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

If Somalis are fighting for Sharia, law that is widely against their interests, then you have your answer for how emergent law and markets need not evolve to be entities conducive to the population.If they're fighting for Sharia law, then Sharia law is in their interests. Yes, they were "good guys."They're using military force to establish power, just like the Islamists and just like the Islamists, they think they are in the right. Perhaps Somalia would be better off with U.N. rulers than Islamist rulers (I'd go so far as to say that is very probable) but it can't be known and since I already think that Somalia would fair better on it's own than with either, this point is going nowhere.If you live within a state, you use its services. You use its military services, police services, its courts and government. You can't get something for nothing.The point is that you can't choose to opt out even if you want to. You have no choice but to pay for these things whether you need them or not. It's a coercive monopoly.If you stiff your landlords on the bill, there are consequences. Accept your personal responsibility.... You want to go back to this? Residency1. Chose home voluntarily2. Pay bills voluntarily3. Can opt out voluntarilyCitizenship1. Chosen by accident (birth)2. Payment is coercive3. Cannot opt outHell, with a state, if you don't pay your "rent" they don't kick you out, they actually force you to stay! Actually not. If you follow politics, states are accountable to each other.It's a simple Google stones throw away to find information on government impunity. Here, this is the first link that came up for me: http://www.brianwillson.com/u-s-government-impunity-at-home-the-politicization-of-terrorism/ If the US military commits war crimes, it will be held accountable by an international tribunal. It may even be retaliated against by other states.Oh, kinda like how if an emergent defense firm commits war crimes (or whatever they'll be called) it will be held accountable by an emergent tribunal and may even be retaliated against by other defense firms. I know you're going to say something along the lines of "An emergent tribunal isn't enough to count on, you need something with power over the public to enact rulings over a public system", or something like that. Not true. In order for the rulings of an emergent tribunal to be accepted by the public (which is already assumed since it is emergent) all it would need is for its rulings to have universally operational support. Really, that's all any state actually runs on. If it doesn't have UOS, it collapses. The difference is emergent tribunals would be law takers, not law makers, which removes most possibility for corruption and impunity. That is, assuming corruption and impunity aren't the market demand. There were more private military corporations than blackwater, and the market didn't cause them to be ethical. They all acted thuggish."Ethical" and "thuggish" are non-cognitive labels. I need examples. A corporation may answer to the state, but as you observe it may form complex relationships with the state and this impedes law enforcement. This is exacerbated when monopolies form. They rival government in political power. Now, let me ask you point-blank: do you want Oil Companies like BP with their own privately-funded armies? Would you want Microsoft to have its own military wing? Honestly, do you not see the insanity in such a thing?First, without a state it is very unlikely for a single firm to pull ahead of its competition to such a significant degree as is seen with a state, both because each firm is playing on a (roughly) even playing field and because the public has incentive to opt out of a firm simply because it's getting uncomfortably large. However, it's not impossible for this to happen and if it does, there will need to be some kind of fall-back measure and there is.The public has a strong incentive to stop doing business with a firm that begins to militarize. That alone is enough to stop most campaign attempts, but it's also not impossible as the firm can simply claim it's military will be used to protect it's costumers, a claim that may even increase its customer base. Still no problem, as now it enters into the industry of protection. As I've said before, persons have a natural (and rational) fear of a firm militarizing, so you would see the emergence of firms who's whole purpose is to check into firms (especially defense firms) and report on them. Since there would be many of these firms, bribery would be nearly impossible.Alright, not what if they decide "fuck this pretend protection stuff, I'm just going to raise an army and start a state!" you still get a ton of problems. 1. It takes time to set up an army, and advertising your intentions is an easy way to get you ass kicked, so it's very plausible that such plans could never even get off the ground.2. Firms don't have a tax base, only customers, which means if they do something against market demand (something like trying to enslave the public), they lose their customers.3. They would be warring against already established defense firms. 