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Comment by yequalsx | Hacker News Reader

In your statement:

"The difference between non-coercive (private) entities and government is that non-coercive entities adapt better."

it's not clear if you are equating non-coercive with private entities. If so you are very much wrong.

Private companies have killed, enslaved, tortured, kidnapped, etc. There are a tremendous amount of examples of private companies being coercive.

As to ratings agencies, some spectacularly demonstrated 3 years ago that they can fail and be captured (akin to regulatory capture) by other private entities.

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In the short run private entities may do horrible things, it takes time for information to travel through the system. But if we're comparing private to government - government definitely takes the cake on environmental destruction and causing human misery.

> Private companies have killed, enslaved, tortured, kidnapped, etc. There are a tremendous amount of examples of private companies being coercive.

These are instances of private companies acting like governments. What characterizes private companies is that they do not use coercion (except of course when it's justified as in enforcing voluntary agreements and protecting property.)

So for example, the original post was about banking regulation. Private bank regulators could not force banks to operate according to their standards. Instead, they would rely on banks' cooperation. If a bank did not cooperate it would run the risk of being rated badly and shunned by customers relying on regulator's rating. In no case would a non-cooperating, non-conforming bank be subject to being "killed, enslaved, tortured, kidnapped, etc" by a private regulator. On the other hand, a bank which does not conform to government regulation is in danger of killed (dissolved) and its officers "enslaved, tortured, kidnapped, etc." (arrested and imprisoned.)

I like the argument that says that when things are good, they are acting like private companies, but when they're bad, they're acting like governments; ergo, private companies good, governments bad.

Can we officially acknowledge that this part of the thread --- which is notionally about bonding requirements for money transfer companies, but is now discussing torture --- has officially gone off the rails?

The whole point of this thread is about whether bonding should be required by threat of force (or torture) by government. Advocates of government regulation claim yes. Opponents claim that there are better, non-violent ways in which consumers are protected. The issue is precisely the use of force. Nobody is saying that bonding is bad or that private rating agencies could not require bonding as a condition of endorsement.

dpatru might be using definitions you don't agree with but he/she is still positively contributing to the discussion. Seems on topic to me, just highly abstracted: what are possible systemic solutions to the article's issue? So I've upvoted dpatru's comments that were in the negative.

Thanks for the discussion, very interesting!

I didn't downmod him, but I'm not going to upmod him for relitigating all of libertarianism on a thread about a specific regulation.

How are ideologically-pure statements -- extracted from a fantasyland where abstruse notions matter and all lines are perfectly straight -- considered a positive contribution? Particularly when they are made in willful defiance of all facts.

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