Freedomain Radio

The only potential problem I see with the DRO model is if these companies are institutionalized like today where they have little to no liability. I think it will be best for there to be a voluntary social contract with the minimalist/anarchist approach for each individual, including the owners of these DROs, courts, insurance services, etc. that revolves around Social Meta-Needs such as non-anonymity(clear identities and information about individuals and their material properties), no violation of these persons and their properties, a network to publish these information of identities, properties, and charges of violation, choosing a DRO or court service to settle a violation, and restitution.

This will enable people to make optimal cost/benefit estimations when it comes to voluntary exchanges with DROs and other services, and persons.

But here's the problem. We look at DROs as replacement for various government institutions. But how can that work where governments and their institutions still exist, in Statist City? Do DROs also operate in Statist City? Or are they (as seems likely) prohibited there by governments that don't want the competition? And if their scope is not global or at least national, but has exceptions all over the place in these statist cities, how really can they work at all?

IIRC Stefan made exception for their operation, or for people operating outside their realm, as in some settlement in the boonies. But that was more in the form of a difficult exception to the rule. Instead we have a majority of people operating outside their reach (if outlawed by these governments). Does this break the DRO model? How would DROs interface with governments?

Paul47:

But here's the problem. We look at DROs as replacement for various government institutions. But how can that work where governments and their institutions still exist, in Statist City?

Murray Rothbard probably said it best when he called government a criminal organization writ large. These aren't social agents....these are gangs. A government's foundations rest on acts of crime (theft, assault, murder, kidnapping, making threats to do so etc..). They're gangs of thugs.

I don't see, or want, a DRO to replace a criminal organization. Given my choice, I want a DRO that makes me think of Taco Bell, Sprint, Honda, Wal-Mart, Ebay, Amazon, Bank of America, or my local "rent-a-cops" security company. I don't view DRO's as a drug cartel, the Yakuza, 8th street, bloods, crips... or anything of the like.

So I see this question of "how will DRO's work within a statist city?" as asking the same thing as "how will DRO's deal with crime?" My answer is that they get more customers, by dealing with crime better than their competitors.

As an exercise, lets stop calling it "Statist City," and try calling it "Crime City."

So, how will DRO's work in Crime City?

I don't see a DRO replacing government, but providing just a dispute resolution service that people are used of seeing government courts provide. What could replace governments are the permitted and unpermitted actions people agree to without the need of some representative or politician forcing it on them. I also see an incremental approach when it comes to alternatives to governments. People going private and underground little by little with legit services and social agreements.

Paul47:

But here's the problem. We look at DROs as replacement for various government institutions. But how can that work where governments and their institutions still exist, in Statist City? Do DROs also operate in Statist City? Or are they (as seems likely) prohibited there by governments that don't want the competition? And if their scope is not global or at least national, but has exceptions all over the place in these statist cities, how really can they work at all?

IIRC Stefan made exception for their operation, or for people operating outside their realm, as in some settlement in the boonies. But that was more in the form of a difficult exception to the rule. Instead we have a majority of people operating outside their reach (if outlawed by these governments). Does this break the DRO model? How would DROs interface with governments?

 

Sounds like a business opportunity to me.  

I think the most likely scenario is that DROs in proximity to statist communities will find a way to make it easier for their customers to do business with the statists than their competitors can.   So I would anticipate that the DROs will negotiate with local companies that provide the various services that their customers need or want.  For example, if you needed to drive a car on the statist communities roads, a DRO might negotiate with an insurance company within the statist community to provide it's members with the necessary coverage.  

As for the governments, the DRO may interface with them the way two governments negotiate foreign bases within their territories.   These are governed by Status of Forces agreements, which detail which laws will be handled by the visiting troops command structure and which will be handled by the local government.    So a DRO would negotiate a contract with the state that specified the same kinds of limits for its members.

In case there is any confusion, I don't want DROs to actually replace government gangs, I want them to replace the advertised roles of those gangs; e.g. providing justice.

My fear is that DROs that compete will simply be outlawed, in the same way that medical care from providers who are not licensed is outlawed, or insurance providers not part of the cartel are outlawed (spend some time looking at your state's laws concerning provision of insurance to get an idea). For DROs to work, they must be entirely free market operations, not controlled in any way by the state. But such are most likely to be simply outlawed.

Outlawed by governments, or other DRO's?

lowkey:

Then again I wonder how many long distance roads will be maintained.   It seems to me that long distance travel will become focused on trains & planes.  So as long as the train maintained ownership for all it's rails,  the rail company could limit any local communities interference to a customs/immigration check at the rail station  (Same for planes that owned their own airports).  

