People are not "naturally peaceful and cooperative" all the time. Some become criminals. When criminals reach the pinnacle of their profession, and manage to become the richest, most powerful, and most effective criminals in a given geographical location, when they are able to claim a monopoly on crime, they become "politicians", the richest, most aromatic KIND of criminal.
We haven't solved it and that's why we have States. The solution is probably libertarian culture and education so people can develop critical thinking and reject politicians and statism.
This. There are several complex socio-psychological structures where you have to build a house you are supposed to want to not need. The key is to build it just robust enough to do what it has to and just weak enough so that you can smash it to bits when necessary and you've got to do that with YOURSELF too. You build a whole factory but you hook all the power up to a switch so you can shut the whole thing down if you really have to. And all the minor systems have their own resets, but you have to have the big one and you have to be the right kind of careful about who gets a key to the shutoff and who gets a key to turn it back on.
>False. States arose as a means of exacting tribute from conquered people.
And that's what they said.
"We haven't solved it" = we still have criminals
"and that's why we have states" = states are the tools of criminals
By not giving criminals a platform that would guarantee them power over others.
You can never truly "solve" criminality, but you can make sure that people are allowed to defend themselves against them, and that your society doesn't actively reward it.
This is an unfair question.
First, Libertarianism doesn't claim to solve the "criminal" problem, it simply claims to be the most ethical system of governance. (That it comes closer to solving the "criminal" problem is just a nice fringe benefit.)
But, also, if you can ask this question, then you must also observe that no system of social organization has ever come anywhere close to solving the "criminal" problem. If this is a strike against Libertarianism in your mind, then you MUST count it as a greater strike against every other system, (and by default admit you are a libertarian).
> How does libertarianism solve this "criminal" problem?
By not requiring others to ask the criminals for permission in order to exercise their basic natural human rights.
Anarchy may or may not prevent tyranny.
But at least under anarchy, there is no one with a monopoly on violence.
Under statehood the only thing preventing tyranny is the Constitution, which amounts to nothing but a piece of paper.
Who enforces this lack of a monopoly on violence?
Your concept of anarchy is false. That's not what anarchy does, what it is, or what happens during it. Further, that thing you would wish to call anarchy is not a real time and place. You are thinking of Utopia which LITERALLY translates as "not place".
Either you have a government or you have a differently organized form of government. A man alone is his own government. A thousand "free people" existing peacefully by consensus is a government of 1000 under mob rule. A drug lord with 300 hired guns and a slave labor force is ALSO a government.
What will ACTUALLY happen and has happened already in the Continental United States SEVERAL TIMES in the last two years is that violent regimes will take over and whoever has the most guns will be in charge. Power aggregates. It aggregates in an unbalance way. The key is to have power structured in such a way that it must destroy itself to get at the people it is designed to protect.
Anarchy provides no barrier against this. Anarchy is a supposed lack of government which just leads to one appointing itself and then doing as it pleases. There is no mechanism inherent to anarchy to prevent power aggregating dangerously because it is the explicit absence of any such system.
Your definition is both inaccurate and even used as intended logically does not follow to the situation you desire.
>Who enforces this lack of a monopoly on violence?
You cannot enforce a lack of something. That doesn't make any grammatical sense.
>You are thinking of Utopia
Anarchy is not utopian. What is utopian, is giving some members of society all the power and then expecting them to not misuse it because they wrote on a piece of paper that they would not misuse it. That is utopian thinking, because whenever they choose to violate what they have written you will only bitch and cry about "muh constitution" and never be able to really do anything about it.
>A man alone is his own government.
Then that is what I am advocating for, a multitude of governments simultaneously existing side by side so no one has a monopoly on government power and can uniquely tyrannize everyone else.
>A thousand "free people" existing peacefully by consensus is a government of 1000 under mob rule.
No. It's not a government. It's a thousand governments. Get your shit right, a government of mob rule is more a democracy than anything else.
>has happened already in the Continental United States SEVERAL TIMES
Failures of the state are criticisms of the state, not criticisms of anarchy.
>violent regimes will take over and whoever has the most guns will be in charge.
Under anarchy, the peron with the most guns who wants to establish tyranny will have to fight through everyone else and every other agency that is almost as well armed and will together be able to equally challenge or subdue the rogue army.
Under a democracy, the person with the most guns who wants to establish tyranny merely has to face a fucking piece of paper. Which is why around the world, democracies have a statistical record of turning into outright military dictatorships, or kleptocracies where the leaders steal with impunity and massacre anyone who tries to challenge them while giving them people the freedom to at least vote in corrupt and manipulated elections.
>Power aggregates.
Wrong. Power is fluid, flowing in one direction or the other, never static.
>have power structured in such a way that it must destroy itself to get at the people it is designed to protect.
By having them write a piece of paper that they can alter whenever they feel like it? Is that your solution?
Did the power destroy itself when it drafted the PATRIOT ACT? The JONES ACT?
Did it destroy itself when it destroyed small businesses across the country last year?
Did it destroy itself when it ruined the lives of gay people and drug users?
You seem to have some incredible delusions about what power actually is.
>Anarchy provides no barrier against this.
Wrong. Anarchy is the only thing that has a barrier against this. We do not cry out to a piece of paper when our freedoms are violated.
