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

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.I know and you were wrong, since it hasn't been two decades since Somalia's collapse. Hence, you were wrong.The ICU was post-collapse.And this is an example of law naturally emerging. Perhaps you and me wouldn't much like Islamic law, but that's what the Somali's wanted and that's what they did about it. So, if we wanted secular law, it would follow that that's exactly what we would do.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.Yeah, yeah, everybody but the Islamists were good guys. =/The U.N. tried to establish power just like they did.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.My argument is against all states, so yeah, I'm going to bring up the crazier ones as well. And it is a mater of fact that these super violent states exist, I'm not wrong about that.Besides, the end punishment for any crime is death. Think about it, lets say you don't pay your taxes. You have chosen to not use government services, your home is totally self sufficient yadda, yadda, yadda. What happens?Well, you get a letter, perhaps a few more letters, then they'll send someone to your house to collect it. If you still don't pay, they'll give you a court notice, perhaps a couple more, then if you still don't pay they'll come and try to forcefully extract you from your home. If you try to defend yourself you will be shot. Those are the states two options, either kill you or leave and they can't leave because that would show how weak they actually are. At the end of the day, all the letters and tax-collectors in the world mean nothing if they won't kill you in the end. Hence, death squad.Sure, there's a chance your defense fails and they kidnap you, but then if you try to leave you'll be shot anyway.Because anarchy doesn't work.Anarchy doesn't work because anarchy doesn't work, eh? Ookay there.It works for me, maybe try again or run it through a proxy since your ISP might filter it.Still nothing, I'm going to try it on another computer, but I won't be able to until tomorrow. Hang tight!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.What? That's not what I said. I brought it up, absolutely, but my point was that when dealing with such firms there will always be occasions of violence and impunity, man will literally have to evolve out of violence before such firms become obsolete, but when you take into account that the state armies behave with impunity to a much greater extent and are less cost-effective, Private armies start to look pretty damn good. The internal legal system of the united states army is the united states, I don't see how this is any more legitimate than the blackwater army's internal legal system of blackwater.The oversight is in both cases, the public (demand). The difference is, with private protection you can switch firms if you don't like the way yours operates.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.Competence? You want to speak of competence when private military has already shown itself to be thousands of times for cost-effective? Sure, the state punishes those who screw up, so long as we hear about it, I wouldn't be surprised if the state has kept a lot of shit bottled up.We have every reason to believe that private armies in developed countries would behave with even less impunity than, say, Iraqi guerrillas. This is because, point blank, we are in a more humane psycho-class then they are.If the U.S. army was ordered to invade Washington and assume control, do you think they'd do it? Probably not, but if the did, we'd be fucked.Now, look at private armies. Would they do it? Well, since they are persons from the same psycho-class, probably not. And since they aren't nearly as big as the U.S. army and there are other firms around, they have even less incentive to try since they would fail almost immediately.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.Even if several mini-states occurred, there would be much less violence as seen with Ireland and England. Anarchic Ireland had no notable wars, just some infighting. The death count alone is enough to see which is more violent.like I've said, the market reflects public demand. If the public fears protection firms that get too big and too aggressive, they'll loose customers. Remember, for the state to be abolished it would have to be assumed that most of the population no longer believes in the nobility of the state anyway, so it's pretty damn unlikely that they would go and form their own when they are consciously against the state to begin with.Don't get me wrong, I fully understand that this isn't a one-step thing. Jumping straight from state to no state typically doesn't end well, even if it is an improvement in the mean time. It'll take a gradual backing-out of state operations. There's nothing wrong with that.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.Ooop, oh, there's that manipulative streak again. There is no authority here, authority assumes the power to make desisions free of questioning. Chieftains had no such power. Firms get into contracts to use a certain companies products, firms promote their product through product placement and whatnot, this all happens regardless of a state, if you have a problem with this then you are arguing against reality, not against me.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.There's a very clear difference between paying a senator to cripple your competition and a firm paying an actor or a book club president or something to say good things about your product. Stop pretending to be stupid, I know you know the difference.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.... Okay, I was very clearly talking about private firms paying for promotion. That happens regardless of a state. Did you actually make this big of a mistake, or did you think I just don't understand my own arguments and you could trick me into folding?Easy to make a strawman of what I said rather than address my actual argument.You would know. Though, this was in fact what you were saying, you're complaining about nothing.