Far from it. There is no anarchy. From the largest trade routes to the smallest transactions, from the global to the local level, pretty much any move we make is regulated by a litany of state policy. Vast legal systems, treaties, trade agreements, jurisdictions, global financial institutions—these are the fetters of state and statist intervention, and their combined reach is global in scale.

I would also say that the claim that there is private ownership is a myth, used as it is to disguise the reality that we have hardly left the state of serfdom. To purchase some means of production, like land for instance, one cannot just go out and stake an area for private use and claim jurisdiction. It's only "private" if the state allows it to be, which isn't saying much because they can come and take it any time they want. Rather, we are obliged to live on their land, more like a fief, over which they have supreme jurisdiction, rights, and control. And through various schemes of taxation they take a share of our labor in exchange for a paltry series of protections, from military to welfare. This is modern feudalism.

From the largest trade routes to the smallest transactions, from the global to the local level, pretty much any move we make is regulated by a litany of state policy. Vast legal systems, treaties, trade agreements, jurisdictions, global financial institutions—these are the fetters of state and statist intervention, and their combined reach is global in scale. — NOS4A2

Exactly. Socialism isn't at odds with capitalism. And there are no (real) leftists anymore, so the issue is settled for all practical purposes. For now.

It really comes down to when people think that they will create a better World by killing other people. Be those to be killed the rich, the jews, the infidels, the communists or whoever. Ideologies, religion and the demand for justice etc. are just excuses that are used to implement the atrocities.

When the ends justify the means. Do you think there's a time when they do?

I would also say that the claim that there is private ownership is a myth, used as it is to disguise the reality that we have hardly left the state of serfdom. To purchase some means of production, like land for instance, one cannot just go out and stake an area for private use and claim jurisdiction. It's only "private" if the state allows it to be, which isn't saying much because they can come and take it any time they want.

The words of someone who has never dealt with managing a project that actually involves using eminent domain. The DoD has a family farm literally in the middle of a bombing range and has spent millions of dollars working around it due to an ongoing court battle over the land. The state can't just seize any land they want in liberal democracies. The state loses eminent domain cases all the time. Taxpayer projects often go 10-20% or more over budget because the state can't get the optimal land required for some public good.

I'd also ask, if, to have "real private property," we need to be able to walk out onto land and "stake a claim to it," what exactly stops anyone else from staking a claim to your land? Where are you going where someone else can't claim that their ancestors owned your land at some point? Isn't it a problem that all the arrable land on Earth has been staked for centuries?

Also, when was the last time the state came by and seized you or any family member's car or stripped you of your clothing so they could take it? Have you ever come home to see that the state had seized your house? When the state does seize property, is there a recourse for it? Something like saying, a court and a jury?

Military protections only seen paltry if you haven't been in a war. Go ask any farmers in Ukraine whose land is on the front line how well their property rights are doing lol. Property rights mean nothing if one side has rights and the other has artillery. No military, no property rights. I am not aware of any pacifist nations ever surviving without the backing of some larger military power that can enforce a peace.

You can defend yourself when someone wants to hurt you. But it should be quite clear that the person is really going to attack and hurt you. We know very well just how easy the wording "an existential threat" is used in politics even today and "pre-emption" is cherished.

You can defend yourself when someone wants to hurt you. But it should be quite clear that the person is really going to attack and hurt you. We know very well just how easy the wording "an existential threat" is used in politics even today and "pre-emption" is cherished. — ssu

Yes. I'm not sure we've learned anything after all our species has been through.

Science and technology has improved, but has there been much other improvement? For me World politics looks more and more like in the 19th Century.

Not only eminent domain, but civil forfeiture, taxation, tariffs, subsidies, minimum wages, welfare, regulation, and so on. Wherever the state takes from some persons what belongs to them and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong, there you have plunder, and that is the nature of the business of your lord.

That a law like the 5th amendment and courts make the process of theft more difficult for the state, none of that, nor your authority on project management, negate the intents and efforts to take what isn't theirs and give to whom it does not belong. The courts are still beholden to the same laws as devised by the state, and eminent domain or some version thereof is present in every liberal democracy. In Canada it is "expropriation". In Australia it is "compulsory acquisition". These words do not mean nothing.