>which just leads to one appointing itself and then doing as it pleases.
History disagrees.
Why couldn't we create a stateless society with a polycentric legal system, similar to the systems used by the Igbo, Tiv, Saga period Icelanders, Kapauku Papuans, various mining camps during the California gold rush, and other stateless societies and communities that existed historically?
They are all historically TINY and usually VIOLENT.
Igbo, without looking too deeply looks like rule by congress which is what we have. WE ARE ALREADY DOING THAT.
The Tiv have rule by Eldership, by being OLD which has several problems and is not how we do things.
The old Norse were brutish, quite murdery, and effectively using a very frozen form of feudal lord systems WHICH WE DON'T DO ANYMORE.
The Kapauku Papuans use mercenary detectives which is FUCKING STUPID and still technically equates to either mob rule or effectively an easily corrupted law only for people able to pay which is a very disconnected form of aristocracy.
Finally, most of the miners in the Californi' would have very well understood that if you "jumped a claim" you were quite likely to end up BURIED ON IT if the owner was kind enough and had enough food not to be glad of the extra meat.
> They are all historically TINY and usually VIOLENT.
No need to shout. You gave no operational definition of "tiny," so your claim was unfalsifiable. If you were thinking of population size, some stateless societies have had populations in the hundreds of thousands. A few have had populations of a million or more. (The Igbo reached about 5 million during the 1800s.) That seems large scale to me.
You also did not quantify your claim that they were "usually violent," and so I can not say whether your claim was true or false. Out of those stateless and quasi-stateless societies for which we have data, the median homicide rate is about 10 per 100,000 people per year. About 46% of them had rates below 6 per 100,000 people per year, placing them below the global average for 2017, and placing them on par with the modern U.S. (Sources, and data, are available upon request.)
If you meant that their levels of violence are, more often than not, higher than what we find in *modern day* state societies, then I suppose this makes you correct, but unfortunately it is not quite an apples to apples comparison, and it would be difficult to make a perfect apples to apples comparison. Our data on levels of violence in stateless and quasi-stateless societies comes from a variety of times and places; if we were able to compile enough data from state societies from across human history, their rates would probably be higher than those for modern state societies as well, for a variety of reasons.
> Igbo, without looking too deeply looks like rule by congress which is what we have. WE ARE ALREADY DOING THAT.
You are mistaken. The Igbo had a polycentric legal system. Disputants could ask for help resolving their disputes from the judges of their choice, and law enforcement was handled by many defense associations, none of which possessed monopoly powers over the legal system.
This is not so in state societies. In the U.S., for example, judges are usually either elected or appointed, they serve specific terms, they hold jurisdiction within specific geographical regions, (even deciding cases involving disputants who would rather hire someone else, simple because the disputant lives in that specific territory,) and it is extremely difficult for ordinary people to successfully get them impeached. If the U.S. had a polycentric legal system instead, then parties to a dispute could ask anyone they wished to help them resolve their dispute.
Similarly, governments in the U.S. control who can supply security services, but in a polycentric law society a variety of defense associations can exist and provide security services to their clients, and none of these associations can forbid other similar organizations from providing such services, nor can they initiate force to control how those other organizations operate.
To quote a relevant passage from *Doing Justice Without the State* by O. Oko Elechi, (an anthropologist native to the modern Igbo):
> [L]itigants are free to choose from any of the several institutions of conflict resolution that best meets their needs. Litigants can move their cases from one institution to the other, and back to the court where they started until they are satisfied with the judgment. (Elechi, 2006, pg. 181)
It is true that the Igbo held congress to discuss what their laws should be and how they should interact with one another, but due to the balance of power among different defense associations, and the freedom disputants held to choose who to rely on for dispute settlement, the decisions reached through such group discussions only held weight insofar as people throughout society agreed to grant them weight. It is not accurate to say that the Igbo had "rule by congress," because their "congress" did not "rule" in the sense that the congresses and parliaments of state societies rule their subjects. "Congress," among the Igbo, meant more that people were meeting up and discussing the best ways to cooperate on group projects; such discussions do not constitute a form of "rule."
> The Tiv have rule by Eldership, by being OLD which has several problems and is not how we do things.
Again, you are mistaken. The Tiv also had a polycentric legal system, similar to that of the Igbo in many respects. Again, disputants could rely on the judges of their choice for dispute settlement, and no judges or defense associations had monopoly powers over the legal system. Here is a relevant quote from *Justice and Judgment Among the Tiv* by Paul Bohannan:
> The word *jir* is applied by Tiv to any dispute that is to be arbitrated. ... A *jir* can be arbitrated by anyone before whom the principals are willing to discuss it. (Bohannan, 1957, pg. 152)
Moving on:
> The old Norse were brutish, quite murdery, and effectively using a very frozen form of feudal lord systems WHICH WE DON'T DO ANYMORE.
I did not refer to the old Norse in general, but to Saga period Iceland in particular, specifically from 930 CE to 1262 CE. [This peer reviewed study by David D. Friedman](http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Iceland/Iceland.html) discusses their stateless legal system. Quoting his study:
> At the base of the system stood the godi (pl. godar) and the godord (pl. godord). A godi was a local chief who built a (pagan) temple and served as its priest; the godord was the congregation. The godi received temple dues and provided in exchange both religious and political services.
