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This is what this conversion always boils down to: use of force.

Here's the problem with that 'bedrock' you are standing on: the vast majority of us are not coerced at all. We've happily agreed to this system. Have you convinced yourself that we are all just to stupid to recognize some yolk that only people with your mindset can see? I feel silly that I feel the need to tell you this but we are not stupid and any justification you make for why people embrace a strong governmental structure that is predicated on most people being too dumb to know what is good for them is built on a flimsy foundation at best.

Think about it: how can people simultaneously be too dumb to do and see what is best for them under their current system but would be able to function just fine under if under a more pure market force dominated Anarcho-Capitalist framework?

I also don't understand the obsession with the market as rigidly defined by Anarcho-Capitalists. Not all human exchange that leads to the benefits of market forces needs to be done through currency and its near analogues. Democracy and Government operate under its own types of markets and mediums of exchange. People still act for their own best interests under those systems. I don't understand why they all have to be homogenized. Having diverse means of exchange seems more robust to me.

And the Anarcho-Capitalist idea of Liberty really only seems to function when there is one person in the world. As soon as there are two people and their Rights and Liberties come at odds, it is like starting from scratch every time. Who's Rights and Liberty trumps whos?

It is like deciding that all previous decisions are useless...humanity hasn't gotten as far as it has by starting over all of the time. Passing along and even codifying wisdom into effective systems, including government systems, is a big reason we, as a species, has been so successful. Yes, markets are a nice system too, but why limit ourselves to just one?

Have you convinced yourself that we are all just to stupid to recognize some yolk that only people with your mindset can see?

Of course not.

I also don't understand the obsession with the market as rigidly defined by Anarcho-Capitalists.

The anarcho-capitalist position doesn't define markets particularly rigidly at all. "voluntary exchange" is pretty much it. How much more liberal a definition are you looking for?

Not all human exchange that leads to the benefits of market forces needs to be done through currency and its near analogues.

Agreed. I'm not sure why you think that position is at odds with anything I've said though.

As soon as there are two people and their Rights and Liberties come at odds, it is like starting from scratch every time. Who's Rights and Liberty trumps whos?

Again, this is where the optimism comes in. I'm optimistic that most conflicts can be resolved peacefully. Where they can't, there isn't - at the end of the day - any way I can see to prevent someone from using superior force to vanquish someone who possesses less strength. But that doesn't mean that we should institutionalize the use of force as a routine part of how we conduct business with each other.

>The anarcho-capitalist position doesn't define markets particularly rigidly at all. "voluntary exchange" is pretty much it.

Then what about the exchange between the organization we call a State and the people?

For example: I am more than happy to exchange my freedom to commit violence and for others to commit violence against me in the course of doing business to a heavily regulated monopoly (the State) that is ultimately controlled by the people that constitute that State. That is one less worry I have with every other interaction I have in my life -- violence has been taken off the table except in the case of rules that I've agreed to live by. Seems like a very fair trade to me. I have already volunteered for that exchange.

Or how about the agreement that I pool my money with people from all different industries and backgrounds into a fund that we all decide to spend through our representatives that we've voted to appoint? This tends to mean that pool of money is used for the common benefit. I'm happy with that situation as well. It creates a collective power that would be hard to match in any less comprehensive scheme, and some problems call for that approach.

In short, I've agreed to exchange time and effort and some freedom of action (that I will never miss) to participate in a system that I think works and works well. This system does not use solely currency as a means for exchange but votes and persuasion. Granted, currency can be spent to nudge votes this way or that but there is no direct exchange.

I believe this is the right way to go and that not everything needs to be translated into exchanges of currency which, really, is the heart of my disagreement with anarcho-capitalism. Not everything must be exchangeable with currency. In fact, some things should be impossible to exchange, directly, with currency.

>Where they can't, there isn't - at the end of the day - any way I can see to prevent someone from using superior force to vanquish someone who possesses less strength. But that doesn't mean that we should institutionalize the use of force as a routine part of how we conduct business with each other.

Violence exists. The best we can do is manage it. Do you not see the contradiction that you would allow freedom of all associations except the one society's currently agreed on?

> Do you not see the contradiction that you would allow freedom of all associations except the one society's currently agreed on?

I think you're assuming something about my position that isn't accurate. But this is starting to drift way more off-topic than ever, and I find myself thinking that I shouldn't even have replied in this thread, since I'm generally in favor of less political discussion on HN. But sometimes I allow myself to get drawn into it.

Anyway, I'm happy to discuss this at length, as long as it's a civil discussion. I'd just rather do it in a different forum. If you're really interested in the rest of my response to this, shoot me an email or something and we can continue the discussion there. If not, I think I'll just stop here.

