressive government we currently have.  But I am painful aware that there are many who refuse to see government as an oppressive system. 

A large entrenched majority can't see the harm in 51% of people dictating to the other 49%.   The difficulty is convincing people that forcing others to go along with any agenda is the real problem and not the agenda which happened to win the vote.  But time after time the losing side will rail against the winning agenda as though their agenda is the better solution.   

I still have tinges of doubt because of the potential of a might always making right in an anarchic system.  Not that we don't already have that going on now.    What hope would a private individual have to proving damages to a DRO against a polluter?  Considering our government with its unlimited funds has a difficult problem doing it.   And how do you extract restitution from a destitute person for any crimes or damages they may inflict?   I can see how someone who has something to lose will behave but what of the people who have nothing to lose?

how many people would have absolutely nothing to lose?
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markuzick

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Re: How do you enforce Anarchy?
« Reply #29 on: July 23, 2009, 06:28:16 AM »

Quote
It seems to me anarchy can't survive under a natural democratic system.  People will join together and use the power of their numbers to impose a kind of government on others.  So how do you stop that from happening? 

Political anarchy is just civil disorder. Any time you have civil order, then by definition, you have civil government of some kind. Civil government needn't violate the NAP. Examples of voluntary civil government exist today in the form of private arbitration firms, private police, security firms and neighborhood associations. These are free market civil governments and they compete with the state.

Achieving a voluntary society can only be done by gradually creating sufficient demand for voluntary alternatives to the state to put the state out of business as the agencies of the state's government are either closed or privatized as various types of voluntary governmental agencies.

Other forms of government, of the non-civil kind, include private welfare agencies, private education, private health services, private fire fighting agencies, private trash collection, private electric companies, private space exploration and don't forget the private organizations involved in production and distribution of common goods and services that in some parts of the world and, increasingly here in the States, are considered to be the responsibility of the state.

The "market anarchist" definition of anarchy is a contradiction in terms.

Quote
3. a theory that regards the absence of all direct or coercive government as a political ideal and that proposes the cooperative and voluntary association of individuals and groups as the principal mode of organized society.


All cooperative and voluntary association of individuals and groups are examples of various types of government and they all have rules that are enforced via force or coercion if more peaceful means fail.

Even though anarchy is supposed to mean "without government" or any of its various synonyms like governance, rulers, managers, masters, control, etc...., "market anarchy" is really a system of voluntary government or, if the above definition is followed, then it's "voluntary pacifist government", which I suppose enforces its laws strictly through social pressure, eschewing forceful self defense.

No such pacifist governments can exist for long and there is no practical means or rational moral suasion by which they can prevent the creation of governments that rely on more forceful means of self defense.

Quote
Do you only let in members to a territory who swear an oath to maintain it as an anarchist territory?  What if they won't swear to the anarchist oath, are you going to bar their entry?   How can you bar their entry and still have open borders?
   

Any organization that monopolizes land in this way is a state.

Quote
If people attempt to form a gang do you deport them?  Who deports them if you have no government?


Of course, in any civilization there is always some form/s of civil government.

Without borders, deportation is impossible. Criminal gangs must be fought by individuals and organizations dedicated to protection and restitution.





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As the state feeds off of the limitation and destruction of legitimate government, anarchy is its essence.

To claim "economic rent" from someone Else's labor when applied to land, which is something no one can own outright, is in itself, to claim landlord status over raw nature. It is an attempt at coercive monopoly power that is at the root of statism.
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