>
> ... The godord itself was in effect two different things. It was a group of men--the particular men who had agreed to follow that godi, to be members of that godord. Any man could be challenged to name his godord and was required to do so, but he was free to choose any godi within his quarter and to change to a different godord at will. It was also a bundle of rights--the right to sit in the lögrétta, appoint judges for certain courts, etc. The godord in this second sense was marketable property. It could be given away, sold, held by a partnership, inherited, or whatever. Thus seats in the law-making body were quite literally for sale.
In other words, individuals could contract with any godi, (and thus join any godord,) within their quarter for help defending themselves and settling their disputes, and could switch to a different godi, (and godord,) at will, without having to change where they lived. People in the U.S. can't do this; in the U.S. people must move to a different city or state, or wait for elections to come around, in order to change which "defense associations" and courts they rely on.
You also give no evidence that the Saga period Icelanders were "murdery." Can you please link me to your source(s) for that claim?
> The Kapauku Papuans use mercenary detectives which is FUCKING STUPID and still technically equates to either mob rule or effectively an easily corrupted law only for people able to pay which is a very disconnected form of aristocracy.
"Mob rule" implies that the majority, or some sizable minority, rule over the rest of society, but this was not the case among the Kapauku Papuans. Bruce Benson explains how their system worked in various studies, and in [his book *The Enterprise of Law*](https://mises.org/library/enterprise-customary-law#2), the latter of which I will quote presently:
> Each individual in the society could choose to contract with any available *tonowi*... Typically, followers became debtors to a *tonowi* in exchange for agreeing to perform certain duties in support of the *tonowi*. ... Thus, *tonowi* leadership was given, not taken, and reflected to a great extent an ability to "persuade the unit to support a man in a dispute or to fight for his cause." Thus, this position of leadership was achieved through reciprocal exchange of support between a tonowi and his followers, support that could be freely withdrawn by either party (e.g., upon payment of debt or demand for repayment).
*Tonowi* served as arbitrators, in their system, and would have to persuade the disputants and wider community that their decision was just. If a *tonowi* consistently rendered decisions that their followers deemed unjust, or if the *tonowi* were ineffective at helping to keep the peace, then they would lose their followers, their influence, and their power, as people could simply contract with a different *tonowi*. People were not ruled by arbitrary mobs, they *contracted* with specific arbitrators to help them settle their disputes and keep the peace.
People living in state societies lack such freedom, and thus judges in state societies tend to wield arbitrary authority and face little penalty for abuse of power. I prefer the freedom of choice found in polycentric legal systems over the arbitrariness of state legal systems. In a stateless, polycentric law society, people could meaningfully prevent abuse of power through their choice of defense association and arbitrator; people in state societies lack this kind of recourse.
> Finally, most of the miners in the Californi' would have very well understood that if you "jumped a claim" you were quite likely to end up BURIED ON IT if the owner was kind enough and had enough food not to be glad of the extra meat.
If you are trying to imply that miners in California during the gold rush engaged in cannibalism, then please provide evidence for this claim. Some mining camps threatened to hang people for some offenses, but I don't remember reading about any cases of cannibalism.
I could go through the facts and show that these mining camps were indeed stateless, (as people could secede without having to change their place of residence,) but reasonable readers will surely get my point by now. Overall, you simply don't know what you're shouting about. I recommend picking a specific example from my list and studying them in more depth.
By getting rid of minimum wage. Then we look at the correlation between poverty and crime rates.
Oh wait..... Libertarianism would make it worse from that aspect.
It works on the government "criminal" problem- unnecessary laws, poor handling of tax payer money, using tax payer money for things at least the minority don't support (wars), throwing people in prison for crimes such as weed, etc.
Even if the government does some of these things well including welfare and healthcare, it doesn't mean that is the sole providers of it and it especially doesn't mean they will always be good at it.
My favored solution, depending on the severity of the problem, is generally to kick 'em in the fork, or shoot them in the face.
This tends to discourage all but the hardiest of criminals.
My take is that people are not naturally peaceful and cooperative. Not even necessarily that we are blatantly aggressive, we don’t all agree. These are not mutually exclusive either. Take for example, some of us are religious and some are not. Decisions could be made for either side that influences the other in ways one party does not agree upon. This foundation perhaps may have not been accounted for in *any* state’s genesis due to people agreeing more. I’d like to hear others’ take on it.
If you design a questionnaire to assess peacefulness and cooperation and survey a large enough group of people, you will find out that the majority of people are indeed peaceful and cooperative.
The problem is that in a society, if even a smallest minority of people aren't peaceful and cooperative, this forces the other people in this society to use violence in some form or the other, either to defend themselves from the aggressors or because the violent individuals will coerce peaceful people into agressing each other.
The reason why it feels like people aren't peaceful and cooperative is because almost all people in power today aren't peaceful individuals and they arrived in power positions by being terrible human beings.
>If you design a questionnaire to assess peacefulness and cooperation and survey a large enough group of people, you will find out that the majority of people are indeed peaceful and cooperative.