I would think that roads would be one of the easiest things to privatize.  Like all other large and expensive undertakings, all of the highways would eventually be consolidated under 3 or 4 major competitive companies that would come-up with various ways to pay for the upkeep of existing and development of new roads that would be tailored to your needs and usage.  Such as a toll for single use, a universal pass to access all of their roads, or local and regional passes to access the roads in your community. 

That way, if you rarely go out of town, you could pay a small monthly fee for use of the local roads and just pay the $5 toll, or whatever, to use the interstate when you go on vacation.  But, if you travel daily for business, you could get a universal, unlimited pass to use all the roads all the time.  Like a cell phone plan.

And if one company gets too much control and starts charging exorberant fees, then there are already several prototype personal flying devices that are going to be more and more economically feasible the more they try to charge.  They even have all electric flying cars that are supposed to hit the market next year for $150k.  That will only get cheaper, and the road companies will have to compete.

sensedata:

lowkey:

Then again I wonder how many long distance roads will be maintained.   It seems to me that long distance travel will become focused on trains & planes.  So as long as the train maintained ownership for all it's rails,  the rail company could limit any local communities interference to a customs/immigration check at the rail station  (Same for planes that owned their own airports).  

 

I would think that roads would be one of the easiest things to privatize.  Like all other large and expensive undertakings, all of the highways would eventually be consolidated under 3 or 4 major competitive companies that would come-up with various ways to pay for the upkeep of existing and development of new roads that would be tailored to your needs and usage.  Such as a toll for single use, a universal pass to access all of their roads, or local and regional passes to access the roads in your community. 

That way, if you rarely go out of town, you could pay a small monthly fee for use of the local roads and just pay the $5 toll, or whatever, to use the interstate when you go on vacation.  But, if you travel daily for business, you could get a universal, unlimited pass to use all the roads all the time.  Like a cell phone plan.

And if one company gets too much control and starts charging exorberant fees, then there are already several prototype personal flying devices that are going to be more and more economically feasible the more they try to charge.  They even have all electric flying cars that are supposed to hit the market next year for $150k.  That will only get cheaper, and the road companies will have to compete.

I agree with you on community and local roads.   The community roads will probably be maintained by a homeowners association and the local roads that connect the communities by business (who get funding from other businesses & road users).

However, long distance is a completely different game (like from Denver to Chicago).   It's already cheaper to load a semi trailer and put it on a train than it is to drive the same distance. 

Now if the highways between the two cities are managed by several different companies that would increase the costs for transporting, which would make the rail solution even more advantageous.   So I think commercial shipping would move more and more to rail.   After than happens the cost for passenger cars would get prohibitively expensive.

Of course, it's also fairly simple to load a car on a train for that same trip.   When I lived in Chile this was commonly done for vacations.  People would put themselves & their car on the train in Santiago and then ride all the way to the north or south end of the country and then drive back.

So it's mainly interstates that I don't see surviving.   They just don't seem cost-efficient and I doubt they could be competitive with existing alternative solutions.

Editted to add:  If it's not obvious already,  I live in the west and so my impression is affected by the large distances we have to travel to get anywhere.  It may be possible to maintain interstates in higher populated areas like the east coast.

I appears as though one premise of many of the posts in this thread is that both government and DRO jurisdiction is expressed in terms of geographic area.

Obviously, that is an essential feature of a government, but does this also apply to DROs as well?

There could very well be two (or more!) DROs operating within the same geographic area, and people who live in that area can decide which agency to subscribe to.  Assuming this particular community has remained standing for more than a few weeks, we can also assume in this example that the multiple agencies have compatible laws, etc.

Is that a correct assertion?  Or is there something about DROs that still requires a geographic component to how they define their jurisdiction in order to function?

If you can have multiple DROs in a given geographic area, especially if DROs are attracting customers at the fringes of the statist communities, I wonder how that affects some of the situations mentioned in this thread so far.

lowkey:

I disliked your violent examples in Part 2.    Particularly the 'Terminally Ill Assassins of America'.    That just seemed like it would fuel the fears that many have about anarchist communities living near them.

However, I do find your idea of multiple diverse communities to be a plausible one.   People are herd animals and will congregate with like minded individuals.  

Neil Stephenson used a relatively dark version of this idea in his books Snow Crash and the Diamond Age or A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer. 

<snip>

  I'd argue that "Snow Crash" wasn't that dark a version.  People were mostly secure, mostly wealthy compared to what most of the world currently experiences (sure it's "what only a Pakistani bricklayer considers prosperity" but most of the world are Pakistani bricklayers or equivelent).  The worst part of the world was the remnants of the USA which was small and relatively powerless (at one point someone introduces himself and has to tell everyone he's the President, he is then ignored).