At any rate, one only needs to look at who has jurisdiction over the land and who is sovereign over it. As per the Supreme Court, eminent domain "requires no constitutional recognition; it is an attribute of sovereignty." In all cases wherever property is concerned, the sovereign entities are invariably states. They can and have walked into people's homes and they can and have taken people's things.

Look at what the sovereign entities do in order to protect their jurisdiction from the invasion of another. They defend it with force wherever required. Why do men in power deserve to be sovereign over their land and get to do whatever they want with the serfs that live on it, but others do not?

For me World politics looks more and more like in the 19th Century. — ssu

That's disturbing considering what happened next. Why does world politics look like the 19th Century?

Why does world politics look like the 19th Century? — frank

Especially post-WW2 Cold War got world politics to look to be two sided. Now it's really getting back to being multipolar. Also in the way that so-called allies of one camp can be found meddling in some third countries internal politics being on different sides. Something that would have been unheard of during the Cold War. You have simply more independent and active participants.

Not only eminent domain, but civil forfeiture, taxation, tariffs, subsidies, minimum wages, welfare, regulation, and so on. Wherever the state takes from some persons what belongs to them and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong, there you have plunder, and that is the nature of the business of your lord.

A lord holds their power by birth or through conquest. I don't recall the last time I saw local officials conquering more than a free lunch platter. If we're going to define "any one exercising state power" as a "lord" then sure, we're in feudalism. But only trivially, and only because we've decided to define "government exists" as "feudalism."

That a law like the 5th amendment and courts make the process of theft more difficult for the state, none of that, nor your authority on project management, negate the intents and efforts to take what isn't theirs and give to whom it does not belong. The courts are still beholden to the same laws as devised by the state, and eminent domain or some version thereof is present in every liberal democracy. In Canada it is "expropriation". In Australia it is "compulsory acquisition". These words do not mean nothing.

Right, because a state face trade-offs. Does the state spend twice as much on a road, taxing everyone else more because you won't part with your land at the market appraised value, or do they force you to sell? Do they let a private dam fail and wash out people's homes because the owner doesn't want to repair it and won't let the state intervene, or do they tell the owner "tough shit, you can't let people's homes get washed away."

One person's land use affects another's.

If you like to fish and "lay claim" to part of a river, and I build a factory on the same river and then fill the river with toxic sludge, killing off all your fish, who arbitrates between us? If you build yourself a nice quiet country retreat and I open up a punk rock venue next door and have massive keg fueled ragers until 5 AM every weeknight, who arbitrates between us?

Absolute freedom is a contradiction. A world without states isn't a world of freedom because anyone who can take anything from someone else is free to do so. Being free means being free to deprive others of their freedom. Lay claim to all the land you want, say "this is mine," what does it change if a bunch of armed men decide your stuff is theirs and you work for them now? It matters not one bit. Hence, people accepting the state, because the state increases freedom.

The lord who is lord by virtue of force isn't free either. They can't stop being a lord who is ready and able to use force to get their way. The second they do, someone will replace them-- they will no longer be lord. And so, they are constrained by such a system as well.

Likewise, good luck keeping roads working or solving a host of other collective action problems without the state. You have streets in extremely rich neighborhoods in the Boston area, all multi-million-dollar properties, where the road has basically ceased to exist because it is a private way and no one a can agree on pooling their money to repave it. The person in front wants to pay less because "they use less of the road," the person in the back wants everyone to split the cost, and of course, they all want to state to step in and take over the road and have the taxpayer pay.

But, certainly having an interstate highway system offers a type of freedom. Currently, I could hop in my car and drive from here to Alaska on quality roads, with nary a fear of highway men, nor any fear of price gouging on gas in remote areas. No, "oh, so sorry, the closest other gas station is 90 miles away. I see you are on empty. That will be $45 a gallon." That's a certain type of freedom, and it's not one you get without the state.

