Re:Why Do We Admire Mobsters?
by philwelch on Friday September 18, 2015 @01:39AM
(#10237644)
> If by "protects property rights based on need" you mean 'takes things other people possess', that protection agency could have a conflict with others.
Do you have any idea just how much property in a capitalist economy is possessed by someone other than the owner? What happens if I'm renting a house from you and you try to evict me? Now it's your protection agency--not mine--trying to take something that other people possess.
In fact, capitalist economies also have shades of legal ownership, i.e. lienholding--so I might even be the legal owner of a Camaro, but if I don't pay the car payment the repo man is legally entitled to take something I not only possess, but actually have some legal title to! And this only works because there's an unambiguous and authoritative legal framework in which these kinds of actions are permissible within bounds of regulation. OK, so if your anarcho-capitalist protection agency tries to repossess my Camaro and my anarcho-capitalist protection agency doesn't think your protection agency followed enough due process, where do we go from there?
The entire point of having a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force is that these kinds of disputes are inevitably going to come up, competing sides are going to be unable to come to a settled agreement, and in the absence of a state, these disagreements will escalate to violence. This isn't a theory, it's the observed history of humanity.
Do you have any idea just how much property in a capitalist economy is possessed by someone other than the owner? What happens if I'm renting a house from you and you try to evict me? Now it's your protection agency--not mine--trying to take something that other people possess.
In fact, capitalist economies also have shades of legal ownership, i.e. lienholding--so I might even be the legal owner of a Camaro, but if I don't pay the car payment the repo man is legally entitled to take something I not only possess, but actually have some legal title to! And this only works because there's an unambiguous and authoritative legal framework in which these kinds of actions are permissible within bounds of regulation. OK, so if your anarcho-capitalist protection agency tries to repossess my Camaro and my anarcho-capitalist protection agency doesn't think your protection agency followed enough due process, where do we go from there?
The entire point of having a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force is that these kinds of disputes are inevitably going to come up, competing sides are going to be unable to come to a settled agreement, and in the absence of a state, these disagreements will escalate to violence. This isn't a theory, it's the observed history of humanity.