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Comment by timtas | Hacker News Reader

The notion of natural monopoly, while superficially plausible, is an ahistorical ex post rationale for government intervention.[1]

Any day now some guy or gal will visit my home to hook up my Google Fiber. How can that be if if Time Warner Cable has a natural monopoly? Oops, I should say that TWC, AT&T, DIRECTV and Dish have an oligopoly. Before you protest that I lump guys who launch satellites together with guys who hang wire on poles, remember in a dynamic world supposed natural monopolies are not safe from substitutes.

[1]https://mises.org/library/myth-natural-monopoly

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But you're comparing apples and oranges. Are you seriously suggesting that we could duplicate or triplicate all the roads in the country to allow competition between private road companies?

(and your example is a bad one - here in my area of NYC, Time Warner absolutely does have a monopoly, I have no other providers to choose from. So it makes sens that someone regulates them.)

But the reason that Time Warner has a monopoly because the city granted them a monopoly--not because of technology. Plus, politics and regulation make it difficult for new entry into their market.

But the reason that Time Warner has a monopoly because the city granted them a monopoly

That isn't the case. Verizon have rolled out FIOS to areas in the city, but have decided to stop doing so.

I don't follow -- which are the apples and oranges? Comparing wires and roads does seem like apples and oranges.

You have to ask, why does TWC have a monopoly in NYC? Did the market create it? Does the market protect it? Why do you think Google Fiber is skipping big markets like NYC in favor of KC, Austin (where I live) and Provo? I hear it said that it's too much work to lay infrastructure in Manhattan. Sure it's a lot of work, but as I watch them boring through the hard limestone up and down my street for the last 9 months -- it takes a whole day for a machine the size of truck to bore a hole from one house to the next -- to reach a maybe 1000 subscribers, I cannot imagine it's less work per subscriber here than a big dense city. No, they are avoiding the big markets because of webs of regulation and bureaucracy which protect incumbents like TWC.

>Are you seriously suggesting that we could duplicate or triplicate all the roads in the country to allow competition between private road companies?

If you want to seriously consider alternatives to the status quo or at least be able to capably debate those like myself who do propose total privatization of roads, I'd point you to Walter Block's The Privatization of Roads and Highways.

free PDF/epub here: https://mises.org/library/privatization-roads-and-highways

I don't think that it would make sense to just multiply the roads we already have. For privatization of roads to exist, the gov't would have to give up its monopoly on their provision first, but the problem is much deeper than just this one unlikelihood.

You mention that if TWC/Comcast/etc. are given state-granted monopolies, why not, of course, ought they not be regulated? If I have a broken knee, why not get a doctor to fix it?

If I have a broken knee and it became this way because of the widespread acceptance of a legal order where nobody is punished for brandishing tire irons and kneecapping, the problem, then, really lies with this legal order. As an anarchist libertarian, I hope that one day governments worldwide will be abolished and until such time will work toward solutions for the problems to come from the inevitable insurrection of the "great" Western democracies.

My position is so unpopular, and so many people now are unable to consider that maybe democracy isn't such a great thing or that gov't shouldn't have its paws on healthcare, education, etc. I certainly don't suggest a step backwards toward feudalism or some sort of dictatorship, but you ought to keep in mind that besides the US, democracy before WW1 was only in 2 European countries.

I really do share the sentiments of those indoctrinated by statism, to want to see peace and prosperity, children be educated, the elderly having healthcare and so on, I just disagree with the technical (legal and economic) approach.

If one can overcome the idea that government MUST do X/Y/Z in order for civil order to be maintained or a good/service to be provided (and these ideas are often easily disproven by historical examples), then it can at least be a fun thought experiment.

So, to answer your question on multiplying roads we'll imagine that somehow the US gov't has been abolished. All the roads now would have a legal status of being unowned. Private companies could branch off roads but not just swoop in and toss up roadblocks or tollbooths. The reason here, and similar logic applies to public parks and other municipal monopolies, is that citizens have been granted easement rights to travel the roads.

Assuming the citizen is not a criminal member of the political elite, there's no reason to be able to take away these easement rights to travel. Companies could begin a very slow process of homesteading or coming to own the previously public roads by making improvements, patrolling for drunk drivers, etc.