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.If a person overseas is working for 3 cents an hour, but his labour is worth 10 dollars an hour in North America, then it makes perfect sense for a firm to go over there and pay 6 cents an hour and keep the profit. What's wrong with that? If you can survive on 3 cents an hour, 6 cents is a fucking goldmine.If there are no restrictions stopping firms from doing this, then many firms go overseas and create an economy of scale, thus wages increase due to firms competing for workers and since everyone is making more money their children can spend more time in school and less time working. It's not as though these persons can't continue working as prostitutes and farm slaves if they really want to, they just aren't that stupid.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?"I really don't know what to say to this, I've sent you links giving actual statistics on what was going on during the industrial revolution and current sweatshops. There are all sorts of resources that don't have to rely on emotion appeals to prove the industrial revolution was a step forward for the common man. What do you say to someone whom is unswayed by actual figures and statistics and whose argument is essentially "Everyone else's happiness comes second to my sense of morality, therefore all sweatshops are wrong and should be abolished by a mega-firm". How do you intellectually or emotionally embarrass or shock someone who is defending "My morals are more important then some slave's living standard"?You're an egotistical childish half-wit. Nothing more.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.So?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.Or something vaguely resembling it, huh? Look, I'm not Mises and I'm not youtube. All I've said was compared to what preceded it, the industrial revolution was a step forward. The industrial revolution was in fact better than feudalism and everything that preceded feudalism for that matter, so your argument doesn't make any sense.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.WTF is this? How am I supposed to have any intellectual respect for you when you keep spouting out arguments like this? The common man became about twice as wealthy and was able to afford better homes, clothes, water, health-care, etc. End of story. I don't particularly care if they were loose with the booze or if un-cured diseases existed at the time. It's not as though these "evil" capitalists were dumping sewage into the drinking water, stroking their long wire-y mustaches thinking "Nya, now to murder off both my work supply and customer base! Nya!"These persons had little to no knowledge about what caused diseases let alone how to cure them. 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?Life expectancy of adults went up too. Though, to be totally fair, since there were so many new diseases, life expectancy was less certain. Feel free to pull out more examples of bad things happening during the IR, the facts and statistics remain that it was a step forward in living standards and we'd still be living like peasants had it not happened. 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..."I am an egotistical child"~Signed, aveskdeFree 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."You're lying right to my (internet) face about my position. Did you think I wouldn't see this? Free enterprise means no barriers to entry. It means no firm can lobby a state to cripple competition. "Regulation" is a naturally occurring thing by definition and oversight when there is only one, very bribe-able firm to "oversight" is laughable. I want an economy without state controls. There, now you have no excuse to straw-man me anymore. Not, that you did in the first place, but now there is recorded proof.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?).You see a contradiction only because you're blatantly making up my position... again. Just once I'd like to read a post from you that isn't riddled with logical fallacies. Are all "geniuses" this stupid? 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).Jeez, when you straw-man another person's position you run with it right to the end of your post, don't you. ;)Are you trying to convince me that if government does the same, it's alright for factory owners to do so?... I don't know how you could have possibly gotten that out of my post... you're going to have to tell me what brought you to this conclusion. 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.I'm sure you've at least seen this relative to yourself. YOU are more productive when you aren't miserable. It's the same deal with everyone else. So, logically, firm owners have an incentive to make their workers happy, or at least not make them miserable. Especially since persons are more willing to work for a firm offering good working conditions. I know, I know, there was a surplus of workers so if you had a firm you were guaranteed to get somebody, but if you wanted the pick of the lot you'd have to offer something more than your competition. Even then, since the worker supply is so high, there's just no reason to beat your workers when you can just as easily not beat them. 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 you're just going to write off any progress just because it didn't automatically bring them up to our level? =/I don't know why you're still trying to argue this, the statistics are against you. Your words are empty. 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.Unclaimed land being used up is not analogous to private land being used up. Private land is not a common and you won't find many examples of farmers over-using their own land. Can a chieftain have his men buy from a certain merchant? Yes. That is an example of market sway.Again, if you can't tell the difference between paying a respected member of society to say good things about your product and a firm lobbying a state to cripple competition, you don't know a damn thing about economics.