Homesteads? Placer claims? Constructive notice?
Posted on 02/20/2006 6:24:40 AM PST by Shalom Israel
In a recent article, Carl Milsted uses Rothbard to argue it would be permissible to use force to make people pay for a service of which their benefit is at least double its cost. His conclusion is that it is reasonable, and even preferable, to establish a minimalist state if it is to people's advantage.
As has already been argued by N. Stephan Kinsella, he totally misses Rothbard's point. Furthermore, he fails to show why people would not choose to voluntarily pay for services which would benefit them double, as has been pointed out by Bob Kaercher.
Even so, I wish to offer another analysis of Milsted's reasoning. His article is a good example of why statists always seem to get it wrong — and why they always fail to understand what we're talking about. The bottom line is that they fail to realize the costs of force due to their unwillingness to see the state for what it is. I will therefore use Milsted's own example to shed light on his fundamental mistake.
Milsted takes the case of national defense, which is commonly considered an institution that would face the free rider problem if supplied on the market. Argues Milsted: "suppose the majority assesses a tax on everyone to spread the burden of supporting the new defense system. This is theft of the minority. However, suppose that the economies of scale are such that this tax is less than half of what people would have had to pay for defense on their own."
That's the argument, plain and simple. If it is morally permissible to steal when the victim is compensated double, the equation seems to fit. Well, let's look into this in more detail and see if it really does.
First, consider a situation where everybody benefits, say, $10,000 on a yearly basis from being protected by a national defense. That would mean, if the premise is correct, that it would be morally permissible to force costs of no more than $5,000 on everybody.
Were it a company supplying a service worth $10,000 to each of its customers paying only $5,000 for it, this would be easy. Anyone willing to pay the $5,000 would get the service, and the costs associated with administration and so forth would have to be covered by the $5,000 paid. But Milsted argues the $5,000 should be taxed, and that makes it much more difficult.
First of all, we know state-run businesses and authorities (especially if they are monopolies) tend to be much less efficient than private enterprises. That means people in Milstedistan would get less than they would in a free market society. But even so, there is still the cost of coercion totally neglected by Milsted in his article.
Forcing people to pay for a service means there will always be someone who tries to avoid paying or even refuses to pay. So "we" (i.e., the state) need to invest in collection services to get the money. Now, let's say Murray, who is one of the people we're trying to coerce, goes out to buy a rifle and then declares that he's "anti-government, so get the hell off my property." Perhaps he even threatens to kill the collection agents. Dealing with him would take a whole lot more out of the budget, meaning there is even less to provide for the defense (which is the reason we're in business in the first place).
But that's not all. Let's say Murray won't give us the money no matter how much we ask or threaten him. We will simply have to take it by force, so we need to invest in the necessary tools and we go out to hire a dozen brutes to do the forcing. (More money down the drain … ) It is already pretty obvious we're in a very expensive business; there will not be much defense left if there are a lot of Murrays in our society.
Now imagine our hired brutes go down the street to Murray's house and knock on his door. He sticks his rifle out the window and shouts something about having the right to his property and that he will shoot to kill. Anyway, the brutes try to open his door only to find it is locked and barred. They will have to break in to finally get their hands on Murray's cash.
Our small army goes back to their van to get their tools, then returns to break down Murray's door. Going inside, they manage to avoid all the bullets Murray is firing and they tie him up and put him in the closet. They eventually find that he does not have any valuables and that he keeps his cash in a locked safe. So they have to break it to get the money.
Now we have a problem. To make this operation morally permissible, the benefit to Murray, which we know is $10,000, must be at least double the cost forced on him. The cost is now a whole lot more than the cost of the national defense; it includes administration and collection costs, hiring the brutes and their tools, as well as the broken door and safe, and the time and suffering (and perhaps medical expenses) Murray has lost while we were stealing from him. How much do you think is left from the original $5,000 to invest in a national defense? Not much.
What if Murray suffers from paranoia and therefore had invested $1,500 in an advanced special security door and $2,000 in an extra security safe? Then the total cost of simply getting into Murray's safe would probably exceed the $5,000 we are "allowed" to steal. What then? Should we break in anyway since it is a mandatory tax, only to give him a check to cover what's above the $5,000 mark? That doesn't sound right.
But on the other hand, if we just let him be, more people would do the same as Murray only to get off, and we would have a huge problem on our hands. This is a typical state dilemma: it costs too much to force money from some people, but it would probably be much more "expensive" in the long run not to. It's a lose-lose situation.
