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Comment by Lambdanaut | Hacker News Reader

Everything you listed already exists in the private sector. (Private roads, schools, hospitals, power plants, buses, and water sanitation). They do quite well for themselves.

As for crime control(such as hiring a violent army, or shoplifting), companies could form unions that will turn down the business of "convicted" criminals. If you steal from a Walmart and you get caught by their union, then Walmart and every other retailer in that union isn't going to sell to you in the future. It's against the personal interests of a company to hire their own private army.

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Looks like you skipped over his argument ensure their upkeep and performance without conflicts of interest. Look at the history of coal mining, the US has already seen private companies running company towns and using their own private army to kill people. That's what unfettered capitalism leads to and most people don't want it.

"the US has already seen private companies running company towns and using their own private army to kill people."

Sounds pretty tame to the actions of the US state, doesn't it?

No, it doesn't, if you actually look at the history (though to be fair, the state was sometimes complicit back then as well).

I'm looking at the history... Do not any US corporations doing anything near as bad as enslaving tens of thousands of Americans - then sending them off to die in muddy European trenches.

Marxist states have killed a hundred million people and counting.

I like imagining the other end of this. Walmart notices guy starting to gain some traction with a competitor. They use their private army to "convict" him and hold him prisoner. Which private army fights to get him free?

In order for Walmart to do business within a jurisdiction and/or with a certain party, it would have to agree a priori to certain requirements: to use certain courts or arbitrators, and for the rulings reached by said parties to be enforceable by certain armed groups.

Thus the private army which fights to free him would be agreed to beforehand.

And presumably Walmart would lose access to some of their markets as a result, and be fined, and/or and/or etc.

That sounds exactly like a government to me

Can't recall a government ever asking my opinion which court I use.

Nor the ability to opt out entirely.

> In order for Walmart to do business within a jurisdiction and/or with a certain party, it would have to agree a priori to certain requirements

Agree with who exactly about those requirements?

The term "jurisdiction" itself implies some governing entity from which to exercise jurisdiction.

I'll assume you mean "the local commune", and when Wal-Mart ignores the rulings of the local commune and opens a shop anyways, what is the commune going to do about it?

Eject them by force you say from the local commune's militia? Wal-Mart will have a bigger army, because they can pay for it.

Eject them by force with a coalition of regional militias perhaps? That might work, but a regional coalition of actors with the right to use force isn't an anarchist commune, it's a government.

We can think of problematic occurrences in every social system.

For example:

If you've got this one 'government' controlling everything, what happens if it just up and decides to start enslaving tens of thousands of people and sending them to die in horrific trench warfare? Who's going to stop this 'government' from doing that?

What if this 'government' starts outlawing certain plants and/or alcohol, and punishing people harshly for using them? Who's going to stop the 'government' from doing that?

What if this 'government' enacts racially discriminatory laws?

What if...

> We can think of problematic occurrences in every social system.

Don't turn the question around.

And don't forget that the one proposing to change the status quo is the one with the responsibility to prove that their proposed change is better, not simply "just as bad".

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