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Comment by bildung | Hacker News Reader

> Qualify "bloody".

Bloody as in decades of civil wars: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_Sturlungs

> Whatever bullshit objection

No need for ad hominems, let your arguments speak.

> like small population or they are "backwards" subsistence farmers is irrelevant to the fact that civil order was maintained by polycentric law for 3 centuries.

Both subsistence farming (e.g. means of production that are by definition not exhibiting division of labor) and an extremly low population density mean that both communication and coordination between people are orders of magnitude smaller than in complex and dense societies. That's pretty much consensus both in macro economics and in sociology.

> Could it work today? Your type won't even allow the experiment

I'm an empirical scientist, so not exactly opposed to experimentation. Has it occured to you that "my type" simply isn't persuaded by your argument?

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Haha. The Age of the Sturlungs, the "bloody" era is after the early Commonwealth I am talking about. Way to not even read my links or have a remote clue about the topic. Look 2 up on the right list on your link for what I am talking about.

You're complaining about what happened after people switched over to the statist mindset you simultaneously are trapped in.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_Commonwealth

>Both subsistence farming (e.g. means of production that are by definition not exhibiting division of labor) and an extremly low population density mean that both communication and coordination between people are orders of magnitude smaller than in complex and dense societies. That's pretty much consensus both in macro economics and in sociology.

Seems like just another bullshit excuse for an increase in bureaucracy like OP is joining into.

>Has it occured to you that "my type" simply isn't persuaded by your argument?

I don't care. The fact remains that we are not allowed any land to experiment with. Say you aren't opposed to experimentation all you want but let me know when we can experiment and I will care. Your democracy experiment will crumble before this ever happens anyhow so whatever. Democracy was not common outside the US pre-WW1.

> Haha. The Age of the Sturlungs, the "bloody" era is after the early Commonwealth I am talking about.

The Age of the Sturlungs is what Commonwealth devolved into in a relatively short period. Are you suggesting the Age of the Sturlungs just appeared out of nowhere?

> Seems like just another bullshit excuse for an increase in bureaucracy like OP is joining into.

Ok, apparently you haven't yet read much about economics. Division of labor is a precondition for both wage labor and capital accumulation. If you have neither wage labor nor capital accumulation, you can't have capitalism. It's that simple. You have markets, yes, but everbody had markets for thousands of years. Markets =/= capitalism. Your argument boils down to using a society that is neither culturally nor demographically nor economically similar to present day societies as a role model for present day society. Can you now see why I'm not persuaded?

And again: Ad hominems don't help. You want to persuade the majority to try out a grand libertarian experiment, but you get all worked up because a single person questions your reasoning. It won't work that way.

>The Age of the Sturlungs is what Commonwealth devolved into in a relatively short period.

The Commonwealth lasted ~290 years. That's all that's relevant is that a polycentric legal order, one paradigmatically different than the statist one that dominates history has worked and could work again.

Your bloody Sturlunga is evidence of the aggressive nature of the statism you propose as "necessary".

>Ok, apparently you haven't yet read much about economics

Sure homie. Update me when you have read Human Action. To me markets are capitalism, but people equivocate on "capitalism" as also the current statist crony corporatism. Wittgenstein teaches us to be clear about what we mean. If you're not familiar with him it's a simple and important lesson.

I appreciated your comments and learned some interesting things from them. I also admire your ability to have an argument without letting it drift toward becoming personal. I wish there were more people online who could do that.

Unfortunately, I think you're feeding a troll at this point. No amount of logic or reason can undo countless hours stewing in his/her own confirmation bias.

> I appreciated your comments and learned some interesting things from them. I also admire your ability to have an argument without letting it drift toward becoming personal. I wish there were more people online who could do that.

Thank you :)

> Unfortunately, I think you're feeding a troll at this point. No amount of logic or reason can undo countless hours stewing in his/her own confirmation bias.

I suppose you are right. But text-only casual communication gets misinterpreted so easily (e.g. I have the tendency to read agressiveness into texts that are just dense factual answers) that I try to stay calm one answer longer than I'd emotionally do. Works for me :)

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