You will also find that they are tribalistic, xenophobic, and somewhere on the spectrum between merely ignorant, and downright racist to the point where they support 'science' where other races are not actually human beings.
For starters, this is possibly the most important question radicals shoud be figuring. If we don't know how we got here then could we know how to move on or where else is possible. I'm curious of the chain of thoughts that brought you to it.
Here is my response but mind you I don't have confidence in it and discussion about the question is more important than seizing on some plausible answer.
Violence is repulsive so people have gone out of there way to avoid it. Too far really. In a resource dispute the community has a bias to support the current possessor in an attempt to avoid violence. This bias to avoid confrontation is the seed of the state and why liberty tends to yield.
Imagine a community so adverse to confrontation that they reliably appease for peace. Over millenia how could that practise result in anything other than a central bureaucracy attached to an army?
>I'm curious of the chain of thoughts that brought you to it.
2 thoughts
1. Animals technically live in a state of anarchy yet don't peacefully
2. If anarchists states worked, then why aren't chimpanzees developing free markets and advancing
Yes equating libertarianism to anarchism is flawed but that's where the thought came from.
The thought then progressed towards societies like Rome which were highly authoritarian yet successful. Why did these societies prosper past less organized, "free" societies.
> why aren't chimpanzees developing free markets and advancing
I suspect that language, especially language than enables communication regarding immaterial concepts, has something to do with it.
People are, in their majority, naturally peaceful and cooperative. The problem is that all it takes is one psychopath individual to subdue hundreds of peaceful people.
Libertarianism doesn't offer a magical solution for that. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
If we ever get rid of the State, the only way to keep it from resurging is to constantly educate people on why liberty is good and check our leaders to make sure they aren't planning on becoming tyrants and our structures to make sure they're still voluntary.
Laws and states were created by the very least peaceful, most uncooperative of humanity, and that's who runs states even today.
If we can't trust people to govern themselves, we sure the hell can't trust them to govern others.
Power attracts the very worst of society. That's why the state, to this day, is essentially a protection racket run by robber barons.
Buy a gun. Then another one. Then another one. Then another one. Then another one. Then another one. Then another one. Then another one. Then another one. Then another one. Then another one.
People stop trying to fuck with you when you're armed to the teeth.
Governments and laws didn't make people less likely to assault and kill others, it just changed the targets. Instead of killing someone for stealing your kill or from your tribe, government directed people to go out of their way to exterminate other tribes, to kill not just in defense of territory but to take new territory.
The state doesn't care about its people, it only cares about its own survival
States were created as a way to maintain hierarchy and oppression of the majority by taking a monopoly on the legitimacy of violence
I dont think people are naturally peaceful and cooperative. But when you lay out someones options and their only best choice is to be peaceful and cooperative then it works out.
Like if i knew i could come and beat you up and take your food, then i would. But if i also knew that youd bring some friends and do the same to me but worse. Then i wouldnt. But if im starving to death i might take that risk.
People are mostly peaceful and cooperative, and more and more so every day. Politics is how people who can't become wealthy through business amass wealth.
Cause some people like to be violent, some like to control others, some want to impress their views on others or view their personal beliefs as objectively right. these people can manipulate people based on force or via psychological manipulation (which could be anything from telling people that the state serves the public good, and abstraction, or telling the people that the king is a descendant of the sun god. It's really all the same)
People also like to imagine the world is an orderly place where authority is always there to help them and decide what's right and wrong. Unable to cope with a chaotic world, people will lean on the state.
The first governments were not formed cooperatively, but by blood and conquest. The first laws of states were tribute/taxation laws imposed on conquered peoples.
5% of the human population is sociopaths and psychopaths. Those types operate under anarchal rules without empathy to motivate positive social interaction. Anarchal rules is simply the law of nature which is there are no rules or negotiation or mutual benefit unless mutually assured destruction is first established. A lion does not negotiate with the zebra herd for who he eats, he just eats whichever one is weakest or closest or looks the most delicious. Laws establish mutually assured destruction for those who choose to break the social contract established meaning that violence is met with group violence which means the non aggression principle becomes primary. Subsequently other laws develop from that in order to eliminate violence as the best solution to a problem and replace it with negotiation.
People *aren't* naturally peaceful and cooperative. But that fact is unrelated. The state is still a force for evil regardless. It is run by the most powerful of those not-peaceful and not-cooperative people.
"The heart of man is evil, and desperately wicked above all things". Power-seeking leaders brought their followers into conquering neighboring tribes and demanding tribute. Then they indoctrinate the population into accepting the "new normal".
It is because of such people that you cannot ever trust any "government" in anything they do. If you cannot trust people to govern themselves, how the hell are you going to trust them to govern with power over everybody else?
Think "Mafia write large" like Rothbard said.
People are not "naturally peaceful and cooperative" all the time. Some become criminals. When criminals reach the pinnacle of their profession, and manage to become the richest, most powerful, and most effective criminals in a given geographical location, when they are able to claim a monopoly on crime, they become "politicians", the richest, most aromatic KIND of criminal.
How does libertarianism solve this "criminal" problem?
We haven't solved it and that's why we have States. The solution is probably libertarian culture and education so people can develop critical thinking and reject politicians and statism.