4. Watchdog firms constantly checking up on large businesses. I read up on Gaelic Ireland and Somalia. Do you know what happened there? Constant fighting. Inter-faction disputes. You keep ignoring and downplaying this. There is no law and order in a region which has no common laws and heads of state. There is competition between men with guns.Alright, I'm going to breakdown what went on in Ireland during the entire thousand year span to show you exactly why the recorded wars happened. 400-800 C.E. ~ Regular warfare between the Uí Néill and the Laigin (400-600). 800–1169 C.E. ~ Viking raids1169–1536 C.E. ~ Henry VIII of England claims himself as the king of Ireland, conquest of Ireland begins. 1536–1691 C.E. ~ Full conquest of Ireland. There you have it. The only real wars involving Irish on Irish was before the age of anarchic Ireland, mostly back in B.C.E. Even their high king system started to falter. Now, you're going to say something like "ah-ha! A high king! There you have it, statism." Not so fast. High kings only had power over their own petty kingdom and were seldom recognized as having any influence outside of it. Every where else was organized by voluntary Tuatha. There were even notable gaps forming between high kings during this time and not much difference occurred as a result. Especially near the end, when hundred year gaps became the norm. From 600 to 1600 C.E, Ireland at best had a state in name only. There you have it. Stateless (at least, for all intents and purposes) and peaceful (expect for the foreign invaders).Do you ever get tired of ad hoc definitions? Do you realise that you just argued that a head of state is not an authority? Heads of states are questioned in their actions, in a process of checks and balances, and transparency.I don't find the head of state to be an authority.Authority means the ability to command those below you. If people listen to you, and are kept in line by force or consequences (do I even need to go on here? you know where this is going), then you may corrupt the market by forcing those below you to act in ways that are not competitive.An Irish chieftain couldn't force anyone to do anything. He had no such power. Paying a respected member of society to promote a product so that word of your product gets out is just a fact of life. There's nothing you can really do about it short of criminalizing capitalism. Since such a law wouldn't have universally operational support, you can cross that off the list of "things that have a snowballs chance in hell". In a perfect world, persons wouldn't promote their product as the best unless it objectively was, but since word of a shitty product gets out fast (especially now a-days with the internet) all that really needs to be done is to stop states from crippling new firms. 99% of corruption, gone. And the other 1% is firm owners promoting a shabby product. You acknowledged what I had been arguing all along. It's a hallelujah moment.I've been acknowledging what you've been arguing in every post I've made to you. Hence, the posts I've made to you. Acceptance on the other hand, is something I've not done and you are mistaken in thinking otherwise.Can you spot the problems here? If someone is making such profits, then they are amassing wealth, and wealth always translates into power. You just acknowledged that capitalism redistributes wealth and thus power in a way that is completely uneven.Second: such uneven distribution of wealth causes social turmoil, due to feelings of outrage and desperation brought on by poverty.I'm trying really hard to remain cordial. Your crass lack of responsibility makes it difficult.You state that money = power, but give no justification or even attempt to define power. I'm assuming that by "power" you mean "the ability to do things", then yes, having more money increases your potential to do things requiring money. And up is the opposite of down. This in no way shows that a firm making a profit is equivalent to a state crippling new firms. But, even if it did, what do you propose? That the state should make it illegal for firms to make more than a certain amount of money?Second: are you kidding me? Capitalism fails because the poor can be jealous of the wealthy? The acknowledgment of this argument alone should be enough to debunk it.Except it doesn't. Look at how poor the people in the IR were. Unions increase wages, not competition.Factually and logically incorrect. Wages during the industrial revolution increased before unions came around, which makes sense considering firms can't grow if no-one can afford their products. Unions helped, absolutely, but I'm not against unions so your argument has no point. Correct. You are the one arguing in favour of slave wages because your morality cannot allow the factories and businessmen be held accountable for mistreating their workers.That doesn't even make sense within its own context. I'm a moral nihilist. I argue "for slave wages" not out of morality, but because logically you have to start somewhere and if you cripple a market just because you feel it's not good enough for you (for moral reasons) then they'll never get off the ground. I'll be more explicit. The Industrial Revolution was by no means a step forward by the standards of welfare for the working class. This is incontrovertible. It is impossible to argue that moving from standard production working guilds and shops, to more cramped facilities with longer hours, and more massive exploitation