From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Mon Sep 16 2002 - 08:33:38 MDT
On Mon, Sep 16, 2002 at 01:38:35AM -0600, Hungry Troll wrote:
>
> I suspect the committment to "anarcho-capitalism" has more to do with
> ideology than pragmatism (then again, most of Extropianism seems that way to
> me). Anyway, I don't really understand it: if anarcho-capitalism is such a
> good idea, then why doesn't someone go out and start one of these "private
> protection agencies"? The fact that this would be impossible just goes to
> show how workable the idea really is.
The simple reason is that it is illegal. The government claims a
monopoly on coercion, which may be the *only* legitimate purpose of
government according to much political theory. Of course, real
governments outlaw private police forces or regulate them heavily for
many reasons, many of which have nothing to do with legitimacy. This
creates a bit of a lock-in situation: if there is no way of legally
demonstrate the efficacy of anarcho-capitalism, then most people will
think it is a bad idea and the only possibility is some form of strong
government.
This is why there are so many dreams floating about among libertarians
about starting one's own country somewhere (in the ocean, in space, on
the net, in some autonomous zone) so they could get the bootstrapping
started. A more realistic approach would be to gradually decrease the
amount of stuff the government is doing, back to the minimum. Once in
that neighbourhood PPL might be easier to implement and far more likely
to be considered by people.
The above fallacious argument of "if it could be done it would have been
done" can of course be usef against nearly any idea, good or bad - "real"
communism, demarchy, micropayments. But only experience can tell us what
really works.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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