The government is the result of market forces. How can it be less accountable than the very market which instituted it and continues to support it?

Seriously?

Ummm, you brought up this point by bringing up the war in Iraq to show that the govt does bad things overseas. You really don't understand the point that private companies could (and even do) get away with the same activity due to market's appetite for the spoils or lethargy to oppose such activity (or influence of powerful forces through propaganda/advertising)?

Thread locked for 24 hours.

My position on this is not that "the state does X, so X is justifiable" but more like "the state does X, so X might be inevitable." If the state does X because that greatly benefits it, wouldn't firms also have an incentive to engage in such activities? If you say "no, because under AC there will be countervailing strong incentives not to", why couldn't these incentives have stopped states have emerging initially?

The best rebuttal I've heard to this is Bryan Caplan's path dependance argument - in the past, private firms would eventually end up as states, but nowadays that might not be the case due to changes in economies of scale. However, because states are already entrenched and can stop new entrants, we can't get to the new efficient equilibrium. I think this would be a good point to discus, since it avoids the pitfalls of holding contradictory views of what incentives exist for firms and for states.

I address arguments along these lines here. It's similar to why you would hire managers and periodically review their performance - it may be too costly to observe everything in the firm yourself. Now, there are principle-agent problems associated with this - you can't perfectly observe the managers and give them the right incentives, so they won't do as well as you would ideally hope. But in spite of this, it can still be worthwhile.

Consider this possibility:

* the state does X
* X is in fact inevitable

Does this imply that we should want to create a state that engages in X?

Really? Can you cite an example of "the state" making this claim?

No, not at all. Your argument that the justice system was a result of free markets is absurd. I used this example to show that just because something happens doesn't mean that it's the "free market result".

So far the cost of the Iraq war is approaching 700B. (Not included in this price is the initial "investment" in the equipment in the first place, which would drive the price even higher) Now let's say you're Exxon/Mobile. You have just about that much money as the largest company in the world.

Do you think that you'd spend your money trying to take the oil through violence? Of course not. You'd be bankrupt trying to get all that "cheap oil for it's customers". Thus, the Iraq war could not have occurred with Exxon leading the way. Only government could pull that off. Thus rebutting the claim that just because it happened, it's a result of the free market.

I hope that clears things up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpsBM1rmx-M

@ the 2 minute mark.

Another way of putting this would be: is government no different from private property? i.e. the idea that the government is a property holder and the citizens are it's clients/customers.

Well, I know of no market relationship where one of the parties can change the agreement/contract at any time without the other party agreeing to it. So to solve this you would have to say that the client party agreed beforehand to any change the other side would make. This is not an agreement but slavery. I certainly don't agree to any intrusion in my life and I haven't agreed to it before.

Then you can say: well, love it or leave it. This begs the question of who owns the property in the first place, because the argument can be turned around: why doesn't the 'government' leave?

Does government do this?

The phrase "monopoly on violence" (which is erroneous in any case, at least in America where the people bear arms) is very different from "ultimate decision making in all disputes, even those disputes involving itself."

Weird, when I read the thread title, I must have missed "Is private property perfect in every single way and provides limitless ponies to all or is it no different from Government?"

Please stick to the topic, as someone insisted on earlier in the thread.

No, you arent. You are saying it isnt INFINITELY accountable, or some other word that means similar to infinitely but also implies perfectly and ideally and bountifully.

But if this is your real argument, "No its not different from Government, because neither is a utopia" then ok, I agree. A cat is no different than a whale because neither is as big as the Earth. Cool.

finally vhawk itt

Damnit, much better.

Cute how you guys say this NOW, but would deny it with your dying breath if the theme of this thread were different.

Wat? In what possible context would I deny that the market and government are not a true dichotomy? Give me an example "theme" in which I would say this if that is your claim. For the record, I've said explicitly in the past that I am neither pro or anti state per se, but see it as a societal institution to administer certain functions, and in general, I am not convinced of a better structure than a "state" in serving those functions. But I don't know why I'm responding to you, because you're on a crusade. Unfortunately, the crusade isn't philosophically sound discussions but rather the promotion of a specific ideology, and philosophically consistent criticisms of its arguments are typically dismissed by certain ACists like you as "statist attacks", labeled as ignorance, ignored, or a combination thereof. "Cute how you guys say this NOW, but would deny it with your dying breath if the theme of this thread were different." What a joke of an argument.

It's very different.

The marketplace equivalent you're looking for is government official as trustee (on behalf of the electorate).

"The term trustee is also applied to someone held to a fiduciary duty similar in some respects to that of a trustee proper. For example, the directors of a bank may be trustees for the depositors, directors of a corporation are trustees for the stockholders and a guardian is trustee of his ward's property. Many corporations call their governing board a board of trustees, though in those cases they act as a board of directors."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trustee