Livemike:

  I'd argue that "Snow Crash" wasn't that dark a version.  People were mostly secure, mostly wealthy compared to what most of the world currently experiences (sure it's "what only a Pakistani bricklayer considers prosperity" but most of the world are Pakistani bricklayers or equivelent).  The worst part of the world was the remnants of the USA which was small and relatively powerless (at one point someone introduces himself and has to tell everyone he's the President, he is then ignored).

I consider it a pretty dark vision of the future because:

• Hiro Protagonist lives in a U-Store-It locker with a roomate and has to go across the street to use a pay bathroom.  And this isn't unusual.  The majority of the lockers were used this way in the story.  Poverty is normal and common.
  
• The existence of the pay bathroom is a revelation that there are many people living on the streets or in facilities without indoor plumbing creating the demand for this service. 
  
• Raven has a nuclear bomb wired into his heart that rode in the sidecar of his motorcycle.   This means the security services are more inclined to ignore his crimes and even assist him if it keeps him alive because that in the best interests of thier customers.   This shows that there can be no real justice because anyone with sufficient wealth and/or luck can become a one man superpower.  A second example of this was Reason (a man portable needle gatling-type rail gun), so it's far to assume that there are many people in the world who can literally do whatever they want and not be held accountable.  
  
• The fact that violent and isolationist phyles, like the white supremicists, existed and were relatively common revealed the relative instability of life.
• (from Diamond Age)  Bud is executed for a violent assault that the victim was expected to fully recover from (with medical assistance).  The description of the blood stained pier made it clear that this was a more common punishment than not.  And this was in one of the larger and more regulated phyles.  If this is the case in an "enlightened" phyle then how bad does it get in the violent ones?  Another example of the justice systems was Ravens "Poor Impulse Control" (on his forehead).   Physical disfigurement seems a particularly heinous punishment and no one is shocked by it.  This tells us that violent and abusive justice systems are probably more common than not in this world.
  
• From Bud & Harv in the Diamond age, we learn how common street gangs and violent crime is.
  
• There is extreme environmental damage as described by the required nanobot filters, and "forbidden" areas.
• Inter-phyle violence.  This was described more in the Diamond age.   Including multigenerational wars.
• Extreme imbalance in relative wealth of the poor and rich.   The rich have the technology and can afford to create temporary islands for a birthday party.   The truly poor aren't even on the streets,  they're pushed out of each community to live on the fringes and often into the forbidden areas.
• The market for Rat-Things (cyberized nuclear-powered air-cooled pit bulls) for security.   A world that has a market for that isn't very stable or safe.
• The fact that being prejudiced against other phyles was seen as good and normal.  
• There's no apparent sanctions or condemnation from the community for child abuse.  When Nell & Harv were abused by their mothers boyfriends there was no remedy except for Harv taking matters into his own hands.
• The two stories occur along the west coast of the US (Snow Crash) and Hong Kong & mainland China (Diamond Age).  However we are given a few hints that this is how the majority of the world is.
  

So it's not a pretty vision of the future.   It's not very rational and it can be extremely petty & vindictive.   But in spite of all these issues and more, the characters are able to achieve an amazing amount of actual freedom.  

I loved the descriptions of the remnants of the USA as a dying phyle that couldn't compete.   It just seems the perfect fate for the way the state is headed.

I disliked your violent examples in Part 2.    Particularly the 'Terminally Ill Assassins of America'.

This was actually intended to be a joke, the sort of thing that a few libertarians/anarchists come up with, sitting around a campfire getting drunkwhile talking about how screwed up things are getting. In fact that may be exactly the way it was thought up. Not to say it couldn't happen; the most dangerous kind of man is someone who has nothing left to lose, and the government seems determined to create as many of such people as possible.

As to worrying others about anarchism, I long ago gave up worrying about what nervous nellies might think about my ideas. They are impossible to satisfy, and they are also the reason we have the government we have. To Hell with 'em. If nervous nellies don't like anarchism, they should live somewhere other than Anarchyville.

People naturally find violent examples disturbing, but forget how much our institutions DO depend on violence, and I'd argue, MUST depend on violence, even institutions in a stateless society (where statist societies exist in parallel). Of course, nonviolent methods like mass non-compliance are always preferable when they can be made to work, but we mustn't rule out violence as a tool merely because it makes people squeamish. There is a difference between aggressive and defensive violence, after all.

Paul47:

I disliked your violent examples in Part 2.    Particularly the 'Terminally Ill Assassins of America'.

