7x adjustment?

1) WTF where'd that number come from.

2) So your intuition is that the average person in 1920 had roughly the wealth of the average Western European in 1980?

It wouldn't be a military, but many private armies. The coordination wouldn't take place by the customers, it would take place by the defense agencies.

Nowhere, I just assumed it from the chart.

No. And I don't consider GDP to be a measure of wealth anyway.

This is why the Gauls so decisively crushed the armies of the Roman Empire.

Do you imagine that these many private armies, when combined, would be larger or smaller than the current unified army?

And since they must needs train together, have compatible secure communications systems, intimately share intelligence, have complementary weapons systems, have a shared standard of training, and have identical doctrines. In addition, to save money they would want to share standard weapons designs and supply chains, share research and development, share training facilities, and collectively control certain highly specialized units and military technology.

If they are the same size as the unified army, and must be seamlessly integrated and train together at all times to achieve readiness, and whenever called to duty out must instantly combine to actually fulfill their mission -- WTF is the difference ???

Garf should be log scaled

Yep, that was it. soon2bepro is cracking me up.

I mean holy **** how do you not know that the rise of states became possible (useful) only after the agricultural revelation? This is like I dunno 8th grade* history and very basic logic.

* Ok maybe more like 5th grade.

I also enjoy the blatantly obvious contradiction between Nielsio saying that one may be justified in using force to prevent someone from dynamiting fish, but not from bulldozing a forest.

If someone bulldozes a forest for fun and games, you should also be able to stop him.

What exactly don't you agree with and why.

I don't know. They would provide a better service for a much lower price. But maybe a smaller army can actually provide a better service.

I don't know that they would need to share all these. All I was thinking about was cooperation in terms of fighting off an invader.

One is funded voluntarily - that is, you only pay for it if it's doing a good job for a reasonable price, and as soon as it's not you withdraw funding. The other, you have to pay for it even if they're just going around killing innocent people in your name and charging you tons and tons of money for it.

Trivially, how do you differentiate between someone dynamiting fish for fun and someone dynamiting fish for production, and someone bulldozing for fun and bulldozing for production, before it's too late? And just as trivially, your definition of production vs. fun is inherently flawed and subjective.

It depends on how you define a State. But the basic system was the same. In fact, States typically allow more private property than tribes. In a hunter-gatherer tribe, everything belongs to the collective. That was my point. Maybe I'm giving you guys too much credit.

For one, you could ask him.

Really? You think dynamiting large areas of the ocean is a particularly social act? Do you think that's how it makes sense to produce things for the market (remember the thing I brought up about associations created to have sustainable wildlife hunting)? How about atomic bombing the ocean? Is that a subjective value of someone that a society can tolerate?

What's your property theory?

You fail basic political science, and history.

"you" dont decide that, society does. if society deems it socially unacceptable to arbitrarely destroy valuable resources there is a good chance they will use force to stop you from doing it. that is, if your property right is recognised in the first place.
that's all there is to it. ofcourse the definitions are subjective, nothing is objective when we are dealing with this issues.

just because something may or may not be consistent with X libertarian philosophy does not mean that it's likely or to happen or that its a behaviour society wants to encourage.

"Asking him" has lots of issues, namely, language barriers, deception, and even someone giving an honest answer, but then losing the capital to fund whatever he was going to build in the forest that just got bulldozed.

Obviously nuking the whales isn't very social, but neither is chopping down all the trees I've fostered, even if it doesn't look like an orchard to you. You've completely failed to define what constitutes an orchard vs. just a bunch of trees outside of the perception of the man driving the bulldozer.

This sounds indistinguishable from statism, which is the whole point the people who have been arguing against Nielsio have been trying to make.

there is no society possible which can meet the needs and wants of all the citizens.
sometimes conflicts of interests arise. the difference between a statist society and a free society is that a free society is much better suited to resolve these conflicts in a more just manner.

Look, it's completely pointless to discuss the details of a social order if you're unwilling to agree on basic principles of evaluating reality and human action.

Anarcho-capitalism is not pacifism. The problem of the state is not that is uses guns but how it uses guns.

If someone charges you with a samurai sword, you are justified in shooting him in the face. Is that statism? Why not? Under what principles do we evaluate who gets to do what?

i wouldn't have a problem with states if they were used to stop people from destroying valuable resources, instead of the opposite of expropriating and destroying property and human capital.

I'd say the same thing to you. Please, give us your basic principles of evaluating reality and human action.


But you do oh-so-like to tell us about non-aggression, which includes assertions like "taxation is theft" and "eminent domain is theft." Please elaborate on the difference between a state commandeering a piece of property such as a house with the intention to turn it into a road or strip mall with a homesteader bulldozing the trees pruned and fertilized by a native for increased productivity and converting that land into a road or a strip mall.

I cannot even begin to make sense of this question. It makes no sense at all.

Since some people here are so fond of GDP numbers, I thought I'd look up some numbers myself and figure out what the US GDP growth has been for the 1820 to 1920 and 1920 to 2010 periods, but this time, measured in gold.

Since from 1820 to 1933 the price of gold was fixed at $20, a nominal chart will do.

Thats such an easy one I can answer...

The homeowner gets compensated and can take his possessions, while the native gets run off as a trespasser and gets nothing, he can't even take the lumber that used to be his wild orchard (as that would be stealing from the more productive "transformer").

I hate to burst your bubble there duder but 1901-2000 was what we call "the 20th century."