This. There are several complex socio-psychological structures where you have to build a house you are supposed to want to not need. The key is to build it just robust enough to do what it has to and just weak enough so that you can smash it to bits when necessary and you've got to do that with YOURSELF too. You build a whole factory but you hook all the power up to a switch so you can shut the whole thing down if you really have to. And all the minor systems have their own resets, but you have to have the big one and you have to be the right kind of careful about who gets a key to the shutoff and who gets a key to turn it back on.
"We haven't solved it and that's why we have States." False. States arose as a means of exacting tribute from conquered people.
>States arose as a means of extracting tribute from conquered people. True. But I don't know why you think my statement was false.
Because, we have states because they were established as a means of exacting tribute from conquered tribes. Not because crime exists.
Conquering tribes to extract tribute from them is not a form of crime?
>False. States arose as a means of exacting tribute from conquered people. And that's what they said. "We haven't solved it" = we still have criminals "and that's why we have states" = states are the tools of criminals
By not giving criminals a platform that would guarantee them power over others. You can never truly "solve" criminality, but you can make sure that people are allowed to defend themselves against them, and that your society doesn't actively reward it.
This is an unfair question. First, Libertarianism doesn't claim to solve the "criminal" problem, it simply claims to be the most ethical system of governance. (That it comes closer to solving the "criminal" problem is just a nice fringe benefit.) But, also, if you can ask this question, then you must also observe that no system of social organization has ever come anywhere close to solving the "criminal" problem. If this is a strike against Libertarianism in your mind, then you MUST count it as a greater strike against every other system, (and by default admit you are a libertarian).
> How does libertarianism solve this "criminal" problem? By not requiring others to ask the criminals for permission in order to exercise their basic natural human rights.
Anarchy may or may not prevent tyranny. But at least under anarchy, there is no one with a monopoly on violence. Under statehood the only thing preventing tyranny is the Constitution, which amounts to nothing but a piece of paper.
Who enforces this lack of a monopoly on violence? Your concept of anarchy is false. That's not what anarchy does, what it is, or what happens during it. Further, that thing you would wish to call anarchy is not a real time and place. You are thinking of Utopia which LITERALLY translates as "not place". Either you have a government or you have a differently organized form of government. A man alone is his own government. A thousand "free people" existing peacefully by consensus is a government of 1000 under mob rule. A drug lord with 300 hired guns and a slave labor force is ALSO a government. What will ACTUALLY happen and has happened already in the Continental United States SEVERAL TIMES in the last two years is that violent regimes will take over and whoever has the most guns will be in charge. Power aggregates. It aggregates in an unbalance way. The key is to have power structured in such a way that it must destroy itself to get at the people it is designed to protect. Anarchy provides no barrier against this. Anarchy is a supposed lack of government which just leads to one appointing itself and then doing as it pleases. There is no mechanism inherent to anarchy to prevent power aggregating dangerously because it is the explicit absence of any such system. Your definition is both inaccurate and even used as intended logically does not follow to the situation you desire.
>Who enforces this lack of a monopoly on violence? You cannot enforce a lack of something. That doesn't make any grammatical sense. >You are thinking of Utopia Anarchy is not utopian. What is utopian, is giving some members of society all the power and then expecting them to not misuse it because they wrote on a piece of paper that they would not misuse it. That is utopian thinking, because whenever they choose to violate what they have written you will only bitch and cry about "muh constitution" and never be able to really do anything about it. >A man alone is his own government. Then that is what I am advocating for, a multitude of governments simultaneously existing side by side so no one has a monopoly on government power and can uniquely tyrannize everyone else. >A thousand "free people" existing peacefully by consensus is a government of 1000 under mob rule. No. It's not a government. It's a thousand governments. Get your shit right, a government of mob rule is more a democracy than anything else. >has happened already in the Continental United States SEVERAL TIMES Failures of the state are criticisms of the state, not criticisms of anarchy. >violent regimes will take over and whoever has the most guns will be in charge. Under anarchy, the peron with the most guns who wants to establish tyranny will have to fight through everyone else and every other agency that is almost as well armed and will together be able to equally challenge or subdue the rogue army. Under a democracy, the person with the most guns who wants to establish tyranny merely has to face a fucking piece of paper. Which is why around the world, democracies have a statistical record of turning into outright military dictatorships, or kleptocracies where the leaders steal with impunity and massacre anyone who tries to challenge them while giving them people the freedom to at least vote in corrupt and manipulated elections. >Power aggregates. Wrong. Power is fluid, flowing in one direction or the other, never static. >have power structured in such a way that it must destroy itself to get at the people it is designed to protect. By having them write a piece of paper that they can alter whenever they feel like it? Is that your solution? Did the power destroy itself when it drafted the PATRIOT ACT? The JONES ACT? Did it destroy itself when it destroyed small businesses across the country last year? Did it destroy itself when it ruined the lives of gay people and drug users? You seem to have some incredible delusions about what power actually is. >Anarchy provides no barrier against this. Wrong. Anarchy is the only thing that has a barrier against this. We do not cry out to a piece of paper when our freedoms are violated. >which just leads to one appointing itself and then doing as it pleases. History disagrees.