> Here's the problem with that 'bedrock' you are standing on: the vast majority of us are not coerced at all. We've happily agreed to this system.

Just like North Koreans are not coerced at all and they've happily agreed to that system.

> Think about it: how can people simultaneously be too dumb to do and see what is best for them under their current system but would be able to function just fine under if under a more pure market force dominated Anarcho-Capitalist framework?

Because we know North Koreans would do just fine with less coercion, and we extend that same 'less-coercion' line of thinking to everyone.

> Having diverse means of exchange seems more robust to me.

Why does the federal government then not allow for competing currencies to the dollar? Why can't my employer pay me in gold (although 2 or 3 states have legalized this now - I wonder why!)? Why does all currency exchange have to be homogenized?

You're speaking against ancap without actually having read any of its literature. I can tell by the silly arguments you're using, and the fact you can't see the propaganda you're fed.

Get reading.

Gold is a currency.

I've read a bit of literature -- I don't know how canonical it was because it was stuff I was pointed to in the middle of chats like this one but I found most of it to be very 'happy path philosophy' which is to say it didn't stand up to much critical reasoning. It seemed like I needed to accept the conclusions before it made sense in any more than a toy world way. It was all also not very surprising. I never had a 'Oh, well now that makes sense' kind of moments.

As soon as I see that it may be worth my time, I'll have a look, but if the answer is 'well the market works well in this area it must work well in all areas' and 'we'll know it works when we try.' or 'some Norwegian clans 800 years ago tried it for 75 years and it worked great (ignoring the fact they had clan councils and chiefs that enforced common laws -- 'but they could chose to change clans!').

Anyway, as far as I can tell it is pretty weak sauce on the order of Objectivism. If you have a pointer to something remotely enlightening I'd like to see it. So far the proponents and the literature I've come across has been pretty hollow.

I don't know about your Norwegian example, and it might be because I'm ignorant of it; or you might be confusing it with Iceland 1200 years ago. If so, remember they had that system for 300 years (longer than the US has existed) and that they could not only choose which 'clan' they belonged to but also could literally buy seats in the law-making house. This makes it a voluntary (therefore, anarcho-capitalist) society.

I'd point you in the direction of any Austrian Economics literature. I don't come from any "objectivist" thinking as it seems to me most of it comes from fiction, which I don't read. But if you learn how wealth can be created from simple exchange between two people, that's the aha moment.

I'd recommend PraxGirl's Praxeology series on youtube, and Schiff's How an Economy Grows and Why it Crashes.

See here is an example of the 'everyone is stupid' mindset: I am pretty sure everyone on HN understands how wealth is created through exchange. That is Econ 101 stuff.

If that is the aha moment, you are many years too late.

I just don't agree that all human exchanges necessarily have to be translatable into currency. It seems unnecessarily limiting. I think it is perfectly acceptable for people to agree to systems where no currency or barter exchange is necessary. For example, buying seats in a law making house...how is that an improvement over a representative voting scheme that is not paid for?

1. Not everyone takes Econ 101.

2. Econ 101 is usually taught from a Keynesian point of view (if you study Keynes' life you'll find out how much he really knew about economics)

3. I'm talking about the stuff that starts at 5:50 here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgsS683F76M . If you understand that you can understand that from the selfish desires of two people to profit, they end up helping each other. This is something I believe Objectivism phrases another way and people have trouble understanding - Obama himself said "I don't know when they decided they wanted to make a virtue out of selfishness", which shows even the president doesn't understand this point.

So you probably haven't had your aha moment yet, as most people.

There are several of those epiphanies, though. Another one that you're due is realizing money is just an indirection for labor. It's proof that labor was performed usefully by someone else at some point in time. It's a concretization of capital so we can work a bunch and decide to utilize the capital earned at a later point in time. Which means any vilification of money is baseless as money is just a product that everyone collectively decided is acceptable in any direction of a given exchange. Money is a shortcut, it does not cause evil, and if we banned all currencies and precious things we'd still come up with tying knots on grass blades or something - anything to prove that some labor was done at some point, and to decouple the two sides of any exchange (1. selling something I have, 2. getting something I want). Again, I'd recommend the Praxeology videos linked above.

I wonder what other means of exchanging with other people you can think of that is not money and the desire to profit (praxeologically, feeling good about donating is a profit).

To your question as to how buying seats is an improvement... it's because it makes the process transparent. Today's seats are also for "sale" but it's a complicated path full of influence games to get to the point you can even "bid" (watch House of Cards to see what not implementing this Icelandic idea begets).

