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

OMG! ISP's filtered information during the antiquity of the internet? Well, you've convinced me. Society would collapse if not for the small group of people monopolizing all the most vital social services...If the internet was filtered, then not filtered, it was because there was demand for it to be unfiltered. Actually it was never unfiltered totally. You see what happened was, in some areas people disliked it and pressured companies to change. In other cases people liked content filtering and so created a market for it. But what's really disturbing is the bit about net neutrality. The net is/was like a free market in almost every way, anarchy, each site is equal in principle, the small sites could become bigger than corporate sites, etc. What happened? You're gonna love this...The ISPs, complaining that users were using up more bandwidth than the ISP could provide (because the ISP had limited bandwidth, but oversold it to consumers calculating that the overall user average would fit their budget), decided that it was time to push for a tiered internet (net neutrality, being what it was meant that as long as you covered bandwidth costs you were every bit as equal as the next guy) but tiered internet would change that, you'd have to pay for premium bandwidth to your site, and competing ISPs could serve slower speeds for rival website hosts, etc.So in an unregulated market (ISP and internet are new and were virgin territory for law) businesses overpromised, then used their money to buy government favours against our wishes. The government wasn't the active pursuer to this, but the nanny that business called upon.Somalia has a government NOW but it didn't from 1991-2006. It lasted that long without the persons of Somalia being ancaps AND with every major political power looking to establish a government during that time. The only warring factions were from other governments trying to establish power. It's actually not like that, but I'll get to that in a moment.It's insanely hard to establish a government. Anarchic Ireland had no government for one-thousand years (!) despite England's best efforts and they (the Irish) weren't anarchists either. Imagine how hard it would be to establish a state amongst ancaps without a tax base.An anarchy is a state of no government, no law, and no oversight. There is no such thing as a crime.What you used as examples are places with informal or transitional governments. Authorities that act as law and police. So they cannot be anarchies.You've said an unregulated market has no merits, therefore you are only comparing the regulations of one market to the regulations of another, since an unregulated market has no merits it cannot be compared. Misconstruement of what I said. - Life expectancy increased from 46 to 48.5 years. This is a poor expectancy as compared with developed countries. But in any measurement of welfare, what is important to observe is not where a population stands at a given time, but what is the trend. Is the trend positive, or is it the reverse?- Number of one-year-olds fully immunized against measles rose from 30 to 40 percent.- Number of physicians per 100,000 population rose from 3.4 to 4.- Number of infants with low birth weight fell from 16 per thousand to 0.3 — almost none.- Infant mortality per 1,000 births fell from 152 to 114.9.- Maternal mortality per 100,000 births fell from 1,600 to 1,100.- Percent of population with access to sanitation rose from 18 to 26.- Percent of population with access to at least one health facility rose from 28 to 54.8.- Percent of population in extreme poverty (i.e., less than $1 per day) fell from 60 to 43.2.- Radios per thousand population rose from 4 to 98.5.- Telephones per thousand population rose from 1.9 to 14.9.- TVs per 1,000 population rose from 1.2 to 3.7.- Fatalities due to measles fell from 8,000 to 5,600.You lack a context. The period up to the collapse of Somalia's government was full of oppression and strife. It also never degenerated into complete anarchy, as factions formed in the power vacuums that followed. So really what we're looking at is ongoing civil war over decades between factions, some improvements happening as unrest falls and foreign aid comes, and never a solid, stable government because of so many groups wanting different types of government.Now tell me, would you rather live in anarchic Somalia, or what Somalia was before the fall of the state? =3Neither. Both are screwed up.http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=363&year=2010 Please select Somalia from that list and read the summary.Then tell me that you think it's peachy there.Distorted? Are you calling every world historian whom has studied Somalia distorted? Are you calling the Mises institute distorted? Are you calling the Austrian school of economics distorted? I'm calling your view and pro-anarchists' views distorted.Are you saying that the government is the most ethical entity in the market? Really?Government holds businesses accountable and we hold government accountable. It historically doesn't work when you force us to hold business accountable because they are very large compared to us and we can't serve them violations, only reduced patronage.I'll explain again. If workers want good working conditions, then companies offering good working conditions will naturally have an easier time finding and keeping competent employees. Since when does a company voluntarily offer good working conditions? They offer what they can get away with. That's why unions came along, a single worker lacks power.Look into modern