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Philosophy, Economics and Justice / Re: The Case Against Anarcho-Capitalism.
« on: May 12, 2013, 11:55 pm »
Thanks for the thorough reply, pine. 
It's a lot to digest, but I'll hit on a few points...
Anarchy as I understand it is a lack of official political authority, but it isn't necessarily leaderless, so I agree about the transition from state to corporations, which would be inevitable with anarcho-capitalism. Of course, corporations and governments already collude for their mutual benefit, and against the public interest, which is why I say, under any scheme that removes the government but preserves private heirarchies: say hello to the new boss, same as the old boss.
IMO, the greatest source of suffering in the world isn't government, but power differentials that allow some people to abuse others. There's really no way to solve that problem. If you enforce egalitarianism, then the enforcer becomes the boss with power. At best, we have invented mechanisms to mitigate abuse: in a democracy, you vote out bad leaders, and in the market, you vote with your wallet. Both mechanisms are imperfect, of course, but this is the best we've come up with in thousands of years of experimenting with how to run societies.
It seems to me that technology is neutral. It can be used just as easily for good or evil. Technology supports the Network, if I understand your term correctly, through things like anonymity networks and cryptography, which give people freedom from hierarchy, but it also gives state agents better tools to spy on their citizens.
It's bad enough that people are volunteering to carry a snitch around in their pocket, since most phones comes with GPS devices that report your exact location to some corporation that won't think twice about handing that info over to government agents, but even if you elect not to use that technology, they want to put cameras around the cities and record license plates as cars drive by.
2 steps forward, 2 steps back.
Technology increasingly gives people the power to destroy each other. 2000 years ago, all you had was a sword, and 500 years ago, all you had was a musket. Now you can fly a plane into a building and take out 3000 people at a time. Someone just wrote the blueprints for a pistol, which a 3D printer can mass produce. What happens when those printers can produce more powerful weapons?
What happens when someone can write malware that takes out the energy grid or water system across a geographical area that contains tens of millions of people?
If we get to a world where every human has the power to eliminate the entire species, our only defense will be the self-preservation principle of mutually assured destruction. But that requires rational actors, and if there's one crazy person in the world...
That's a scary thought, and I don't know how we could solve that problem, except through massive regulation of the technology. It's the reason why we don't let any nutball own a tank or missile launcher today.
Yep, our greatest asset is the ability to store and transfer information, so each person doesn't have to rediscover the most basic facts about our world. We can stand on the shoulders of giants instead.
And they will beat rest of us senseless too.
There's good news, though. Did you know that statistically, your chances of dying in armed conflict today are 90% lower than they were a century ago? And now we have nuclear weapons and ICBMs, while back then they had cannons and rifles. The world has gotten a lot less violent, and that's a great thing. Our only chance to survive as a species is to continue that trend.
The interesting question is why have we gotten less violent. It isn't just mutually assured destruction. I think it's because global trade makes us dependent on each other, and forces us to work together rather than against each, but also, global communication makes us sympathetic to each other. When you can see people in Haiti suffering after an earthquake, because the live video is fed into a box in your living room, that makes them more than just nameless, faceless "others". They are people like you and me, deserving of moral consideration. Global communication is killing the tribalism of the past (which manifested variously as nationalism, religious and ethnic pride, etc).
Most importantly, global communication is expanding our moral circle. The only way we're going to survive as a species is to progress past our ape phase.
It's a lot to digest, but I'll hit on a few points...It should be noted that I completely disagree with the concept of anarchy as being "without leaders" or without "hierarchy" or structure. It is the difference between one dominant hierarchy (like state communism) and many many networked forms of it (like a market with its corporations). I consider an absence of leadership to be completely non-describable and fundamentally unnatural. Any power vacuum is a very dangerous thing in all places and times, which is why people intuitively rebel at the idea of anarchy (or too strict hierarchies, like a caste system, because the system doesn't produce enough entropy to be healthy).
Anarchy as I understand it is a lack of official political authority, but it isn't necessarily leaderless, so I agree about the transition from state to corporations, which would be inevitable with anarcho-capitalism. Of course, corporations and governments already collude for their mutual benefit, and against the public interest, which is why I say, under any scheme that removes the government but preserves private heirarchies: say hello to the new boss, same as the old boss.
IMO, the greatest source of suffering in the world isn't government, but power differentials that allow some people to abuse others. There's really no way to solve that problem. If you enforce egalitarianism, then the enforcer becomes the boss with power. At best, we have invented mechanisms to mitigate abuse: in a democracy, you vote out bad leaders, and in the market, you vote with your wallet. Both mechanisms are imperfect, of course, but this is the best we've come up with in thousands of years of experimenting with how to run societies.
If you look at most advances in technology of recent years, I think it is reasonable to suggest it supports the Network, not the Hierarchy.
It seems to me that technology is neutral. It can be used just as easily for good or evil. Technology supports the Network, if I understand your term correctly, through things like anonymity networks and cryptography, which give people freedom from hierarchy, but it also gives state agents better tools to spy on their citizens.
It's bad enough that people are volunteering to carry a snitch around in their pocket, since most phones comes with GPS devices that report your exact location to some corporation that won't think twice about handing that info over to government agents, but even if you elect not to use that technology, they want to put cameras around the cities and record license plates as cars drive by.
2 steps forward, 2 steps back.
We are generally biased as a species to think of the future in a dystopian way, and indeed I think that there will definitely be civil strife and war concerning this transition, but ultimately the networked form shall result in a more advanced world. So simultaneously the future is bright and there will be horrible (Net)wars.
Technology increasingly gives people the power to destroy each other. 2000 years ago, all you had was a sword, and 500 years ago, all you had was a musket. Now you can fly a plane into a building and take out 3000 people at a time. Someone just wrote the blueprints for a pistol, which a 3D printer can mass produce. What happens when those printers can produce more powerful weapons?
What happens when someone can write malware that takes out the energy grid or water system across a geographical area that contains tens of millions of people?
If we get to a world where every human has the power to eliminate the entire species, our only defense will be the self-preservation principle of mutually assured destruction. But that requires rational actors, and if there's one crazy person in the world...
That's a scary thought, and I don't know how we could solve that problem, except through massive regulation of the technology. It's the reason why we don't let any nutball own a tank or missile launcher today.
It is like the heart beat of human civilization, it is what makes our species the most successful I think, that we have optimized this process by virtue of being able to communicate directly.
Yep, our greatest asset is the ability to store and transfer information, so each person doesn't have to rediscover the most basic facts about our world. We can stand on the shoulders of giants instead.
I think all that needs to be done, is for a great clash to begin with any two great State powers. Once accomplished, they shall beat each other senseless, adhering to old memes about state power and nationalism.
And they will beat rest of us senseless too.
There's good news, though. Did you know that statistically, your chances of dying in armed conflict today are 90% lower than they were a century ago? And now we have nuclear weapons and ICBMs, while back then they had cannons and rifles. The world has gotten a lot less violent, and that's a great thing. Our only chance to survive as a species is to continue that trend.
The interesting question is why have we gotten less violent. It isn't just mutually assured destruction. I think it's because global trade makes us dependent on each other, and forces us to work together rather than against each, but also, global communication makes us sympathetic to each other. When you can see people in Haiti suffering after an earthquake, because the live video is fed into a box in your living room, that makes them more than just nameless, faceless "others". They are people like you and me, deserving of moral consideration. Global communication is killing the tribalism of the past (which manifested variously as nationalism, religious and ethnic pride, etc).
Most importantly, global communication is expanding our moral circle. The only way we're going to survive as a species is to progress past our ape phase.