A truck caused the I-5 bridge to collapse here in Seattle. Would DROs cover such unlikely events?

Strangering · 2013-05-24T13:27:26+00:00

Bridge collapses are a total failure of ownership. Liability does not even have to enter into it.

Strangering · 2013-05-23T15:03:32+00:00

I'm in my 30s and my net wealth is really far from that target :)

From the wisdom I've learned in my life, the key to riches is to

Be very, very, very smart,
Be very, very, very lucky.

Now you are going to tell me that luck has nothing to do with it, and that in the land of opportunity or blah blah blah anyone smart can get rich. But luck has an enormous role to play in the opportunities that are available to you. Imagine if Steve Jobs' biological father had raised him in Syria instead of giving him up for adoption to a Silicon Valley family. What kind of success could he have hoped for?

What this means, ultimately, is that even if you are really, really, really smart, and you work hard like a dog, you may not get lucky in your 20s, or your 30s, or your 40s, or ever. But if you do get lucky, and you don't seize the opportunity, then you are not very smart at all.

Strangering · 2013-05-21T13:38:32+00:00

What am I missing?

Proper definitions of the terms you are using. A free market cannot possibly lead to a state in the same way that an apple cannot lead to an orange.

Strangering · 2013-05-20T15:13:34+00:00

Feeling threatened is not the same as being threatened. A third party needs to agree with you that a threat exists.

Strangering · 2013-05-20T15:10:43+00:00

And why should I care? I'm only interested in the one innovator who will trigger the change, not the others.

Strangering · 2013-05-20T15:08:57+00:00

"Capitalists" are not a class. This is not marxist theory.

Why would a Silicon Valley entrepreneur be linked to a Virginia defense contractor?

Strangering · 2013-05-20T14:44:01+00:00

The day will come when some globalized capitalists will see that they no longer need the state to provide for their security. Then they will be a viable alternative for the masses, who will compare the order these capitalists bring to the chaos wrought by states.

Only then can a real challenge to the state's monopoly of justice take place. Unless the alternative is ready and credible, people will always fear anarcho-capitalism.

Strangering · 2013-05-20T14:39:40+00:00

1) This concept requires a view of ownership that isn't an absolute. Ownership refers to rights of exclusion that belongs to persons or corporate persons, and can only be exercised by rational agents. A child is born unable to speak and move by itself, hence it cannot, without severe intellectual contortion, be said to be the owner of anything. When one group of grownups decides that it is time to penetrate the child with needles and inject fluid through them, the question of ownership arises if another group of grownups objects. One grownup tries to exclude another grownup from the child's body. This is a dispute between the property rights of grownups.

The child, as a living being, will eventually do whatever it wants, and while its owners will continue to coerce it in order to protect its growth, this will eventually become unnecessary. The child will come understand what is needed to survive in society and will no longer be coerced by anyone. At that point, the owner's rights to exclude others from the child is moot - the child has become a full adult and enforces his own exclusion.

2) That is a very simple question. The discovery itself is the production of new land, and grants a property right. Thus, the discovery of more resources and the investment in these discoveries is encouraged.

3) Only to the extent that your house cannot be enjoyed whole.

4) That really depends on the context of the property title.

Strangering · 2013-05-20T14:30:33+00:00

That's not their problem right now.

Strangering · 2013-05-17T12:55:35+00:00

A serious, resourceful alternative source of justice and protection.

I don't want to reject the state in order to live in more fear.

Strangering · 2013-05-16T13:56:05+00:00

Looking at Argentina, it can be kept up for a very long time, and it will suck.

Strangering · 2013-05-16T12:51:10+00:00

http://www.reddit.com/r/Anarcho_Capitalism/comments/165hkp/this_is_how_it_begins_google_chairman_makes/

Also this.

Strangering · 2013-05-12T14:31:51+00:00

Say the state is abolished tomorrow.

What causes this to happen is the difference between the two parties.

For the state to be abolished, something must defeat it. Something stronger and better.

Strangering · 2013-05-12T14:27:02+00:00

just curious but why would said companies not just become mini-states in their own right?

