Comment by kiba | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kiba | Hacker News Reader

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It's time -- lord, long past time -- for smart hacker types to leave behind the immature, naïve libertarianism that pervades their industry and engage with a real, honest politics that, at least implicitly, acknowledges and owns-up to the great wealth and resources already afforded them. /You didn't get here on your own, and you never would have otherwise./

This argument is highly misleading. Libertarians complain about the quality of the public services all the time. They complained about congestion on roads, the high expenses of hospitals due to emergencies law, and police that spend way too much time chasing drug dealers rather than providing actual security.

They are taking money by force. You pay your taxes, or you go to jail. You don't have any option of not driving on roads, not getting emergencies care services, and so on.

It is by laws that emergency services will be provided for you, regardless of your ability to pay. It is by government mandates that create all these roads that we drive on. Your security is not provided by a local milita but by a professional army.

That is the cost of giving up your freedom. It's freedom that I wouldn't want to give up. Because a large enough government to give everything you want is large enough to take it away.

The French revolution history lecture by my history professor is enough to change my very reason of being a libertarian from idealism to never again resolve.

It's not misleading. The political economic function of the government is to ensure that markets function under controlled conditions. An elaborate government apparatus provides services without which capitalism as we know it today would be inconceivable. Those services are worth something. If you disagree, let the government cease the enforcement of limited liability.

It's not misleading. The political economic function of the government is to ensure that markets function under controlled conditions. An elaborate government apparatus provides services without which capitalism as we know it today would be inconceivable. Those services are worth something. If you disagree, let the government cease the enforcement of limited liability.

Libertarians has proposed a number of ways by which to regulate the market economy that doesn't involved coercion. Whether or not that is feasible is another matter entirely.

That being said, I prefer the alternative of being a member of the unorganized milita rather than a police state that handle every security services for me. I believed that a professional, well trained army are of some use but they should be limited to a size that doesn't allow them to invade nations and conquer the locals.

Wars is the death of empires, nations, and government.

<i>Whether that is feasible is another matter entirely.</i>

No, it's not. I could suggest that we can power cold fusion with green cheese but that doesn't mean it will heat your house this winter.

A false dichotomy. The choice isn't between living in a police state and running amok with your slingshot.

Enforcing trademarks another example of a social program for business that I guess you could live without. We could disagree about the need for patents and how the US Patent and Trademark office is configured, but most people here, among them entrepreneurs, would agree that trademarks are a good thing, and that they should be enforced.

But let's see what happens if we were to hijack each other's brands. Maybe we should take over the YCombinator trademark. After all, enforcing trademarks isn't directly concerned with national defense. In the name of limited government, it's OK to suggest affiliations with corporations by using their trademarks without their approval. Especially since we dyed-in-the-wool libertarians don't believe in negative externalities, and that businesses have the right to do whatever they want. Those other companies with their putative concerns about reputation and perception about their brands, trademarks and logos are third parties to the exercise of our God-given libertarian rights. I only hope my militia is stronger than their militia.

A false dichotomy. The choice isn't between living in a police state and running amok with your slingshot.

I see no dichotomy between keeping a properly sized professional army, a militia, and an unorganized militia. The problem is that temptation of giving up responsibility entails giving up freedom and the issue of incentives.

I certainly do not like to see another Napoleon and Ceasar arising from the improper organization of military defense. Men like George Washington are rare in the history of the world.

But let's see what happens if we were to hijack each other's brands. Maybe we should take over the YCombinator trademark. After all, enforcing trademarks isn't directly concerned with national defense. In the name of limited government, it's OK to suggest affiliations with corporations by using their trademarks without their approval. Especially since we dyed-in-the-wool libertarians don't believe in negative externalities, and that businesses have the right to do whatever they want. Those other companies with their putative concerns about reputation and perception about their brands, trademarks and logos are third parties to the exercise of our God-given libertarian rights. I only hope my militia is stronger than their militia.

Much problem are there with the silliness of trademarks. However, I have little to say on this issue either way. I did studied patents and copyrights system and concluded to the best of my knowledge that they are not good public policy.

As I noted, libertarians hated the congestion on public roads. We certainly do believe in negative externalities. Does it not goes further to say that libertarians thought certain kind of regulations hurt the regular people and benefit corporations? There is such term called crony-capitalism, you see.

If a militia decided to invade a country for the sake of ransacking it, than the milita lost sight of its purpose.

If the need to enforce trademarks was actually great enough, then a private company or a standards body would obviously arise to fill the need.

LOL!

"Money" only exists because of the organization of government. If we didn't have any, I could just come on to your land, shoot you, and take all your land and possessions.

At the risk of being shot by the land owner or whomever else has a stake in you not doing that.

As all of the "they are taking my hard-earned money and giving to those unproductive masses" like to point out, there are far more of them then there are of you. Eventually you would run out of bullets and end up decorating your precious property as a wall-hanging or drinking mug.