So, of course, no one is entirely free in any respect, the state is a constraint, but it also enables freedom. You can grab a piece of paper and draw any shape you'd like, but if you draw a triangle, you're no longer free to have drawn a square. If you eat your cake, you can't save it. There is no absolute freedom. But relatively, the state helps with freedom, and relatively, I'd much rather be a citizen in Canada today than a serf in 1000s Provance.

Believe it or not neighbors can deliberate with one another without the need of any state authority and men can design and build infrastructure without being a state employee. In fact, the state more often than not contracts out these duties to private entities.

But by now we’re so inured to state power that it is always assumed they have to be involved, I guess as the sole arbiter of right and wrong, while anyone who is not a state employee must have too smooth of a brain to function in such a manner. For some reason it has become a truism, rather a myth, that only man in his official form can lay asphalt or protect others from bandits, as if state officials are a different species. The problem is no one can ever answer why these duties can only be accomplished by state employees.

As for collective action, there is nothing collective about state activity. I’ve never once been consulted about roads or bandits. Have you? These sorts of decisions are never collective, but are invariably decided by a cabal of politicians, officials, and their bagmen.

And no wonder people cannot band together to fix a simple road; they have been taught their whole lives that people cannot, nor should not do so. No wonder people cannot band together to help the poor in their community, or fix potholes, because they’ve been taught their whole lives that they do not need to bother, that we can let some politicians and officials take our money and they will handle it for us.

I do not believe that any significant proportion of human beings will turn into bandits and murderers as soon as they find themselves free to do so. I’ve met enough people to conclude otherwise. But the state has long captured and monopolized so many of the simple duties and responsibilities that we have to one another that we no longer even need to care for others in our community. The state will do it for us. That’s not freedom and independence. That’s dependency and slavery. That’s how you raise a race of irresponsible human beings and I fear we’re long past that point.

Believe it or not neighbors can deliberate with one another without the need of any state authority and men can design and build infrastructure without being a state employee. In fact, the state more often than not contracts out these duties to private entities.

Most infrastructure projects are examples of natural monopolies. You're not going to build two parallel power grids, two sets of roads, two sets of sewer systems, etc. Without government, who stops the monopolist from charging whatever is best for them for electricity, gas, etc? There are reasons that government heavily regulates or runs certain types of industry, natural monopoly is the primary one.

As for collective action, there is nothing collective about state activity. I’ve never once been consulted about roads or bandits. Have you? These sorts of decisions are never collective, but are invariably decided by a cabal of politicians, officials, and their bagmen.

Yes. Roads and crime are both covered by local government. It's very easy to get meetings with city councilors in most places I've lived, you can just call their cell phones. The last city I lived in had a roads committee that has public speakout time scheduled at monthly meetings, and people came to speak about roads, normally getting their private ways converted, almost every full city council meeting. The police force had bi-weekly neighborhood meetings on crime. I still get annoying texts about them.

The Feds mostly are in the business of simply giving funds to state and local governments to spend, and public input is part of the planning process for any major road project I've seen.

And no wonder people cannot band together to fix a simple road; they have been taught their whole lives that people cannot, nor should not do so. No wonder people cannot band together to help the poor in their community, or fix potholes, because they’ve been taught their whole lives that they do not need to bother, that we can let some politicians and officials take our money and they will handle it for us.

Have you ever driven in a developing country? Roads aren't well funded there. They didn't grow up with the government "babying" them by always taking care of the roads. And yet... the roads remain shit.

I do not believe that any significant proportion of human beings will turn into bandits and murderers as soon as they find themselves free to do so. I’ve met enough people to conclude otherwise

Well, as opposed to your anecdotal "I think most people are nice," I would just point out that the estimated murder rate for humans in hunter gatherer societies is around 2,000 per 100,000. This is over 10 times higher than the most violent countries on Earth today. It's higher than many war zones; the equivalent of America seeing 6.6 million murders in a year. In such a societies, 1 in every 5 human males who make it to adulthood will die in combat of some sort.

