But then one day, a guy called Satoshi landed on the island and told everyone about block-chains. Nobody had any idea what he was talking about, so he showed them how if they all agreed to a set of immutable rules, they could all live happily.
Collectively, the community decided upon the smallest number of voluntary rules to live by. Simple rules like
- We will trade between each other when it is mutually beneficial
- No coercion
They all agreed, but later down the road, Ben tried to start raising the toll prices again. Mises and Friedman decided to stop trading with Ben and only between themselves.
Mises and Friedman soon became economic powerhouses of freedom. While they had to take longer less efficient routes transporting their resources, they worked within their limits and carried on.
Ben then lowered his toll price inviting Mises and Friedman to start trading with them again. But wouldn't you know it? Mises and Friedman were well aware of his tricks and his bad reputation, they said "no."
Ben's town quickly fell apart as everyone left to join the free and voluntary towns of Mises and Friedman.
Are those other, less efficient routes somehow unowned in this continuation of the story? Or are the people along those routes under some kind of enforceable agreement to keep them from doing as Ben did?
The real question is why anyone would push their property claim to the absurd state where they are destroying their own income, as in the scenario. There are privately owned toll roads and canals that exist right now. Why don't they keep increasing their fees at a rate that asymptotically approaches infinity? Because no one would pay them. The simple fact is that producers are not free to set any price they wish in the market. They are constrained by the willingness of consumers to pay their fees. If it were not so, the price of everything would be infinite.
The OP posits that there is a sort of reverse cartel defection effect at work here, where all the members of the River Transit Guild are induced to defect against a decrease in prices necessary to save their business, but in fact it would be the opposite. Raising the prices at your gatehouse while everyone else lowers theirs doesn't mean that you will make more money, it means that more people will avoid going through your gatehouse.
Well I am new to these discussions and am not an economist so I may be missing something. But this seems again to assume that other routes are available. I'm guessing real-world privately-owned toll roads do not drive their prices up because there are other public routes required by the you-know-what.
In @biophil's scenario, if I understand correctly, we can first suppose that tromping through the (unowned?) jungle instead of the handy river imposes a cost $X. This means people along the river can collectively charge just under $X, right? If any one of those along the river impose a toll that puts the total over $X, then they all lose out; but if the total fees along the river are under $X and one actor lowers their toll by some small amount, that just means another can raise the toll by that small amount and it is still better for the traders to take the river.
Then we suppose that the jungle (and air and sea and underground and ... ) are all owned (is there any reason they wouldn't be in the anarchist utopia?), and I have to say I get confused, so maybe you can help. People along the jungle route realize they can play the same game Ben does. Of course if they charge too much, people will go back to the river - if the river tolls don't add up to be too much. In these kind of rent-seeking scenarios, I take it, each owner may as well charge something, since they are no worse off than when they were letting people through for free if the people decide not to go through at all.
I agree with @discombobulated that the main problem is how to handle private coercion and might making right - and I think @biophil agrees too, in this post. And when it comes to @discombobulated's interesting analogy of world governments, there it seems we are left to settle things by might making right - which I'm inclined to think is unfortunate.
@biophill hit the nail on the head with that post and it is exactly my concern as well. But, since the problem of might makes right already exists between nations, that doesn't make it a great reason to stop thinking of ways to try and make voluntaryism work. Even if we were only able to enjoy a brief period of it before reverting back to coercion, it would still be worth it in my opinion.
For a discussion on the commons in an anarchist society, check out my new discussion on the commons in an anarchist society.
The fable in the OP forgets the fact that since the barge-men were doing well at the time the wall was built, they could have just negotiated with all the land owners in between their two towns and built a canal and the contracts would have priced in reasonable tolls anyway.
Besides this, it is likely that the barge men would also have had the option to buy up all of the actual river property on the way down the river as a consortium and the wall builder would have been given the choice of sell it or make a contract of rental, which would have made him happy and money anyway.
This story is typical of people who think in terms of the commons still existing in an anarchocapitalist society. This cannot happen. It interferes with business, and despite what these anti-capitalists might think, it is the whole purpose of traffic routes to allow traffic through because it fosters trade between people along the path. In as far as money is needed to maintain the route, there has to be some scheme of gathering money from those who benefit from this route. Those who use it to do business with those people pay it anyway through their trade with these stakeholders.
So you favor the abolition of the commons? Fascinating. Everybody else who replied to my post said "well, at least you have to keep the commons." I was about to write a post discussing this. In fact, hang on a sec - I just did. For a discussion on the commons, check out my new discussion on the commons.
