NOT MY OWN IDEA(THE IDEA OF FAIRNESS & IT'S CREATION)

[atlashead]

When Political systems are formed, they should be formed on the basis of mutual gain.  When Roark says "the creator creates", the creator replies, "here is your $, creators".  The inventor of currency is due a piece of the pie BECAUSE they invented cooperation; the destroyer and opposite creation philosophy of altruism.

[BaalChatzaf]

27 minutes ago, atlashead said:

When Political systems are formed, they should be formed on the basis of mutual gain.  When Roark says "the creator creates", the creator replies, "here is your $, creators".  The inventor of currency is due a piece of the pie BECAUSE they invented cooperation; the destroyer and opposite creation philosophy of altruism.

currency or money  a universal unit of trade, valued for its convenience and divisibility  was "invented"  over 5000 years ago.  The inventor, (praises to him/her, whoever the inventor was) is long dead.  But we can do him homage by using his/her invention in the most productive way possible. 

[Peter]

I used the search words, “political system” and found this old letter which is interesting.

Peter

  

From: Eyal Mozes To: "" <objectivism Subject: OWL: cultural requirements for a free political system Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 08:24:17 -0500: James Donald's latest message brings up an issue on which I've never seen any extensive discussion in debates about anarcho-capitalism: what are the cultural requirements for a free political system - anarcho-capitalism or a minimal monopoly government - to function and to protect individual rights? Advocates of anarcho-capitalism often beg the question on this issue, when they argue by comparing how anarcho-capitalism would function in a society in which individual rights are universally recognized and respected to how a monopoly government functions today.

 

James Donald states that anarcho-capitalism would function well in a culture in which "natural law crimes" are "totally uncontroversial", and in which "for ordinary routine crimes there would be no disagreement".

 

To which my question is: in such a culture, why would you need anarcho- capitalism? Why would you need any institutions *at all* for protecting individual rights, whether competitive or monopoly? If there is no disagreement on crime, i.e. everyone with no exception understands individual rights and respects them, then no one would want to commit any crimes, and so protection from crime is not needed; and while there might still be disputes about contracts, so contract arbitration may still be needed, everyone would voluntarily comply with the decisions of any arbitrator that they have agreed to accept, so the use of retaliatory force for contract enforcement would also not be needed. The *only* function that might still be needed for the retaliatory use of force would be national defense.

 

This is the society Rand described in Galt's Gulch. In Galt's Gulch there is no police, no enforcement of contracts, no protection from crime, because none is needed. The only institution needed to protect individual rights is Galt's screen hiding the gulch from the outside, a form of national defense. The only way to achieve such a society is the way it is done in Atlas Shrugged: hand-pick the people allowed to enter the area, make sure (among other requirements) that all of them understand and respect individual rights before they are allowed to come in, and find some way to make sure outsiders cannot come in without permission. The result, as Rand recognized, is far from an ideal society; its inhabitants are eager to leave it and "go back to the world" as soon as they can; the reason is that any such society would necessarily be very small-scale, with a small number of people and therefore with limited opportunities for productive achievement.

 

A more reasonable cultural requirement for anarcho-capitalism may be a society in which individual rights are not *totally* uncontroversial, but nearly so; in which a rational philosophy of individual rights is so dominant that there may be an individual here and there who does not respect individual rights, or who believes in Marxism or in "pro-life" or in some other anti-individual-rights philosophy, but such people are so rare that there's not enough of them to organize into a group of any consequence. In such a society individual criminals may exist, but an organized crime organization on any scale could never form, and neither could a Marxist or a "pro-life" organization. I would concede that in such a culture, an anarcho-capitalist system could function effectively (with the caveat that it will have to find some way to handle national defense); but then so would a monopoly government. If individual rights are so universally understood that a "defense agency" that attacks individual rights could never form, then a monopoly government could never be taken over by politicians who try to increase its power, either.

 

If we consider instead a culture like today, in which the dominant philosophy does not understand or respect individual rights, then *no* truly free form of government can exist. The best that we can hope for politically, without improvements in the culture, is today's US, as the best approximation possible for a monopoly limited government, or today's Somalia, as the best approximation possible for anarcho-capitalism. Of the two, I definitely prefer the US.

 

But consider a more realistic cultural goal then getting individual rights universally understood and recognized; consider a culture in which a rational philosophy is dominant, and most people do explicitly or implicitly accept and respect individual rights, but there is still a significant minority that do not, that accept some form of religious extremism or other irrational ideology and consequently do not respect individual rights.

 

This is the sort of culture in which a monopoly limited government could function, and preserve people's freedom in the long term; a population that understands individual rights will quickly remove - by vote if possible, by arms if necessary - any politician who tries to increase the government's powers beyond its proper limits. But an anarcho-capitalist system could *not* function in such a culture. Since there would still be significant minorities that accept anti-individual-rights ideologies, they would be able to form their own defense agencies, arbitration agencies, etc.. So far I have seen anarcho-capitalists, when asked how their system would deal with such anti-individual-rights agencies, give one of three possible answers:

 

a. Deny that such agencies could possibly be formed, on the grounds that people would be too rational to want to form them; i.e. assume nearly universal agreement on individual rights. This answer concedes my point that near-universal agreement on individual rights is a cultural requirement for anarcho-capitalism.

 

b. Point out that defense agencies would have a strong economic incentives to compromise rather than get into violent fights. I.e. when these irrational minorities create their own defense agencies, the more rational agencies would have an incentive to compromise with them and allow them to violate their clients' rights rather than get into a fight. This answer amounts to an admission that, as long as individual rights are not almost universally accepted and respected, an anarcho-capitalist system cannot defend them.

 

c. (a direct contradiction to b) Claim that the more rational defense agencies would attack the irrational ones and force them to cease operations. The problem with this answer is that a "competing defense agency" that can forcibly stop its "competitors"' operations is a monopoly government; so this answer is not a defense of anarcho- capitalism, it is a repudiation of anarcho-capitalism. (This contradiction is present in its most obvious and blatant form in Randy Barnett's "The Structure of Liberty", as I pointed out in my 1998 review; http://

www.objectivistcenter.org/articles/emozes_review-structure-of-liberty.asp;

others are less obvious about it because they write less clearly than Barnett, but this contradiction is inherent in any attempt to defend anarcho-capitalism while claiming that agencies that violate individual rights will be stopped from operating.)

 

In sum, when we look at the cultural requirements for a free political system, the difference between anarcho-capitalism and a limited monopoly government becomes clear. Both have a strong cultural requirement, both would require great improvements in today's culture before they could function to fully protect individual rights. But the requirements for anarcho-capitalism are much stronger, and therefore much less realistic; a limited monopoly government requires that a rational philosophy supporting individual rights be dominant in the culture, but can function even if some significant minority continues to accept an irrational philosophy; whereas anarcho-capitalism requires that a rational philosophy be nearly universally accepted.