[Takeda Shingen]

Originally Posted by Skybird

You have not read the link on Private Law Society. A state is not needed to have a security service working for the overwatching and monitoring of rules that the local community agreed on. It's just that the community is small enough to decide int he rules itself in a more basic-democratic understanding, and the laws not formed up by a government. Instead of giving a monopole for force and executive power to a political caste that in a democracy, for the already explained reasons, has an inbuilt interest to abuse its power due to the limited time it is available to it and because politicians have no private property at stake but only waste the property of other people, security becomes a service item that you order and pay for like you pay a craftsman for painting your wall, a baker to bake bread or a trainer to train you in something. This is what is meant with private law society. Hoppe refers to it also as "natural order".

So when that murderer runs we've got to hire Skybird's private bounty service to hunt this man down and exact justice upon him. And I assume that we'd have to pay in gold, because there is no system of organized currency. The only resource that my immediate locale has is lumber, so I suppose the only way I am going to survive in this new utopia is to become a logger. With only four households (communities must be as small as possible), we're not going to have a whole lot of logging output. So what happens when we can't afford the bounty hunters? Moreover, how does the next feudal kingdom down the road react when corporate assassins that they didn't hire arrive and shoot the place up as they go after that murderer?

It doesn't work.

Obviously, it cannot be allowed that companies providing such services become so big that they no longer offer their service under the valid rules, but that they can actually make the rules. In other words, the corruption of power and the forming of monopoles. Both size of companies and size of communities must stay that limited that the population of the community can oversee the general developments and actions taken, and can then vote against something people do not like by moving into a neighbouring community with different rules. What you get is a competition between communities to be attractive for people.

If companies have to stay small, where is the power coming from? Who owns the infastructure? Or are we all supposed to go neo-luddite? How are roads going to get cleared? Are 1500 little feudal kindgoms each going to be responsible for 1/4 of a mile of the highway that intersects their territory? How are four families supposed to clear these roads ourselves?

It is of the essence I think, that we say good-by to this idea of thinking that bigger always is better. It is not. The bigger the system, the more complex it is, the more options there are for hiding corruption and abuse. Transparency depends on system dimensions that are such that it does not take an elitist caste or informed insiders to "interpret the signs", but that people with ordinary solid education can see the links and contexts, can see how the action of others of their community effects themselves, and how their own actions effect the others. This alone sets rigorous size limits to communities.

Service companies must be prevented form becoming so big that they can form monopoles that enables them to dictate the conditions to the community. while people can vote with their feet and move elsewhere, monopolist companies of several communities may be tempted to form up a cartel, a mega-monopoly that dictates conditions to not just one but several communities. Obviously, this is no desirable condition.

As I hinted at above, you're going to need big companies, and more than a few of them.

Service like a "privatized police" are needed only for the very obvious violation of common sense rules in this model. Many other rules for business contracts, social interaction and social self-organisation can be left to the participating people in place, it doe snot take a state to tell them what rules they must follow. Communities can only blossom when sufficient people want to live min them, it is in the very own interest of communities to be attractive for people, and thus: to compete with others.

The problem with this islands of humanity argument is that no community can create what it needs to survive. Power, water, etc. It just doesn't work.

I took me quite some time to come around to an old argument by Steve which he raised very early, in some forgotten discussion years ago. Steve said something like this: state all nice and well, but why trusting in that politicians are the better managers, enabling them to define good and solid rules of regulations? He was and is right. Even before that, Neal once said something like that, too, asking me why I thought that politicians would be handling business rules better than the corrupted economic leaders that at that time I was attacking. Next he perplexed me with the simple question why people should pay taxes (which back then I still took for granted...) Hehe, those were the days... Now, Hoppe in general questions that in a democracy politicians ever could have an interest to serve the common good, the common sense reason, the bets longterm interest. He argues it is the explicit interest of democratically elected politicians to abuse the system. Because they do now own its properties, but have only limited time in which they can make use of its resources. So they make hay while the sun shines. They make expensive promises that should get them reelected (as long as the people do not realise that debts and interests in the future will be even ore expensive). They bribe the people with giving them back taxes - that before had been robbed from the people on grounds of that the state should have the authority to do so. Why should it? Why not leaving the question whether that school gets build, that highway or railway gets build, to those people being effected by it - the people living right in place?