This isn't suprising. It's about the murder rate we see in similar species and synchs up with data on extant hunter gatherers. Chimpanzees also have wars. Studies of hunter gather societies that made it into the 20th century found that raids, mass murder, rape, and slavery/thralldom were essentially endemic. Forensic anthropology converges on similar figures.

https://www.nature.com/articles/nature19758

Oxford, a well off area with a high number of priests had a homicide rate of 110 per 100,000 in the 1340s, several times worse than the worst American cities today.

Essentially, as you go back in time homicide rates are massively higher than today. State development and state monopoly on force is the primary factor indicated in this shift.

So, if people killed each other in massive numbers before civilization, why would they agree to get along without any enforcement mechanisms today. Seems like a wild supposition. Who is even going to sign any sort of long term contract if there is no court to make people live up to their contracts?

You see freedom as only "lack of limits on my behavior." This is naive. There is also "the freedom to have safe roads," the "freedom to have safe drinking water," the "freedom to be educated." If you only think of freedom in terms of negative freedom, no one telling you what you can't do, then of course the state is monstrous. But this is to ignore the actual context we live in.


We live in a world of trade offs. Conscription takes away men's freedom. But in the context of the American Civil War, conscription was necessary to end slavery. Given the losses the Confederacy was able to bear, about 1/5th of Southern males killed, the only path to victory for the Union was large scale conscription. You can see the same thing in plenty of other cases.

No charity has ever offered universal education; only the state has done this. Companies don't keep drinking water safe out of the goodness of their hearts. On the contrary, firms appear to pollute as much as they can without the state stopping them. Now if you grow up drinking water suffused with lead and are now cognitively impaired, are you "free to become a doctor?" No. You can't pass the exams because of brain damage from heavy metal exposure. But if I, a factory owner up the street, am free to do as I please, I might very well dump lead into your water.

I am incredulous than anyone actually thinks firms won't pollute without the state punishing them for it.

Right, one has to go and prostrate oneself before those in power and practically beg in order to have any input. But you'll note that the state moves swiftly towards any project that accrues to its own benefit, like war for instance, while it moves slowly and only under great pressure towards anything that accrues towards the people's benefit.

Political scientist RJ Rummel estimated that around 212 million people were killed by governments during the 20th century alone, spawning his notion of "democide". The world wars, the various genocides, the instances of mass slave labor, were largely conceived in the civilized minds of those with state power. I'm much more comfortable with the homicide rates of hunter gatherer societes than I am with the murder on an industrial scale produced by those in authority. No hunter-gatherer has ever dropped a nuke on people, as far as I know.

I actually have travelled the world in my time during my youth and have seen the shit roads, and I would argue that this was because their governments are shit, not because they have any higher degree of freedom. I've also been to the low-tax countries such as Monaco, the Bahamas, and Dubai, and can report that their infrastructure is far superior to the ones I see here. Countries that are higher in degrees of freedom, at least according to the Human Freedom Index, tend to have better infrastructure than the ones who employ more coercive measures on their own people. But I don't care about any of that. I'm not a utilitarian.

The state not only has the monopoly on violence, but also the monopoly on crime. It can get away with levels of murder, theft, fraud, that if any of us were to commit we'd be sentenced to death and rightfully so. There is not a single line in their own constitutions and charters that they have not violated. So I'm unconvinced that they are any sort of legitimate authority or that they deserve any power in the first place, and I certainly wouldn't push all that aside because I enjoy a comfier drive on my way to Alaska.

I've also been to the low-tax countries such as Monaco, the Bahamas, and Dubai, and can report that their infrastructure is far superior to the ones I see here. Countries that are higher in degrees of freedom, at least according to the Human Freedom Index — NOS4A2

Countries with the Highest Human Freedom Indexes (2021):
Switzerland— 9.11
New Zealand — 9.01
Denmark — 8.98
Estonia — 8.91
Ireland — 8.90
Canada — 8.85
Finland — 8.85
Australia — 8.84
Sweden — 8.83

Countries with the Highest Tax Rates in The World in 2023
Aruba.
Sweden.
Austria.
Denmark.
Japan.
Finland.

