The MaBell monopoly was intentionally created by the US government. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_AT%26T#Monopoly

Standard Oil is brought up a lot in monopoly discussions, but it wasn't much of a monopoly to begin with. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil#Monopoly_charges_and_anti-trust_legislation

At its worse, it had 91% market share. That means it wasn't a monopoly, first of all. Secondly, competition eroded it to 70% within a matter of years. And by the time the government got around to "saving us from the evil monopoly," Standard Oil was at 64% marketshare... Hardly a monopoly at any point, and yet the government took full credit for the market doing what it does best: competition.

DeBeers fell apart on its own. And it was arguably never a monopoly, just a very very influential player.

US Steel (nee Carnegie Steel), a very influential 70% market shareholder whose influence rapidly waned in a global economy

Even then, it was more likely that the people who owned monopolies were buying politicians (because this actually happened), rather than the government simply protecting them for no reason, so to say that the government is the cause of monopolies seems hard to prove or provide evidence for.

As PJ O'Rourke said, "When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators." It's an inherently flawed idea, and no high minded "just make sure they're the good guys" will magically fix that

Hello everyone, my first post here.

I'm talking here because I want to know if anyone knows about some site that have the global prices of consoles (Video Games) or Electronics in general. This is for my great agorist plan.

Ps: English isn't my first language, I'm sorry if there are any mistakes.

I have been trying for decades. Even fled the country. My friends in UK and France wonder what the beef is. They get to put their subscriptions on hold with no issues when they are not using their service.

Those armed customer service agents for USA roads are having none of it.

They hired 87,000 more customer service specialists and charged it to my account, even after I spent so much time telling them I want to cancel the service and get no value for all the fees. I feel like they are robbing me! I don't remember signing any contract. I think my parents may have as some kind of goof to mess with me. Customer service can provide no evidence that I signed up for the account.

One person in another department said I could cancel, but have to pay a hefty cancellation fee before they let me off the hook, and insisted I sign up with a similar service before confirming the cancellation....

I had an interaction with their collections department. Really aggressive. "I will find you and I will murder you" levels of threatening. Hard to ignore this firm and their abusive tactics.

I kind of hope they just go out of business at this point. No idea why so many people think this is such a great service...

In capitalism, the capital providers are the owners. In socialism, the labor providers are the owners.

Not exactly. In capitalism, everyone owns themselves and the products of their exclusive labor. When something is the product of multiple people's labor, those people must come together and decide amongst themselves how to split it up.

One of the most common arrangements is that those who provide the capital recieve the end product while those who run the capital recieve a wage. This is known as employment.

This is far from the only arrangement used though. For example, the reverse arrangement is fairly common as well. In this case, those who provide the capital receive a rent and those who run the capital recieve the end product. This is known as renting.

Another possible arrangement is that the person who provides the capital runs it themself. This is known as self-employment.

The word "capitalism" is a bit of a misnomer. In fact, it was first used as an epithet by Marxists to discredit the system.

In reality, "capitalism", or free markets rather, does not privilege capital owners above laborers, it strikes a balance between capital and labor. After all, capital is itself the product of labor, which is the product of capital, ad infinitum.

How is taxation theft but wage labor is not?

The difference is consent.

Why isn't all sex considered rape?

Well, in one scenario, two (or more, whatever you like) people consent and both derive pleasure from it. It is a win win scenario. In the other, a person is violently aggressed upon and harmed.

Why isn't all trade theft?

Are you "stealing" from the baker when you buy a loaf of bread? He labored to make it. You gave him money. He actually seeks your money in exchange for his labor. That is consent. If the baker points a gun at you and demands you buy his shitty, walnut cupcakes, even though you have a nut allergy, that is clearly non-consentual, extortive and borderline murder if he also demands you eat them.

Consent is key to peaceful human interactions. If someone advocates aggression against others, then they are not engaged in a peacecful interaction.

However, why are taxes theft then? Well, it's obvious, it's coercion, it's not voluntary.

Correct. When the state uses its immense monopoly on violence to coerce a victim to hand over the irreplaceable moments of their lives without their consent, it can be properly considered theft.

So like, in a "voluntary" contract made by the employer and the employee, the employer takes a part of the value produced by the employee.

... this is not theft, as it's part of a voluntary contract and the employee has agreed to it.

