Debate: Free-Market Police: Better or Worse?
Side: Much, much better...

No, it was correct. It just depends on how you quantify the violence. If you define civil wars as strictly between large factions, then the civil wars started in the late eighties and ended in the mid to late nineties. If you also include smaller factions fighting, due to offshoots from the ICU, then it continues to the mid 2000s.You spoke of 2 decades of civil war in relation to the collapse of Somalia's state when the collapse wasn't even two decades ago. Which means you were either mistaken, or deliberately being deceitful.You really have no clue, huh? The ICU had success because the Islamic Somalis wanted Sharia courts and Islamic supremacy. The Transitional Government had success because secular (and I think it was Christian also) Somalis wanted a new government.The wars came because, as usual, Islamic terrorists and warlords wanted to seize a moment of instability to establish power under the guise of religion.What does this have to do with what I wrote? Wanted Islamic supremacy? Islam was already the reigning religion in Somalia and Islamic courts already existed long before the collapse. You say the wars happened because of terrorists and warlords, the U.N. invaders fall under this category too, buddy. Are you at threat of having your limbs chopped off by a machete? No? Then you do not fear death squads. End of discussion. It is irrelevant, I.E. it does not follow that a government is a death squad, despite your attempt to change the topic.There aren't states that threaten to do just that? Even in the united states, the death sentence exists. They go overseas and kill hundreds upon thousands of persons, including civilians. What else would you call a squad that causes such death? Perhaps... a death squad? You just can't admit when you're wrong. =/Police follow rules and are accountable by courts. Death squads are not. Hyperbole and innuendo do not make an argument.And the courts are accountable to the state and the state is accountable to the public, right? Since it all leads back to the public anyway, why not cut out the middle man (state)? But, I guess that's sums up out entire dispute anyway. =/Does that answer your hypothesis?Actually, does it even need to be said that you don't want companies armed with guns competing with each other for profits? Seriously?The first link didn't work. Blackwater's marked growth is clearly the consequences of state-sponsored military action, but even then everyone basically agrees that Blackwater and other private military corporations (“PMCs”) are far more cost-effective than government-administered military forces for virtually any engagement.Sure you can point to a little over a dozen occasions where blackwater agents have fired on civilians, but do you really want to play the "who's killed more" game? Really? =/I don't want armed firms competing with each other. This is a given, but it's also Utopian. Newsflash, states do the same thing. If you think state armies stop profit wars then you are one very naive individual, avesk. If you pay a leader of a clan to request that his followers buy your goods, then no longer is competition driving your quality of service. You have rigged the system.Once again, Paying someone to promote your product/service is NOT analogous to paying a political party to stifle competition. I can't believe you would be opposed to such a thing. Do you really find promotion to be "wrong"? Are you saying you want the state to stop private firms from promoting their products? You're retarded. This sort of promotion happens with or without a state, so this isn't an argument against anarchism, it's a critic of reality.Are you really this slow? When you exploit a group of people, it is possible to abuse them without them even knowing about it, because from their perspective they are receiving an improvement to a prior life.Are you really this retarded? Any firm that doesn't instantly bring up a persons quality of life to ours must be corrupt, eh? It doesn't matter that the firm actually does improve their quality of life, it's still "evil". I'm not even going to listen to your spurious reasoning here because you are happy to employ people at slave wages, knowing full-well how badly we treat those people because you live in luxury in the west and can see the difference, but you choose to live here rather than work in those sweatshops yourself.I really hate stupid, selfish people.I'd rather these persons receive "slave" wages then sub-slave wages. But I suppose YOU would rather these persons receive sub-slave wages so long as your backwards conscience is clear.I really hate egotistical, Utopian asshats. Have you ever worked as a child in a sweatshop? Are you in one now? Is it a matter of habit to find children missing limbs and fingers where you live? No? Then shut the hell up and appreciate that the elimination of child labour and opening of public schools has improved our living conditions.Lol. So you're just going to ignore my argument because I don't work in sweatshops? Face it, you're arguing against history. These persons quality of life has improved because of these sweatshops and you just can't handle that. You're egotistical and childish. If anything, YOU need to appreciate the elimination of child prostitution and slave labour brought on by these sweatshops. If you weren't so quick to attack that which you've been trained to hate, you'd realize that since these persons are making more money, there's less reason for their children to need jobs. Which means they can get educated and compete for good jobs on a global scale. But, I suppose it takes just a little too much maturity for you to handle. Feudalism ended in England long before the Industrial Revolution. Comparing the Industrial Revolution to it is like comparing McDonalds' jobs to factory jobs in the 18th century and concluding that we should appreciate them, despite that decades ago working at a small restaurant would be considered more enjoyable work.Specifically, Feudalism declined between the late 14th and mid-16th centuries. The Industrial Revolution started around the early to mid-18th century. Reforms occurred after feudalism like a money-based economy and centralised government.You know, I never actually said anything about feudalism. YOU did. So it looks like you're arguing against yourself here. My whole argument has been that the industrial revolution was an improvement relative to the quality of life that preceded it. Regardless of if you would call that feudalism, monarchism, whatever, it was an improvement. Relative to what preceded it, it was terrible. The only advantage to the Industrial Revolution was a major rise in goods produced. The cost was health, poor working and living conditions, crowded cities, and a steep difference in wealth.Think of the Industrial Revolution like Mecha-feudalism as revenge for Feudalism's fall centuries earlier. Instead of owning land and signing vassals, you owned factories and