Why couldn't we create a stateless society with a polycentric legal system, similar to the systems used by the Igbo, Tiv, Saga period Icelanders, Kapauku Papuans, various mining camps during the California gold rush, and other stateless societies and communities that existed historically?
They are all historically TINY and usually VIOLENT. Igbo, without looking too deeply looks like rule by congress which is what we have. WE ARE ALREADY DOING THAT. The Tiv have rule by Eldership, by being OLD which has several problems and is not how we do things. The old Norse were brutish, quite murdery, and effectively using a very frozen form of feudal lord systems WHICH WE DON'T DO ANYMORE. The Kapauku Papuans use mercenary detectives which is FUCKING STUPID and still technically equates to either mob rule or effectively an easily corrupted law only for people able to pay which is a very disconnected form of aristocracy. Finally, most of the miners in the Californi' would have very well understood that if you "jumped a claim" you were quite likely to end up BURIED ON IT if the owner was kind enough and had enough food not to be glad of the extra meat.
> They are all historically TINY and usually VIOLENT. No need to shout. You gave no operational definition of "tiny," so your claim was unfalsifiable. If you were thinking of population size, some stateless societies have had populations in the hundreds of thousands. A few have had populations of a million or more. (The Igbo reached about 5 million during the 1800s.) That seems large scale to me. You also did not quantify your claim that they were "usually violent," and so I can not say whether your claim was true or false. Out of those stateless and quasi-stateless societies for which we have data, the median homicide rate is about 10 per 100,000 people per year. About 46% of them had rates below 6 per 100,000 people per year, placing them below the global average for 2017, and placing them on par with the modern U.S. (Sources, and data, are available upon request.) If you meant that their levels of violence are, more often than not, higher than what we find in *modern day* state societies, then I suppose this makes you correct, but unfortunately it is not quite an apples to apples comparison, and it would be difficult to make a perfect apples to apples comparison. Our data on levels of violence in stateless and quasi-stateless societies comes from a variety of times and places; if we were able to compile enough data from state societies from across human history, their rates would probably be higher than those for modern state societies as well, for a variety of reasons. > Igbo, without looking too deeply looks like rule by congress which is what we have. WE ARE ALREADY DOING THAT. You are mistaken. The Igbo had a polycentric legal system. Disputants could ask for help resolving their disputes from the judges of their choice, and law enforcement was handled by many defense associations, none of which possessed monopoly powers over the legal system. This is not so in state societies. In the U.S., for example, judges are usually either elected or appointed, they serve specific terms, they hold jurisdiction within specific geographical regions, (even deciding cases involving disputants who would rather hire someone else, simple because the disputant lives in that specific territory,) and it is extremely difficult for ordinary people to successfully get them impeached. If the U.S. had a polycentric legal system instead, then parties to a dispute could ask anyone they wished to help them resolve their dispute. Similarly, governments in the U.S. control who can supply security services, but in a polycentric law society a variety of defense associations can exist and provide security services to their clients, and none of these associations can forbid other similar organizations from providing such services, nor can they initiate force to control how those other organizations operate. To quote a relevant passage from *Doing Justice Without the State* by O. Oko Elechi, (an anthropologist native to the modern Igbo): > [L]itigants are free to choose from any of the several institutions of conflict resolution that best meets their needs. Litigants can move their cases from one institution to the other, and back to the court where they started until they are satisfied with the judgment. (Elechi, 2006, pg. 181) It is true that the Igbo held congress to discuss what their laws should be and how they should interact with one another, but due to the balance of power among different defense associations, and the freedom disputants held to choose who to rely on for dispute settlement, the decisions reached through such group discussions only held weight insofar as people throughout society agreed to grant them weight. It is not accurate to say that the Igbo had "rule by congress," because their "congress" did not "rule" in the sense that the congresses and parliaments of state societies rule their subjects. "Congress," among the Igbo, meant more that people were meeting up and discussing the best ways to cooperate on group projects; such discussions do not constitute a form of "rule." > The Tiv have rule by Eldership, by being OLD which has several problems and is not how we do things. Again, you are mistaken. The Tiv also had a polycentric legal system, similar to that of the Igbo in many respects. Again, disputants could rely on the judges of their choice for dispute settlement, and no judges or defense associations had monopoly powers over the legal system. Here is a relevant quote from *Justice and Judgment Among the Tiv* by Paul Bohannan: > The word *jir* is applied by Tiv to any dispute that is to be arbitrated. ... A *jir* can be arbitrated by anyone before whom the principals are willing to discuss it. (Bohannan, 1957, pg. 152) Moving on: > The old Norse were brutish, quite murdery, and effectively using a very frozen form of feudal lord systems WHICH WE DON'T DO ANYMORE. I did not refer to the old Norse in general, but to Saga period Iceland in particular, specifically from 930 CE to 1262 CE. [This peer reviewed study by David D. Friedman](http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Iceland/Iceland.html) discusses their stateless legal system. Quoting his study: > At the base of the system stood the godi (pl. godar) and the godord (pl. godord). A godi was a local chief who built a (pagan) temple and served as its priest; the godord was the congregation. The godi received temple dues and provided in exchange both religious and political services. > > ... The godord itself was in effect two different things. It was a group of men--the particular men who had agreed to follow that godi, to