71–80 of 140 posts
That has the most math notation of anything I've seen written about anarchy in some time!
some time There was a time you've seen more math notation written about anarchy? I'm curious. It'd be great if you can link.
That has the most math notation of anything I've seen written about anarchy in some time!
Math is important. It tells us the shape of the possible. Game theory tells us when we're creating an unstable set of incentives. Our intuition for fairness is only a crude approximation of game theory. Societies and their moral systems (there's little difference) don't come out of nowhere. Sentiments like "game theory is just capitalistic ideology" make me sad. Math, like all sciences, is true whether you accept it…
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I don't think ancaps are all like that. You can't run business if you don't serve your customers well. Does that translate into pathological selfishness and other extreme behavior that goes in customers' nerves? I don't think so, because such business wouldn't last long. I agree with the GP post above, and I'd also like to point out the idiocy of the "scientific" assumption from Wikipedia that "central planners" have…
>You can't run business if you don't serve your customers well. Serving your customers well is entirely out of self interest, especially in large corporations; in fact, this is the easiest example of "every man for himself". You serve your customers well because ultimately it brings you more profit. Sure, it's not as sure sighted as screwing over every customer, but people who are selfish aren't necessarily stupid. I…
This general tenet starts to break down the fewer competitors operate in the market. Monopolization allows corps to capture supernormal profit and externalize as much cost as possible. When there's only one person that's got what you need, they can treat you how they want.
tl;dr: Comcast.
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>You can't run business if you don't serve your customers well. Serving your customers well is entirely out of self interest, especially in large corporations; in fact, this is the easiest example of "every man for himself". You serve your customers well because ultimately it brings you more profit. Sure, it's not as sure sighted as screwing over every customer, but people who are selfish aren't necessarily stupid. I…
>Serving your customers well is entirely out of self interest This general tenet starts to break down the fewer competitors operate in the market. Monopolization allows corps to capture supernormal profit and externalize as much cost as possible. When there's only one person that's got what you need, they can treat you how they want. tl;dr: Comcast.
And if you think about it, individual car mobility is this in practice. The ways are build by someone else but you can decide how and where to drive. And it kinda failed in many areas.
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Most anarcho-capitalists that I know and from who I learn are absolutely not about "every man for himself" at all. Charity and voluntary cooperation are major parts of the society as they would like it to become. See https://wiki.mises.org/wiki/Friendly_society and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispute_resolution_organizatio...
> ...as they would like it to become... Friendly society... DRO... I think this has always been my primary gripe with ancap -- it's Utopian. And all Utopian thinking has the same problem -- it's either irrational, or very rational but starting from very strong axioms. Ancap writers, to their credit, tend to care a lot about crafting strong, rational arguments. When I think about ancap (or any political theory that se…
I don't one can expect more from any group. An-Capism is as un-utipian as you can get while still having some vauge definition of an ideal system.
Most AnCaps happily admit that the assumed society would not be near perfect. In fact, I would actually say that it would probably not be that much better then what we have now.
I don't think the axioms are that special, its basic rational choice political science/economics that is applied in most AnCap arguments.
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Doesnt that seem like an oxymoron, anarcho-capitalist? Like up-down?
"Anarcho-capitalist" was coined by Murray Rothbard, who himself was finally forced (by reality) to admit that: we are not anarchists, and that those who call us anarchists are not on firm etymological ground, and are being completely unhistorical Unfortunately the internet gives voice to lots of people who don't let facts get in the way of their opinions.
Etymological or historical are not actually relevant.
A name is a name, self assigned and people use it, many people now it.
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I don't think ancaps are all like that. You can't run business if you don't serve your customers well. Does that translate into pathological selfishness and other extreme behavior that goes in customers' nerves? I don't think so, because such business wouldn't last long. I agree with the GP post above, and I'd also like to point out the idiocy of the "scientific" assumption from Wikipedia that "central planners" have…
>You can't run business if you don't serve your customers well. Serving your customers well is entirely out of self interest, especially in large corporations; in fact, this is the easiest example of "every man for himself". You serve your customers well because ultimately it brings you more profit. Sure, it's not as sure sighted as screwing over every customer, but people who are selfish aren't necessarily stupid. I…
And the goal of the buyer is to buy things in such a way as to get himself the largest surplus, i.e., the most value for a given cost. So by your reasoning, all buyers are selfish just as much as all sellers are selfish.
> People have moral standards. I think I'm just a cynical ancom with regard to how people would really behave in the absence of all regulation.
Moral standards existed long before any regulation. We have moral standards because we evolved that way--i.e., because they are adaptive for a species that has to form cooperative relationships in order to survive. Cooperative relationships include economic relationships--specialization and trade. That's how we build wealth.
It is true that, as soon as people start building wealth, there is an incentive to plunder it instead of building more. One way of describing a key problem with many (if not most) modern societies is that they are set up to reinforce, or at least not discourage, the incentive to plunder.
> Let's not forget what large companies can still get away with today, and imagine what it would be like with anti-competitive monopolies, oligarchies, and two or three organisations controlling mainstream information sources.
Um, you're describing what things are like today. And the reason they're like that is, in large part, because one of the things large companies can get away with is buying political power and influence, which they can then use to plunder instead of building wealth. But the reason they can do that at all is that political power and influence can be bought, because it's centralized.
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A lot of communists posit that capitalism (and perhaps in some cases statism) cause and/or arise from something kind of resembling a mental illness. Marx's "Alienation" and especially Delueze's "Desire" have this flavor. I think this is one reason why there's a whole brand of communism that's closely tied to Freudian/Lacanian style psychology. That psychological aspect usually plays some role in transitionary theorie…
Well, that's a big weakness of these theories, I think. My question is not terribly complex or dependent on unusual or unrealistic situations. I would also note that sometimes, people operating off a 'psychologist' basis like you've identified, misunderstand the critiques of others as being also 'psychologist'. For example, the Hayekian critique of central economic planning is often characterized as a psychological a…
No, usually the psychological arguments are needed to hand-wave away crucial but obvious problems.
> Well, that's a big weakness of these theories
No, it's not. It's perhaps their most important insight.
I mean, IMO they're wrong, but the insight about the need for a psychological aspect is important and correct.
Libertarians and especially anarcho-capitalists need similar psychological arguments (the fact that they often hand-wave over this need not-withstanding).
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>Serving your customers well is entirely out of self interest This general tenet starts to break down the fewer competitors operate in the market. Monopolization allows corps to capture supernormal profit and externalize as much cost as possible. When there's only one person that's got what you need, they can treat you how they want. tl;dr: Comcast.
Well, Comcast's oligopoly is largely established by the fact that rights-of-way and pole-attachment rights are monopolized by municipalities, which tend to approve only a single, or few providers. It's not a natural monopoly.
Only because, when municipalities do try to treat bandwidth as a public utility, which they can sell to all providers equally, Comcast and other large ISPs sue them.
> It's not a natural monopoly.
I agree, but I don't think it is primarily local municipalities that are propping it up.