Yes, the existence of money is what stops me from shooting you

I assume he means "the existence of government stops you" not "the existence of money stops you".

equally absurd

Unless I have a gun too, which I would in hypothetical anarchyland, in which case we've got a gunfight.

Hypothetical anarchyland isn't a very nice place to live, though. Most libertarians are not anarcho-capitalists (let us ignore the subset who are because they're crazy), and are quite happy to pay the portion of taxes which go towards sensible things like the police force and the enforcement of contracts. The problem is that governments get to set whatever tax rates they like, inevitably wind up with a desire to go beyond this and to begin using tax dollars to feather the nests of whoever gets to make the government's decisions, whether it's a solid gold tomb for the King or free welfare checks for the bottom 51% of the population. And, y'know, we can deal with some of that happening, because it's inevitable, but we do need people to be standing up all the time and saying "Hey look Mr President, how about we get to keep a bit more of our money and you get to fly around in a private 777 instead of a private 747?"

I'm not sure how you make the leap from "the government is necessary to protect your private property" to "it's not really your property, it's the government's". The bank is also necessary for me to get paid, and so is the electric company and the telephone company and the nice lady down in HR, but it's still my money. I don't mind paying for the services they provide either, but I'll still complain if they take more than they're entitled to.

Yes, but being an anarcho-capitalists is a very interesting rabbit hole.

For once, a subset of ancap are able to engage in dealing with a Neal Stephenson plot device.

I often feel like I am in a cyberpunk novel. ;)

> The bank is also necessary for me to get paid, and so is the electric company and the telephone company and the nice lady down in HR, but it's still my money. I don't mind paying for the services they provide either, but I'll still complain if they take more than they're entitled to.

When everyone gets to decide how much they want to pay for private goods, ceteris paribus we get better, cheaper private goods. When everyone gets to decide how much they want to pay for public goods, ceteris paribus we get worse and fewer public goods.

I don't really think that anarcho-capitalists are _that_ crazy. I'd be quite happy if some of them were to try getting together and building their utopia somewhere, because I'm honestly curious as to how it would end up playing out. I mean, I strongly suspect it would be worse than the government we have now - but would it be that much worse? People even managed to make communism work for a little while and this seems a bit less crazy a priori.

I already have some experience in an quasi anarcho-capitalist economy. Here are what I learned:

1. Cheaters are most problematics to deal with, especially with drive-by fraudsters. They make everything worse for everybody else, not just the direct recipient of the fraud. 80% of drive-by cheaters can be prevented with simple measures. However, the rest are long term scammers who build up reputation and than cheat over us. This is extremely difficult to prevent. Thus everyone factor in the risk of being cheated out of their money.

2. Reputation is VERY IMPORTANT in an economy with no court and police.

3. Paypal dollars and anything that is chargebackable is BAD MONEY. It is the DOMAIN of scammers and fraudsters. They also cause bank runs as people transfer their worthless money into something more valuable.

Is the economy a utopia? No. There are some scumbags who cheat and sometime got away with it. In one situation, their fraudulently brought merchandise got confiscated by an exchange mediator but not before it cause damage to the system. However, others were not so lucky. A guy got 2000 dollars in chargeback and had to shut down. What people will do, is learn how to handle cheaters, and find better methods to avoid cheaters. Since it is the internet, you can't just do "violence" or coerce individuals. It's impossible. Contracts are entirely based on reputation and trust. Nobody want to go to a state court and waste lot of money on lawyer.

Which country is that supposed to be?

"However, the rest are long term scammers who build up reputation and than cheat over us."

Well you have that in the rest of the world too -- only they go by nobler-sounding titles of government agents, bureaucrats, commissioners...

"Reputation is VERY IMPORTANT in an economy with no court and police."

What's the problem here -- reputation can be earned, through quality, and should. The stronger it is, the less it can be shattered by drive-by morons who haven't built it for themselves yet (and if they had, they wouldn't need to).

"They also cause bank runs as people transfer their worthless money into something more valuable."

The corrective invisible hand at work, it sounds to me. Again, what's the issue?

"Contracts are entirely based on reputation and trust. Nobody want to go to a state court and waste lot of money on lawyer."

I think the western world will be moving to that direction as public services keep increasing prices and decreasing quality, as every coercive monopoly must, especially a high-deficit one.

Contracts in the end are always primarily based on reputation and trust, aren't they? And shouldn't they?

Which country is that supposed to be?

There is no country in the world that is at the very least quasi-anarcho-capitalist. This economy deal entirely on the internet and with bitcoins as its currency.

I think the western world will be moving to that direction as public services keep increasing prices and decreasing quality, as every coercive monopoly must, especially a high-deficit one. Contracts in the end are always primarily based on reputation and trust, aren't they? And shouldn't they?

