Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

These three things regulate the space between households. The government, however defined, must monopolize them because otherwise you give tremendous power to the hands of private corporations. At least with a government there are political constraints that there are not with a corporation.

However the argument over monopoly I don't think comes down to this. I haven't yet met a libertarian who thought that murder should be legal absent a contract to the contrary, nor have I yet met one that thought that big business should be able to control all roads and exclude whoever they want from travelling. If you would argue these things, I suppose you'd be the first at least that I have met.

The disagreement I think is actually a disagreement that hasn't really been brought to in much of the Libertarian community. The problem with monopolies are scale and power problems and these are the same problems with government in the US today as well. We want to prevent monopolies by decentralizing power in the marketplace. The desire I think is to do the same in government space. So the argument is over a decentralized government model vs a heavily centralized government model.

I think if folks came to realize that that is exactly what is desired, it would be easier for Distributsts and Libertarians to make common cause. After all, does it really matter whether a city is formally private or public sector? What does matter is that government power is distributed and that it is held most strongly where it is closest to the people.

I would point you back to Aristotle's "Politics" actually where he comes up with a theory of government as follows (heavily paraphrasing):

1. Men and women come together to form the social basis of society, namely the procreative household. This is the vehicle by which culture is passed on, and it is the economic center of the society (pre-industrialization at least). Consequently the procreative household is the engine of both culture and society, and the goal of the economy is to nourish the household.

2. Households come together and address their common problems by forming organizations to do this. This is the basis of the polis.

(As an aside, Aristotle was not particularly hostile to same-sex sexual relationships, but saw marriage purely as a heterosexual institution due to the cross-generational imperatives. Also he had a very naive view of how gender power relationships actually worked in Greece.)

Now, viewed from this perspective (and it is pretty much the total basis for all pre-industrial society everywhere), you have government being a union of married child-raising households (since adoption is a replacement for procreation where that is not possible). Law then exists to address the common problems between households, both in terms of violent crime and contract issues, but also shared commons and infrastructure.

Now, this is very different to 20th and 21st century America and Europe. Government is not a union of isolated individuals, but if mini-state/businesses in the form of households. This sense of government formally passed from the US with the passage of the 19th Amendment but had been falling apart for a few decades prior under pressures from industrialization, and vestiges continue to be suppressed even today (one example is the argument over same-sex marriage, but another is the general hostility towards self-employment at the hands of Congress).

A government which is a union of households, which respects near-total autonomy of the household is far weaker than a government which subjects the household to scrutiny by CPS, undermines retiring with the kids with social security, requiring most kids to go to public schools, and so forth because the union-of-households government cannot interfere to form culture.

There are common problems that exist in a domain that a government must address. There is a social imperative to government. The real question is over the scope and nature of that government. Is government to be a social contract of individuals (but it's really a super-intrusive form of adherence contract since the individual can't really individually negotiate it)? Or is it a more limited institution in the service of households, not individuals?

I think when you look at it, that's the real choice (i.e. between a Lockean/Humean government and an Aristotelian one), not between a government and anarchy. People always invent government.

FTA: So if the worst thing you can say about something is to criticize its tone, you're not saying much. Is the author flippant, but correct? Better that than grave and wrong. And if the author is incorrect somewhere, say where.

> I'm just calling him out for being a jackass.

This is actually DH0, Name Calling.