Of course, your answer is the right one. Your solution to the coordination problem is to coordinate. To organize, to unionize, to band together to exert the functions of government (though, under a different name). And then pray that it all stays non-violent.
All good points. Perhaps my choice of a river as an exploitable commons was clumsy?
But it's important to understand that your last paragraph is missing my point entirely. Gatehouse operators aren't competitors; their services are not substitutable without additional costs. It's not like a barge operator can say "I will use gates 1, 2, and 4, but 3 is too pricey so I'll just not go through that gate." Maybe 2 and 4 could collaborate to build a portage, and this could be used to control 3's price, but to enforce the cartel price upon 3, 2 and 4 would have to operate the portage at a loss. All of this is avoidable economic inefficiency.
Thanks for humoring me in all this - all this writing is a great way for me to distill my thoughts on the subject.
By the way, I'm seeing if I can get another one of these discussions going. For a discussion on the commons in an anarchist society, check out my new discussion on the commons in an anarchist society.
It doesn't really matter, there are plenty of alternative solutions for them to employ. If people block the river route, then take to land. If they block the land routes, then take to the sea or air. There's always another way of doing something.
The sea and air are unowned? Or are the owners of sea and air under some kind of enforceable agreement to keep them from doing as Ben did?
It doesn't matter if the sea and air are treated as unownable common spaces or if they are owned. The hypothetical proposes that everyone owns every piece of accessible real estate or travel corridor, and they're all determined to cut off their noses to spite their face. This is both wildly implausible and inconsistent with how we know people in these sorts of situations actually behave right now. It's a "just so" story.
If you want to take it to this extreme... Let's say Ben saw Mises building his home in a valley surrounded by mountains with only one entrance and exit. Ben sneakily builds a wall blocking the path thereby imprisoning Mises in the valley. Can Mises do what it takes to escape? Who is justified in their action if there is no government to resolve this conflict of interests (I think that is the point you are trying to make)?
Either way, someone is going to have to make a decision on the matter. Whether you decide to pay and give control to a coercive government to make the determination, or come up with a mutually beneficial agreement on your own, a decision will be reached regardless.
In this example, if Ben wants to be malicious, then Mises would do whatever it would take to survive. Meanwhile, the rest of the community will be seeing how Ben is treating Mises and would decide how they want to respond to it.
Let's say North Korea somehow was able to imprison South Korea. Would we need to create a world government to resolve it?
I really wish I could believe in your story, but you're sweeping too much under the rug.
You talk of the towns as rational decisionmakers, but they aren't - they're just collections of rational people. Your argument for anarchy assumes a degree of coordination that anarchy itself rejects.
My story was just a simple contradiction to yours and was not meant to be the go to guide for voluntaryism. It was meant to counter your primary argument. If someone acts maliciously in a trade for their own benefit and is not mutually beneficial, then it is easy enough to just not agree to the trade. The malicious actor is then barred from future trades and suffers the consequences.
But even throwing my little story out the window, just take a look at the world right now. We have a bunch of independent countries all acting for their own benefit. There is no world government telling each country how to act, so they do so according to their own needs. There are trade agreements and the UN etc., but what happens if countries don't follow the rules or act disreputably? Sanctions. AKA refusing to trade. If this can be done on an international scale, I would think it can be done on smaller scales between people, cities, states etc.
I love these ideas but the biggest flaw to anarchy/voluntaryism in my mind though is protection from violence. What is to stop groups from just using violence to impose their will on citizens again and bring people back into coercive governance? Or if groups do build their own protective forces to prevent this, what is to stop some rogue commander to stage a coup?
The old chestnut, 'But wouldn't the warlords take over?'. No, they wouldn't because voluntary agreements with multiple competing security providers would exist, and those providers would have agreements with each other when violent incursion affects each other on a scale that is outside the limits.
Note also that historically, such as the war of independence and the civil war, it was a mix of regular and irregular forces that came to win in the end. This is something that can only happen when anyone with the will to pick up arms and learn how to use them and who makes the effort to be communicative with the more formal, organised forces near them, can produce defensive capability that can repel all but a greatly overwhelming size of force. The bigger the force, the greater the chance that more people from a wider geographical region would get involved.
Capitalism has the advantage that people who adopt it as strictly as in the anarchocapitalist form of it, are both wealthier and more peaceful. It would be extraordinary for an outside force to come into play or even an internal force that does not understand that production and productivity are the key to winning wars, would not be less equipped at waging war. The USA was the main winner of World War 2 not because of anything other than its long period of relative peace and capitalism had provided far more resources and capital in the form of productive capability, that the soldiers had more power per person than either side of the enemy.