sweatshops for your answer.Fast food sells well because persons buy it for the taste, not the nutrients.No. They buy it for convenience. Hence why it is of inferiour quality usually.If Com cast provided a poor service on a free market, person would take their business elsewhere. If they don't it's because it's not that big of a deal.Which didn't happen. The best we could do was sue them, which failed.Big company > small consumers.Motion picture industries are able to do these things because of the laws that are in place now... thanks to the government. =3Who bought those laws in the first place? Wealthy IP owners.Government had no stake in it.I'll take your word about the water, but if it's still selling then either barriers to entry are in place (which I already know there are) or there is a demand for the water despite the low quality.Homeopathy is a pseudoscience that essentially sells distilled water with claimed properties because supposedly water has a memory. Despite not producing a service besides the placebo effect, it has gained a significant market.Competition sees to it that only the best make it to the top. the worst runner cannot win the race unless there is some entity he can appeal to in order to get some advantage. I'll solve your problem for you:Best is a word with ambiguity like fitness in mainstream understanding of evolution.What best means is closer to fitness in evolution. In other words the most fit business makes it to the top, where fitness means most adapted to the constraints of the market. It does not mean quality, price, cleanliness, or safeness.The environment of the capitalist market requires maximum profits at minimal investment costs. That is the most concise description. It is actually a lot like biological evolution but with money replacing food and ideas and names replacing genes.Therefore, like evolution, corporate empathy and responsibility only emerges when it is profitable and in most cases it is more profitable to be thrifty, like in biological evolution. This means cutting corners like cleaner factory emissions and wastes, and worker salaries.The only way this can change is by altering the environment of the market to pressure different behaviours. Individuals lack the power to do this, so we need unions and authorities big enough that can listen to individuals, but make that change themselves. This is where unions and governments come in.Ha capito?Now let's do a comprehension check: is the best (most fit) company always the best (most desirable to you)?A regulated market is successful to the extent that it is allowed to behave free of regulation. All that's needed for a market to survive is supply and demand. Any perversion on this will hinder it. It depends on what we want. Ethical behaviour and responsibility? Can't have a free market for that.No god could manage evolution better than it has managed itself.Untrue. To extend your metaphor, we the gods made natural things like aurochs, wild fowl, grasses, and fruits much better through selected evolution (cows, chickens, corn, bananas). Just like how we made a free market better (for everyone) through selected legal evolution.You've got it all wrong:http://www.fff.org/freedom/0993e.asphttp://mises.org/daily/4604Sure, quote more libertarian/free market websites, that always helps.As I've said time and time again, there's more to the market than affordability. If Company-A does a better job than company-B, then comp-a will grow, thus be able to provide an even better, more affordable service. Great, nothing wrong with that.If Comp-A suddenly decides to over-charge on it's product, then it will be easy for other companies that haven't yet changed their prices to undersell Comp-A. Problem solved. Perhaps instead of higher prices, Comp-A removes it's employee's benefits. Since it's a large company, it's going to piss off a lot of people.If the cut-backs are bad enough, the company runs the risk of it's employees striking. During this strike period persons will have to take their business to comp-B, or -C, or -D etc.In the last part of this you hit a wall. In the free market labour strikes are prohibited through violence against strikers (and especially unions). So the workers just have to shut up and accept the reductions.FUD happens with a state, so that is in no way an argument FOR government.Example of fitness not better.There are hundreds of third party reviews one can go to so they can find out more about a particular product now, would they all stop existing just because the government does?That requires a literate populace and modern infrastructure and technology. Sweatshop workers (who will be the primary workforce in your free market) won't have access to many personal computers.Mostly, lock-ins aren't a big deal. It's only rational for a business to want return customers and if doing so is as simple as making their product non-compatible with that of their competitors, then obviously that's what will happen. Which is unfair to consumers and hinders creativity (try looking for legal applications that can play all media formats, for example). Another example of fitness over better.Now only have I read about it, but I've sent you links on it. So, either you're a liar or you've merely been ignoring everything I've been saying to you.I provided links on the industrial revolution and Somalia. Both contradict your fantasy of lack of government descending into market-managed law and order. Instead we see warring factions and in the case of the industrial revolution we see that without government factories could simply use force to keep their underpaid workers in line.Show me