Now, what if Murray is very poor and doesn't have the $5,000? Then we would have to take whatever he's got and make him work off the rest. We need to get the $5,000 to cover our expenses of the national defense, and we have the right to take that amount from him. It could, of course, be argued he couldn't possibly benefit $10,000 from a national defense if he has no money and no property. If we trust Austrian economics, that might very well be correct; the benefit of national defense would, like any other product or service, be valued subjectively and thus the benefit would be different for each and every individual.
If this is true, it means we have an even greater problem: the state can rightfully levy costs of a maximum of half the subjective benefit enjoyed. Well, that's a task that would keep an army of Nobel Prize winners busy for a while. If possible, I wonder how much that would cost in the end.
This is the problem statists face on an everyday basis when discussing philosophy and politics. It is easy to make nice equations and formulas, and theorize on great systems and cheap solutions neatly enforced by the state. But when consistently failing to realize the costs of coercion it makes their reasoning fundamentally flawed. Just scratching the surface reveals they really have no clue whatsoever.
Per Bylund works as a business consultant in Sweden, in preparation for PhD studies. He is the founder of Anarchism.net. Send him mail. Visit his website. Comment on the blog.
I fully understand the concept of a few guiding principles that can be extended to determine the rules of a 'moral' society. This isn't unique to the libertarians. My issues with this process is that when the principles result in an unworkable society, then one must reject the process.
I concede that raising the stakes raises the specter of defeat, and hence calls private defense into question. There are several ways to answer you.
One, I could raise the stakes still more--as I already did earlier, anticipating this--and say, "What about Iran armed with a sun-killer bomb? What would the US military do?" The answer is, of course, that it would kiss its arse goodbye, like the rest of us.
Or two, I could observe that the Pinkertons will have nukes. After all, we're postulating that government doesn't exist in the US (but does everywhere else); that implies there will be no NRC, and hence nobody to forbid the Pinkertons' building nukes. Luckily, the Pinkertons will have a disincentive to get uppity, since Securitas and Hagana will also have some nukes. And, of course, so will Steve Ballmer and, just to keep up with the joneses, so will Larry Ellison.
Or three, I could ask exactly what motive these nations will have to nuke the US which, remember, hasn't invaded anyone since government was dissolved in the Libertarian Bloodless Coup. Like Switzerland, we would be a desirable trading partner; also like Switzerland, we would be a quiet neighbor. That being the case, your proposed nuclear threat is based on the assumption that we're dealing with a madman like Ahmedinejad or Brezhnev. Of course, we might well come to face such a madman. However, I'll point out that Russia and China will deter Ahmedinejad, since their interests do not align with his, and US trade is the main thing keeping China from starvation--especially since the 100% free trade policy after the LBC...
Your General Re Defense Division is not going to build its missile defense from scratch in a year ...
Nor is Iran going to attack in a year. The dissolution of all government after the LBC will, of course, result in a flood of classified technology hitting the open market. It will take the Chinese a while to digest it all, and meanwhile the Americans will be marketing it like crazy, as will the Japanese. Given their love-affair with technology, the Japanese would be selling personal defense force-fields within the decade; kids will be hacking their iPods to use as subspace communicators. Some weirdo at MIT will invent the phaser. In the meantime, Taiwan, Tibet and Hong Kong will all declare full statehood and independence from China, leaving the middle kingdom with its hands quite full.
The standing army raises its ugly head once again,,,
You keep developing amnesia, and forgetting that every soul in America is armed--with phasers, in fact--and will fight to the last man. If all else failed, and China nuked the crap out of the US, they'd still have to kill every breathing soul on the continent before the war was over. Which raises the question, what operational goal calls for complete extermination of your best market--the one keeping your nation from starvation? The militian obviates a standing army, precisely as the 2nd amendment intended.
only this time there's no civilian oversight beyond what the Board of Directors think
...as opposed to the amazing civilian oversight that takes place now? Thfffpt! Anything interesting going on today is classified, friend. They could tell you or me about it, but then they'd have to kill us. We oversee nothing of any significance.
And to provide 3rd party enforcement of covenants, conditions, restrictions, easements, foreclosures, reversionary rights, etc.
Homesteads? Placer claims? Constructive notice?
Homesteads predate government. They were actually invented by Thag Bønszjeld, when he raised his atl atl menacingly and growled, "This Thag cave! Thag find! Thag find!"
LOL. So then, if nobody actually wants or needs armies, then armies will simply cease to exist under your proposed system, right? If nobody actually wants or needs courts, then courts will cease to exist. If nobody wants or needs roads, roads will cease to exist. And so forth.