Keep in mind, these are lessons, not a critique. I am not criticizing the reputation based nature of a cryptoeconomy. Rather it is lessons in how the cryptoeconomy really works.

This is pretty interesting. Do they ever convert BitCoins back to fiat money or precious metals at some point? Well I guess I can research this myself, I did come across BitCoins before. Fancy idea of backing currency by CPU power rather than a tangible, durable, universally accepted store-of-value but it's a step forward from fiat currency that is backed by the decree of Heli Ben and the gunned power of a state to tax future production...

I did not mean to imply you were criticizing. Your lessons are valid examples of a quasi-anarchic situation. People policing themselves, organizing networks of trust and reputation and self-protection.

Sounds like there is a market in there for mutually-trusted middlemen acting as, well, "trustees" or escrow services? Or is that built into BitCoin already. Of course if the scam only materializes after the transaction was already completed to mutual consent, that's a different matter. But what kinds of fraud are happening there?

This is pretty interesting. Do they ever convert BitCoins back to fiat money or precious metals at some point? Well I guess I can research this myself, I did come across BitCoins before. Fancy idea of backing currency by CPU power rather than a tangible, durable, universally accepted store-of-value but it's a step forward from fiat currency that is backed by the decree of Heli Ben and the gunned power of a state to tax future production...

The notion of bitcoin being backed by CPU mining or even GPU mining is a fallacious notion. CPU and GPU are used to mine bitcoins and create bitcoin blocks, nothing more.

Every currency will probably have an exchange market. Bitcoin is no different. People have brought pecious metals with bitcoins, as well USD. However, USD are usually prefixed with a service such as Paypal USD and MtGox USD, and so on because of additional monetary property that the service provider imbues to it. Thus, Paypal accounts are considered risky because of chargeback.

Sounds like there is a market in there for mutually-trusted middlemen acting as, well, "trustees" or escrow services? Or is that built into BitCoin already. Of course if the scam only materializes after the transaction was already completed to mutual consent, that's a different matter. But what kinds of fraud are happening there?

The trust network is mostly around the bitcoin forum. There has been talk of creating reputation systems of some kind but nothing of substance come out yet. Most frauds are usually the drive-by scams type of frauds. However, the other concerns is when escrow failed to do their job or simply disappear. There may be no intent of fraud involved, but people lose their money all the same.

Apriori (that is, without knowledge of the results) communism was way less crazy-sounding that some here tend to think, because look how many smart people it attracted! Look at 60's US or at Russia circa 1900, where communism was the belief system for smart young people to "graduate" to. It had the same hipster vibe as the belief in a benevolent singularity today, only more so.

I wouldn't say that this means that it's a priori crazy, merely that humans have an outstanding ability to believe crazy things.

The flaws should have been apparent to anyone who understood human nature and was willing to sit down and ask the obvious questions like "What happens when X" and "But won't people Y?" They were less apparent to people who didn't want to sit down and ask these sorts of questions.

This is pretty much exactly the same level of crazy you get from anarcho-capitalists.

The flaws should have been apparent to anyone who understood human nature and was willing to sit down and ask the obvious questions like "What happens when X" and "But won't people Y?" They were less apparent to people who didn't want to sit down and ask these sorts of questions.

This brings to mind my favorite communism story. 15 or so years ago my local newspaper ran a story about a young lady who was moving away to go work for the American Communist Party, because she had taken a trip to Cuba and seen Communism in action; it was clear to her that this was the ideal form of government for the people. That same day, the news was full of stories of people risking their lives to leave Cuba in homemade boats. It always amazed me how this girl could completely miss this.

Untrue, the concept of money was developed long before government. Hammurabi's code only formalized a number of systems that were already in place. It took government to make money unsound.

Yeah, it took a government to transform "money == gold / gold in a bank" to "money == debt".

partially true, you are talking about Fiat money, and it is true that it is a fairly modern invention. Taxation was more abusive system prior to Fiat money, your local lord, or city state with its self issued currency, it was not a rosy experience always.

Depends on historians interpretations mostly -- as in any case there are instances that support your point and those that refute it, and there are historians who come to your conclusions and those that come to the opposite ones.

By necessity, local landlords and smaller communities were in a much stronger "competition of sorts" with their neighboring "jurisdictions", more effective than our grand nation states with their inter-national tax agreements. Some of them were nasty bastards, but the next one presumably less so. They seriously couldn't indebt themselves and keep raising taxes quite as abusively as today's nation governments do, the world over, and didn't. You do realize than sub-10% taxes were the default scenario in these times long past, and in many European provinces they were in fact paid voluntarily, for real armed protection services that could be denied if you chose not to pay them, but weren't forced to.

References / citations? Read Hans Hermann Hoppe's Democracy book, it's full of them.

thanks for the reference, in turn i offer Nial Ferguson excellent - the ascent of money. fantastic overview, if only for the analysis of the dramatic effect of fibonacci, and the ascent of the Medici family.

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