Agreed.
However, government is a special case: it reserves to itself a monopoly on violence and the ability to set the rules. Special cases deserve special treatment.
edit: it's a small world, I recognise your username from LP.
However, government is a special case: it reserves to itself a monopoly on violence and the ability to set the rules. Special cases deserve special treatment.
edit: it's a small world, I recognise your username from LP.
Standard Oil literally blew up the competition. Homestead Steel hired the Pinkertons to bash heads (and kill a few). Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Aetna kill indirectly by denying shelter, access to finances, or healthcare coverage.
The Libertardian arguments are getting more than a little tired, and we've heard them repeated a few too many times.
But these case are remarkable because they are rare, not common. And because in all such cases they predate the settlement of an uncontested government monopoly on violence in some geographical area.
I suppose you are mistaking me for a Rothtard, an anarcho-capitalist who believes in a free market in violence. Not so; it's been pretty well shown by now that centralising the social violence function is, on the whole, a better strategy.
But it comes with the downside that you've centralised a lot of power and it needs particular supervision and constraint.
Well, let's refer to your initial claim:
"However, government is a special case: it reserves to itself a monopoly on violence and the ability to set the rules."
Now, either you're tautalogically defining any organization which sets rules and exacts violence in pursuit of its ends as a government (which is a meaningless distinction), or you're making a nonsense argument. Actually, both are nonsense arguments. Note too that I've included a number of other organizations other than state-registered corporations, though I include those.
Yes, historically, companies have acted violently
Sure. Where historically was:
July 6 when Montreal Maine & Atlantic declared total war on the town of Lac-Megantic, Quebec: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/15/us-train-lawsuit-i...
April 17, when West Fertilizer Company declared war on West, Texas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Fertilizer_Company_explos...
Ongoing corporate war through the 2000s carried out by the Gulf Cartel subsidiary Los Zetas in Neuvo Lardo, Mexico, with death tolls running to the 100s annually: http://www.pro8news.com/news/96625619.html
Ongoing petro-religious corporate warfare in Iraq, with a death toll in the 10s to 100s of thousands: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/07/15/police-a...
May 15,2 2013, Wells Fargo's war against individuals who were not even its mortgage holders: https://livinglies.wordpress.com/2013/05/15/wells-fargo-wron...
November 25, 2012, war on behalf of American and other clothing manufacturers and retailers against Bangladeshi garment workers: http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/25/world/asia/bangladesh-factory-...
December 2-3, 1984, war by Union Carbide against the citizens of Bhopal, India: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster
All of these are cases in which violence was used by companies directly or through conscious and deliberate disregard for human safety and consequences in the aim of profit. The use of force to secure control or direct gains.
Or perhaps you'd like to address companies such as Blackwater (now Xe), armed affiliates of oil, gas, mineral, and diamond operations, forestry operators, and others, who transact directly in death and force?
The distinction you're drawing simply doesn't exist.
(That must be someone else, since I never used this nick before this account and don't even know what LP is. The Libertarian Party?)