Thanks Bush

[Anonymouse]

You see, you are making the same assumption in your questions, attributing prosperity with empires or states.

Question: Why have all historically affluent peoples been organized into empires, nation-states, or city-states?

What we know as city is precisely that which since ancient times is synonymous with trade, irrespective of the State aspect or not. It is because of cities which we signify trade, and ergo prosperity. This question is faulty for it assumes only the obvious that there are affluent people in empires, nation-states, or city states. You speak of it as if it's something good, not realizing that because of invasions and wars, it hampers on trade, and prosperity therefore those that are prosperous lose out in times of wars, and depressions, caused by them. If you read The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups by Mancur Olsen, you will see he brilliantly displays his study on collective action, in which he states that iindividuals have no economic incentive to participate in seeking large group collective goods unless forced through coercion, or presented with some sort of selective alternative.

Obviously due to your lack of knowledge regrding economics, you have asked a question which is the heart of Austrian economics, and it will take more than paragraphs to answer you, but suffice to say that you attributed the Industrial Revolution to Nation-States, i.e. politics, and not praxaeological laws of human action, highlights your misconception. In his own words regarding political economy, he says "They do not tell us much about the relationships between the form of government and the fortunes of the economy or adequately explain why some societies are rich and others are poor". Of course he likens government to a stationary bandit, which will protect its "goods" and invest in "public goods" but only to a limited extent. Since politicians do not produce goods or services, i.e. do not have to labor for their income like the rest of people, because their income is guaranteed through coercion ( taxation ) there is no way to know what the price of their labor is, or how to calculate the GDP, and yes it means the present "GDP" is a false one, not yielding a true result of the conditions given.

Question:Why have all peoples not under a government been conquered by those who were?

This has already been answered in my many boring and tedious discussions with you and surfer and everyone else. All governments come into existence via force. This is not a question of government, since even the family is a form of government, it's a question of what type, i.e. individual, familial, central, etc.?

[loseyourname]

Originally posted by Anonymouse You see, you are making the same assumption in your questions, attributing prosperity with empires or states.

Must I really state again that I don't attribute prosperity to nation-states, I only view them as necessary for the maintenance of it?

What we know as city is precisely that which since ancient times is synonymous with trade, irrespective of the State aspect or not. It is because of cities which we signify trade, and ergo prosperity. This question is faulty for it assumes only the obvious that there are affluent people in empires, nation-states, or city states. You speak of it as if it's something good, not realizing that because of invasions and wars, it hampers on trade, and prosperity therefore those that are prosperous lose out in times of wars, and depressions, caused by them. If you read The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups by Mancur Olsen, you will see he brilliantly displays his study on collective action, in which he states that iindividuals have no economic incentive to participate in seeking large group collective goods unless forced through coercion, or presented with some sort of selective alternative.

All you have done is state that yes, the existence of cities makes conditions more favorable for prosperity. That is what I have already said.

This has already been answered in my many boring and tedious discussions with you and surfer and everyone else. All governments come into existence via force. This is not a question of government, since even the family is a form of government, it's a question of what type, i.e. individual, familial, central, etc.?

That is why I was careful to say those not under a central government (those that are tribal or individualistic) are conquered by those that are. You have never answered this objection, as much as it may have been discussed. You can throw economics all you want, but this is not an economic matter. There can be no free market for a conquered people.

[Anonymouse]

I have answered this objection plenty of times. This is precisely why all vertically integrated empires fail over time, you just supported my argument that societies that induce situations counter to the will of that segment that is coerced will have no incentive to support that said society, i.e. Iraq, a clear case of one big brother invading the little guy, ergo will have no room for trade or free markets. The type of economies which you are referring to only succeed in the short term, and tend to deteriorate over time, but the free market and trade have been going on for thousands of years, surely there must be a reason for this, and many empires have come and gone, yet the market remains, trade remains, and inviduals are still there acting.

[loseyourname]

Did I not just say that this is not an economic matter? Need I say that I feel a government should not, to any extent, intervene in the free market. I'm pretty hardline about this. Government is necessary for other reasons - mostly, to keep us from being conquered, to ensure that individuals and entities do not cheat one another, and to keep guys like me from murdering half of the people I meet. I can promise you I would do if it were not illegal.