Is there anyone here who actually believes that to be the case? Do you? I rather doubt it, considering how much effort you've put into persuading people that private defense systems are not necessarily inferior to public provisions for defense. So who is this mysterious person or persons out there, the one who neither wants nor needs armies to defend him and his property, and yet gets billed for it anyway? You? Are you the one who thinks that defense is unnecessary? Is there anyone at all, other than the hopelessly naive, who thinks that armies are unnecessary?
But, of course, there is no such person, is there? Even you recognize the need for defense, I think. Which says to me that you are, in fact, arguing against national defense on behalf of people who don't really exist - the hypothetical people who don't need armies to defend them against other armies. Or you're arguing on behalf of those silly enough to actually believe such a thing, even though you yourself don't happen to be quite that silly. I think that you want armies and courts and roads and what-have-you as much as any sensible person, but you apparently, for whatever reason, don't want to have to pay for them. What can I say? Welcome aboard, fellow free-rider ;)
How long does the homesteader have to work the land in order to claim it?
What in blazes are you talking about? I'm talking about the hundreds of dollars I personally pay toward the Ponzi scheme called "Social Security", as well as the substantial sum exacted yearly to pay farm subsidies to Rupert Murdoch. Not to mention another several hundred personally paid by me toward bridges to nowhere in Alaska, six-lane highways connecting one-horse towns in the midwest, Mafia-owned road construction crews in PA... need I go on? It may be news to you, but if I decide not to pay the something-like $10K bill they give me yearly, I'll go to jail.
So lets get this straight. You see no moral difference between me having my driveway paved, and someone threatening to imprison me if I don't give them money to pave someone else's driveway? If so, I see why we aren't connecting: you have no morals at all.
It may shock you to learn it, but many cultures have addressed this problem, and licked it, all without any help from any lawyers at all. I knew that'd blow your mind.
Every man in a county, a town, a city, or a State is deeply interested in the education of the children of the community, because his peace and quiet, his happiness and prosperity, are largely dependent upon the intelligence and moral training which it is the object of public schools to supply to the children of his neighbors and associates, if he has none himself.The officers whose duty it is to punish and prevent crime are paid out of the taxes. Has he no interest in maintaining them, because he lives further from the court-house and policestation than some others?
Clearly, however, these are matters of detail within the discretion, and therefore the power, of the law-making body within whose jurisdiction the parties live.
KELLY v. CITY OF PITTSBURGH, 104 U.S. 78 (1881)
TANSTAAFL
Through law and coercive force employed against those who refuse to abide by the consensus solution.
You apply the phrase interestingly. Apparently, if I cram a lunch down your unwilling throat, and assuming you don't actually choke to death, I can then bill you, and you'll feel obligated to pay. Cool.
You use the term "law" quite oddly. Apparently, any act of self-defense is an act of "law", even before the Greeks and Romans had invented the subject in its roughly modern form, or before codifiers such as Hammurabi came along. For kicks, you're compounding this by equating self-defense and robbery, as both "coercive force".
If you don't want to pay for the buffet, leave the restaurant.
TANSTAAFL
Defining a term of years for a homestead claim to become effective is an act of self-defense?
Beg that question.
Errr, I don't have a crystal ball here, my man. We've been discussing the national defense for a few dozen posts now - if you want to drop the (rather silly) idea of turning the Pentagon over to mall security, I'm all for it, but try to give everyone a heads-up at least.
In any case, if you want to argue for smaller government, you should definitely do so - you'll find precious few here who disagree with you on that. On the other hand, the no-government argument is a non-starter for, oh, about 99.997% of the world, this board included, so rather than slogging through all that to get to a kernel of a sensible argument for smaller government, I suspect that most folks who might be inclined to listen to a smaller-government argument simply tuned you out a while ago. Lead with your strong foot first, is my suggestion - anarcho-capitalism is simply not on the table, regardless of how immoral you find the concept of the state to be. Sorry.
WTF are you talking about? Extension of service in a declared emergency is part of the original contract. The failure of some people to read the fine print does not invalidate the principles of contract.
You came late to the thread, so it's not surprising you didn't read #93, in which I anticipated this argument. You are essentially walking up to a man who is in his own yard minding his own business, and trying to force him to eat. He refuses. You then try and force him to pay anyway. He refuses either to eat or to pay. So you attempt to force him from his property, claiming that his land is now inside your restaurant.
TANSTAAFL
Heinlein is of course rolling in his grave to see the phrase used as a defense of forcible expropriation. But it ain't logical. You're trying to force people to pay for things they never ordered.
Enjoying the benefits created our society and its laws while demanding that he continue recieving them for free.
TANSTAAFL
That is precisely my issue with Milsted's arguments, and while I don't agree completely with all of the libertarian's ideas nontheless it is weighing those ideas against Milsted's assertions that make the flaws in his arguments apparent.
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