Quote from: ascent on July 22, 2011, 04:42:44 PM

Quote from: myrkul on July 22, 2011, 04:22:27 PM

ANY voluntary arrangement is fine by me. Even if it superficially resembles a government. As long as they're not putting guns to people's heads and saying "pay up, or something bad might happen to you", and calling it anything but extortion, they are free to set up whatever organization they like.

Worst case scenario, We're back to where we started, Here.

I think for people to take you seriously, you need to stop with the "People putting guns to my head and forcing me to pay taxes" line. Yes, I concede that you can go to jail if you don't pay taxes. But let's address this side issue:

Yeah, you can go to jail if you don't pay taxes.
I don't know where you live, but if it is in the USA, then you only have to pay taxes if you make above some certain amount, therefore, you can decide to not pay taxes by not making a lot of money.
You don't need to pay property taxes if you don't own property. You can rent. Sure, you're indirectly helping the landlord pay taxes, but in your world, your rent payment would be helping the landlord pay a lot of service contract fees.
You don't need to pay sales taxes if you move to Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, or Oregon.
You do consume the services provided by the government, whether you think you do or not.
Your consumption of those services and payment of taxes result in a major offload of burden placed upon you which would be the constant evaluation, purchasing and maintenance of contracts with various companies. Frankly, it would suck more than you probably realize.
Yes, I grant that the government engages in inefficiencies.

So, stop it with the line about a gun being placed to your head and taking money from you. I understand you don't like the tax model. I get that. But you're going to have to show me that you have experienced extreme stress and trauma in your life from life threatening actions by individuals taking money from you if you wish to continue with that line in debates with me. Do it again, and I'll just leave. If that's what you want, then fine.

If you pay the Mafia enforcers on regular occasions without a fuss, they probably aren't so trauma inducing, either. I suppose that makes the Mafia a legitimate institution?

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The one where you get paid more. When you let some other guy do all the work and then steal the fruits of his labor, you can afford to pay your mercs better. Piracy is profitable without some sort of overwhelmingly present and powerful force to dissuade it. Somalians wouldn't do it if it didn't work sometimes, and they've got everyone on their ass - if the US, now, can't functionally stop their piracy, what stops people from piracy in AnCapistan, when there's no monolithic centralized army? I'm assuming anonymity is going to be trivial in this scenario - blackface and skimasks, burned off fingerprints, blank eye contacts, padding, second skin (latex paint to prevent skin flakes) and complete waxing ( no loose hairs.) Could even do funky things like mixed blood transfusions to prevent single-sourcing DNA origins.

The risk/reward factor has to be accounted for, too. The cost of bullets will always be cheaper than the cost of honest labor.

Which would you rather be, a Somali pirate or a rich Western doctor?

Yeah, pirates can gain from looting, pillaging, etc but they don't gain as much as if they worked honestly. Furthermore, with competition among defense companies, there would be far more incentive to hunt pirates. I mean, the US government just doesn't give a shit about pirates unless they happen to board something the US government finds valuable. They worry more about shooting guys in Afghanistan who are likely to never do anything to the US if they are left alone, and thus don't devote any resources to protecting mariners on the sea. Furthermore, various regulations prevent the sailors from carrying guns, which would at the very least make piracy much harder. If there were multiple security companies, they would allocate their resources much more efficiently. There would doubtless be bounties on pirates, and the companies would go after targets who were actually a problem rather than phantoms conjured up by crooks in office looking for a way to carve up a little empire among third world nations.