Once again, also correct. If I seek work in exchange for money, and someone seeks my labor and will pay me, we have entered a consensual, win-win relationship. This is ethical (as you have admitted).

It [taxation] is though. It's voluntary. In exchange of taxes, you have electricity and water, you are protected by the police and by the firefighters.

If this is the "gotcha, free-marketers!" twist, it just doesn't work. In "services" received in exchange for being robbed, there is no consent, and those "services" are typically coercive monopolies where no other alternative is even permitted by the state, under penalty of kidnapping, caging, or execution. Kidnapping and caging a peaceful person, then demanding they work to pay you for the privilege of a roof and food, where they literally have no other choice, is not an argument that they must pay their captors. Some people might call that slavery.

unless you live autonomously and completely cut off from these services.

And here is the typical statist argument engaging in victim-blaming: "if you don't like it, then why don't you leave?" As if it is encumbant on the victim of abuse to flee her home, family, friends and town to escape her abuser, rather than the abuser to stop the violence.

For those who suffer citizenship based taxation, even leaving is not enough. It is like a crazy, rapey ex who stalks you all over the planet, constantly threatening you and abusing you until you marry someone else just as crazy, rapey and violent to chase them away.

The biggest argument for intellectual monopoly is that without it, nobody would make large investments if they won't sustain long term high profits from it. The issue with this is capital goods themselves are necessary to discover innovations, and intellectual monopoly increases scarcity of these capital goods. In other words, investments to create innovation wouldn't need to be as large without intellectual monopoly.

Note that I call intellectual property "intellectual monopoly" because property is inherently a scarce resource, and knowledge is not. Use intellectual monopoly instead to give less ground to statists.

I’m going to ask you a series of yes or no questions.

The government has a history of corruption?

The government has a history or mistreating minorities?

The government has a history of mistreating women?

The government has plotted and executed attacks on innocent people?

I hate going to government offices like the DMV or Post Office because they run inefficiently?

The government should be providing healthcare and education instead of doctors and scholars?

%99 of the time they’ll flee from the conversation or try to spring into mental gymnastics. But it effectively makes them admit their way doesn’t work and shouldn’t be retried for the… what? 250th time?

From Gentile, who wrote the book on Fascism:

“Fascism is a form of socialism, in fact, it is its most viable form.”

On April 22, 1945 in Milan, the Fascist leader Benito Mussolini would declare the following:

“Our programs are definitely equal to our revolutionary ideas and they belong to what in democratic regime is called “left”; our institutions are a direct result of our programs and our ideal is the Labor State. In this case there can be no doubt: we are the working class in struggle for life and death, against capitalism. We are the revolutionaries in search of a new order. If this is so, to invoke help from the bourgeoisie by waving the red peril is an absurdity. The real scarecrow, the real danger, the threat against which we fight relentlessly, comes from the right. It is not at all in our interest to have the capitalist bourgeoisie as an ally against the threat of the red peril, even at best it would be an unfaithful ally, which is trying to make us serve its ends, as it has done more than once with some success. I will spare words as it is totally superfluous. In fact, it is harmful, because it makes us confuse the types of genuine revolutionaries of whatever hue, with the man of reaction who sometimes uses our very language.”

How does it compare? Would an ancap society end up like BTTF 1985A ?

Thanks in advance.

First appropriator: this looks like a nice place to build a shelter and a tomato garden. Nobody is around, using this space, seems to have claimed it or even knows about it.

(10 years later)

Georgist: pay me, move or be moved!

First appropriator: why?

Georgist: someone else may want to live here and grow potatoes!

First appropriator: you?

Georgist: Not me, but some human, somewhere, at some time might! There are a lot of people around here using land for homes and gardens, so I have assessed an "unimproved Land Value Tax" based on increasing demand nearby.

First appropriator: there is a another parcel of space next to me where they can do that. I do not want to move. Been here a long time bothering nobody.

Georgist: But you are excluding them from this parcel, so you have to pay me and everyone else that exists now, and every future generation!

First appropriator: so, you are threatening me if I don't get out of your way? Sounds like theft to me.

Georgist: no, you are the thief by being here!

First appropriator: Ok, so if I go next door, where I just suggested you can also go, will you stop threatening me?

Georgist: No! We claim all space and time as ours, and if you claim it, you are committing aggression!

First appropriator: Ok, so, no matter what I do, you are going to threaten me with violence? Sounds pretty aggressive. I will stay put. The difference is, I never threatened to hurt anyone to build my home and garden here. You are being a jerk.

“Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.”

― Frederic Bastiat, The Law

There is reason to suspect that workplace democracy would be the primary business model in a free market. There are several ideas that lead to this conclusion, and they are as follows:

1. In a free market, firms would naturally be smaller. This is because larger firms would lack the hindrances the government gives to smaller firm size (public transportation, sales tax, regulations, etc.). Smaller firms actually outcompete larger ones in a free market. This is because they have better access to the knowledge distributed throughout society over a large bureaucracy (Hayek’s knowledge problem). This results in smaller firms being better at adjusting to demand shocks, making profitable decisions, and even innovation. Factor in the ECP, which states that between states of production, prices are needed to make the most allocatively efficient decision, and suddenly vertically integrated firms become less profitable as well. And all this is compounded by the fact that workers are more productive in smaller businesses. For more on this subject, I recommend reading “Organization Theory” by Kevin Carson. For a historical account of small firms beating large ones, check out “Triumph of Conservatism” by Gabriel Kolko.

2. Perhaps this goes along with the first point, but I think it’s large enough on it’s own: in a free market, it will be a lot easier for any random person to start a business. Without the state enforcing things like taxes and regulations, factors of production necessary to start a business would become a lot more abundant. With this abundance, more businesses will spring up, and even make these factors more attainable. With this, virtually anyone could start a business. For example, I could decide to operate a restaurant in my garage, and so could anyone else in my neighborhood. Will big conglomerates like McDonald’s be able to compete with that?

3. An issue with worker cooperatives is that workers have higher time preference than capitalists. This means cooperatives take less risks and actually expand less than traditional businesses, and even tend to employ less people. This is the reason we don’t see many cooperatives today. However, this problem only persists in a system in which large firms sizes are the goal. In a free market, this problem is gone, as firm sizes will become smaller. Cooperatives actually thrive at a smaller scale over other forms of management (I’ll delve into this more with my next point). The issue of them not employing enough people is fine because virtually anyone can start a cooperative or self-owned business of their own due to the abundance of capital as demonstrated by the previous point. We would actually see a lot of competition this way, making it overall better.

4. Hayek’s knowledge problem can actually explain cooperatives being better at smaller sizes. In a traditional business model, a boss must be able to make decisions on the business without having access to all the knowledge of the employees. A cooperative has a better flow of information between workers and thus would make more informed decisions. This advantage goes away at larger firm sizes as democracy gets more and more tiresome, but at a small scale, this isn’t as much of a problem. You could compare it to a family making decisions together vs a family where one person takes charge of directing everyone to every task.

Original comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/Libertarian/comments/rou9sq/would_a_work_place_democracy_be_align_with/hq0y8wf/

I remember that time Ronald McDonald kicked in my door. The Hamburgler rushed in and tossed 4 dozen Big Mac's on my living room floor. Mayor McCheese was demanding I fork over $2,000 for the food product I never wanted in the first place, or he would force me to labor for 6 months over a deep frier at the local shop. Grimace was grinning menacingly my way, daring me to cause trouble!

How in the world could I explain tomorrow to Jeff Bezos that I have no money left for the mandatory drone drop of hot pockets? Surely he will drop some bombs on my neighborhood instead for such a transgression!

Of course, this doesn't happen, because economic relationships are not political relationships. An entrepreneur fills orders to customer demand at the point of sale. A political ruler orders you to meet his demands, at the pointof a gun.

Arms. Lots of them. And I don't mean meal team six larping levels. Industrial, whole market scale, modern warfare level armaments.

One of the craziest things I encountered as an expat/tech nomad is how far reaching insurance is outside Western societies.

Like, the risk of actual invasion and war is insured for firms and their employees. I thought it was some bizzarre fiction when I saw the contract. My coverage actually included professional extraction under fire. It is nuts, I know, but also a real thing. And this was not even for taking a gig in some 3rd world, at-risk failed state. It was for Singapore!

In a libertarian free market anarchy, the risk of an invasion is pretty low (all of those nation states keeping funds in your banks tends to make them react badly to some bozo rolling tanks in to steal their assets). It is non-zero, however, and a credible defense of property is a keystone of stability for foreign investment. Much like the jet turbine generators in Sterling Forest, New Jersey for business backup and continuity IBM offers. They have never actually been needed, but that assurance is why five 9's of uptime commands a premium.

