From: mss2@quads.uchicago.edu (Michael S. Schiffer)
Subject: Re: warfare
Reply-To: mss2@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 05:59:39 GMT

In article <Bvq3ty.527@acsu.buffalo.edu> sulkom@ubvmsb.cc.buffalo.edu (Mark Sulkowski) writes:
>In article <==4-00+@engin.umich.edu>, mschiffer@engin.umich.edu (Michael S. Schiffer, LHN) writes...
>>	But what's to prevent the security agencies themselves from
>>becoming a threat?  After all, provision of defense in exchange for
>>wealth isn't a definition only of anarchy-- it also characterizes
>>feudalism.  Why shouldn't a security agency exercise power over its
>>clients, or raid those who aren't?  Because other agencies are
>>protecting them?

>	Why shouldn't a left anarchy have problems with gangs of people
>becoming a threat?!?  Because other people are protecting you?

	Well, I'm not arguing for a left anarchy.  Actually, at this
point, I'm not really arguing for anything-- I'm arguing against the
long-term workability of an anarchy based on freely chosen security
forces, because I don't think there's anything which would press them
to continue to remain freely chosen.

>	If people in a right anarchy had the pacificm that left anarchists
>require in their society, then how can left anarchists criticize right
>anarchy.  It would work according to their own requirements of human
>nature.

	I'm certainly not a pacifist, so I'll leave that one entirely
alone.

>	To get to your question, what "prevents" security agencies
>from becoming a threat is not necessarily another agency.  It is the
>profit motive.  Security agencies have an incentive to be civilized
>because that is what attracts customers and avoids ostracism from
>society.  A rogue (statist) agency could find itself achieving the 
>status of outlaws very quickly.  A rogue agency is not impossible,
>but it is unlikely because the incentives lead in the other direction.

	I don't really see that.  Seems much more likely that a rogue
agency would find itself achieving the status of a state.  Maybe not
the first one, but in the end you'd get someone with the competence
and venality of a Charlemagne or a Robert Guiscard, who's able to play
his enemies against one another to either buy off or crush those who
would oppose him.  And, of course, once a state is established it's
becomes progressively easier for it to expand, at least to a point
(since it will tend to have the power to defeat or cow smaller
enemies, while a coalition will be difficult to form even in the face
of a threat if the state's leader is good at stirring up trouble).
Theft is, in the short run at least, quite profitable-- particularly
if it's combined with service (i.e. defense against other enemies) and
threat.  After all, that basically describes the development of
governments out of relatively anarchic situations (e.g. Europe in the
6th-8th centuries, Iceland in the 12th).

Mike
-- 
Michael S. Schiffer, LHN, FCS	"Indeed I tremble for my country
mss2@midway.uchicago.edu	 when I reflect that God is just."
mike.schiffer@um.cc.umich.edu	 -- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on
mss2@usite-next.uchicago.edu     Virginia (1784)
Newsgroups: alt.society.anarchy