This isn't a real response. If you think I'm wrong, give me an argument. Don't just keep asserting your own view. I've given examples of prisoner-dilemma type situations (such as tragedy of the commons, where each user of a limited common good such as water personally benefits from overuse, but if everyone overuses, then everyone is worse off).

Meh, you aren't familiar enough with game theory and economics to support your argument. A free-rider is someone who benefits from a collective bargain made between market participants, but refuses to pay the costs associated with the bargain. For instance, suppose members of a community mutually agree to pay for a police force to enforce local laws. Some members might decide they don't want to pay for a police force though because they'll still get the benefit of the police force even so (since the other members will still be willing to pay). These members are "free-riding" on the agreement of others for a general good without paying the cost.

Principal-agent conflict refer to the common problem where someone hired to carry out a task for another person will often have interests that diverge from the person hiring them and because of information asymmetries, is able to act towards their own interests without the hirer being able to tell.

For instance, dentists and patients often have diverging interests. A dentist wants to make more money, patients want to spend less money. But there is an information asymmetry here - patients have to rely on the dentist to tell them when they need to spend more money on a dental procedure. In other words, the dentist acts as an agent on the patient's behalf, telling them when they need a filling, etc, but also as the person who benefits when the patients needs a filling.

If you don't own something you have no right to it.

You need to reread what you said. Then you need to reread what I have said in this thread. You continue to straw man my position.

None of this refutes my comment.

The state has nothing that it didn't take from others. How can you steal from an organization that owns nothing?

I'm the only one in this conversation that is concerned with other people's property rights. And people with attitudes like yours are how hundreds of millions have died at the hand of the State.

I've given you arguments. And I explained the first time you posted the PD why it was correct. You continue to be purposefully obtuse.

I didn't ask for an explanation of what these mean, I asked you how these are exclusively a free market problem. I am not an economist, but I definitely know more than you do. I don't have the patiences to explain how the free market works to you.

He isn't being obtuse. You haven't actually made any arguments. A list of claims is not an argument and a repeated list of claims is also not an argument.



You clearly don't understand how a real free market works. You do probably have a halfway decent naive understanding how a free market would work if **** economicus* existed.

You do realize that we have already tried the whole free market experiment multiple times in the actual real world, right? Everywhere that there is no effective state presence, there is a 100% perfectly free market. The multitude of examples might have worked out to not be complete disasters if a different species tried it. Maybe spiders?

*If you don't already know what **** economicus is, then you don't even have a rudimentary understanding of economics, let alone free markets.

I brought up the prisoner's dilemma to explain why I don't accept the NAP. My claim was that in the absence of the state it is sometimes rational to act aggressively towards others for Hobbesian reasons. Essentially, Hobbes argues that, given some plausible generalities about human psychology, in the absence of a state people will exist in a state of insecurity with regards to physical and material safety because they can't trust that other people will not rationally pursue their own self-interest in survival. Given that we can't trust other people in this way, it is often rational to pre-emptively attack them to preserve our survival (which meanst that it is also potentially rational for them to pre-emptively attack you, and so on).

Your response was:

This doesn't show how my argument fails. Instead, you are reasserting that it is rational without a state to follow the NAP and that a state incentivizes you to use aggression. So I responded by using the prisoner's dilemma to illustrate the logic of the argument I'm making.

In game theory terms, Hobbes description of a stateless society follows the logic of a prisoner's dilemma, where individuals rationally pursuing their own self-interest act in a way that leads to an outcome that is worse for everyone. A well-known solution to the prisoner's dilemma is for an outside force to punish the prisoners if they defect by more than the threatened prison terms.

This is essentially the solution proposed by Hobbes for the role of the state. He argues that a powerful enough social organization (he refers to it as a "Leviathan") can threaten to punish people who pre-emptively attack others, even if it is done to improve their own chances of survival. This threat, if believed, will lead to a society with less violence and aggression, because you reach an equilibrium where you it isn't rational to pre-emptively attack others for your own survival (since doing so would lead to a worse punishment from the state). Your response was to reiterate that:

and

Since the point of my argument was to show that it is sometimes rational to act aggressively in society and that sometimes in life we are in a prisoner's dilemma, I responded:

After some prodding from BTM, you presented why you think life doesn't follow the logic of a prisoner's dilemma by arguing:

Here you present two arguments:

1) In free markets we can communicate and so respond rationally towards others (presumably so as to avoid the worse outcome described in the prisoner's dilemma).
2) It is never rational to take an action that makes someone worse off in a free market.

I responded by pointing out that communication doesn't change the logic of a prisoner's dilemma. Thus, even given that in free markets we can communicate with each other, if we are in a prisoner's dilemma situation then the communication offered by markets won't change what it is rational to do.

