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Question for Libertarians/AnCaps
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2015-09-26 at 3:13 AM UTCSuppose my company is the only supplier of water to a small town and owns all of the pumping, purification and supply infrastructure. I'm rather greedy and just raised my prices again, and some of my customers are now dissatisfied with my service. Another business thinks they can do better and wants to get in on the game. I refuse to sell them the right to use any of my infrastructure because it's not in my interest to have competition, and although they have the capital to build their own, it would be wasteful and inefficient to have multiple lines servicing the same area. They end up investing in a different area with less risk, and establish their own water supply monopoly.
Without a central regulatory body, how do you prevent this from happening? -
2015-09-26 at 3:23 AM UTC
Suppose my company is the only supplier of water to a small town and owns all of the pumping, purification and supply infrastructure. I'm rather greedy and just raised my prices again, and some of my customers are now dissatisfied with my service. Another business thinks they can do better and wants to get in on the game. I refuse to sell them the right to use any of my infrastructure because it's not in my interest to have competition, and although they have the capital to build their own, it would be wasteful and inefficient to have multiple lines servicing the same area. They end up investing in a different area with less risk, and establish their own water supply monopoly.
Tighter government control is the obvious answer.
Without a central regulatory body, how do you prevent this from happening? -
2015-09-26 at 3:47 AM UTC
Suppose my company is the only supplier of water to a small town and owns all of the pumping, purification and supply infrastructure. I'm rather greedy and just raised my prices again, and some of my customers are now dissatisfied with my service. Another business thinks they can do better and wants to get in on the game. I refuse to sell them the right to use any of my infrastructure because it's not in my interest to have competition, and although they have the capital to build their own, it would be wasteful and inefficient to have multiple lines servicing the same area. They end up investing in a different area with less risk, and establish their own water supply monopoly.
Without a central regulatory body, how do you prevent this from happening?
I once posed almost exactly this question to the ancaps of the community. Interested in seeing what response you get. -
2015-09-26 at 6:57 AM UTC1.) Tough luck. Aggregates are what ultimately matter and no system is perfect. Governments in general have an immense amount of aspects that are extremely flawed and harmful.The statists and supporters of democracy are often the most utopian of all, believing that the moment when everyone will come to their senses and agree with them, become highly informed about every major issue, and government corruption will end, is just around the corner. Fetishizing the Nordic region, with under .3% of the global population and with a very large percentage of the population being White (this matters a lot), along with having a very shallow, simplistic, and overall poor understanding of Europe in general, oblivious to any negative aspects, confounding variables that effect international comparisons, and massive problems with future projections.
2.) This problem is intractable for small towns, producing a large incentive for people to avoid economically inefficient areas, which are currently massively subsidized by states.
3.) A competitive bidding system where companies place bids to command infrastructure for set periods of time, following certain terms that are agreed upon.
4.) Communal systems, which are fully compatible with a libertarian/ancap system as long as they're voluntarily agreed upon. This is a commonly misunderstood point by people who have no real grasp of the ideology.
If people are so stupid that they can't even solve basic problems like these, what hope does democracy have? This is a dichotomy that few people realize, the criticisms leftists make of human nature and the incompatibility with a libertarian society and the implications for the outcomes of their own preferred systems. -
2015-09-26 at 7:17 AM UTC
1.) Tough luck. Aggregates are what ultimately matter and no system is perfect.
Well there go all the justice and natural rights arguments for libertarianism. It might not matter to you since you're basically a nihilist (refusing, so far as I've been able to tell, to acknowledge an objective normative good) and all your political arguments basically boil down to trying to shame the opposition. But for people who have an actual ideological foundation to inform their beliefs (like soph) then admitting libertarianism naturally leads to "unfair" economic situations causes a number of problems. Firstly it defeats the idea that libertarianism is justified by some pre-held notion of the value of meritocracy and brings to light that the market does not, and never has, ensured a global optimum. Somewhat more philosophically, but I think more devastatingly, it forces the libertarian into forming a dichotomy between natural (inevitable, or permissible) monopolies and "unnatural" or "man-made" monopolies (like using martial force limit access to resources or markers (as governments do)). The issue natural demarcation is unresolved in philosophy, considered by many to be intractable; any political theory running afoul of it is basically a non-starter. -
2015-09-26 at 4:20 PM UTCPublic Service Commission
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2015-09-26 at 7:57 PM UTCNatural rights is so passé. It's a decent introduction for beginners, but among the serious anarcho-capitalist theorists it hasn't been the standard position for a while. Of course, as with any ideology, the majority aren't particularly well informed, knowledgeable, intelligent, have a very good grasp of their preferred ideology in general. Your standard run of the mill minarchist/minimal state libertarian, internet libertarian, is like this; they're a very poor representation of us, just as you would likely feel an enormous cringe if you heard your typical early 20 redditors discussing (parroting feel-good quotes back and forth) Bernie Sanders and we're unfairly grouped in with them, if others assumed that they represented your views.