This is a contradiction in itself. Communities have to be as small as possible, but then they have to not only build schools, but infastructure as well? I have to build a railroad? Do I have to pay for the trains? Who maintains this infastructure? Companies cannot get too big. Communities cannot get too big. It doesn't work.

International relations, some may say. Well, everybody is free to travel, to visit places that he wants to visit and where his presence is tolerated. But international globalised trade: must we build TVs in Japan and have them shipped around the globe to the US - can the Us manufacturers not build TV themselves? Why must butter from Ireland be delivered to Holland, Dutch butter to Germany, German butter to Denmark, and Danish butter to Ireland? Why must German potato farmers fear for their existence when their sales drop because somebody thinks it is a clever idea to help the Egyptians by buying Egyptian potatoes and ship them to Germany? Germany is drowning in potatoes, the whole damn EU does. What kind of frikking madness is all this? "Freedom"...? No, parasitism. The parasitism coming from people forcing themselves into the middle position. A wants to buy from B, but here comes C, taking A's money and a fee and handing the money to B, and taking B's item for a fee and giving it to A. That is nice where A and B live a good distance apart and C can offer the needed transportation. But it still only makes sense when B's goods and items are something that A does not have and cannot produce. Sending Green tea from asia to Europe, makes sense, we cannot plant green tea in Middle Europe. But shipping butter from Denmark to Austria makes no sense at all or potatoes from Egypt to Germany makes no sense at all. International trade should focus on items that are rare, while items everybody has or can produce himself must not be shipped around at all.

The rules by which this form of trade is handled, again do njot need government, but can be organised and settled by the participating partners: the Japanese regional community producing the tea, and the European local community ordering it. The shipping company can settle the contract for transportation with the partner in negotiations that need to government and no politicians. If people think it becomes too expensive, they will not agree to a deal. Where is a state needed that robs taxes and claims the right to limit people'S freedoms? The longer i think about it, the less I can see any such need.

If I want to order Japanese tea, I go online using Verizon's internet service (a big company), purchase from the company's website, and the tea is shipped using a carrier (another big company). To do this in feudal land, I have to inquire by word of mouth to a regional trade company, who in turn must inquire with the next and the next and the next until we reach someone who deals with Japanese goods. So now we have taken something in three steps and turned it into dozens of steps. I might get my tea in a few years, provided I can get that railroad built. It doesn't work.

Like democracy always leads to growing totalitarianism and socialism, capitalism always wants to turn into monopolism, one has to ensure that this does not happen, with enforcing conditions for basic minimums of competition never beeing bypassed or eroded and violated. Transparency< and limited dimension/size of companies and communities and administrating structure I consider to be vital here.

Even cases of military defence against the inevitable evil-doers and conquerers can be handled this way, though there is a risk. A huge cooperation between many regional communities is needed to organise a military defence effort powerful enough to repel any thread by an aggressor. The mere size of such an effort holds risks to the construction of communities that are designed to be not as big but as small as possible. We recall the times when mercenary armies in Europe helped to keep wars alive and prevent peace, because thy made their living by fighting wars, not earning money when there was peace. So, there is a critical point. Right now, I have no satisfying complete solution. I could point at the Hanse alliance that was a very powerful trading alliance of over 200 cities around the Baltic with my beloved city of Lübeck being the capital - but also maintained the privatised military forces needed to protect itself and its trading routes.

You'd better find a more than satisfying and complete solution, because I think that you've forgotten just how bloody this period was. Expect lots of violence.