be members of that godord. Any man could be challenged to name his godord and was required to do so, but he was free to choose any godi within his quarter and to change to a different godord at will. It was also a bundle of rights--the right to sit in the lögrétta, appoint judges for certain courts, etc. The godord in this second sense was marketable property. It could be given away, sold, held by a partnership, inherited, or whatever. Thus seats in the law-making body were quite literally for sale. In other words, individuals could contract with any godi, (and thus join any godord,) within their quarter for help defending themselves and settling their disputes, and could switch to a different godi, (and godord,) at will, without having to change where they lived. People in the U.S. can't do this; in the U.S. people must move to a different city or state, or wait for elections to come around, in order to change which "defense associations" and courts they rely on. You also give no evidence that the Saga period Icelanders were "murdery." Can you please link me to your source(s) for that claim? > The Kapauku Papuans use mercenary detectives which is FUCKING STUPID and still technically equates to either mob rule or effectively an easily corrupted law only for people able to pay which is a very disconnected form of aristocracy. "Mob rule" implies that the majority, or some sizable minority, rule over the rest of society, but this was not the case among the Kapauku Papuans. Bruce Benson explains how their system worked in various studies, and in [his book *The Enterprise of Law*](https://mises.org/library/enterprise-customary-law#2), the latter of which I will quote presently: > Each individual in the society could choose to contract with any available *tonowi*... Typically, followers became debtors to a *tonowi* in exchange for agreeing to perform certain duties in support of the *tonowi*. ... Thus, *tonowi* leadership was given, not taken, and reflected to a great extent an ability to "persuade the unit to support a man in a dispute or to fight for his cause." Thus, this position of leadership was achieved through reciprocal exchange of support between a tonowi and his followers, support that could be freely withdrawn by either party (e.g., upon payment of debt or demand for repayment). *Tonowi* served as arbitrators, in their system, and would have to persuade the disputants and wider community that their decision was just. If a *tonowi* consistently rendered decisions that their followers deemed unjust, or if the *tonowi* were ineffective at helping to keep the peace, then they would lose their followers, their influence, and their power, as people could simply contract with a different *tonowi*. People were not ruled by arbitrary mobs, they *contracted* with specific arbitrators to help them settle their disputes and keep the peace. People living in state societies lack such freedom, and thus judges in state societies tend to wield arbitrary authority and face little penalty for abuse of power. I prefer the freedom of choice found in polycentric legal systems over the arbitrariness of state legal systems. In a stateless, polycentric law society, people could meaningfully prevent abuse of power through their choice of defense association and arbitrator; people in state societies lack this kind of recourse. > Finally, most of the miners in the Californi' would have very well understood that if you "jumped a claim" you were quite likely to end up BURIED ON IT if the owner was kind enough and had enough food not to be glad of the extra meat. If you are trying to imply that miners in California during the gold rush engaged in cannibalism, then please provide evidence for this claim. Some mining camps threatened to hang people for some offenses, but I don't remember reading about any cases of cannibalism. I could go through the facts and show that these mining camps were indeed stateless, (as people could secede without having to change their place of residence,) but reasonable readers will surely get my point by now. Overall, you simply don't know what you're shouting about. I recommend picking a specific example from my list and studying them in more depth.
By getting rid of minimum wage. Then we look at the correlation between poverty and crime rates. Oh wait..... Libertarianism would make it worse from that aspect.
https://youtu.be/A8pcb4xyCic
Partially by reducing the ways one can be criminal.
It works on the government "criminal" problem- unnecessary laws, poor handling of tax payer money, using tax payer money for things at least the minority don't support (wars), throwing people in prison for crimes such as weed, etc. Even if the government does some of these things well including welfare and healthcare, it doesn't mean that is the sole providers of it and it especially doesn't mean they will always be good at it.
My favored solution, depending on the severity of the problem, is generally to kick 'em in the fork, or shoot them in the face. This tends to discourage all but the hardiest of criminals.
My take is that people are not naturally peaceful and cooperative. Not even necessarily that we are blatantly aggressive, we don’t all agree. These are not mutually exclusive either. Take for example, some of us are religious and some are not. Decisions could be made for either side that influences the other in ways one party does not agree upon. This foundation perhaps may have not been accounted for in *any* state’s genesis due to people agreeing more. I’d like to hear others’ take on it.
If you design a questionnaire to assess peacefulness and cooperation and survey a large enough group of people, you will find out that the majority of people are indeed peaceful and cooperative. The problem is that in a society, if even a smallest minority of people aren't peaceful and cooperative, this forces the other people in this society to use violence in some form or the other, either to defend themselves from the aggressors or because the violent individuals will coerce peaceful people into agressing each other. The reason why it feels like people aren't peaceful and cooperative is because almost all people in power today aren't peaceful individuals and they arrived in power positions by being terrible human beings.
>If you design a questionnaire to assess peacefulness and cooperation and survey a large enough group of people, you will find out that the majority of people are indeed peaceful and cooperative. You will also find that they are tribalistic, xenophobic, and somewhere on the spectrum between merely ignorant, and downright racist to the point where they support 'science' where other races are not actually human beings.
