nimh wrote:Wow, this is being quite the revelation. An utterly different way to group A2K' ers by their political conviction than the usual tired left/right, liberal/conservative one.
That's indeed a revelation. Especially since you and I end up at such opposite ends of the scale. From arguing with you, I had always gotten the impression that we have a fairly similar outlook on politics. We are presuaded by the same kind of evidence and by the same kind of arguments. True, we often disagree in the conclusions we draw, but I'm still surprised we ended up on
opposite ends of the scale.
nimh wrote: Now, the average employer might be a transnational business with three thousand employees in twelve cities (if not much more still). The scale and concentration of power has increased proportionally, and you as lone employee have little to bring up anywhere.
I would offer two arguments against this practical example. One, multinationals are "the average employer" only if weighted by the press coverage they are getting. The average business is still small to midsized (I can look up the stats if you want), and the average employee works for a small to mid-sized business. But small companies never make news on TV and national newspapers, so you are likely to be unaware of how widespread they are.
Second counterargument: I agree that concentration of power is a problem, but this is a
much bigger problem with states than with corporations. For a rough measure of what I mean, consider that the size of the ten largest nations is measured in hundreds of millions of citizens, the 10 largest cities is measured in millions of citizens, and the size of the ten largest companies is measured in hundreds of thousands of employees. Control over a nation concentrates much more power in the hands of a few than control over a corporation does. Hence, when power is shifted from the national to the private level or at least to the regional level, that's part of the solution to your problem, not part of your problem. it is also an answer to your following interjection:
nimh wrote: Libertarians want to break down all that half, but have a blind spot for the similarly institutionalised, globalised, concentrated power structures in the private space.
As I hope I have demonstrated, we are
not blind to private power structures. We only think that they compare to the power concentration in governments like chickenpox compares to small pox, and so we think it worthwile to trade off the latter for the former.
nimh wrote:Libertarians want to break down all that half, but have a blind spot for the similarly institutionalised, globalised, concentrated power structures in the private space. Thats no way to create individual self-rule. Privatising the roads or army doesn't make the individual any more free - it just transfers the power over him from one (publicly owned) national entity to another (privately owned) one.
As it happens, this extreme position is not held by all libertarians. Most of us want a nightwatchman state of approximately the size Adam Smith described. This state would supply national defense, courts, police, roads, and it would finance -- but not necessarily operate -- the schools. All of this can be done with about 10% of GDP, which is 1/3 the size we have in the USA and about 1/4 - 1/5 of what we have in Europe.
As to your example, I tend to agree with you about interstate highways; but over the centuries, in countries like Switzerland and the early US, private militias appear to have done a fairly adequate job in defending civil liberties against the threat of military dictatorship. Anarcho-capitalists typically want to abolish the standing army and have the government defended exclusively by citizen militias of the kind I just described. Intuitively I don't think that would work. But it might, and I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand.
