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

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.I said almost two decades of civil war when speaking of post collapse. I said almost three decades of civil war when considering pre-collapse.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. The ICU was post-collapse.You say the wars happened because of terrorists and warlords, the U.N. invaders fall under this category too, buddy. Basically, warlords existed post-collapse and were hoarding foreign aid and using it as currency. The UN Peacekeeping force along with US support tried to offer assistance but warlords made the situation violent, then it became a military campaign to eliminate the warlords. This failed miserably and the US cut its losses.Islamic elements (Al-Shebab I believe it was called) started to gain power, and were militant. Ethiopia, a predominantly Christian neighbor, invaded possibly because of this threat. The Somalis were almost universally outraged and fought back, and the ICU formed. The ICU rooted out most of the warlords (though it could be argued that a faction which wishes to bring Sharia into an anarchic region is like a warlord).Then fast forward and we have various instances of a transition government being formed but the ICU and split factions fight it. Eventually some sort of deal was struck between the ICU and the UN transitional government (thank god for common stupidity and the desire of Somalis to be abused by Islamic Law).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? Oh, so now you wish to compare Canada to Pinochet's Chile and Kim Jung-il's North Korea, in order to insinuate that you fear death squads.I guess this is what you get when hyperbole crosses into the domain of equivocation and lost context.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. =/Because anarchy doesn't work. Somalia demonstrates this.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.It works for me, maybe try again or run it through a proxy since your ISP might filter it.So if I understand you, when confronted with reports of Private Military Contractors which is related to the subject of the debate that we are discussing here (Private Police, difference is scope), and those reports indicate that the private contractors operated with impunity, failed to discipline internally their employees and behaved violently where state military would not your observation is that they were cost effective.Wow, this is why I keep coming back to debate you. It's a comic goldmine. You know maybe the PMCs are cheaper because they don't have any military tribunals, no oversight, and no legal system internally.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? =/It doesn't matter who has killed more. That's not the topic. The topic is competence. Historically our military has screwed up, but at least we punish the people responsible, and even when that has failed we have made revisions to the system to keep it from happening again. PMCs operated with impunity and will never be held accountable for their thuggish behaviours because of diplomatic directives, and your beloved market seems to have no effect on them.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. Do I even need to comment on this? When there isn't a state, lots of little businesses and tribes and corporations and factions fight with each other constantly (See Somalia and your damned Ireland which you ignore). A state keeps this violence at bay with police and militias, so even if states fight with each other, if the world were an anarchy it would be all those states divided into dozens of factions per state, fighting with each other. A violence fractal.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. The stupid. It burns.If a market works as a demand and quality driven meritocracy, then paying an authority to contract his underlings to buy your goods violates this purpose and the system is fatally flawed.Of course, when a business pays a state senator to use their services in a big project, this is known as Pork Barrel spending and is frowned upon. When a business does the same thing in an anarchy, to the local faction leader, you call it "promotion" to downplay the corruption.This sort of promotion happens with or without a state, so this isn't an argument against anarchism, it's a critic of reality.Bingo! You hit the answer that defines why an anarchy doesn't magically solve Capitalism's problems. Do we even need to go any further? You just admitted yourself what I've been saying to you for the past... um... two months?Anarchy: money buys political favours.State: money buys political favours.What's the difference? No civil wars due to competing local factions, and oversight upon businesses and institutions to prevent and punish corruption.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". Easy to make a strawman of what I said rather than address my actual argument.I said repeatedly that wealthy business owners who move their businesses overseas do so, that they may pay the workers next to nothing for their labour while selling those goods here at Developed World Pro-Union and Labour Law-Certified Prices. In other words, and this is critical, the factory owners can afford to pay their workers a better wage, one that doesn't require them to work at literal sweatshop shifts in order to make ends meet, but the owners choose to pay insufficiently. The market isn't solving this problem, it is perpetuating it.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. I don't really know what to say to this. I have linked to resources which describe the terror of past Sweatshops. There are all sorts of resources that paint a vivid and miserable picture for what it's like to work at a sweatshop for your life. This is commonly accessible information. What do you say to someone who is unmoved by how bad sweatshops are, and whose argument is essentially "Sweatshops are great! They are just a bit less shitty than slave labour! Let's make more of 'em!"How do you intellectually or emotionally embarrass or shock someone who is defending "a little bit less shitty?"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. At these wages there is usually incentive to raise more children as workers in your family, so that the combined family profit makes life vaguely comfortable.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. Did you ever watch those Youtube videos you sent me, and read your own MISES links? They compare the Industrial Revolution to Feudalism, or something vaguely resembling it.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. I thought it was obvious but... mass production made productivity extremely high for cheap goods... used I guess by a population that was as high as 70% infected with tuberculosis, average age of death between 35 and 40 years, plagued by constant cholera epidemics and general chronic sickness from the water and malnutrition, and constant drinking of alcohol (some would subsist on cider and similar beverages because the water was toxic).So they were comfortable in their cheap garments... as they died from disease and accidents.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.So? Children occupied (varying reports) between 50 and 70% of the workforce depending on time, source, and job. In the hard labour work like mining they were expected to die by their mid-twenties. Phossy Jaw killed so many young girls that movements sprang up to combat Phossy Jaw. It was typical to see limbless children walking the streets, and by some accounts children's grave markers lined fields.Do you ever bother to look into this topic beyond the first numbers that MISES quotes to you?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. In a bet between me being mentally deficient and you being mistaken... guess where you ought to throw your money? You're arguing with a genius... so...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. Free enterprise means no oversight, rules or regulation. You advocate this and ending the state.It's like you're telling me "I'm not against regulation, I just want an economy without regulation."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.We already addressed this. You think that corruption exists with or without a state, but that without a state, corruption of the market ceases (am I the only one seeing the wide contradiction here?).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. Ah so the fault of all those Factory hellholes wasn't the factories themselves for acting profitably, no, it was states for being corruptible (something that you acknowledged is a fact of reality with or without a state).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. How is this relevant? We were discussing factory owners who put their own interests ahead of all of their workers for decades. Are you trying to convince me that if government does the same, it's alright for factory owners to do so?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... I'm saying that the owners didn't care to make their workers cheery, and besides open windows were believed to spread consumption in that day and age anyway.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. =/ How much wealth lined the pockets of the factory owners, yet they were happy to dock large sums of pay for all kinds of minor in-factory rules infractions, and they were happy to pay less than enough for their workers to stay well-fed and comfortable.So?Reply to:If a factory farmer is farming beyond his factories means then he is damaging his own farm, not everyone else's. So this example is by definition not an example of barriers to entry. Factory farms are private property, they aren't public. =/Was: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.In other words, as predicted by The Tragedy of the Commons, the workers used up a common resource (land) selfishly and ended up harming themselves and everyone for it.Yeah, you think you can pay persons with no market sway for market favours, I'M the delusional one. =/Can a chieftain have his men buy from a certain merchant? Yes. That is an example of market sway.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. You already acknowledged that the wealthy corrupt regardless of state.