For a road company to succeed, given that they can't just extract tolls from easement rightsholders, they'd have to add some value like as mentioned with fixing potholes, you'd probably see some expansions like the original ideas for I-70 in Baltimore, then there would probably be some bundling in with auto insurers and DRO's ("dispute resolution organizations", which could be for- or non-profit police and judges basically).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_70_in_Maryland#Histo...

The US government is abolished, but the legal system is preserved? Not how it works. There would be a vacuum and a brutal rush to reappropriate resources according to rules other than property rights, which ceased to exist along with the government.

Government evolved from much worse scenarios. What's to stop me from building a militia and taking over a town? Taking your house and wife? I've got overwhelming force and I say they're mine.

>The US government is abolished, but the legal system is preserved? Not how it works.

I said this was a thought experiment to sort of isolate this one issue. It's how we (praxeologists of law) might give suggestions to the polycentric legal system rising from a previously state-ruled region.

You might not have this misunderstanding but many do. Anarchy simply means a lack of rulers. It doesn't necessarily entail chaos and it certainly doesn't mean a lack of law.

Anarchist libertarianism or anarcho-capitalism is distinguished from early leftist-"anarchism" by two main characteristics.

The former is radically and uncompromisingly for free markets and anti-state, with a focus on sound legal theory (a combination of a set of static legal grundnorms, viz. the praxeological aspect or a set of laws reasonably suited to all humans, with room for free variation among groups/cultures understanding that personal ideology will shape jurisprudence).

The latter—leftist-"anarchists" as you'll probably see protesting the next Gx Summit or depicted on the TV—make varieties of socialist or communistic ideological proposals which results in a total lack of consistent legal theory. As an ideology, "an-cap" is relatively new and our body of attendant legal writings already dwarves theirs. Where leftist-"anarchism" has been tried, it's failed to maintain civil order and the "leaders" have been nigh-indistinguishable from other despots.

>There would be a vacuum and a brutal rush to reappropriate resources according to rules other than property rights, which ceased to exist along with the government.

You'll probably get that anyhow if you are so unlucky to live in a country that implodes and it is more likely that most people will just go on following the status quo than you and others being so swayed by my words and we see an orderly unwinding of your gov't.

Throughout civilized history, from tribalism to today, we've seen paradigm changes. What's next when democracy fails? Ideology and law can both be seen broadly as "technologies". A few of us are working on a backup plan. Most people who are even interested involve themselves in electoral politics and/or try to use the web for "smart gov't".

>What's to stop me from building a militia and taking over a town? Taking your house and wife? I've got overwhelming force and I say they're mine.

The simple answer is that feuding is expensive, even more so of a drain without a mass of people to extract wealth from to fund wars.

Really though, if you were concerned with these objections you'd realize you already live in such conditions and become a libertarian anarchist! You live in a state (geographic monopoly on law, arbitration and the use of violence).

Democracy is an insidious advancement in ideological technology because it gave the populace the idea that "anyone can be king". The US was a noble experiment but I consider it a failure. You have a massive drain on standards of living from bureaucracy and regulations, meanwhile the political elite is not much different than in previous paradigms.

Why take houses by brute force when you have everyone in them convinced that X/Y/Z must be provided by gov't, and that gov't needs it's "revenues"?

Polycentric legal orders similar to what we propose have maintained civil order longer than the US has existed so far[0]. It was just after WW2 that the dollar upended the pound sterling as the world's reserve currency and there was a sudden huge rise in prices and chaos in Britain.

It will be an interesting chapter in history for how long the US maintains its global hegemony. Why not, with half of world military spending or whatever doesn't the US just start picking off little countries here and there like you say? Well they sort of actually do by proxy wars and "economic warfare".

At a basic level, governments are in a state of anarchy amongst themselves though. Why might it not work at other levels? I'm convinced that we can have what's promised by states but under-delivered by abolishing them. A lot of those suffering the sort of Stockholm syndrome concomitant with statism see what I am saying as crazy but I'm unconcerned.

This is one tactic on bringing about libertarian anarchy and many who in debate will say they oppose it actually are helping bring it about[1]. If you want a more in depth answer to your actual questions see here perhaps[2]. A DRO is a startup too ambitiously frightening for today's YC, but it actually funds many who feed into said tactic. Legal praxeology is just a hobby for myself and I doubt I'll live to see my dream of a free society, so I am working on a large global health problem which again is part of the tactic.

[0] https://mises.org/library/medieval-iceland-and-absence-gover...

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20140530221508/http://www.anti-s...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTYkdEU_B4o

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