How does one mitigate risk in a free market? Typically insurance. You might imagine it is all about accountants, actuary tables and lawyers, but back to my second paragraph: they actually employ lots of other actors for risk mitigation because it has a direct impact on profits. Military-grade extraction ops, or jet turbine backup generators for data centers.

What is to stop an insurer from creating an armory? In most Western societies, it just does not make sense, since the state does it. Without a state, does the requirement for stability disappear? Of course not.

What's more, what if the insurer offers free coverage for those training with the armory? I was a pilot before I expatriated. You can bet I would jump at an opportunity to train once a month in an F-35 or equivalent!

A free market anarchy is basically a heavily armed Swizterland, with financial incentives to have a credible, defensive military, fully geared for a response and with training incentives, but entirely voluntary and market-based. Hell, foreign investors are the ones funding the whole thing just to keep their assets secure. No need for tax victims.

This, of course, is a hypothetical with as much real-world overlap as I can muster refereincing existing systems and technology leveraged for rational self-interest and profit. You can bet entrepreneurs will find even more effective, efficient and creative ways to mitigate such threats like a PRC invasion. There are plenty of other options that may cost less than the "kill people and break stuff" approach, including mutual sureties that are economically destructive to aggressors, etc...

FWIW: I live in Asia and PRC are actively harrassing rigs and boats here. I do take it seriously, and would love to have a far more effective military than what nation states in the region can muster.

First of all, a right is any action I choose to take that does not conflict with the negative rights of anyone else. From eating a flavor of ice cream, hanging the toilet paper roll backwards -- or to use the necessary and proportional force required to stop violent aggression as it is happening. Rights are not granted by anyone. They just are. They can either be recognized and even protected by others, or they can be ignored and unjustly violated.

Why would you violate someone else's right to defend their lives?

Alone on an island with a pride of lions trying to kill me and eat me, I have every right (some might argue a natural, ethical imperative) to craft a lethal weapon and prevent my own demise.

Ok, so the alone on an island situation seems contrived, one might argue. Let's change that pride of lions to a tribe of cannibals. Does the right to life and self defense disappear merely because the aggressors threatening to murder me are people? Why should I be disarmed while they are not?

Well, we do happen to live with a tribe of aggressors that use threats of lethal violence against everyone else. It is called the state. Its handful of leaders demand absolute obedience with whatever irrational demands they make, and happen to be armed with guns to elicit compliance.

The mere fact of having a means of lethal self defense does not make someome a murderer. It is the act of aggression against peaceful people and using those weapons in escalation that makes the act murder.

It is not just the state. Through its prohibitions and awful policies, it creates other gangs of aggressors -- from drug lords to enemy foreign nation states. All of which are similarly armed.

The fact is, millions of defensive gun uses happen each year, dramatically dwarfing murders and other violent crimes -- literally preventing much more carnage. Armed human beings are doing much more to prevent tragedies than the proportionally small number of bad actors that create tragedies. (r/dgu)

All practicality aside, it all boils down to whether nor not a peaceful human being has a right to live their lives free of aggression. If so, then it is also right they be allowed to defend that life that is theirs by right of being alive in the first place.

Regulations cut both ways, especially pollution.

Before the EPA, and in fact one of the reasons cited for the Clean Air and Water Act, was when the Cuyahoga River in Ohio literally caught fire, repeatedly, due to industrial pollutants.

At the time, there were several individual and community tort actions in progress to force the pollutors to stop messing up the river, fund a clean up, and pay damages. Lots of damages.

The state, noticing there was a real problem, and never letting a crisis go to waste, quickly stepped in with a solution. It issued industrial stream use permits to the pollutors! This effectively stopped pending tort actions.

That's right, the state regulatory body intervened and removed the people's ability to demand relief through tort actions by giving the pollutors permission to pollute -- a credible defense.

Regulatory compliance can be a powerful defense to prosecution.

Case Western Law wrote an excellent paper on the subject called Fables of the Cuyahoga.

I say remove such legal barriers to tort actions and open the floodgates for class actions, individual and community tort to force pollutors to actually have to pay for the negative externalities (damages) they incur. Stop socializing the costs for pollution.

