Question to pvn and other anarcho-capitalists

[Darryl_P]

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What makes you think anarcho-capitalism is not being practiced in this country?

It may put you at odds with the law on occasion -- but everyone is not playing by the same rule book.



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This is a very interesting take and one with which I tend to agree. The State itself can be regarded as a very large private enterprise controlled and protected by the majority of the population to uphold their interests vs. the strong, rich and potentially ruthless minority. They are simply acting out their freedom to band together in large numbers and create a force so powerful that it can take on anything any other group has to offer.

It's true that most of the participants have nowhere near the rational capacity to articulate their role in the whole thing, but if you just ignore their words, look at their actions and assume the subconscious is in charge, then the above scenario seems to be a pretty accurate reflection of reality IMO.

[tylerdurden]

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Please tell me that you were joking. You can't be seriously offering up the example of ...Somalia as some kind of social prototype. It can't be!

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You have a reading comprehension problem. Somalia is not a prototype. The lesson to be learned from Somalia is not how wonderful it is (because it's not) but how much better it is NOW than it was BEFORE.

[tylerdurden]

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I believe in a previous post, pvn said it would be better to fight and die like an animal than be governed.

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I haven't said that. In fact, I've said before that it may actually be better to say in the US under a state than to go to a stateless area depending on a ton of other factors.

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So it doesn't surprise me that he chose Somalia as his ideal utopian society.

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Can you point out where I said it was ideal?

[mrgold]

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Well if government = evil, then the equation is simple. Everyone would benefit!


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That simple equation works in the aggregate, ie. that the population gets a net benefit overall, but that wasn't my question. Surely you can appreciate that it's possible for total EV to go up even if it goes down for 99% of the people, can you not?

Or maybe I should be addressing this to pvn since I think you meant it tongue-in-cheek.

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You are making a huge mistake here. Decreasing government may have an overall increase on GDP but that is not an overall increase of "EV". Expected Value refers to welfare or utility and not just money. A dollar is not worth the same to every man and redistributive policies may have a depressing effect on economic activity but a positive impact on total uitlity or "EV".

[DVaut1]

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You are making a huge mistake here. Decreasing government may have an overall increase on GDP but that is not an overall increase of "EV". Expected Value refers to welfare or utility and not just money. A dollar is not worth the same to every man and redistributive policies may have a depressing effect on economic activity but a positive impact on total uitlity or "EV".

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I think this is key and rather important; I’m sure some here will argue that +GDP is essentially synonymous with +utility; yet I disagree that we ought to even let utility drive all our actions (this probably belongs in the philosophy forum but certainly has political implications). This (this = below) is a frequent challenge to utilitarianism (and a valid one, IMO):

Imagine we're presented with two hypothetical societies: one gets 1000 happiness points, the other gets 999. A utilitarian is forced, by definition, to accept the first society (the one who receives 1000 happiness points) as being inherently better. Yet imagine our two societies had two separate populations of 10 citizens each, and we distributed the happiness points thusly (see below). Also, imagine that 0 points is someone living in abject, horrid pain and squalor – a life dominated by suffering, no doubt. 1000 points is human utopia, something akin to a constant orgasm or something – whatever the greatest amount of pleasure that could ever be conceivably derived, experienced with invariable consistency. Imagine that every point is a step toward less pain and more pleasure.

Society 1: = 1000 points

Person A receives 1000 points.
Person B receives 0 points.
Person C receives 0 points.
Person D receives 0 points.
Person E receives 0 points.
Person F receives 0 points.
Person G receives 0 points.
Person H receives 0 points.
Person I receives 0 points.
Person J receives 0 points.

Society 2: 999 points

Person A receives 100 points.
Person B receives 100 points.
Person C receives 50 points.
Person D receives 150 points.
Person E receives 75 points.
Person F receives 125 points.
Person G receives 50 points.
Person H receives 50 points.
Person I receives 99 points.
Person J receives 200 points.


A utilitarian is forced to accept Society 1, despite the fact that it subjects a good deal of people to the most torturous life imaginable. Certainly, Society 2 denies everyone the chance at a constant orgasm...but it’s the more desirable society, IMO - even if it concedes that some measure of pain and suffering will be experienced by all. And I think it’s a challenge utilitarianism doesn’t successfully answer. While not being an outright rejection of Mill, I think it presents a conundrum for utility hawks – is utility vulture-ing as justifiable as it initially appears?