of dangerous labour, could be better for the workers' welfare.Life expectancy of adults didn't change much during the IR, but it still went up. The infant mortality rate dropped from about 75% to about 30%. So, either your view of the IR is wrong, or reality is wrong. These persons voluntarily chose the factory life over the farm or prostitution life, so at the very least they found it worth while. Are you going to argue against them too? It's inarguable that many diseases came about because of the IR, but this isn't the fault of capitalism, it's the fault of ignorance. Since the average persons could afford better health care and new research was able to be funded, this problem was absorbed pretty well, all things considered.Wages only allowed for the bare minimum. There was rampant malnutrition. Healthcare? Laughable. You have no idea what 18th and 19th century life was like."Water" is particularly laughable since they could only afford to drink polluted river water.Non-cognitive gobbledygook. You can blame bacterial ignorance on capitalism during the industrial revolution in the same way you can blame communism during the time of Marx for being ignorant of atoms. The wage gain during the industrial revolution did much more than provide the "bare minimum". And unlike you, I'm actually going to provide evidence for this claim. A mill machinery attendant made about 15 shillings a week (though the average wage was closer to 20). This is about double what they earned before the industrial revolution.What could you do with 15 shillings a week? Well, you could get a one night stay in a decent inn would cost 2 pence (1/6 of a shilling) and a little over a shilling would get you a week in an unfurnished room. A house would cost you 10 pounds (660 shillings) per year. Since the average wage was 720-960 shillings per year, homes became easily affordable on a single salary with money left over for food, clothes, health care etc. Especially with the new abundance of doctors and since food and clothes became so much cheaper during this time. What was once a full-family burden became affordable on a single salary, which meant progressively less need for the kids to work. http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/IndustrialRevolutionandtheStandardofLiving.html  http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/static/Coinage.jsp http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ShillingI'll just quote this:Free enterprise means no barriers to entry.andI want an economy without state controls.You don't want a lack of regulations, you just want a lack of regulations.What am I supposed to say to this, avesk? I've already made the argument that state controls (which include barriers to entry) are not "regulations" and that even if that's what you mean by regulation it's not how I use the word. There's nothing else to say about this.Listen. I am not disputing that a happy worker is productive. Why then, is it a matter of historical record that factory owners beat their workers and kept them in fear?Beating child workers was common place because beating children in general was common place. The history of child abuse as a means of child rearing has best been outlined by Lloyd DeMause's Psycho-class theory. Have you read up about it yet? I think you'd find his work especially interesting. (And no, it's not a libertarian site) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychohistory http://www.psychohistory.com/So in your mind, expecting generosity and good-naturedness in people isn't laudable, instead you see any demands for fair wages as extreme and unfair to the factory owners.Why are you advocating for the wealthy? The wealthy can take care of themselves. They don't need you as a cheerleader.I'm not "for" the wealthy, I'm just not against them as everyone else seems to be. I value good products at fair prices. Since the state cripples competition (the means of which the most productive firms are hammered out), I oppose the state. To me, it's a matter of efficiency.Personally, I believe (know) the income gap will shrink without a state, so it wouldn't make much sense for me to oppose the state if I'm "for" the wealthy. There's a word for people who take information out of context. In your case it is datamining. You take figures that only show some level of goodness and avoid looking at everything else that contradicts you, you further ignore context that applies to the 19th century.The information I base my views on are averages proven by testimonial evidence. You posts are typically non-cognitive. If you have some statistics you'd like to share, feel free to bring them up anytime. Tell that to the people who lived during the dust bowl.Also tell that to the people in South America who are clearing out rainforests for cows.Again, un-owned land does not equal private property. If you pay a chieftain to require his servants to buy from you, then you are crippling your competitors. Quit whitewashing what I said by claiming "requiring" means "speaking in favour of."You're wrong, and need to downplay verbs in order to maintain your preconceptions.There's no "requirement" when your very membership to the tuath is voluntary. This is not analogous to the state, to which you membership is compulsory so long as you live on any land they feel entitled to.