signed workers. They were your slaves, basically.Yet another argument pulled from your ass. I mean, this one doesn't even make sense relative to ITSELF! The only advantage was more goods produced? How the hell does that even make sense? How would it be possible for all this capital to be produced if no one could afford it? I just... don't know how to respond to something so utterly stupid. Real income doubled. Persons had more disposable income so they could afford better homes and health-care. Britain's population DOUBLED. The life expectancy of children increased dramatically. The percentage of the children born in London who died before the age of five decreased from 74.5% in 1730–1749 to 31.8% in 1810–1829.You couldn't possibly be more wrong on this topic. I'm starting to think you actually have a literal mental deficiency. I mean, you don't even seem to have a wikipedian understanding of history and economics. This is not the issue. The issue is that those methods which improved upon it and reformed it, are what you're fighting against. You're against oversight, accountability, regulation. You want factories to return to those conditions.Wrong, wrong, wrong. I've never once said I was against those things. In fact, I've specifically said just the opposite. Our dispute is over whether a state is more efficient at managing the market than free-enterprise. It was one out of a long list of personal accounts. But ignoring that, the facts are that the wealthy will always corrupt the local political hierarchy. A state is irrelevant to this. You like to pretend that only states are corruptible.I'm going to get an aneurysm if I keep reading your arguments, I just know it... =/A CEO paying a respected member of some community to say good things about his product to other persons is NOT an example of corruption... if I say anything else, you're just going to twist it and barrage me with an entire posts worth of logical fallacies, so I'm going to leave it at that.Point blank: if they "knew" as you do, then there wouldn't have been the need for unions, labour reforms, and so-on. The factory owners would have worked to improve the conditions themselves. They fought against labour reforms which suggests that they didn't know, or knew better than you.That's your argument? The existence of unions proves that beating your employees is more cost effective than not beating your employees?... I'm just... really glad you have no political sway. Really, really glad.Like I've already said, but am going to have to repeat since you seem incapable of accounting arguments I've made that aren't directly in front of you, without a state to cripple your competition, the only way to attract workers is to provide good working conditions. When you CAN lobby the state to cripple competition you can get away with more because your industry becomes (more) inelastic. You know, I understand your problem now. You're too wide-eyed to understand how cruel and callous people are. The factory owners spanned over a hundred years and still found that the best way to get work done was to intimidate their workers.No, the problem is YOU'RE too wide-eyed to understand that the government puts themselves first and everyone else second. Perhaps wide-eyed is not the right term, more accurately, you're to eyes-pointing-in-opposite-directions. Not congruent with the other information. The managers docked workers for a long list of offenses related to individuality, they beat workers too. It is not within their nature, therefore, that they should wish to bring good cheer to the workers. Especially when it was the factory owners which fought labour reforms.What does this have to do with the window tax? I'm going to guess you're trying to say that these owners are cruel persons, therefore they would not put in more windows if they could afford it... Since you already disagree that happy workers are more productive, there's nothing else to say here.1760: No regulations on factory labour.1860: Many labour regulations have already been passed, they were simply not enforced.You already know what I'm going to say to this, so I'm moving on.Still, it must be said that their wages were pitifully low anyway, so 70% of almost-nothing isn't very impressive especially as they were starving or malnourished most of them time.So you're just going to write off any progress just because it didn't automatically bring them up to our level? Look, I know you don't like the idea of statelessness and all, but at this point you've got to see you're fighting a loosing battle. I know you know you're making a bad argument, at the very least you should drop it and move on to some of your less stupid arguments. =/ Who exactly? The wealthy were better off. Those in parliament were better off. The workers were not better off. The Industrial revolution killed so many, left the rest malnourished, injured, and diseased.Seriously have you any concept of what life was like in those days? Living quarters would suddenly collapse due to poor construction, tuberculosis and cholera were common epidemics, the local water supply was toxic from sewage and industrial waste, and there was nothing but constant toil.Before that the population was lower, living arrangements were more spacious, jobs had more space for workers, etc.I already told you exactly how much wealthier the workers got and they become much wealthier in comparison than the upper-class. Go back and re-read it because I'm sick of re-writing my arguments to you. Especially since I usually have to re-write them in back-to-back posts. =/The Dust Bowl or the Dirty Thirties was a period of severe dust storms causing major ecological and agricultural damage to American and Canadian prairie lands from 1930 to 1936 (in some areas until 1940). The phenomenon was caused by severe drought coupled with decades of extensive farming without crop rotation, fallow fields, cover crops or other techniques to prevent erosion.[1] Deep plowing of the virgin topsoil of the Great Plains had displaced the natural grasses that normally kept the soil in place and trapped moisture even during periods of drought and high winds.So?So if I take a moment to think like you do, then when the state vanishes, magically it becomes impossible for money to trade hands between authorities for favours. It's almost as if you live in an alternate reality where the rules of social interaction are completely different.Yeah, you think you can pay persons with no market sway for market favours, I'M the delusional one. =/Why do you think it is possible for the wealthy to subvert a state's existence? Do states have collection boxes next to all their leaders? Is money only possible in a state? It is possible because a state is an authority, like any which forms in a group of humans, and authorities may be bought and sold.Subvert? I never said anything about that, in fact I've very clearly stated that it's because of the states power that the wealthy are able to corrupt the economy. Nice try though. ;)