Quote from: Mike Hearn on October 02, 2013, 10:43:20 PM

All the modern examples of government-less areas of the world I can think of are countries where the state collapsed after a revolution or war, usually either quickly replaced by a (often worse) government, or constantly warring factions.

Dr. Benjamin Powell looked a dozen or so standard of living measures they could get reliably reported from Somalia over the course of 15-20 years. What we find is that these living measures decline dramatically from 1985-1990 (its last years of having a state). Since losing it's statelessness these living measures have improved dramatically. They rank in the top half of African countries. And they're near the top in access to telecommunications. They're the third biggest improver in life expectancy on the African continent since 1990.

They have improved in absolute terms and they've improved relative to the average on the continent.

We're not comparing the United States today to Somalia now. Somalia is definitely a poor impoverished country, like much of the African continent. What we need is relevant institutional comparisons. How well does any given country/culture do compared to it's less state or stateless alternatives. It's not fair to compare a first world country to a third world country regardless of the institutions we're comparing.

How does Somalia do in its statelessness compared to when it had a State and to the other 42-some sub Sahara countries? That's the relevant comparison.

http://benjaminwpowell.com/scholarly-publications/journal-articles/somalia-after-state-collapse.pdf

Quote from: Mike Hearn on October 02, 2013, 10:43:20 PM

But absence of decision making is not really the same thing as absence of the rule of law, which is what DPR wanted.

This is a strawman. Market anarchy is not absence of law. Even the Somalis have law (Xeer), they just don't have a dominant state.

Quote from: Mike Hearn on October 02, 2013, 10:43:20 PM

That's an empirical study, it even says so in the abstract. That's the kind of economics I find convincing - study the data.

1) There are many empricist economists and econometricans who are market anarchists.

2) "The statistical approach, unlike deductive inference, leaves the conditions under which established economic relations hold good fundamentally undetermined; and similarly, the objects to which they relate cannot be determined as unequivocally as by theory. Empirically established relations between various economic phenomena continue to present a problem to theory until the necessity for their interconnections can be demonstrated independently of any statistical evidence. The concepts on which such an explanation is based will be quite different from those by which statistical interconnections are demonstrated; they can be reached independently. Moreover, the corroboration of statistical evidence provides, in itself, no proof of correctness. A priori we cannot expect from statistics anything more than the stimulus provided by the indication of new problems. In thus emphasizing the fact that trade cycle theory, while it may serve as a basis for statistical research, can never itself be established by the latter, it is by no means desired to deprecate the value of the empirical method. On the contrary, there can be no doubt that trade cycle theory can only gain full practical importance through exact measurement of the actual course of the phenomena it describes. But before we can examine the question of the true importance of statistics to theory, it must be clearly recognized that the use of statistics can never consist in a deepening of our theoretical insight.

II.
Even as a means of verification, the statistical examination of the cycles has only a very limited value for trade cycle theory. For the latteras for any other economic theorythere are only two criteria of correctness. First, it must be deduced with unexceptionable logic from the fundamental notions of the theoretical
system; and second, it must explain by a purely deductive method those phenomena with all their peculiarities that we observe in the actual cycles. Such a theory could only be false either through an inadequacy in its logic or because the phenomena it explains do not correspond with the observed facts. If, however,
the theory is logically sound, and if it leads to an explanation of the given phenomena as a necessary consequence of these general conditions of economic
activity, then the best that statistical investigation can do is to show that there still remains an unexplained residue of processes. It could never prove that the
determining relationships are of a different character from those maintained by the theory." - Friedrich A. Hayek, Prices and Production.

Quote from: Mike Hearn on October 02, 2013, 10:43:20 PM

It's difficult to do the same for anarcho-capitalist ideas because there aren't any good examples of it working successfully in modern times.

1) Embedded in the question is the assumption that libertarian countries dont exist because they are fantastic creatures, like unicorns. Of course, just because something doesnt exist yet does not mean it cant exist.

2) An indefinite number of potential reasons may speak against market anarchy. No matter how many you succeed in falsifying, however, some may still be left, and you can never prove that none are left. In other words, you've shifted the burden of proof and haven't shown we need a state (a term not synonymous with law) in the first place.

Quote from: Mike Hearn on October 02, 2013, 10:43:20 PM

Theories that exist in the world of abstract philosophy is how you end up with the deflationary spiral idea - stuff that simply doesn't match observed reality.

"We cannot in practice consider a fact without relating it to other facts, and the relation is a theory. Facts by themselves are dumb; before they will tell us anything we have to arrange them, and the arrangement is a theory. Theory is simply the unavoidable arrangement and interpretation of facts, which gives us generalizations on which we can argue and act, in the place of a mass of disjoined particulars."
(Henry Clay. Economics for the General Reader. New York: Macmillan. 1925. pp.10-11.)

"The 'practical man' habitually acts on theories that he does not consciously realize; and in most cases this means that his theories are fallacious. Using a theory consciously, on the other hand, always results in some new attempt to clear up the interrelations that it assumes, and to bring it into harmony with which theoretical assumptions; that is, it results in the pursuit of theory of its own sake." - Friedrich A. Hayek, Prices and Production.

Quote from: Mike Hearn on October 02, 2013, 10:43:20 PM

Rothbard had a lot of very strange ideas about the nature of cartels and monopolies

Really?