Replying to Avatar Chris Liss

The irony of the "defund the police” crowd is they’ll end up having way MORE of a police state when the conditions become intolerable.

Everyone wants a tidy paradigm that’ll solve humanity’s problems once and for all. The socialists just think if we tried real socialism, the communists want “real communism,” the anarchists want “real anarchy” but none of that shit works in practice. We had anarchy, i.e., the nasty, brutish and short state of nature, we’ve tried communism, and it killed > 100M people last century. There are no isms, no paradigms that will solve the problems of humans living among other humans.

Best trade-off I can come up with is top-down fascist government but only to the absolute minumum extent necessary to foster the conditions for maximum bottom-up prosperity.

That’s messy though because once you have a top-down government, you have to watch to make sure it’s (a) doing it’s job (keeping order, protecting its borders, arresting criminals); and (b) not overstepping its job by undermining bottom-up prosperity with regulations, cronyism, onerous taxation, bureaucracy, etc.

You have to have a government and keep it within these narrow bounds. Does too little, you slip into anarchy. Does too much, you slip into communism/totatitarianism. It’s like water — too cold, you get ICE (no pun intended), too hot you get steam.
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MAHDOOD 5d ago

That’s a massive conclusion to form. Why would having no police lead to having a massive police state? Not sure how that adds up

Regarding your other point, your argument is that in order to prevent violence and theft, we must enact violence and theft. More specifically, we need just the right amount of violence and theft to live prosperously. Too much violence and theft is bad and too little is bad. In order to keep that balance you’re aiming for, the people have to keep government in check. Well why don’t the people just keep themselves in check? Lmao why do you need the government as middle man to begin with?

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Chris Liss 5d ago

1. Because no police leads to an intolerable state of lawlessness, and the people will beg for an overcorrection.

2.. The people keep themselves in check either by doing violence themselves (state of nature) or outsourcing the violence to an accountable third party (police). Doing it yourself works for a small minority of those cut out to be mafia bosses and warlords, but most will choose to outsource. There is no utopia without the credible threat of violence as deterrence. If you don't punish violent criminals severely you don't have a functioning society.

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MAHDOOD 5d ago

1. So you believe that humans are inherently violent and evil?

2. This is a false dilemma fallacy. There is more than one option.

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Chris Liss 5d ago

1. Humans are inherently *capable* of violence and evil, yes because what drives human behavior (mostly) is incentives. If you do not strongly disincentivize violence, it's a virtual certainty that *some* humans will use it against regular people, and society will be at the mercy of those most willing to use it. Libertarianism fails to disincentivize violence against the innocent. Communism fails to incentivize wealth creation among the capable, and when resources are scarce, violence ensues. They both ignore basic, fundamental obvious facets of human nature.

2. There may be other options, but what's not optional is the credible threat of retributive violence should you commit violence against someone else. Again, feel free to live in the wild west and hunt people with your posse if you prefer, but most people are going to want to outsource that task.

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MAHDOOD 4d ago

1. You didn’t answer my question. But you brought up another point regarding incentives. The system we currently live in, incentivizes the government to be violent. This is apparent given the nature of its actions: 9/11, psyop shootings, MK ultra.

In addition, you’re arguing that violence disincentivizes violence. You’re looking at things in black and white. People are individuals who will always have the power to choose what they want to do regardless of incentives. They can choose to be violent in the current system or peaceful in a different system. They could also choose the opposite, respectively. Since the current system isn’t eliminating violence, then arguing that libertarianism won’t work because it also can’t eliminate violence is not a strong argument. The goal isn’t to eliminate violence because that’s not possible. Some people will act violently regardless of the system. The goal is to not legitimize the violence by saying you have to pay taxes for x y z service that you don’t want.

