Re:Competition Is Dying, and Taking Capitalism with It?
by AnthonyMouse on Thursday November 29, 2018 @01:52AM
(#18558563)
"Imagine if there were no governments" is a category error. There are always governments, not all of them are formal. Whoever has the most mercenaries can make rules.
The thing that works is to have a coercive force which is primarily used to quell other large coercive forces. So you have a police force that prevents violence etc.
But it needs to be limited in scope, because it has no natural predators. It's always tempting to use the coercive force for <thing> where <thing> is literally anything. Laws are molasses. They have benefits, but they also have costs, and the fact that the costs and benefits apply to separate people makes it much too easy to do net-negative things.
The thing that works is to have a coercive force which is primarily used to quell other large coercive forces. So you have a police force that prevents violence etc.
But it needs to be limited in scope, because it has no natural predators. It's always tempting to use the coercive force for <thing> where <thing> is literally anything. Laws are molasses. They have benefits, but they also have costs, and the fact that the costs and benefits apply to separate people makes it much too easy to do net-negative things.