Consequentialism is a much better position from which to argue: www.google.com/search?q=david+friedman+consequentialism
Although this book does provide a very good criticism for the moral justification of government: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Problem_of_Political_Authority -
2015-09-26 at 9:08 PM UTC
Natural rights is so passé. It's a decent introduction for beginners, but among the serious anarcho-capitalist theorists it hasn't been the standard position for a while. Of course, as with any ideology, the majority aren't particularly well informed, knowledgeable, intelligent, have a very good grasp of their preferred ideology in general. Your standard run of the mill minarchist/minimal state libertarian, internet libertarian, is like this; they're a very poor representation of us, just as you would likely feel an enormous cringe if you heard your typical early 20 redditors discussing (parroting feel-good quotes back and forth) Bernie Sanders and we're unfairly grouped in with them, if others assumed that they represented your views.
Please tell me you don't vote.
Consequentialism is a much better position from which to argue: www.google.com/search?q=david+friedman+consequentialism
Although this book does provide a very good criticism for the moral justification of government: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Problem_of_Political_Authority -
2015-09-27 at 12:09 AM UTCNever have, never will. I've never even registered. Happy?
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2015-09-27 at 1:53 AM UTC
Natural rights is so passé. It's a decent introduction for beginners, but among the serious anarcho-capitalist theorists it hasn't been the standard position for a while. Of course, as with any ideology, the majority aren't particularly well informed, knowledgeable, intelligent, have a very good grasp of their preferred ideology in general. Your standard run of the mill minarchist/minimal state libertarian, internet libertarian, is like this; they're a very poor representation of us, just as you would likely feel an enormous cringe if you heard your typical early 20 redditors discussing (parroting feel-good quotes back and forth) Bernie Sanders and we're unfairly grouped in with them, if others assumed that they represented your views.
It's funny, this sounds familiar for some reason... almost like something I've said before... repeatedly...Consequentialism is a much better position from which to argue: www.google.com/search?q=david+friedman+consequentialism
Great, I'm a true blue consequentialist myself. The issue is that consequentialism requires that you cede the necessity of government intervention in situations like OP has brought up, since monopoly is obviously not optimal. -
2015-09-27 at 2:19 AM UTCAll the townsfolk get together and form a vigilance committee and simply run the greedy fucker out of town and take the infrastructure. It's their town, after all.
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2015-09-27 at 2:55 AM UTC
It's funny, this sounds familiar for some reason… almost like something I've said before… repeatedly…
I thought you might find that funny, I did too.The issue is that consequentialism requires that you cede the necessity of government intervention in situations like OP has brought up, since monopoly is obviously not optimal.
If political authority is required to produce an optimal outcome in this scenario, but the aggregate effects of what political authority will realistically lead to in other realms outweigh the benefits, it doesn't follow that you should support the existence of government.
Loosely related, I cam across this and thought it was amusing:
It’s finally out–The big review paper on the lack of political diversity in social psychology
by Jonathan Haidt (not a libertarian)
http://heterodoxacademy.org/2015/09/14/bbs-paper-on-lack-of-political-diversity/Part of the complexity is that…] Social conservatism correlates with lower cognitive ability test scores, but economic conservatism correlates with higher scores (Iyer, Koleva, Graham, Ditto, & Haidt, 2012; Kemmelmeier 2008). [Libertarians are the political group with the highest IQ, yet they are underrepresented in the social sciences other than economics]
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2015-09-27 at 5:52 AM UTC
If political authority is required to produce an optimal outcome in this scenario, but the aggregate effects of what political authority will realistically lead to in other realms outweigh the benefits, it doesn't follow that you should support the existence of government.