>Another one that you're due is realizing money is just an indirection for labor.

That doesn't imbue it with any special properties.

I am not vilifying money. Obviously it is a very useful medium of exchange. I just don't understand why it must be elevated to /universally/ useful medium of exchange.

>I wonder what other means of exchanging with other people you can think of that is not money.

Votes, for one. Favors. Time (that is not covered by labor such as Time Spent Cultivating Friendship or Mentorship). Kindness. Even most inter personal violence and ill intent. Extra-currency exchanges between people abound and it doesn't make sense in many cases to make them transferable by assigning some currency value to them.

Speaking of optimism, early Communists were also great optimists, believing in the inherent goodness of human nature.

Produce as much as you can, take as much as you need, what could possibly go wrong?

(Spoiler alert: pretty much everything)

If you think that, then you can't have read much communist literature.

Marx spent large parts of his life criticising the idea that this was easy, and criticising the idea of the "inherent goodness of human nature".

On the contrary, Marxism assumes that it is human nature to first of all satisfy our own basic needs. In the German Ideology, Marx made the point that if a socialist revolution were to happen in an under-developed economy (like say Russia, or China, or Cuba, or North Korea, or Vietnam at the times of their respective "revolutions"), then redistribution would only make want common, and the same class struggles would reassert themselves. It was Lenin who laid the groundwork for ignoring that central part of Marx' of theses - a part he kept repeating in various contexts throughout his life.

Because a vital part of Marxism is the idea that society moves through phases that are dictated by social and economic conditions for production, and which "traps" us all. Marx did not see the capitalist as evil, nor did he see the workers as good - he saw everyone as effectively being forced into roles they either lived up to or lost. E.g. a capitalist that failed to act like a capitalist would go bankrupt and enter the working classes.

It was not "inherent goodness" Marx expected to bring a socialist revolution, but the working classes rising up in anger as capitalisms focus on increased productivity eventually reaches a point where the way of further increasing productivity makes capitalism itself fail as it runs out of fresh markets to expand into, and turns inwards on itself, with wages and jobs eventually being the only thing to cut. Couple this with the expectation that the ruling classes will refuse to yield to popular demand, but instead will use the means of oppression available to them.

The only reason a socialist revolution is considered necessary by Marxists is the assumptions that humans are not "inherently good", or at least not "good enough". But nor are they evil: It is natural to want to keep what you have, and so natural for the ruling classes to resist.

> Produce as much as you can, take as much as you need, what could possibly go wrong? > > (Spoiler alert: pretty much everything)

Of course no system has ever attempted that kind of distribution, and Marx explicitly warned (e.g. in Critique of the Gotha Program) that this was a long range goal for an advanced, well developed communist society, and that in the intermediate stages leading up to a socialist revolution, and during socialism, he saw it as more realistic to aim for a gradual transformation of the modes of production and to gradually redistribute through changes to taxation and salaries and welfare systems - not some "free for all" overthrow of all existing structure. In fact this is a defining difference between Marxism and the various anarchist ideologies (which tends to advocate the immediate destruction of the state to various degrees)

Even Leninist and subsequent bastardisations of Marxism kept to this - in large part I suspect because it became a convenient excuse for the various party elites to keep the masses in check while they lived in luxury.

I remember when I was 20, and had just finished reading "Machinery of Freedom", intent on fixing all the glaringly obvious problems in society by applying a medicine of revolutionary libertarianism.

Happily, I have now grown up.

> Happily, I have now grown up.

But you haven't grown up enough to avoid making appeals to authority in order to justify a moral high ground.

I remember when I was 20 and I believed that those that were older than me knew more than I did because they were grown ups. Then I learned knowing is hard work, lots of reading involved, and most people avoid the legwork and jump straight to the "I know better now that I'm a grown up" because few call them out on it.

Grow up.

What appeal to authority?

The whole point of my comment was that I'm now more unsure of anything than I was when I was younger and more susceptible to appealingly simple solutions.

The world is incredibly grey.

The appeal to authority is "I'm older, therefore wiser regarding subject matter X".

Being unsure is excellent. Relying on maxims such as "simple solutions are wrong" is not.

Simple or complex, the only way to prove something wrong is by refuting it. For that you need reason. Maxims are not refutations.

> We are the ones who are optimistic enough to believe that we don't need a huge government apparatus, collecting tax dollars at the end of a gun barrel, and using that money to fund aggressive use of force, in order to have a peaceful, just, and fair society.

And history has shown several times that such optimism is folly.

Europe might not be perfect, but government spending is overall much saner.