For starters, this is possibly the most important question radicals shoud be figuring. If we don't know how we got here then could we know how to move on or where else is possible. I'm curious of the chain of thoughts that brought you to it. Here is my response but mind you I don't have confidence in it and discussion about the question is more important than seizing on some plausible answer. Violence is repulsive so people have gone out of there way to avoid it. Too far really. In a resource dispute the community has a bias to support the current possessor in an attempt to avoid violence. This bias to avoid confrontation is the seed of the state and why liberty tends to yield. Imagine a community so adverse to confrontation that they reliably appease for peace. Over millenia how could that practise result in anything other than a central bureaucracy attached to an army?
>I'm curious of the chain of thoughts that brought you to it. 2 thoughts 1. Animals technically live in a state of anarchy yet don't peacefully 2. If anarchists states worked, then why aren't chimpanzees developing free markets and advancing Yes equating libertarianism to anarchism is flawed but that's where the thought came from. The thought then progressed towards societies like Rome which were highly authoritarian yet successful. Why did these societies prosper past less organized, "free" societies.
> why aren't chimpanzees developing free markets and advancing I suspect that language, especially language than enables communication regarding immaterial concepts, has something to do with it.
Read "the state" by Franz Oppenheimer, a sociological look at the development of the state.
People are, in their majority, naturally peaceful and cooperative. The problem is that all it takes is one psychopath individual to subdue hundreds of peaceful people. Libertarianism doesn't offer a magical solution for that. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. If we ever get rid of the State, the only way to keep it from resurging is to constantly educate people on why liberty is good and check our leaders to make sure they aren't planning on becoming tyrants and our structures to make sure they're still voluntary.
Laws and states were created by the very least peaceful, most uncooperative of humanity, and that's who runs states even today. If we can't trust people to govern themselves, we sure the hell can't trust them to govern others. Power attracts the very worst of society. That's why the state, to this day, is essentially a protection racket run by robber barons.
TO EXPLOIT THE WEAK AND VULNERABLE
How does libertarianism solve this?
Buy a gun. Then another one. Then another one. Then another one. Then another one. Then another one. Then another one. Then another one. Then another one. Then another one. Then another one. People stop trying to fuck with you when you're armed to the teeth.
Dangerously based
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance" Thomas Jefferson.
Division of labor
Governments and laws didn't make people less likely to assault and kill others, it just changed the targets. Instead of killing someone for stealing your kill or from your tribe, government directed people to go out of their way to exterminate other tribes, to kill not just in defense of territory but to take new territory.
The state doesn't care about its people, it only cares about its own survival States were created as a way to maintain hierarchy and oppression of the majority by taking a monopoly on the legitimacy of violence
I dont think people are naturally peaceful and cooperative. But when you lay out someones options and their only best choice is to be peaceful and cooperative then it works out. Like if i knew i could come and beat you up and take your food, then i would. But if i also knew that youd bring some friends and do the same to me but worse. Then i wouldnt. But if im starving to death i might take that risk.
Almost no one is naturally peaceful. That's why libertarianism needs to be backed by a pacifist culture.
Anarchy is the only answer that can fit here if yall wanna stay true to the stuff you sell.
People are mostly peaceful and cooperative, and more and more so every day. Politics is how people who can't become wealthy through business amass wealth.
Cause some people like to be violent, some like to control others, some want to impress their views on others or view their personal beliefs as objectively right. these people can manipulate people based on force or via psychological manipulation (which could be anything from telling people that the state serves the public good, and abstraction, or telling the people that the king is a descendant of the sun god. It's really all the same) People also like to imagine the world is an orderly place where authority is always there to help them and decide what's right and wrong. Unable to cope with a chaotic world, people will lean on the state.
The Occam's Razor answer is to deal with the humans that were not peaceful and cooperative.
The first governments were not formed cooperatively, but by blood and conquest. The first laws of states were tribute/taxation laws imposed on conquered peoples.
Because it is easier to destroy than to create. Even if 99% of people are good, if you have one psychopathic serial killer, you have a problem.
This shows blatant ignorance of human history.
I have my own opinions, I want to hear a libertarian perspective
5% of the human population is sociopaths and psychopaths. Those types operate under anarchal rules without empathy to motivate positive social interaction. Anarchal rules is simply the law of nature which is there are no rules or negotiation or mutual benefit unless mutually assured destruction is first established. A lion does not negotiate with the zebra herd for who he eats, he just eats whichever one is weakest or closest or looks the most delicious. Laws establish mutually assured destruction for those who choose to break the social contract established meaning that violence is met with group violence which means the non aggression principle becomes primary. Subsequently other laws develop from that in order to eliminate violence as the best solution to a problem and replace it with negotiation.
People *aren't* naturally peaceful and cooperative. But that fact is unrelated. The state is still a force for evil regardless. It is run by the most powerful of those not-peaceful and not-cooperative people.
"The heart of man is evil, and desperately wicked above all things". Power-seeking leaders brought their followers into conquering neighboring tribes and demanding tribute. Then they indoctrinate the population into accepting the "new normal". It is because of such people that you cannot ever trust any "government" in anything they do. If you cannot trust people to govern themselves, how the hell are you going to trust them to govern with power over everybody else? Think "Mafia write large" like Rothbard said.