So if some group decided I was a criminal by their standards (say if I insulted them on the street, or something), they could come to my home in the night and summarily execute me?
Your common or garden libertarian will construct all manner of complex arguments as to how that isn't so, but there's really nothing in the philosophy which forbids it.
You're right. Proponents of polycentric law don't claim that something fundamentally forbids this from happening. But the same goes for proponents of centralized (government) law. What needs to be analyzed is which system makes this more likely to happen.
I think you have a deep misunderstanding of libertarianism (which is your right of course). Libertarians don't necessarily not believe in laws, they simply don't believe in a monopoly of laws and law enforcers. This is kind of the whole point. Its clear that in your world view "justice" is somehow inexorably tied to government, but there others that disagree (which leads to your confusion in thinking that because som…
I notice you don't question the "everyone is greedy" assertion, however. As I understand it, libertarians believe that justice can be attained through the adversarial institution of the market. That is, by everyone greedily fighting within the bonds of normal commerce, a just (but likely not equal), situation will arise. The gaping hole in this scenario is that those who are greedy and, say, losing or just not gettin…
> those who are greedy and, say, losing or just not getting what they want from the normal framework, have every incentive to cheat in this competition.
This is also clearly the case with centralized government law.
Okay, I'm going to go out on a branch and throw up a strange hypothesis. I don't have any stake in the Bitcoin or drug dealing games, apart from generalized anarchistic tendancy: Silk Road 2 was a project set-up by some government agency or gangsters. The overall plan is to eliminate competition and sow uncertainty around both Bitcoin and Silk Road type unregulated markets with anonymous owners. The "transaction mall…
> Alternatively, I'd also love to hear good arguments against this position Oh, I'll bite: If you have the choice between conspiracy and incompetence the latter is almost always the more likely.
Ah, yes, Hanlon's razor. It works as a general rule, but I think that there are enough powerful, vested interests (proven by eg. Russia, China and US Fed actions/statements regarding Bitcoin) and enough precedence (CIA disinfo campaigns, NSA TAO and it's 'dirty tactics', Chinese and Russian gang ops and propaganda/DoS attacks, corporate APTs) to make conspiracy a real possibility. I think that one of the key things here is that many of us discussed the possibility of exactly this situation, whether conducted by advanced actors or petty criminals the last time that Silk Road was burned to the ground (and, in that case, it was pretty clear who was behind it).
at the top of the article: Update: The amount of BTC that was stolen was calculated by Nicholas Weaver @NCWeaver – Computer Security Researcher, to be around: 4474.266369160003BTC that are with the value of about $2.7 Million.
That should be 4474.26636916 . . . who is doing BTC calculations with floats?
Bitcoin can be divided down to Satoshi's (0.00000001) an are often traded in fraction. Since they're worth $500+ at the moment, it makes a lot of sense.
There are currently thousands of different sets of laws and legal systems that you can choose to subscribe/submit to. Potential victims of crimes can shop around for the legal system that they prefer, and those who intend to commit crimes can do the same. Generally this "shopping around" cannot be done retroactively; there are a few exceptions to this however. The way that you pick the one that you wish to be associa…
That doesn't do anything to answer my question about where libertarians stand on the question. I still don't get what a civilization without a "monopoly on laws and law enforcement" would look like.
"Laws" and "law enforcement" are just products, similar to any other service. If you can imagine what a civilization without a monopoly on food production, or house cleaning services, or medical services would look like, you should be able to imagine with a civilization without a monopoly on laws and law enforcement would look like.
Most people believe that monopolies are not economically efficient for producing "ordinary" goods and services, but for some reason they don't believe the same is true for laws and law enforcement. I don't see much of a difference. Certainly the production of laws and law enforcement is not an easier task than the production of food.
So if some group decided I was a criminal by their standards (say if I insulted them on the street, or something), they could come to my home in the night and summarily execute me?
Your common or garden libertarian will construct all manner of complex arguments as to how that isn't so, but there's really nothing in the philosophy which forbids it.
Wow! That's one of the two basic things.
"reject the use of force or fraud to compel others except in response to force or fraud."
This is seriously the most hilarious thing I have read in a long time. Here we have a group of objectivist libertarians who believe that there should be effectively no laws other than the law of economics and self-interest who run an illegal website devoted to the pure greed of cashing in on contraband, and this is what they write: "I’ve included transaction logs at the bottom of this message. Review the vendor’s dis…
> "I’ve included transaction logs at the bottom of this message. Review the vendor’s dishonest actions and use whatever means you deem necessary to bring this person to justice." We need the government!
I'm not following how you are drawing the conclusion that this is a call for government. It seems more like a call for 'street justice' to me. Much of the rest of the your post is based on this assumption. What I took from that post is more akin to a mafia boss saying 'take care of the problem' in an effort to maintain plausible deniability if caught, but everyone involved knows the real meaning is to track down and kill the guy.
I honestly don't get this. If there isn't a monopoly on laws and law enforcement, does that mean that victims of crimes should be able to shop around to get the law enforcement agency that they want? Should the accused? Is there any historical precedent for anything like this actually working?
Not in the slightest, but the besetting flaw of libertarians is the belief that history has nothing to teach them save what they desire to learn, and that the existence of government, in one form or another, throughout recorded human history, implies nothing whatsoever regarding the viability of their particular flavor of utopianism.
Do you consider the history of government to be particularly positive? It doesn't seem that way to me.
So if some group decided I was a criminal by their standards (say if I insulted them on the street, or something), they could come to my home in the night and summarily execute me?
Right now, there is one group that can decide you are a criminal by their standards. It's a group that you have virtually no control over, and it's funded via force.
Exactly. I only have to worry about being declared a criminal by one rather than [arbitrary number] of groups that I have literally no control over.
The number of strawmen in your argument is staggering.
It can't be strawmen if they're direct quotes. I pulled quotes out that were contradictory to their actually stated philosophy. The whole statement is riddled with them. In fact, your claim of strawmen is actually a straw man argument (and also so funny).
> It can't be strawmen if they're direct quotes.
It can, if the people you're arguing with now aren't the same people you're quoting.