Slippery slope fallacy matie, your cognitive biases are showing.
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2015-09-27 at 8:23 AM UTCIt's not the slippery slope. Incrementalism is a legitimate and commonly used strategy, and I'm referring to realistic/probable outcomes. In an ideal system political authority/government power would never be abused and mistaken/destructive policies would never be enacted, but that clearly isn't the case.
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2015-09-27 at 10:38 AM UTCIn a free world it wouldn't be a problem to pick up your bags and move a town over if you prefer their lower water costs. I'd argue a regional monopoly isn't a monopoly at all.
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2015-09-28 at 5:39 AM UTC
It's not the slippery slope. Incrementalism is a legitimate and commonly used strategy, and I'm referring to realistic/probable outcomes. In an ideal system political authority/government power would never be abused and mistaken/destructive policies would never be enacted, but that clearly isn't the case.
It is a slippery slope fallacy though. Limited trust busting causes exactly one thing: limited busting of trusts. If you're not a dogmatic anti-statist then you should have no problem admitting we should empower the state where evidence suggests doing so will lead to better outcomes, and you yourself have admitted state intervention would lead to a better outcome in OP's hypothetical.
Oh how the cool rational facade cracks under the pressure of a case you can't wave the holy sacrament of the free market at and declare solved.In a free world it wouldn't be a problem to pick up your bags and move a town over if you prefer their lower water costs. I'd argue a regional monopoly isn't a monopoly at all.
Well who's being idealistic now?
In the real world, free or not, up and moving as local prices fluctuate is not a feasible strategy for nearly any sort of business. In OPs example, how can you expect a farmer to sell their land, go find new land, and start farming when the only local supplier of something starts engaging in price gouging? How is price gouging at whatever level is less expensive than the cost of people with enormous sunk costs moving town supposed to be the optimal solution here? -
2015-09-28 at 6:05 AM UTC
In the real world, free or not, up and moving as local prices fluctuate is not a feasible strategy for nearly any sort of business. In OPs example, how can you expect a farmer to sell their land, go find new land, and start farming when the only local supplier of something starts engaging in price gouging? How is price gouging at whatever level is less expensive than the cost of people with enormous sunk costs moving town supposed to be the optimal solution here?
That local farmer could bring his case to committee , and they could possibly decide to remove the parties engaged in price-gouging, by force if necessary. It would be up to each locality to handle it in the way they see fit, of course.
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2015-09-28 at 4:49 PM UTC
That local farmer could bring his case to committee , and they could possibly decide to remove the parties engaged in price-gouging, by force if necessary. It would be up to each locality to handle it in the way they see fit, of course.
So you want government? Great, I agree! -
2015-09-28 at 6:21 PM UTC
So you want government? Great, I agree!
yeah, you know me by now, I have a predilection for vigilance committees. -
2015-09-28 at 6:46 PM UTC
Well who's being idealistic now?
Wasn't the question how an ancap society would deal with the problem? I think the answer was pretty clear: Moving.In the real world, free or not, up and moving as local prices fluctuate is not a feasible strategy for nearly any sort of business.
You can't make this claim because you don't know the specifics of the macro-economic situation in this case, neither do i but that's the problem with hypotheticals like this.In OPs example, how can you expect a farmer to sell their land, go find new land, and start farming when the only local supplier of something starts engaging in price gouging?
How can you expect that no one will look for alternatives when there's a cost incentive to do so, and how can you expect businesses aren't cognizant of this fact and will not engage in price gouging to prevent people from looking for alternatives and buying their product.
Even if the company falls on hard times and it has to increase prices by a minimum to survive, well, that's a risk of doing business.How is price gouging at whatever level is less expensive than the cost of people with enormous sunk costs moving town supposed to be the optimal solution here?
Stop forcing utilitarianism on me, for one you're assuming the water company is going to peg the price so high no one will want to live in that town anymore. Well if that's the case, poof goes the local economy and with it the water company. Don't you think in the interest of self-preservation the water company isn't going to increase prices by an unsustainable amount? Also, if god forbid the water company is stupid and they do it regardless, well, then obviously the cost of moving is less than the cost of staying in the water companies' town. Or people wouldn't do it right?