This was actually intended to be a joke, the sort of thing that a few libertarians/anarchists come up with, sitting around a campfire getting drunkwhile talking about how screwed up things are getting. In fact that may be exactly the way it was thought up. Not to say it couldn't happen; the most dangerous kind of man is someone who has nothing left to lose, and the government seems determined to create as many of such people as possible.

As to worrying others about anarchism, I long ago gave up worrying about what nervous nellies might think about my ideas. They are impossible to satisfy, and they are also the reason we have the government we have. To Hell with 'em. If nervous nellies don't like anarchism, they should live somewhere other than Anarchyville.

The problem that I have with the example is that it places violence as the primary response.  This just furthers the belief that might makes right.  

It's like Raven with his nuclear bomb (in Snow Crash),  he was above the law because of the potential effect of harming him.   Not because what he was doing was no harm to others or because he was within his rights to act as he was.

It's not hard to imagine that neighboring communities could come up with peaceful solutions to these problems that are inevitable.   In this case, the interaction could go something like this:

Officer:   Do you know why I pulled you over today?

Anarchist:   Not a clue.

Officer:   Well you don't have a valid license plate and I'm going to......

Anarchist:   Excuse me, but I think you've made a mistake.   I'm a resident of Anarchyville and we have an agreement with your community regarding these types of issues.   If you could please just call the number on this card,  they will explain it all to you.  Or you can radio the chief of police and he will do likewise.

Officer:  If you'll give me a minute, I'll do just that.........

Anarchist:   Take your time, but you should be aware that for every 15 minutes that you detain me contrary to the limits imposed by our agreement you personally owe me 1 gram of gold.   I'll be waiting and the clock is already running....

Now we have a nice peaceful solution to the same problem.

Paul47:

People naturally find violent examples disturbing, but forget how much our institutions DO depend on violence, and I'd argue, MUST depend on violence, even institutions in a stateless society (where statist societies exist in parallel). Of course, nonviolent methods like mass non-compliance are always preferable when they can be made to work, but we mustn't rule out violence as a tool merely because it makes people squeamish. There is a difference between aggressive and defensive violence, after all.

It seems to me that if we emphasize violence as a primary response to minor infractions then we risk creating a situation were regions would balkanize and inter-community violence would become the primary method for setting disputes.   In that world, the first thing communities will do is arm themselves so that they can defend themselves.   Then it's only a small step to encourage others to use those weapons in aggressive ways to remove the imagined threat of the communites they feared. 

On the other hand, if we provide examples of peaceful solutions working then we can reduce the fear that others feel.   Then it is more likely they will listen to other things we have to say.

The problem that I have with the example is that it places violence as the primary response.  This just furthers the belief that might makes right.

Silly me, I thought it does.  :-)

Keep in mind we are talking about fundamentally violent statist communities sharing the landscape with anarchist communities. Violence is going to be part of that picture, no matter what. Now I'm all for negotiating, but negotiation involves compromise, and you know where that goes - i.e. negotiating half your freedom away this time, and some more next time, etc. Also you have the problem, who are you going to negotiate with? Remember, there are no leaders in an anarchist community. Who can speak for every anarchist? There is no such person.

That's why I called the whole thing a bunch of "rules of thumb". That means it probably won't get negotiated; rather, it will work out naturally through self-interest or fear.

I don't know the book Snow Crash. I tried reading one of his books and couldn't get into it.

It seems to me that if we emphasize violence as a primary response to minor infractions then we risk creating a situation were regions would balkanize and inter-community violence would become the primary method for setting disputes.

I don't really think so, because most people don't like to be involved with violence, and they do like to be involved trading with others. I just don't buy the "Leviathan" argument.

You also have to worry about the point expressed in this quote by John Dickenson:

"Indeed nations, in general, are not apt to think until they feel; and therefore nations in general have lost their liberty: For as violations of the rights of the governed, are commonly...but small at the beginning, they spread over the multitude in such a manner, as to touch individuals but slightly. Thus they are disregarded...They regularly increase the first injuries, till at length the inattentive people are compelled to perceive the heaviness of their burdens. They begin to complain and inquire - but too late. They find their oppressors so strengthened by success, and themselves so entangled in examples of express authority on the part of their rulers, and of tacit recognition on their own part, that they are quite confounded."

In other words, the time to stop problems is to nip them in the bud when they start, not when the abuse has become established. Let's face it, the world won't end if a few cops get shot for playing the bully. Might cause the rest of them to straighten right up and stop bothering people.

As to providing good examples, it is my expectation that life in Anarchyville will be so much better due to lack of the oppressive weight of the state, that people won't take long to gravitate to them after they have proven to them that anarchy actually can work, unlike what the propaganda says. So statist communities will simply depopulate. But I could be wrong there; there may be a significant segment of humanity that just needs rulers.