Quality of port infrastructure (2006 - 2019)
Singapore — 6.5
Finland — 6.4
Netherlands — 6.4
Hong Kong — 6.3
Denmark — 5.8
Japan — 5.8
Panama — 5.7
Belgium — 5.6
Estonia — 5.6 9
USA — 5.6
South Korea — 5.5
UA Emirates — 5.5
Iceland — 5.4
Qatar — 5.4
Spain — 5.4
Taiwan — 5.4
Sweden — 5.3

:chin:

Also, Monaco, the Bahamas, and Dubai are high in wealth disparity.

Freedom and socialism don't work. Because then you just sit there and let "someone else take care of it". How do you think the other person gets paid or is otherwise rewarded/compensated for their "taking care of things" ie. farming/planting/waste disposal/parcel delivery/law enforcement literally any work you can imagine. By having a higher position than you. They can lie to the position above them (FAR above you) and you will face the consequences without a single jury or trial simply because they outrank you ie. are your social better.

Iron-fisted authoritarianism and socialism works wonderfully. You do what you're told when you're told ie. farm this, build this, do this etc, etc, and say if something goes wrong ie. bad harvest due to bad weather, someone steals what you've built (and if you are found to be complicit in this 'theft' you will be punished severely), the powers that be sigh, and give you enough food, water, and resources to survive regardless.

There's definitely pros and cons to both. Unfortunately in one system injustices are known to rarely ever see the light of day...

How come you only bolded those three countries? What’s the argument?

No argument. Just pointing out that the bolded countries are at the top of the list for high taxes, also top of the human freedom index list, and top of the list for quality infrastructure. I'll now add that they're at the bottom of the wealth gap list.

So why not Switzerland or the Netherlands or the Ivory Coast or Singapore?

I can't bold those countries if they're not listed, obviously. None of them are in the top 6 countries with the highest taxes, for instance. The Ivory Coast is not listed at all.

I've just extended the courtesy of italicizing those countries in the list for you, however. What does it indicate?

I've also been to the low-tax countries such as Monaco, the Bahamas, and Dubai, and can report that their infrastructure is far superior to the ones I see here. — NOS4A2

I haven't been to these places, so I have no opinion on their infrastructure. But Dubai is 1588 square miles; Monaco has <1 square mile; Bahamas is the giant among the 3 with 5358 square miles, but is spread out over 700 islands. Whatever their assets and liabilities, there isn't much point in comparing them to Canada (3.8 million square miles) or Australia, the latter which is a continent.

What does it indicate?

Cherry-picking, I guess.

The second question is the structure of the private ownership, contrasting what we have to co-ops etc. — Judaka

This is a great point.

We can quibble about my experiences, if you wish. No doubt geography is not my strong suit. I explicitly said I could care less about it. The utilitarian benefits to taking the fruits of another’s labor is not worth it, in my opinion. The pyramids probably benefited the beneficiaries but that doesn’t change the fact they were built with slave labor. I’m more interested in the moral arguments, which seem to be lacking.

fruits of another’s labor — NOS4A2

Cherries, apples, bananas…the fruits are being stolen.

Can a centrally planned economy democratically and logically distribute resources, wealth, and labour of the world? — an-salad

Corporations are centrally planned economies, internally. They fail miserably most of the time at distribution. But it can be done.

What are you meaning by capitalism though?

Cherry-picking, I guess. — NOS4A2

Your cherry-picking doesn’t appear to indicate anything, other than that Switzerland is highest on the Human Freedom Index and Singapore and the Netherlands have good infrastructure.

We actually don't know for sure that the pyramids were built with slave labor. Engineering studies indicate that many of the steps in construction were technically very demanding as well as physically difficult. I don't think anyone has demonstrated exactly how the ordinary 2.5 ton stones were maneuvered into place, much less the really big stones at the center of the pyramid (the king's chamber) that weighed between 30 and 80 tons. 8000 tons of granite were brought from distant quarries. Slave labor might well have figured into some phases, but there is also some evidence that at least some workers were skilled wage earners. (The evidence is partly in the existence of construction villages next to the work site.)

But to your point: Funds had to be expropriated from one source or another.

Funds do not have to be expropriated from one source to another. They can also be exchanged voluntarily. As a self-described democratic socialist, which method would fund your projects?