meanduck

> I think 'physical assault' is a very simplistic view of the NAP

Its simple by design. Its easiest to get universel consent.

> I fall on the other end of the scale where indirect damage through social/economic/environmental channels can be considered to infringe on liberty. Slander laws, noise ordinances, and non-localized environmental pollution all fall into this category and are eligible to be addressed through regulations which actually improve liberty. However, not being allowed to ask questions does not fall in this category in my opinion.

Sure you can create such contract. But it cannot be called NAP. Otherwise it will lead to miscommunication.

There is no such thing as "free market economists". That was halfly my point. They are statists in disguise.

> Why are we more concerned that we stick to an ideology - it's treated as a fundamentalist religion, treated as the solution to every problem and something with which any disagreement or deviation must be shot down - and not the people who are rich or poor, safe or suffering, educated or not, healthy or not, etc.

You are imagining. I am claiming no such things.

> in a free society, you have the freedom to do whatever you want so long as it does not infringe on the rights of anybody else.

Thats not NAP if rights is anything but right to be not physically assulted.

NAP is basically: do no (physical) harm.

You not only allowed to be aggressive in other ways (such as economically) but its relied upon to tackle overly powerful entities (like megacorps).

> I think empirically history shows that lack of regulation can be as bad as too much regulation.

You cannot stop every bad things in the world. Otherwise you will end up creating more unstability and, as a result, worse things.

Libertarianism/Free-Market does not claim to iradicate all the bad things humans do to each other. It just that it will give you best fighting/winning chance.

> The reality is more of a balance, and black-and-white faith in the free market solving everything looks more and more to me at least as a dangerous delusion.

You got it opposite. Its the libertarians believe that world is too complex to be understood by one entity and better left to multiple entities (aka market). Libertarians wont go around claiming they understand the intention of every employers and ban them for asking certain questions.

Free-Market is smallest abstraction. Free-market can reduce to Statism if there is a demand. But Statism wont reduce to free-market.

Free Speech != Unbiased Speech.

If state can forbid you speaking something, you dont have free speech. Money does not come into equation when we talk about free speech.

If free-market cannot solve this nothing will. No actor (including Govt) has mental capicity to understand everything in this world.

Free-market solves everthing best with most stability.

Do you think market will forget this ? Govts seem to forget that despite being big, they are market actors themselves. And it wont be the Comcasts but many SMBs.

In todays volatile world, noones existence is certain. And govts need to realize this soon before they spend all of their capitals like this.

HN is toast. Its being overrun by statists/socialists.

> A free market is defined as an exchange where both sides have access to the same information.

Its free as in freedom; to do anything. You are free to ask anyone about anything anytime.

You can do anything except be physical aggresive (like states).

> Even fervent laissez-faire economists admit the necessity of appropriate regulations: contract enforcement rules, avoidance of monopolies, a system of law and order for handling disputes, etc.

All of these has free market solutions.

All of these peope you speak of are not free market supporters. They are statists.

TLDR: 25k Govts is better than 25 Govts.

And I absolutely agree. Its obvious that noone is going to happy with their Mega Govt all the time. We should work on mechanism that allows creating new, smaller Govts out of a Mega Govt as easy as possible. Let the market innovation/compitition advance Governence too.

No one will give the amount of invasive data needed to verify a model. So we will never know which model works.

And thats for a country in Top 10 Ease of doing business [1]. In others politicians/bureaucrats are truly someone to be afraid of. Case in point: The Current Income Tax Raid Raj in India [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ease_of_doing_business_index

[2] https://qz.com/860230/here-a-raid-there-a-raid-everywhere-a-...

You missed the point. The 1% is not about wealth its about power over 99%. Even your random low level bureaucrat has more power than the 5% (wealth-wise).

The GP is good comment lets not init a flame war here.

Your math is little wrong.

    1%: The Politicians, Bureaucrats & Friends.
    19%: The Rich paying with money.
    80%: The Poor paying with freedom.

Guess who takes shelter in tax havens like rich but at the same time pretend to be altruistic to/for poor.

> Maybe it's because the king enables those above the peasants to retain that position?

Surely its nothing compared to Govts with multi-trillion dollars in (extorted) revenue because thats what have been my observation.

And Oracle would be near bottom in such list. Oracle hire Indians because its cheaper not because of some altruism. At least until Indian Govt makes it artifically expensive.

I am sure this has been mentioned to death. But I always find this contradictory. Companies cannot be soley profit driven if at same time they artifically reducing supply of eligable candidates. That makes no business sense.

So if companies are rejecting someone that means as whole (read net), they are expecting more bang for the buck.

Its always amusing to watch bureaucrats & friends to rationalize their extortion/authoritarianism. Bitcoin/Mass-Talent_Wealth-Migration cant come quick enough.

Usually people support taxes/megastates/state-as-a-solution-for-everything in bundle. My bad if thats not the case here.

We disagree on size of state. The flexibility/unhappiness of the social contract increases with size of state. The consent/absense-of-it is easier to indicate as size decreases.

As I said, I am dependent on others. But the others != citizens of a nation. Its a very small subset. And for the service I am happy to pay as humans have been paying since invention of society.

Yes I am. Police/Courts works because people are non-aggressive. And when you do get in trouble, Police/Courts should be last in your list of things that will help.

I have no contract with everyone. I cant recruit someone from other side of the country to prevent you from taking it.

I have to use my social/economic power. And yes I am happy to "pay taxes" to them. Because I need them but not to a welfare/UBI-addict who just takes.

And whats up with assumption that everyone will steal from everyone all the time if it were not for Govt ?

Its their desire to impede the eventual massive reduction in tax revenue due to "evasion". Without enough tax revenue, they wont have free money anymore.

Harsh yes but sometime you just have to call it the way you see it.

You wont be able to enforce every arbitrary agreement. The constitutional courts will only rule on limited matters such as physical aggressions.

And (for example) for Oracle to enforce non-compete, It will have to come in agreement with big corps such as Google/Amazon/Facebook/etc. This will work for most cases. But former-employee of Oracle will be able to work at Joyent.

In conclusion, You have to get help from others to enforce an agreement not enforced by Govt.

Also note, constitution ~= what everyone consents on. That is, 1. It will be short & sweet. Everyone will be able to understand it. No suprises. 2. It will never have surveillance measures.

> So it would be difficult to have members of said hypothetical community agree to contribute to a (for example) road maintenance fund.

One reason why I want to give up part of my land and pay for road to be developed is that it will increase value of the land. That reason would suffice for 99% cases.

Also its safe to assume that Humans are also cooperative and neighourly bunch.

> Antitrust comes about when a company has a high enough market share AND uses this market share to bludgeon any competitions.

I feel like only a non-elected, inner circle within Govt gets to decide what these condition will return today. Even if the whole country is split 50/50, its only their retval that matters.

In ideal society, a legal debate is nothing to be proud of. People's lives/properties depends on it.

AFAIU antitrust lawsuit triggers when you break an implicit agreement with customers i.e. breaking trust. But thats not what happened here. App Store is sole distributor of apps. Customers knows this. Customers may even rely on it.

So what gives ? Specifically what can a business in general do to avoid such fate ?

I have better solution: Break up Mega Govts. They are truely too big to fail. USG can exploit as much as it wants because it knows citizens have nowhere to go.