My response to (2) is just a disagreement based on examples. I gave well-known examples of how well-functioning markets can fail to reach optimal outcomes, such as tragedy of the commons, free-rider, and principal-agent problems. Free markets are favored by economists (and me) because they provide a mechanism for people who are acting in their own self-interest to act in ways that are broadly socially beneficial. However, there is nothing in capitalist theory that says that market mechanisms can do so in all situations.

Your response:

Here you are giving up on (1) as an argument and just reverting to claiming that prisoner's dilemma are impossible in life.

Here your argument is that the state has worse outcomes than the market.

I don't know, I feel like my argument hasn't really been addressed here. I think we are faced with prisoner's dilemmas in politics and society all the time - whenever we have to cooperate with other people in a way that requires us to lower our own weapons. So I'm not persuaded by your denial, especially without any argumentation supporting it.

As for the superiority of markets in solving prisoner's dilemma situations, okay. I support free markets. However, I am doubtful of their ability to solve some of the problems solved by the state, because the solution to the Hobbesian problem is one where a single social organization has a monopoly on violence (otherwise you are still living in a war zone). I'm doubtful that free markets are effective for creating this monopoly and anyway, if markets are successful in creating such a monopoly, I would just call the social organization with that monopoly a "state."

However, mostly what I'm arguing for is the utility of a state. If you think there is a better solution, fine, go for it. But all that is really required for my argument to succeed is for the formation of a state to be an improvement over the status quo. And a society with no power enforcing nonviolence seems worse to me that a society that does have such a power.

[My Bold]


Ants! The answer is Ants!

Can you give an example of when there was 100% free market and it was a complete disaster?

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You will have to define "100% free market." It isn't a standard economic term, and I am nearly certain that you are not using any terms in the standard way.

You used the term, I just repeated what you said. So when you said 100% free market what did you mean?

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Lol. Sorry. I meant unregulated markets. The 100% was a throwaway clause in the sentence. Since you are allowing me to define it, I expect no whining from you.

Beanie Babies. Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Chile. Most markets in the USA prior to 1934. The list is pretty long, but those are some examples.

You consider the 19th century America, which was the greatest increase in the quality of life for the common person, a disaster? The time that American went from a nobody to a world economic powerhouse. That's what you consider to be a downside to the the free market?

And can you explain what disaster there was around beanie babies?

First, this is a false dichotomy. Just because the state is not giving protection, does not mean that no one is. You won't find any prominent ancap that thinks in private security would not exist. Second, the NAP states one should not initiate aggression on otherwise peaceful people. It says nothing about what people will or will not do. And it does not claim that no one will initiate violence. It is not an argument for pacifism. So none of this actually addresses the NAP.

In the PD it could only be considered rational to "aggress" against the other prisoner because that's the was the game is set up. The best outcome for the prisoner is to throw the other under the bus. My argument was that the best outcome in society is never to throw someone under the bus or aggress against others. Actions in a society always have consequences. Which is why you don't go around bad mouthing your colleges just in case they were going to bad mouth you.

I'm not familiar enough with this argument. But if Hobbes is relying on the assumption that no protective services would exist in the absence of the state (which it appears he is), then his entire argument fails. Also, as I pointed out above, there is never a time when it is rational to aggress against others in a society. There is always consequences. Even if those consequences don't come in the form of being locked in a cage. This world painted where everyone just sits back and does nothing when people aggress against them just doesn't exist. So again, the argument fails on the basis of its assumptions.


See above.

And I pointed out that some none of your examples are exclusive to free markets. And the principal-agent is an issue for the state, and would not apply to the free market.


Not impossible, but that it is not a reflection of reality. And you have never addressed this.

Ok. Your argument appears to be (feel free to give a one sentence sum up if this is not accurate) that people are best off in a society without the state to aggress against others.

My counter would be:
1. In a stateless society security would still exist. Therefore you still have a high probability of being "punished".
2. In a society you are better off in a group. If you aggress against others you have a high probability of being kicked out of the group. This is how most tribes worked for most of history with great success. So stealing from your neighbor might get you the "stuff", but you are worse off because others will no longer transact with you. So it is not rational.
3. There are plenty of things in life that are not regulated by the state, but we don't see the sort of issues you describe on the whole. For instance, why do people give 2 weeks notice? Why doesn't everyone cheat on their partners? Most of society follows the NAPish philosophy in 90% of their lives with no need for state coercion.

Bolded is a false dichotomy. Also a monopoly on violence is exactly how we get so many war zones. And the free market wouldn't create a monopoly. Monopolies don't really exist in the free market. That's one of the benefits.

Why would the bolded be true?

I get the feeling that you are not a minarchist. But that's really what you have defended. How do you go from a state that only protects property to the one we have?

Not at all. The state did a great job of increasing the overall welfare of its citizens.

That didn't happen in the 19th century. It happened in the 20th.

No. It didn't happen, so it would be weird if that was what I considered anything.



Yes.

How?

I suggest you look that one up. Spoiler: You're wrong.