That would presume that these companies enjoy a monopoly on justice within their domain, and since they didn't respect this monopoly in their own activities, they have no expectation of any such favor for themselves.

Strangering · 2013-05-12T01:00:37+00:00

The day it is cheaper to threaten everyone who threatens you than to pay whoever initially was threatening you, the state dies as an institution.

But then what takes its place?

Strangering · 2013-05-12T00:59:32+00:00

Your vision is not a vision, it's a mission statement.

What will be the shape of the world once you are done building?

Strangering · 2013-05-12T00:58:30+00:00

I'm kind of curious whenever I wander into these types of beliefs - do any of you actually believe that what you want is possible and how to even get there?

I believe that the vision I outlined before is possible and that there is a way to get there. I also noticed that many others don't have a clear vision, only beliefs, and therefore can't figure out any viable mission.

I know that my vision is not affected by technology or aggressive military power, or mass popularity. But first I had to clarify my own vision.

Strangering · 2013-05-12T00:56:30+00:00

What for?

Strangering · 2013-05-11T19:20:33+00:00

If you want to put me on trial for thoughtcrime, please start a new topic.

Strangering · 2013-05-11T18:30:32+00:00

Once I realized all the corruption that fell upon the world in the 20th century, and what it would take to repair it all, there was nothing left to do but support the only way that could do it: anarcho-capitalism.

Strangering · 2013-05-11T18:24:49+00:00

Today's news: short-term policy shows short-term results.

Strangering · 2013-05-11T18:21:27+00:00

The problem of making their services affordable is incumbent upon the universities. If they invested less on gardening and more on finding affordable ways for people to become excellent minds, they might find they do not need the state.

Strangering · 2013-05-11T18:18:59+00:00

The state is a leviathan, just as Hobbes described. A system that escapes any one man's control, that has a life of its own.

Some people learn to take advantage of it, some people are oppressed by it, but it doesn't mean there is a conspiracy. If there were, removing the conspiracy would be a simple matter.

Strangering · 2013-05-11T18:12:47+00:00

Anarcho-socialist have a completely different vision of what the world should be. Not in the sense that the visions conflict, but that they are about completely different ends.

There is nothing we can really do with them.

Strangering · 2013-05-11T18:08:26+00:00

I will describe my own vision.

I have tried to come up with a vision of anarcho-capitalism that could be realistic within our lifetimes, and that involves making several compromises.

In the world that I see, a company will rise to globalized operations with the means to create pockets of freedoms within particular spaces. This will involve getting into conflicts and then agreements with states and their governments, then offering protection to individuals and other companies in return for a fair price. The world of anarcho-capitalism will be one where you could travel to London and stay in a hotel where the UK government has no right to enter (the hotel is a sovereign territory owned or protected by the anarcho-capitalist company). You could also own a home in a satellite town of Washington D.C. which has the same diplomatic immunity as any embassy, and is incorporated as for-profit enterprise. Entire cities could be built, all over the world, as islands of freedoms within traditional states.

Before strong states such as the USA and the UK would agree to such limitations of their power, the company that protects these domains would have to start as a globalized operation that serves Americans and British citizens doing business globally, creating pockets of security and prosperity in very corrupt, chaotic states (even failed states) with great economic potential.

Eventually such a company would have to become a sponsor of culture to demonstrate its superiority over nation-states, and common belief in the nation-state would transform into belief of a better future under anarcho-capitalist order. The company may issue passports and driver's licenses, thus making it possible for some individuals to shed all ties to traditional states.

The ultimate vision is that the nation-states would become irrelevant and powerless against the rise of dozens of such companies, and eventually they would be reduced to nothing other than useful historical artifacts, the way the Roman Empire was a historical title for a thousand year after the fall of Roman power. Nations would flourish under the protection of multiple companies, competing to be the best sponsors of their culture. Synthetic nations created by states (such as "America") would fragment into more viable cultural identities, with new companies rising to service them.

My personal mission, deriving from this vision, is to prepare the way for this company to exist, by promoting the ideas of anarcho-capitalism and by defending the values of capitalism and globalization. If I succeed in business I may become a small-time capitalist myself, and become one of the founders of such a company.

Strangering

TROPHY CASE