[Cheesecake_Marmalade]

If there's no mass production, it sounds like this society would just devolve into feudalism. After all, capitalism isn't possible without a surplus of goods.

[Dr House]

If there's no mass production, it sounds like this society would just devolve into feudalism. After all, capitalism isn't possible without a surplus of goods.

But you weren't talking about capitalism...

[Cheesecake_Marmalade]

Yeah woops my bad. There was a thought there but I can't for the life of me decipher what it was.

I think it was that everything devolves into feudalism without mass production, because without mass production everyone needs to pool their resources together just to survive.

[canadiancapitalist]

Who get's the powers of the state (in Anarcho-Capitalism) if there is no state?

No one, which is kind of the point of calling it Anarchy Do you mean who is allowed to use violence or who will use violence? In that case it is anyone who has aggression initiated against them. As for who will use violence, I would imagine violent people. I believe society would be significantly less violent in an anarcho-capitalist society not because human nature will change but because submission to it will no longer be a way of life and because violence is a self perpetuating cycle.

If you are talking not about the use of violence or coercion - in my view the defining characteristic of a state - but perhaps about decision making and arbitration the question is simpler and more complex. As for decision making it is of course the property owner. Everything, including the sea and possibly the sky, will be owned by an individual or organization, except that which has yet to be homesteaded. As for arbitration, there will be organizations that will voluntarily arbitrate disputes. This would handle the bulk of society - honest people. The rest would (likely) be outcasts from honest society who would have to learn their way back in / start a new identity to have any interaction with the good folk. What I mean by this is something similar to the system on digital points forum for money transactions - that is a record of every money transaction you make on the website with feedback etc. That is one possibility. I do not know exactly what voluntary solution people will find to whatever problem they face but I am confident that violence will never be more effective than voluntary cooperation, even if it is simpler. Plus violence except in self defense is wrong guys.

[JimmiBaez]

Good books: Everyday Anarchy, Practical Anarchy, Achieving Anarchy. Each a different book by the same author; Stefan Molyneux

Acceptable articles =

http://theantidote.wordpress.com/2007/0 ... anarchist/

http://freedomain.blogspot.com/2008/08/ ... archy.html

Also, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_anarchist_books

[DubiousDan]

Dr House:

And greed is the problem. In the absence of the state, coercive force goes to the hands of the highest bidder, which happens to be corporations, which are profit-driven. No longer do corporations have to buy the state to screw over the little guy, they are the state.

Me:
Wrong. The state is created by the sword, maintained by the sword, and destroyed by the sword. If there is no state, the sword will create a new one, and then the merchant can play his games. However, only if the warrior permits. If the little guys take up the sword, all of them, as in Switzerland, then the merchant must walk carefully.

Greed is not the problem, ignorance is. Greed is error, it comes from the belief that the self exists. Greed is the attempt to prove that the self exists. Since it seeks to prove a lie, it is insatiable. Understanding is the key to freedom, and understanding alone. However, individual understanding frees the individual, it does not free a people. Only when the people understand, then there will be freedom. A day too far, I fear.

[DubiousDan]

Liberty:
A communist society would eliminate most of the incentive to work all together.

Me:
One of the great lies of civilization is that man needs an incentive to work. Man has a need to work, it is innate to his very nature. Today, in most social orders, only the wealthy or those who have found work that will support them that they enjoy can truly work. Once you separate work from coin, then it becomes work and not drudgery.

Most of the great individual achievements of Mankind have been made my men doing not what they were forced to do, but what they wanted to. Einstein was paid to be a patent clerk, not a theoretical physicist. The foundations of physical science were laid by hobbyist. The need to create is innate in man, a social order that frees that, reaps enormous rewards.
Unfortunately, by and large, the creativity of a few is enabled at the expense of the many. A truly competent state would abolish drudgery and enable work. That is the promise of anarchy. Once men are freed to do not what they must, but what they want to, then you have creativity on a scale undreamed of at present. However, it takes a truly competent leadership to match man and task and yet meet the needs of the social order. That is why the stateless state has taken so long to arrive. It requires competence at a level beyond the competence of any social order in the history of mankind. Can that competence be reached? That is a question upon which the survival of Humanity may well depend.

It is a paradox, the stateless state requires leadership beyond that of any existing state, for it must be led by ability, and by ability alone.

That accounts for the failure of anarchy to the present time, the anarchists concentrate on destroying the quality most essential for their success.

[DubiousDan]

Liberty:

I'm not arguing with you. I was stating that Spidermonkey is complaining about something that can't be changed. i.e. It's like complaining that humans grow hair.

Me:
I disagree. I believe that greed is an acquired pathology. Greed should not be confused with interest. The organism has needs. The needs of survival, the need to avoid pain, the need to avoid misery, and the need to procreate, and the need to work among others. Interest is concerned with meeting need. Greed is an attempt to prove the self exists. The self is an illusion created as part of the probability extrapolative function of the mind. Man is probably the only animal on Earth that lives for the future. For that, he needs an idea of the future. That is the function of the probability extrapolater. This works at the individual level and in conjunction with other Humans at the group level. The organism exists, the self doesn’t. since greed seeks to prove a lie, greed is insatiable.
For some reason, the myth of the self is endemic to civilization. However, if one studies cultures at a pre-civilized level, one can find the absence of greed. The Polar Inuit are an example of this. Since many confuse greed with interest, this is not obvious without careful study. I’m not certain that all pre-civilized cultures are without greed. There are cultures that exist below the level of civilization but above the elementary tribal social orders. I’m not sure which came first, greed, or civilization.

[Voluntary]

The Machinery of Freedom is a classic anarcho-capitalist book by David Friedman, Milton's son.

[DubiousDan]

Voluntary:

The Machinery of Freedom is a classic anarcho-capitalist book by David Friedman, Milton's son.

Me:
Anarcho-capitalism is an oxymoron as far as I’m concerned. It seems to me to be a means of turning the country over to the corporations. We have enough of that now. This idea of hired guns is especially repugnant to me. I’m not too concerned with theory. I’m concerned with who has the guns. Since an individual can’t very well use squad level weapons or company level weapons, you need a militia. That is, if you aren’t getting into really exotic Anarchies. Everybody has to be in the militia, or else the militia is in charge.

As for police, the only way you could have police is by having people be given that function either out of duty or for pay. However they wouldn’t have any special powers or authority, they would have only the hierarchy of ability. For them to be armed, everyone else would have to be disarmed. Yes, they could carry weapons as long as anyone else could as well.
They might be needed for specialized work, such as investigation. As for public safety, that is the charge of the citizen.

Finally, it seems to me that today, capitalism depends on contract slavery. Obviously, there is no place for that in Anarchism.