osan
Member
- Joined
- Dec 26, 2009
- Messages
- 16,867
Having no ruler is not the same as having no governing function.
That is all fine and well, but the means of achieving order and maintaining it is governance. To govern is to regulate, which is to say, to keep in proper working order - a "well regulated militia" is one that is in proper working order and it stays that way through training.
Most of the time, yes. But not always. It's the "not always" part that poses the problems of proper governance.
We do not have free markets, so I must take it you are speaking in theoretical terms.
Such as?
Vendetta? And what of mistaken beliefs of guilt? Who investigates? By what authority? Or do we just go kill them?
Which ones? What are their roles? Whence derives their authority? To whom are they accountable?
So you say, but you have yet to give concrete, detailed, and credible examples of how this would work. I would also point out that this is indistinguishable from "government" because that is precisely what it is.
Private courts and police? And to whom are those accountable? By what authority do they act against the free rights of their fellows? How are they kept under control? How are they handled when they cross lines of justice and propriety?
If there is no credible and consistent threat of counter force against those who would entertain notions of mayhem against their fellows, what exactly is there to prevent them from acting on such impulses? Not all humans are decent creatures. Some are mightily indecent.
You claim anarchists embrace order, but how is order achieved and maintained, and how are crimes to be treated such that justice is served and the message is reinforced to one and all that crime (real crime, not the phony baloney arbitrary bullshit like smoking a joint or jerking off in public) will not be tolerated? How is a rational standard of justice to be assured and how are those who stray from that standard to be held accountable? These are the questions I have yet to find answers for by anarchists. All I ever hear are nonsense responses such as "the market will determine..." It is a bullshit answer and until I see substantive, detailed, and well structured ideas, there is nowhere else to go but "chaos and corruption"
I will also state that rational consistence is an absolute requirement for a just and free society. If I can carry a gun in my home town, I should be able to do so in any town, anywhere in the nation. I should be at absolutely ZERO risk of ending up in prison because some group of yahoo dickheads decided no guns were to be allowed in their town. I take it this makes sense to you?
What else would you suggest? Government of pigs? Goats? Chimpanzees? Obama's toe nails?
People are mostly orderly, but it has been historically demonstrated to the point of nausea that tiny bands of individuals can cause untold problems and must be dealt with. Dealing with murder to serve justice IS government, even if it is the victims family members hunting the killer down and lynching him from the nearest tree. It is precisely and exactly that and nothing more or less. The question, then, is whether these hopefully minimally required functions are discharged honestly, justly, capably, morally, ethically, correctly, and completely, and to whom the administrators shall be held accountable in the cases where the standards are not met.
E.g., guy is murdered. Family determines X is the guilty party, hunts, captures, and kills him only to later discover X had nothing to do with it. What do they say to the family of X? Oops? Accidents will happen? Gee, sorry about that? What is their accountability? To whom and how shall they be held? Shall X's friends and family find and kill them to even the scales? If not, why not? If so, the friends and family of those they visit justice upon feel they were killed unjustly - after all, it was an honest mistake? What is to stop them from seeking their own justice? This sort of thing might not spiral out of control very often, but what about when it does? History provides us with far too many examples of blood feuds that have lasted for decades and even centuries to believe this is not only a possibility but a likelihood. Look at the Serbs and Croats - they have hated each other with a mindless lust for many centuries. The moment Tito was out of the picture, they took up right where they had left off, despite 40 years (two full generations) of being held at bay.
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When people are sufficiently frightened and/or angry, they behave in ways that make them indistinguishable from demons. Those are the circumstances that require our attention - not when everyone is peaceably playing bridge with their neighbors.
This must be due to a failure on your part to properly comprehend what it is I write.
Case in point. I have neither said nor implied any such thing in even the most remotely vague manner. What I have said is that when people are behaving poorly, and I mean criminally so, they must be called to account for their actions. If they are not, those with the basic personality impulses to do as they please regardless of whom they damage will do precisely that. Good behaviors - morally justifiable behaviors - require no governing actions. Criminal behavior, OTOH, does. To fail to treat criminal behavior is to put out the message "anything goes", and that is a recipe for catastrophe.
In large measure yes. And again, what of the rest? You fail to address that part, save to cite "market options" without defining what they are. Thus far all we have is air and that is not sufficient.
And once a gain you fail to describe them even in the most cursory manner. What is one to do with this?
Where and when? I do not recall any ancap nations in existence. Could you cite at least one example and describe how it has done what no constitutional republic has done?
Either your reading comprehension is poor or you have not been careful in your reading of the things I have written. I have asserted nothing about "monolithic" government either explicitly or implicitly. I have simply raised the point that crime must be dealt with or chaos ensues, nothing more. I've written nothing about taxes or force or anything likewise. It is a fact that we either address crime or we do not. If we do not, it's anything goes. If we do, the basic questions as I have listed them above arise: who discharges the functions? What are the standards? What are the accountabilities? What is the moral basis of authority? And so on... I have repeatedly asked ancaps to describe in sufficient detail their model of how criminal justice would work in their world and thus far have gotten nothing but non-starters for answers. That is not good enough. People need to see a plan - an architecture of a world that convinces them that it will work. Without that, you can go on about ancap this or that until you keel over dead, having gone absolutely nowhere. It's not my current vision, so I don't care what they do. But if they want people such as myself to get on board, they will need to do a far better job of convincing people that this is something that can work.
I am pretty much ancap all the way except for the criminal justice aspect. I am not on board there because I do not understand it and nobody has yet provided a satisfying explanation. The SOLE legitimate function of government is to guarantee and protect the rights of the individual. Whether that government is embodied publicly or privately is, in principle, irrelevant so long as the basic requirements of structure, function, accountability, and moral basis are in place. Tell me in a satisfying way how this is done in your vision of the world and if it makes sense to me I will alter my views accordingly. Fair enough?
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