The Purpose of the State?

Night Ripper wrote:

So, someone pro-slavery says "but how will my slaves get jobs without slavery" and I'm supposed to have a 3-point plan just to reject slavery? I don't think so. I think it's better for some slaves to starve than to have slavery.

What I mean is that slaves won't actually starve if we abolish slavery, people just think that. And explaining it to them will make them more likely to come to your side than insisting that their position is morally wrong.

No, I will grant that some slaves will starve and even granting that it's still morally wrong to have slaves. I'm not going to appeal to consequences when the consequences don't matter.

The consequences matter to other people, or they have mistaken beliefs on how detrimental the consequences will be. By refusing to appeal to them you refuse to address concerns that people might have.

Well slavery is a very clear-cut example, it gets more sketchy when you take examples that are relevant today, such as environmentalism or welfare. Here people think that initiation of violence is the only way to not have starving people and poisoned rivers. And your moral appeals are not going to change their minds. Addressing these concerns, explaining how the environment or the poor will actually be better of without initiation of violence, might.

Again, I will take for granted that the only way to feed some people is to put a gun to the heads of others but that's wrong. Consequences be damned.

Night Ripper wrote:

Again, I will take for granted that the only way to feed some people is to put a gun to the heads of others but that's wrong. Consequences be damned.

Well, the socialists don't have such constraints, they sell their ideology with whatever arguments it takes. And that is why the state takes half of your income to pay people to be poor, and we live in a worse world because of it.

Once upon a time people didn't have constraints against slavery either. The times, they are a changin'.

Yeah, but times could be changing faster if those who advocate liberalization wouldn't insist on arguing with ideological purity, but were willing to accept flawed compromises.

I don't think slavery was abolished because anyone argued about the practicalities of it. I think it was abolished because of moral outrage, sense of fairness, empathy, and so on.

I have another question.
Do you object to the state in principle, or to what it does? If the state would not cost you anything, not coerce you in any way, but only force everybody to stick by the contracts they voluntarily made, and of course protect us from each others, would you be against it's existence?

You suggested that the bank has the right to take your house if you don't pay your loan, but would that mean that the state should do it on their behalf, or is the bank going to send a guy in a leather jacket?

A state is a monopoly on the initiation of violence over a geographical region. Without the initiation of violence you have nothing but voluntaryism aka anarchy.

The bank will pay people to act on their behalf. Of course it's doubtful that violence will be the first recourse. You should read up on dispute resolution organizations, DRO's.

Night Ripper wrote:

A state is a monopoly on the initiation of violence over a geographical region. Without the initiation of violence you have nothing but voluntaryism aka anarchy.

The bank will pay people to act on their behalf. Of course it's doubtful that violence will be the first recourse. You should read up on dispute resolution organizations, DRO's.

Oh, I see, there would be police, just private. There would be traffic laws, just not enforced by force.

Have you never driven on a private toll road? You agree to terms of use when you pay your toll and drive onto it. Some of the terms include speed limits and prohibitions on littering. If you don't like the terms then you are free not to drive on those toll roads.

Night Ripper wrote:

Have you never driven on a private toll road? You agree to terms of use when you pay your toll and drive onto it. Some of the terms include speed limits and prohibitions on littering. If you don't like the terms then you are free not to drive on those toll roads.

Yeah. And the these days we could do it all digitally. You drive onto a road and it's registered automatically and your toll is paid without you even thinking about it. Then at the end of the month you go through a list of everything you purchased and maybe there could be some process to object to a payment and get it back.

I do have some concern that there would be numerous semi-exploitative monopolies, such as rural roads where it makes no sense to build another competing road. Those would be very expensive, because you'd have to drive there. Of course even if I had to pay 100 Dollars every time I cross the bay bridge, as a whole infrastructure would still be cheaper than paying taxes. And that even leaves out the opportunity cost of taxation and government intervention.

The best historical refutation of this thesis is in two books by socialist historian Gabriel Kolko: The Triumph of
Conservatism and Railroads and Regulation. He argues that at the end of the last century businessmen believed the
future was with bigness, with conglomerates and cartels, but were wrong. The organizations they formed to control
markets and reduce costs were almost invariably failures, returning lower profits than their smaller competitors, unable
to fix prices, and controlling a steadily shrinking share of the market.

The regulatory commissions supposedly were formed to restrain monopolistic businessmen. Actually, Kolko argues,
they were formed at the request of unsuccessful monopolists to prevent the competition which had frustrated their efforts.

Oh, I absolutely agree with you there about monopolies in general, they are practically impossible to maintain in a free market. What I mean is not companies in a competitive market, but a single road or bridge. Say you have to drive that road to get to work and home, there is no alternative route. The private owner of that road could demand a very high toll because there would be no competition.

EmperorNero wrote:

Oh, I absolutely agree with you there about monopolies in general, they are practically impossible to maintain in a free market. What I mean is not companies in a competitive market, but a single road or bridge. Say you have to drive that road to get to work and home, there is no alternative route. The private owner of that road could demand a very high toll because there would be no competition.

Let me offer another example that might illustrate better what you're getting at and then I'll answer your example as well.

Let's imagine you are a window washer working near the top of an apartment skyscraper. At some point, a strong wind blows by and causes you to fall. Luckily, just like in the movies, you catch a flagpole on your way down. So, there you are hanging by your hands on a flagpole, 50 stories above the street. To your left you see that the apartment next to the flagpole has a window open. You have two choices, either hang there and eventually drop to your death or go into the open window and thereby trespass on another person's property. Being a staunch libertarian, what should you do?

It seems as if most libertarians would trespass which gives non-libertarians cause to go "Aha! So you don't always respect the non-aggression principle." and it seems that we have opened the door to trespassing and taking the property of others, etc.

The problem is as follows. This is what we call an emergency and the ethics of emergencies aren't the ethics of normal situations. We don't plan our ethics based on "lifeboat situations" because we aren't normally in lifeboats. It would therefore be misleading to take this emergency situation and then use that as a basis to disregard property rights in normal situations.

Of course we can get bogged down in what counts as an emergency and so on but that's only because these principles aren't meant to be hard and fast rules, they are guides which require some kind of personal value judgment. Is using the bathroom an emergency? Maybe, but it doesn't matter. You're not going to cause me to abandon my principles based on a few minor difficulties such as this. I'll take the special cases on a case-by-case basis.

Now, as for your example, if using that road is an emergency situation then the above applies. If not then you'll just have to find another way. Build your own bridge. Rent a helicopter. Whatever. Your personal inconvenience is secondary to the property rights of others.

Also, since you're found of practicalities. Most of the time people are willing to make concessions to allow others right-of-way on their property called "easements". Farmers do this all the time when one farm is surrounded by other farms. Most people are reasonable and not out to simply cause difficulties for you because they can, at least, not face-to-face.