In other words, I think many of us who have a hard time accepting absolutist morality also have a hard time embracing utilitarianism, given some scenarios we might be able to create that so violate our intuitions – like the one I presented.

End rant, but I thought you made a key point, nonetheless.

[SheetWise]

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Also, imagine that 0 points is someone living in abject, horrid pain and squalor – a life dominated by suffering, no doubt. 1000 points is human utopia, something akin to a constant orgasm or something ...

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Society 1: = 1000 points

Person A receives 1000 points.
Person B receives 0 points.
Person C receives 0 points.
Person D receives 0 points.
Person E receives 0 points.
Person F receives 0 points.
Person G receives 0 points.
Person H receives 0 points.
Person I receives 0 points.
Person J receives 0 points.

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So in Society 1, who's giving Person A their orgasms, and why? Who's cooking A's dinner, and why? It seems to me that in a short time Society 1 will look like Society 2, at the direction of 1A*.

*(Either that, or 1A is a sadist who likes to cook while jacking off).

[DVaut1]

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So in Society 1, who's giving Person A their orgasms, and why? Who's cooking A's dinner, and why? It seems to me that in a short time Society 1 will look like Society 2, at the direction of 1A.

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I think you're missing the point. This isn't really about supply-side economics or anything like that (at least not as I presented it). Like I said, there could be political implications drawn from this, but I wasn't really getting at that right now, and I was trying to get at something a little more narrow, namely utility.

But yeah, it's not as if Person 1A is literally experiencing an orgasm - just a constant state of pleasure akin to orgasm, or something similar. Whatever it feels like to win the lottery for millions or win the WSOP or something like that - however we might describe that phenomenon of experiencing the highest pleasures available - and they're probably agent dependent. Some might find the highest pleasures available by laying at the beach, while others find it having an orgasm (I choose 'having an orgasm' as my example because it's something we can probably all agree is a high-state of pleasure), while others have it when they're playing with their dog or something. Likely, it would be a combination of different experiences.

And just assume, for simplicity, 1A cooks his own food because he loves to cook or something - either way, how he acquires his food isn't particularly relevant.

In fact, I thought this "1A is a sadist who likes to cook while jacking off" was funny enough that, for this purpose, we can let it stand as true in my hypothetical situation.

But I think we can agree that, while Society 1 has the highest utility, it's a society that we can likely reject as being undesirable - although perhaps there are some ardent utilitarians who disagree. I'm willing to listen.

[TomCollins]

What percentage of the population is better off if you re-institute slavery? 90%?

[mrgold]

if society A has 1000 utillity it is inherently better than society b at 999. However i beleive that society A requires many times as many resources/goods to produce this level of uitlity in only one person. For example if you took one of the happy guys summer homes away and gave it to one of the sad gus in societey A this would increase the sad guys utility alot more than it would decrease the happy guys utility. I guess this is basiacly the law of diminishing marginal utility and it can be applied to say that a society that distributes goods more equitably will tend to be a higher utility society and if its not than society b has just that many more resources to begin with.

[DVaut1]

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if society A has 1000 utillity it is inherently better than society b at 999.

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Given the way I constructed Society A, I can't accept that it's more desirable than Society B, despite its higher utility. If we put ourselves behind Rawls' Veil of Ignorance, would anyone (not knowing which person they would end up in Society A) choose to live there? I would think that, almost unanimously, we would choose to live in Society B, and it's not even close.

P.S. Sheetwise- the introduction of Rawls' Veil of Ignorance and maxgold's citation of the law of diminishing marginal utility is getting closer to a critique of supply-side economics - not 100% there yet, but we're getting closer, so you can probably jump in with your criticism now... (you can jump in with your criticism at anytime, of course, but I think it's getting to be more appropriate now...)

Also, anyone not familiar with Rawls' Veil of Ignorance should Google it or search Wikipedia or find Theory of Justice at their local library/bookstore to see what I'm getting at. And I'll admit that while I like buffets and sometimes see them as a good value, I'm not much of an economist and probably can't speak to the law of diminishing marginal utility as well as others might.