It would take just one case completely wiping out a pollutor's business to spook the rest into far greater compliance. Imagine what would have happened if BP had to pay the true costs for the Deep Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Insurance premiums would be sky-high for any rig operators that did not fantastically exceed even the most stringent (and constantly changing) regulatory rules dictated by a politically operated executive branch. Rather than ever-changing, fiat actions by an administration elected every 4 years, clean air and clean water would instead be a matter of settled case law over time as new actions are brought against pollutors. The rules would be strict, fixed, predictable, and victims would actually receive real relief, rather than fines going to government bureaucracies.

Couldn't find if a rebuttal has been posted already, so there's my bet. The guy0s video is here https://youtu.be/GfjiBIkIOqI

The Impact of Gun Ownership Rates on Crime Rates: A Methodological Review of the Evidence

Purpose: This paper reviews 41 English-language studies that tested the hypothesis that higher gun prevalence levels cause higher crime rates, especially higher homicide rates.

Methods: Each study was assessed as to whether it solved or reduced each of three critical methodological problems: (1) whether a validated measure of gun prevalence was used, (2) whether the authors controlled for more than a handful of possible confounding variables, and (3) whether the researchers used suitable causal order procedures to deal with the possibility of crime rates affecting gun rates, instead of the reverse.

Results: It was found that most studies did not solve any of these problems, and that research that did a better job of addressing these problems was less likely to support the more-guns-cause-more crime hypothesis. Indeed,none of the studies that solved all three problems supported the hypothesis.

Conclusions: Technically weak research mostly supports the hypothesis, while strong research does not. It must be tentatively concluded that higher gun ownership rates do not cause higher crime rates, including homicide rates.

Schools that Allow Teachers to Carry Guns are Extremely Safe

Total number of people killed on campus

The U.S. is well below the world average in terms of the number of mass public shootings, and the global increase over time has been much bigger than for the United States.

Over the 18 years from 1998 to 2015, our list contains 2,354 attacks and at least 4,880 shooters outside the United States and 53 attacks and 57 shooters within our country. By our count, the US makes up less than 1.15% of the mass public shooters, 1.49% of their murders, and 2.20% of their attacks. All these are much less than the US’s 4.6% share of the world population. Attacks in the US are not only less frequent than other countries, but they are also much less deadly on average.

Out of the 97 countries where we have identified mass public shootings occurring, the United States ranks 64th in the per capita frequency of these attacks and 65th in the murder rate.

Not only have these attacks been much more common outside the US, the US’s share of these attacks have declined over time. There has been a much bigger increase over time in the number and severity of mass shootings in the rest of the world compared to the US.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3289010

Mass Shootings by Country, 2022 Not a part of this study, covers fewer countries.

In the United States in 2014 total firearms injuries including fatal and non-fatal was 114,628. While annual estimates of injuries prevented by firearms range from 0.6 million to 6.1 million. That means from 5 to 53 injuries were prevented for every injury caused by firearms.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3134859

National Survey Estimates of Prevalence of Defensive Gun Use

Patri Friedman explains how dispersed costs and concentrated benefits favor special interests in democracy:

Democracy debunked in 2 minutes

I was invited to share this post from r/Anarcho_Capitalism, so here it is (I rewrote option 4 to include the edit in the original post).

So you're against abortion. Fine. Let's not debate if right or wrong here. This post is merely to point out that being against abortion (or any other law involving under-represented third-parties for that matter) and what people are willing to do about it may lead to a non-preferred outcome, should the state be abolished.

If there's a state, you vote for politicians who claim to share your views, and hopefully they'll make laws to restrict and ban, no matter the economic or social cost, as you both consider it morally right. Unfortunately, that applies to everything else, including weed smoking or other things you may enjoy doing, and carries taxation and other things you may despise, so you favor anarchy.

But you're still against abortion, and there's no state, so no governing body designed to enforce abortion upon society as a whole. You'll most likely have 4 options:

1. Pay private right enforcement agencies to ban abortions and punish those who try to do it. Now, Paying the cost of such control, plus profit, won't be enough. You'll have to spend more than what people who want the right to have an abortion will pay those agencies and private arbitrators to be protected against aggression should they go through the procedure. So how much are you willing to pay to protect other people's unborn babies and foetuses?
2. You go live in a privately-owned city that enforces a ban on abortion, and collect monthly fees to operate. Abortion control is agreed upon at entry and won't go through market mechanisms as easily as option 1. Other communities nearby may allow abortion, but you're happy with it being banned in your little society. Additionally, such cities may come with rules you dislike, much like the state.
3. You take the issue with your own hands and go punish people who have abortions outside clinics. Your life expectancy gets significantly reduced. Let's agree that this option is not preferable.
4. You're not willing to spend a penny or go out of your way to punish abortion, but you think it's wrong, and understand that anarchy you may very well lead to a society where abortion remains unchecked. This option carries the unfortunate conclusion that you put a very small price on morals as long as violations don't affect you, or you accept the fact that people are entitled to their own set of values, including abortion, and recognize that freedom also means that people should have the right to do things you disagree with, as long as they don't affect you personally. It's a rather rational stance, so no judgement on my end there. But you have to recognize that this leaves no space for under-represented third-parties.