these free-market nations.I've already proved that history shows a strong stability in anarchic nations. here, I'll show you again:http://fringeelements.flux.com/foranemergentgovernance Scroll down to the parts about Iceland and Ireland... actually, skim through the whole thing since it addresses and debunks literally everything you've said thus far.Singapore was a sweatshop country before recently. Malaysia, India, Pakistan, most South American and Central American countries have had and continue to have sweatshops or comparable conditions, most are or were unregulated markets, or minimally regulated. They are experiencing what we had a century ago.I skimmed the book and found it full of pleading, amateur style, essentially what one expects from crackpots. Yeah I know you'll say "you just dismissed it" well maybe. Why am I so confident? Because I have no political alliance, I look at history and the present day and have little need to fit what I see into how I think the world ought to work. I saw what happened in the industrial revolution, I have seen periods of anarchy, I have seen modern industrial revolutions. Do you know what it tells me? You cannot trust free trade to dole out ethics, morality, or act according to your ethics and morality unless it must submit to something bigger or equal. I learned that humans are social and will form governing bodies on their own.But perhaps most damning is that I'm very good at spotting bad arguments and nothing reads like one more than this pro-anarchy and pro-free trade tirade (except, well Young Earth creationism). You are revising and spinning history much like the Christian Reconstructionists do when they try to say the US is a Christian Nation. That is, history is taken out of context (the IP laws of the MPAA and RIAA for example) and in some cases one point is emphasised or downplayed to support a political agenda.Ah, the old "fuck off to Somalia" argument. Like I haven't heard that one before. =/So you're going to sit there and tell me that you'd rather live in pre-anarchic Somalia which had more crime, less doctors, more sickness, higher mortality rates both amongst infants and non-infants, less disposable income per home AND less drinking water/food? You're the one advocating for anarchic Somalia. So go live there and tell us how anarchy/transitional government feels firsthand.Yes, yes; I`m sure your friends know more about economics than, say - the Austrian school of economics...Once again you've dismissed my argument without ever making one of your own.If it's so stupid, it should be easy for you to say why. Otherwise, it's clear you can't.Basically, despite the billions of dollars invested into free market research and advocacy, it's still wrong for a healthy, egalitarian society.Why? Because without restrictions a business will amass wealth and continue to do so at the cost of workers (history vouches for this), the cost of consumer safety (again vouched for), government integrity (another time vouched for) and environmental safety (BP oil spill anyone?). Regulations attempt to and succeed fairly well at holding this behaviour accountable where we cannot.That's factually not true. You're acting as though I'm the only one whom believes a stateless society could not only work, but would work better than a state run one. There are entire schools that teach the economic theory I've been proposing to you. Ludwig Von Mises predicted the stock market crash of the 1930's down to the month it happened when no one else could. There are biblical historians that say the old testament predicted Jesus. In neither case does it make the doctrine (yours or theirs) any more authoritative.I don't know, maybe it's hard for normal people like yourself to comprehend my arrogant dismissal of something you obviously spent some time with. I'd ask that you consider how an authority need not be right, and that a theory must be wrong if it contradicts data, irregardless of the men behind the theory. Your "theory" proposes an ideal economic and stateless utopia that has been contradicted by modern and historical example. Instead of amending the "theory" it tries to spin history.Somalia did better without a state than it did with a state. Not really. Look at the big picture. Look at it during the years leading to anarchy and the history that followed and follows.Ireland lasted without a government for over 1000 years. That’s far longer than any government in history (with the possible exception of the Roman Empire, if you count Byzantium as the continuation of a single line of government).There can be tribes and small factions that form a prototypical government, but not a concrete state. Anarchy implies a lack of this.Governments inevitably collapse. they aren't solutions, but rather periods in between anarchy. The only way to initiate a government is if the population already believes in the necessity of the state, and even then and even with a tax base already in place it could take upwards of 15+ generations to establish.Anarchy lasts for short periods, then factions and leaders form, then a proto-government forms (basic law and order with no state) then a government forms. Anarchy is the shortest period.So who's really claiming the earth can be held by a tortoise? I've answered and debunked everything you've brought up thus far while you have not done the same. You just denied the evidence, said the problems were okay, and spun history.I wish I could dump you off at Mogadishu and then you could tell me how great it is. Knowing my luck though a solid gold asteroid would then hit the city and the ensuing wealth would create a paradise.