L80, "Fundamentally if China decided they wanted to take over Australia and rape it for all it's resources then it would be a walk in the park and relatively inexpensive." As at 2013, China could not possibly invade Taiwan with conventional forces, let alone Australia. She could not possibly project military force all that way south by a troopship convoy or a fleet of airborne paratroops. The Top End is damn near 'uninvadable' and certainly very difficult to move and resupply troops all that way across desert for 1000 kms in any direction. Communications are easily cut. She may well get her men on the beach, but that is the easy bit, the hard bit follows immediately. US satellites and drones etc will tell us that an invasion fleet is gathering and airfields are chocka with planes, which she does NOT have at the moment. The PLAAN is tiny compared to her needs, and she has no way of supporting that fleet at the moment. China would have to do a japan and head south via the islands to get within striking distance of the top End to have a go, and THAT means WW3. OC
Deleted What was I smoking when I posted that incoherent jumble of thoughts? My morning coffee mustn't have kicked in. Each bit made sense but was way too disjointed to be useful.
Are you not familiar with what the Japanese said about America in WW2. There will be a gun behind every blade of grass? Not to mention thousands of miles of ocean. What about supply lines? Anyway OC said it better than I could. The arbitration is the law enforcement. You're thinking in top-down terms of a centralised law system. That's not how it would work. You sign up with a security provider to protect you. As part of that contract you agree to abide by the rules of arbitration if you find yourself in some kind of dispute. eg. if someone has stolen your car. People will generally only want to sign up with places where there is a clear record of fairness. Why would you sign up with a provider that used an arb system that was giving out bad verdicts favouring certain people all the time? How could you be sure you wouldn't be on the end of an unfair verdict one day? This is not a lawless land we are talking about so I don't understand your question. Security providers are NOT the law. That's what the arbitration service does. Then the security providers choose the arbitration service/s that they want to go with. There is a clear seperation between those providing security and those determining laws. To give you an example of what happens in this world. Your car gets stolen. Your security provider, with whom you have a contract to protect you and your valuables, tracks it down and finds the person who did it. He has a different security provider. There is now a dispute between 2 customers of different providers as to who has the right to the car. Under the terms of the contract, whenever there is a dispute you are both obliged to go to arbitration and accept whatever ruling is handed down. It is highly likely you will get your car back plus compensation in this situation due to the incentives I've outlined here and above. EDIT to add: if the guy chooses not to abide by the ruling then also by the terms of the contract he has with his security provider, that provider no longer gives him protection at which point the car could be forcibly taken back, without interference from that guy's security provider.
At least they'd be a burden only to their immediate family and friends .... who would sort them out quickly :lol:
There are plenty of people in society who want those who cannot look after themselves to be cared for right? I mean, that's why we have charities in the first place. I know I would certainly donate money to such places. However, if I knew the place was giving out money to people who didn't require it, then I'd be less willing to fund such a place. So it's likely the places that would be the best funded are those that are looking after the genuinely needy.
For anyone who wants a more in-depth coverage of the ideas I'm talking about here are some videos [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4CcannofnY[/youtube] [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yz0AvdqRVnI[/youtube]
His subtle distinction between Libertarianism and Anarcho-Capitalism in the first video is interesting at ~5mins (that A-C as Libertarianism is a prediction rather than a definition). Not immediately sure how important it is rather than a different emphasis on slightly different aspects. The people I've met who class themselves as A-C's (notably Walter Block) would say that the NAP is core but he seems to be implying that the NAP is a natural outcome of anarchy rather than a central tenet.
I had to re-watch that to see what you mean. There's different approaches to looking at An-Cap. Friedman generally seems to approach things in a pragmatic fashion. ie. saying this is the most efficient way of doing things and then whatever comes out of that comes out of that. If you read or listen to him, you realise he doesn't get into the moral side of things the way that, say, a Stefan Molyneaux does. And I'd say he's right. The cost of enforcing victimless crimes is a very high one that I don't think most people would be willing to pay. OTOH, I think just about everyone will be willing to pay money so they don't get murdered, robbed, raped, etc. The latter involves personal protection and protection of you property. The former involves coercion of other people to not do things that aren't harming anyone. If those people are willing to pay for their own protection to allow themselves to do those things then the people who wanted them not to would need to pay significantly more and a lot of people would need to pay that price so that agencies would enforce those "crimes". So, I think the cost-benefit analysis leans toward protection of life and property being affordable and not really anything else. Which is by definition, libertarian. I think that's what he means. There was actually a big fight on another forum where some statists were saying that the NAP itself is going to be enforced in a free society. Which of course it can't be, because there is no central authority. It's basically just a principle, or a truth, if you will. Some will accept it. Some won't. Most will accept it, as most do even today. We'll still need security and law because of the minority who don't want to follow it.
On re-reading, I think this is subtle but important. At last year's Mises conference in Sydney I saw Konrad Graf give a brilliant, extremely detailed presentation about creating a entire legal framework around the practical operation of the NAP ethics. As you would expect, to a large extent there was a lot of similarity to old common law but he was effectively redrawing the boundaries of what the law creators and enforcement people could and could not do. I remember thinking at the time that it would be the ideal framework for a DRO. In this sense the ethics would be at the heart of the DRO but - as this thread has teased out - there is no reason why a different DRO would have to do the same and general society could effectively bash it around the edges and end up with another system. I have no idea where I'm going with this, but it is food for my mind to slowly digest.
Well, I'll try and clarify my point of view on this. It's all very well to say create an entire legal framework around the NAP. But what does that mean exactly? OK, so you've created the framework. So what? Are you going to force people to follow it? Most would say no I would think. However, I do think in a society where you had competing security and hence competing law that standards would be teased out and formulated much the way that standards in many industries are today. In that sense, I think a legal framework will work. But the other thing to point out is that even today most people accept the NAP. How many people think it is OK to murder someone? To steal someone's property? etc, so I think we already know it will be a guiding principle of a free society. The question is, why isn't it today? Well, like I said, it is, the exception of course being government, which needs to hide it's behaviour in propaganda, fear-mongering, indoctrination, structures, etc so that people don't notice or don't think about the fact it violates principles that most people hold dear every day. This is where the principle comes in most useful in my mind. To point out today that what the government does is against rational, reasonable and civilized behaviour. That it has no place in the modern world because it is violating principles that the vast majority of us regard as inviolable.
