See this follow-up from Charles to my earlier post on Ken MacLeod’s post on the correlation between peace and statism. Charles makes, inter alia, the point that states aren’t all that peaceful once one includes the state’s aggressive actions toward its own citizens.
That also reminds me of the point I made somewhere that given an unbiased media, crime statistics ought to take government actions into account.
Tsk, tsk, don’t you know that if the president does something it’s not illegal by definition?
Anyway, my latest worry about anarchy is that it would be less efficient than government. After all, businesses profit the most when they abuse and exploit their workers. Isn’t it the case that those who are willing to hurt and oppress will always win out in an economic contest with those who respect others as equals?
businesses profit the most when they abuse and exploit their workers
Only in a hampered market, where competition is restricted. In a freed market, with no government-sponsored cartelisation, competition among employers would be higher, and firms that abused and exploited workers would lose employees to those who didn’t. And this process of increased worker empowerment would also lead to more worker-owned firms.
Isn’t it the case that those who are willing to hurt and oppress will always win out in an economic contest with those who respect others as equals?
That doesn’t seem to be the moral of Axelrod’s work. (Ignore the misunderstandings of Spencer and Rand.)
After all, businesses profit the most when they abuse and exploit their workers. Isn’t it the case that those who are willing to hurt and oppress will always win out in an economic contest with those who respect others as equals?
I would say these two things are only true when coercion is allowed, and the point of the brand of anarchy espoused here is to make sure coercion is not allowed.
Presumable workers, as economic actors themselves, have an incentive to “hurt” the bosses for their own profit. You make it sound like it’s a one-way extraction on a totally passive resource, and not a tug of war between two opposing sets of actors, both making money that contributes to the economy through either consumption or investment.
Of course, you could also collapse this duality by having the workers own the business themselves.
Even if the state vanished tomorrow I’m not sure that would end the dynamic of the ruthless and wicked having an advantage. For example worker-owned firms that successfully cheated and intimidated other worker-owned firms could get ahead, or the workers could become the new bosses. Like in law partnerships, it’s basically a worker-owned firm where there is a “senior” class of workers that lords it over the other workers.
To be honest it doesn’t seem like workers are as class-conscious as you make them sound. I never really bought into that whole social anarchist idea about a “tug of war” between workers and bosses causing business cycles either.
Like in law partnerships, it’s basically a worker-owned firm where there is a “senior” class of workers that lords it over the other workers.
Yes, but the law profession is a paradigmatic case of an artificially cartelised market. It would be a lot harder to keep the lower-level workers “down on the farm” if alternatives were more readily available — as they would be in a world without licensure requirements, for example.
I’m surprised the “state is violence” point wasn’t made earlier, but I guess the original discussion makes more sense if “order” is substituted for “peace” in those posts.