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

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.It takes two to tango, buddy. Businesses are greedy things, I'm not arguing against this. In fact, that reason above all else is why I say the government is the most dangerous thing possible to the market. The event you've just given is a perfect example of barriers to entry. You must understand, appealing to the government for a special advantage is only possible if there is a government. And the government is always happy to permit these advantages since it means they get to tighten their grip on the market further. If there wasn't a government, what would of happened? Well, the same thing that happens to all businesses that can't provide a service good enough to meet market demand.They loose out to the competition and life goes on.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."Law" isn't something unique to government. You can have "laws" in a free-market. Perhaps law isn't the best word. call it, agreements. By living in a certain area you agree to not steal or kill. If you are caught doing these things, you will be shot/ostracized/whatever. If two persons voluntarily make an agreement, agree on a particular court should anything go wrong and they sign a contract then you have both law and anarchy. See what I mean?Order is emergent. It comes from the bottom up, not the top down. You believe in evolution, don't you? So, did God build the DNA of animals, or did they emerge? Misconstruement of what I said.Then free-enterprise societies do have merits?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.This made me laugh. Not because I find what you've said stupid, just the opposite, it's absolutely brilliant. Somalia was not a country of anarcho-capitalists, yes. There were many governments trying to establish power, yes. But, it STILL outperformed Somalia back when it had one, big central government. Don't find that strange? Don't find that hilarious?Neither. 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.I wasn't asking you which you would rather live in relative to where you do live. Obviously it's still a third world nation and doesn't hold a candle to the much more capitalistic first world nations. But, out of the two it's clear post-collapse Somalia would be a much better place to live than pre-collapse Somalia for all (and many more) of the reasons I listed above.I'm calling your view and pro-anarchists' views distorted.My views reflect the views of the organization I've listed. If I am distorted, then so are they. If they are distorted, then distortion is the best form of economics.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.Actually, we are the large ones. Think about it, does it even make sense that something weaker than us can control something stronger than us? If this is what you've been told, somebody has lied to you.Businesses exist because of the demand from us. They control the supply, but not the demand. Since they don't control the demand they can either submit to our demand, or fail.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.I support unions. =3You're absolutely right. Companies offer what they can get away with, which is only so much before they start loosing employees to the competition, of whom has recently upped their dental plan to better accommodate their employees. Which didn't happen. The best we could do was sue them, which failed.Big company > small consumers.And... there was no government in existence when the "power of the people" failed?I would point to this exact same situation as evidence of how solving a rather simple market problem has failed thanks to the states existence. No. They buy it for convenience. Hence why it is of inferiour quality usually.Perhaps, I don't buy much fast food, so I can't say I speak for everyone on the reasons for buying it. But, convenience or taste, the fact remains that it exists because their is a demand for it. And that alone is enough to keep it in existence.Who bought those laws in the first place? Wealthy IP owners.Government had no stake in it.You can't "buy laws" from a government without a government. =3Without a government, it's based on agreements. I don't know about you, but I never signed anything agreeing to use government services. I've never signed anything stating that I agree to these laws bought by wealthy IP owners. Don't you find it stupid that you should be tethered by the agreements of others? 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.Well, most persons aren't very smart. The thing is, this problem can only be solved by people learning about it. This problem still exists even though the government exists, see? the government won't do anything about it unless there is demand for something to be done about it. That's why government seems like something we need. they take take over things persons are already doing are are trying to make happen so to keep us dependent on them. Look at welfare. What a cluster-fuck that is! The only reason why welfare exists is because there is a demand for the poor to be taken care of. But, if persons already want to give money to the poor... why do we need welfare? Wont persons start up charities and the like to accomplish this? Of course they would and the hilarious part about this is that the government's "charity" (welfare) works so terribly that persons still come together to organize mass charities. My point is, government is like a retarded version of the market. I don't mean this as an insult to the government, but merely as a factual observation. It's retarded in a very definitional manner. Government is taking things persons already would do on their own and sending it through a looong struggling process just so it can meet a lesser end and call itself a success. 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.Then you ARE saying God could manage evolution better than it has managed itself. =( (p.s. I still support unions)Thriftiness is in the best interest of evolution, yes. But you're body doesn't start dumping all your muscle tissue simply because its calorically expensive. It keeps that which is needed for you to survive. Understand? It depends on what we want. Ethical behaviour and responsibility? Can't have a free market for that.And why not? When the demand is great enough, even the neck of a giraffe will extend to reach the food at the tree tops. 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.And these better grasses and fruit, did they not come from market demand? If there was demand for these things already, would persons not naturally invest in it with or without a government forcing us to?Do you need to be forced to do things you already want to/are already doing? Sure, quote more libertarian/free market websites, that always helps.Well, only if you actually read the information. =pUnderstand, they aren't proposing libertarian answers because they are libertarian, they are libertarian because the answers suggest libertarianism.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.Why? What can a company do when all it's workers are on strike? Take its remaining revenue and hire militia to beat them? And you think this company will remain competitive on the market after word of this gets out? I sincerely do not. ;)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.History disagrees with you, my friend. Need I remind you that the amount of radios, phones and televisions rose several hundred(!) percent in Somalia once it because a free-market? 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.The market tends towards unity. That's why there is only a handful of methods for measurement. The only time unity doesn't occur is if it's not a big enough deal for there to be significant market demand.Perhaps it seems like I'm just shrugging off this one, but really, that's all there is to it.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.Yeah, yeah. Anarchic Somalia was terrible, that explains why it rose from one of the worst countries in northern Africa to one of the best... Oh wait, no it doesn't. ;)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.Ethics and morality, eh. You know, all this tells me you will never be happy until the world submits to you. It won't. But, you can have a world where you don't have to submit to the ideologies of others. I think you'll find this just as pleasant.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.You do know that anarchism is the lack of a political agenda, right? It's just, it seems odd that you keep talking about me as though I'm trying to push an ideology on you. I'm saying they're ALL stupid, just as an atheist would say all the religions are stupid. If anything, the burden of proof is on you as you're the one saying I need religion, er, I mean, government. ;)You're the one advocating for anarchic Somalia. So go live there and tell us how anarchy/transitional government feels firsthand.Just did, turn out it was much better than it was before the collapse, just like I've been saying. ;)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.Since this basically sums up our entire dispute it would be redundant to argue this here as well as everywhere else.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.1. Not a doctrine, just the opposite2. Not authoritative, just the opposite3. There is empirical evidence showing Ludwig's predictions. As per expectation, your analogy doesn't follow. Or, are you saying that empirical evidence is worth the same as the scriptures of the old testament?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.That's quite a bold claim coming from you while you know nothing of the Austrian School of Economics' track record.... =/There can be tribes and small factions that form a prototypical government, but not a concrete state. Anarchy implies a lack of this.Then you're straw-manning me as this definition of "anarchy" is not what I've been talking about, avesk. "Tribes" coming together to improve trade in ways they couldn't alone is not a government. It isn't a government until it starts taxing.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.Just something to note, what you've said in no way shows that the government is an improvement on the market. Persons naturally come together in large groups to increase trade. This doesn't have to result in a government as anarchic Ireland has proven.In fact, coming together and not forming a government worked a hell of a lot longer than any government has. =DI 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.Pfffahahahahahahaha!!!!! If only =p