[jilbagh]

This debate would be a great one to air on c-span or maybe Horizon would like to pick it up. We can even start a reality series and have you guys live in the same house and all...wow i need to make some phone calls on this one

[Anonymouse]

Originally posted by loseyourname Did I not just say that this is not an economic matter? Need I say that I feel a government should not, to any extent, intervene in the free market. I'm pretty hardline about this. Government is necessary for other reasons - mostly, to keep us from being conquered, to ensure that individuals and entities do not cheat one another, and to keep guys like me from murdering half of the people I meet. I can promise you I would do if it were not illegal.

Aww, the famous argument of "we need government to protect us from not being conquered". See The Myth of National Defense.

[loseyourname]

You have already conceded that, historically, people not governed by a central authority have a tendency to be conquered by those who are. Are you now going to dispute this?

By the way, that was only one of three reasons I gave for the existence of government. But it's cool, continue your pattern of ignoring most of what is said.

[Anonymouse]

You are misconstruing "government", or the idea of it. The modern State, is not the same government as Feudal lords, or Bedoin tribesman.

Now for the myth of national defense:

The Myth of National Defense

by Hans-Hermann Hoppe

[This is the introduction to The Myth of National Defense: Essays on the Theory and History of Security Production (Mises Institute, 2003), posted October 24, 2003.]

In the American Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson affirmed

these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness: that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence indeed will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience has shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is in their right, it is their duty to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

More than 200 years after the Declaration of Independence, it seems appropriate to raise the question whether governments have in fact done what they were designed to do, or if experience or theory has provided us with grounds to consider other possibly more effective guards for our future security.

The present volume aims to provide an answer to this fundamental question.

In fact, this question has recently assumed new urgency through the events of September 11, 2001. Governments are supposed to protect us from terrorism. Yet what has been the U.S. government’s role in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon?

The U.S. government commands a "defense" budget of $400 billion per annum, a sum equal to the combined annual defense budgets of the next 24 biggest government spenders. It employs a worldwide network of spies and informants. However, it was unable to prevent commercial airliners from being hijacked and used as missiles against prominent civilian and military targets.

Worse, the U.S. government did not only fail to prevent the disaster of September 11, it actually contributed to the likelihood of such an event. In pursuing an interventionist foreign policy (taking the form of economic sanctions, troops stationed in more than 100 countries, relentless bombings, propping up despotic regimes, taking sides in irresolvable land and ethnic disputes, and otherwise attempting political and military management of whole areas of the globe), the government provided the very motivation for foreign terrorists and made the U.S. their prime target.

Moreover, how was it possible that men armed with no more than box cutters could inflict the terrible damage they did? Obviously, this was possible only because the government prohibited airlines and pilots from protecting their own property by force of arms, thus rendering every commercial airline vulnerable and unprotected against hijackers. A $50 pistol in the xxxxpit could have done what $400 billion in the hands of government were unable to do.

And what was the lesson drawn from such failures? In the aftermath of the events, the U.S. foreign policy became even more aggressively interventionist and threatening. The U.S. military overthrew the Afghani government that was said to be "harboring" the terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden. In the course of this, thousands of innocent civilians were killed as "collateral damage," but bin Laden has not been captured or punished to this day, almost two years after the attacks. And once a U.S. approved government had been installed in Afghanistan, the U.S. government turned its attention to wars against other enemy states, in particular Iraq with its huge oil reserves. The U.S. refused even to rule out the employment of nuclear weapons against enemy regimes. No doubt, this policy helped to further increase the number of recruits into the ranks of people willing to use extreme violence against the U.S. as a means of retribution.

At the same time, domestically the government used the crisis which it had helped to provoke to further increase its own power at the expense of the people’s liberty and property rights. Government spending, in particular on "defense," was vastly increased, and a new government department for "homeland security" was created. Airport security was taken over by the federal government and government bureaucrats, and decisive steps toward a complete electronic citizen surveillance were taken.

Truly, then, the current events cry out for a systematic rethinking of the issues of defense and security and the respective roles of government, the market, and society in providing them.

http://www.mises.org/fullarticle.asp?control=1356

You can read the rest of the article at the link, which totally demolishes the idea of "national defense".

[Anonymouse]

Another nice analysis of the State which is too long to post hereso go here.

The State: Its Rise and Decline

[loseyourname]

All that addressed was interventionist government and infringement on civil liberties. Again, you are not addressing me, as I am staunchly isolationist and libertarian. I am not in any way attempting to defend out current government.

You still haven't addressed my other two points, but again, I expected that.