Let's assume the government is a legitimate organization when it "provides services". Let's say that when you are robbed, you have paid for a service. This is the mentality people use to say that when you use a road without paying taxes, you leached from them.

Do you though? Given the services of the government, it's more similar to a movie theater. Let's say I snuck in or simply paid for one movie and watched another one. Assuming I didn't take a seat for you (oftentimes movie theaters have empty seats), then I have taken nothing from you. At most, I simply trespassed against the theater, not having done anything to you. Any mess I make is the responsibility of the owners to clean up.

Many gatcha hypotheticals can't be handled by states either.

Tough Luck | Bryan Caplan

CURRENT AFFAIRS’ “SOME PUZZLES FOR LIBERTARIANS”, TREATED AS WRITING PROMPTS FOR SHORT STORIES | SCOTT ALEXANDER

Executives direct Directors who direct Managers who direct Supervisors who direct Workers.

Leftist anarchists mistakenly call this "hierarchy" and then oppose it because archy is in the name. Here's a couple things I've written on this:

~

Hierarchy is an unfortunate misnomer. Etymologically, hier means “sacred” and archy means “ruler”, giving us “sacred ruler” as the etymological definition of hierarchy. Theocracy has hierarchy; you could even say that certain conceptions have God as a hierarch. In popular usage, however, it’s used to refer to echelons of authority, inside and outside of government. Because anarchists oppose rulers, many, maybe most, also claim to oppose all hierarchy. That would make sense if we’re talking about “sacred rulers”, but we’re not. They oppose echelons of authority found within many types of organizations. Should they? Would they be consistent anarchists to oppose organizational “hierarchy”? I don’t think so, especially when we consider that the authority exercised in non-governmental organizations is done so on the basis of consent, ie. the individuals who comprise the lower echelons of authority give their permission to the higher echelons to direct them in value-producing ways. Nobody’s illicitely “controlling” or “exercising power” over anyone else, so the anarchist opposition to organizational “hierarchy” is a non sequitur from anarchist principles.

~

Are echelons of authority (misnomer: hierarchy) un-anarchistic? While I think it’s reasonable to predict that there will be fewer associations organized in an echelonical manner in a free society than under a culture of statism, the prevalence of echelony is evidence that it’s an efficient and sometimes necessary form of organization. Can a movie or play be made without actors obeying directors, and directors obeying producers? Can a sports game by played without players obeying referees and coaches? Can people’s medical needs be met without medical assistants obeying nurses, and nurses obeying doctors, and doctors obeying medical principles? I have serious doubts that any of these endeavors – and more – can be successful without echelonical organization. If anarchism requires the dissolution of these forms of organization, then anarchy will be, at least, boring and painful. No thank you.

~

I love left anarchist Michael Bakunin’s essay on natural law and authority. In it he wrote, “Does it follow that I reject all authority? Perish the thought. In the mater of boots, I defer to the authority of the bootmaker; concerning houses, canals, or railroads, I consult the architect or the engineer… But I allow neither the bootmaker nor the architect… to impose his authority on me.” Absent state protection of property title and incorporation, your employer is, like the bootmaker and engineer, a natural authority, not of boots or engineering, but of value production. Taking an employment contract is a demand for consultation in producing value for the employer, and ultimately the consumer. He is not imposing his authority on you anymore than you are imposing your authority (skills) on him. Business-based organizational echelony (misnomer: hierarchy) is merely layers upon layers of unimposed natural authority serving as value-producing consultation.

In some sense that statement is correct.

Open borders diminish public support for welfare. So by opening borders we can end the welfare state.

Immigration has a negative effect on attitudes towards universal spending: Even in Sweden: the effect of immigration on support for welfare state spending by Maureen A Eger

Link of the argument

Link of the article