The warlords wouldn't take over because they'd be so tightly organized and intertwined with the economic order as to be indistinguishable from a government. ;)
re op: 'his ownership of the river' ? I would think people wise enough to set up such a society would make sure not to allow the private ownership of vital water ways. How does Ben become any different than the state at that point?
On 'all agreed to a set of immutable rules, they could all live happily.'
Wouldnt that kind of absolutism lead to coercion?
thoughts: I dont see how Voluntaria would deal with criminality and security.
Problems that will exist so long as we labor under a system that pits people against one another, creates mass concentrations of wealth. Why cant we seem to even imagine moving beyond the old paradigm of work wages and competition? and use technology and our strong social dynamics in the wisest ways possible, by fucking taking care of the basic needs of and education humanity? (answer bc the global power elite depend on poverty, war and drugs)
It seems to me that this can only happen if we free ourselves from the underlying disease of competition and the accumulation of personal wealth. What are essentially vestiges of nature-born scarcity, that we have created an economic system based on it, so that even while we produce surpluses scarcity in the form of planned obsolescence, is manufactured. While we destroy the planet and a Fed note is worth more than a person's life. At what point and how, do we leave it behind?
We should be competing against physics, music and math, not one another except in productive ways. We can educate, house and feed everyone on earth with the goal of ultimately harvesting the global potential of human mental and creative ingenuity. Imagine anyone could study any field they loved. Academia would not be poisoned by money. Just look around the whole of global society. It corrupts almost everything and breeds far more misery than anything else.
Profit has driven the technological marvels we see today. At the same time,nearly 20k babies below the age of 5 die every day bc the water they have to drink is not as clean as what I use to flush my toilet. The world is so fucked up im sure sure of this is a blessing or a curse.
A paycheck would not be necessary bc we would want for nothing. Somehow striving towards a world like this strikes me as more important given the double-edge nature of technology, the mind-blowingly destructive state of things as they are (drugs and war are the two biggest money-makers for the establishment) and the gulf between the haves and the have-nots.
Imagine a world with no notions of financial profit because money is no longer necessary. Because this is unprecedented it strikes us as hopelessly naive and idealistic and yet it's not outside the realm of possibility and given the benefits, people would take to it bc it would be a vast improvement over what we have now. And of course, automation would be the main catalyst. It could be implemented gradually by taking money back to what it should be: a means of exchange. It simply requires the overthrow of the central bankers/military industrial complex.. I'd like to think the Romanian model on a global scale could work. Of course no immediate change is possible but with gradual change with that end goal in mind, we could far better live up to our potential as a species. Looking at how fucked up the world is I just dont think it will ever happen so we can stop imagining now.
-pardon this long rant, if anyone even reads it, pardon any repetition, im tired/
You are proposing communism. But that went so well every other time in the past when it was tried. Surely your scheme would work where everyone else's failed?
Do you know that the reason why the USSR did not die of starvation was because Lenin basically allowed agriculture to be a free market? This is why even still today in Russia most farms are family concerns and average size is 5 acres.
The problem with your scheme of ubiquitous commons is that human beings are not commons. Who gets to decide whose is the greatest 'need'. When you boil it down, and I am going to be a bit nihilist here, nobody needs anything. You don't need to be alive. Need is no metric. Humans survive in very extreme situations although if it goes on for a long time it usually ends their lives prematurely.
Everything everyone wants is a want. There is no needs. We don't need you, you don't need me. We are here, and the real question is how can we both profit at each other's gain.
You are actually not unanimous in thinking that the commons should be preserved, and this is really interesting to me - so I wrote another post:
For a discussion on the commons in an anarchist society, check out my new discussion on the commons in an anarchist society.
The river is not an unlimited resource. Therefore it can not be a common. It will get clogged up with boats and nobody gets any value out of that. Nothing that is limited can be a common. Who profits most from it should be who uses it, since their profits flow into more business, more spending, or, even, just holding money off the market and making others' money more valuable.
There is no good outcome from any common property, except when the multiple owners are a very very small group, like family sized. And ultimately the kids grow up and want their own private piece of their own anyway.
what do you mean by 'you are not unanimous?' The ambiguity of the english pronoun 'you' is very troublesome in my view. In most languages the plural is also formal. Why would we all be unanimous, some here are also unicorn land of non-scarcity socialists also.