2. And you can outsource that task once the government is out of the way. But right now you can’t and that service is less affordable due to the nature of the tax system. Remember that the government offers a service. A shitty service sure, but it is a service. And any service that the government offers can be done more efficiently and more cheaply on the free market. So if someone wrongs me, I can pay for a service to enact justice. Rothbard argued that these types of services would be best completed by insurance companies. They have the resources to make you whole. And there’s no compulsion or violence needed. People pick and choose what services they want. And if they don’t want it, they don’t have to get it. It’s peaceful and the solutions are solved. Everything would be better if all property was privatized. The incentives align better that way. No one cares for public property because they’re not incentivized to.

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Chris Liss 4d ago

Your question was based on a faulty premise — whether humans ARE evil is not relevant. It’s what they are CAPABLE of doing that is not in doubt.

You can argue the merits of a private police force and the tradeoffs that would entail. But they would still be police and they would still be highly imperfect and not perfectly accountable. But some entity is going to need to apply force to violent criminals if you want to have a functional society, and that entity will be top-down fascistic to some extent, given its power and role.

But it’s self-evident the prospect of retaliation disincentivizes violence. Some people will STILL act violently, but far fewer than if there were no prospect of jail time. And when those who do act violently get got, that’s a measure of justice, which is necessary for people to move on and avoid, for example, multi-generational blood feuds.

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MAHDOOD 4d ago

Okay so you basically think that the current system with the largest criminals like pedo Epstein clients, central bankers, and warmongers that are literally dropping bombs on children is better than an imperfect system that respects individual autonomy and provides optionality? Please answer this question with a simple yes or no.

These private police forces would behave very differently because they are private and are held accountable by the free market. Private property is different from public property. People take care of private property but people don’t care for public property the same way. And they never care for it to the same extent that someone would care for their private property. This applies to any public and private service as well. All you have to do is consider the difference during your interactions with police and private security. One treats you like you’re subhuman and the other treats you like a valuable asset to their livelihood because your satisfaction with their services is what puts food on their table. The other thing you seem to overlook is the profits of violence in this type of society. You’re not going to get very far in life swindling and murdering people in a society without government. The reason is because people are forced to take personal responsibility for themselves. Don’t trust verify. Notice how in Bitcoin where things are not well regulated yet, Bitcoiners take responsibility for themselves to call out scammers. They’re hyper vigilant and they’re literally the reason I didn’t lose my life savings a few years ago before an exchange blew up. And their hyper vigilance is what led me to become a bitcoiner. The government wasn’t looking out for me. And they’re literally paid to do it. They’re paid to look for crimes and protect us. At least that’s what they claim.

Even if you don’t have a police force to stop a specific criminal. Businesses will not allow that criminal on their property to harass their customers. If everything is privatized, that criminal will not be using highways. They’re not buying homes in neighborhoods with peaceful people. HOAs will keep an eye out for that specific criminal too. Services like neighborhood watches will do their best to protect their customers. People are incentivized to protect themselves and their customers even more when government is out of the picture. The combination of remarkable creativity and problem solving that humans have will flourish. There are cameras everywhere nowadays. It’s hard to get away with anything really. If you get caught, your picture will be shared across businesses. Tbh going to jail in the current system is a much lighter punishment than being ostracized by a society free of government. Whatever problems you are worried about, the free market can solve and provide a better solution to.

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Raison d'État 5d ago

English Common Law functioned well for a millenium without police.

Oriental tyrannies have possessed government police since Antiquity, but the first police force in the English-speaking world were instituted only in 1829.

It is true that we are not the same peoples, culturally, as then, but that should be seen as an illness to remedy, not a certainty to submit to.

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Chris Liss 5d ago

Pretty sure they had kings who could just order your execution without due process if you ran afoul of the edicts. Human nature is such that it needs boundaries. The key is to make those boundaries wide and causing the minimum interference necessary. But without boundaries, there is no peace for anyone.

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Raison d'État 5d ago

Thomas Hobbes said it better.

But he was also wrong, just a cringey apologist for early-modern Absolutism.

We can all benefit from reading up how past societies actually worked. Mises.org has a great library.

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MAHDOOD 4d ago

And your solution for creating these boundaries is to give a small group of people the right to do things that others cannot and to enforce that right through violent force? Do you feel that violence is an effective solution to get things that you want with otherwise peaceful people?