This is the last one I’ll do. I’m getting testy, and I’m pretty sure he’s refusing to listen to a single thing I say. In the interest of not wasting any more time on a lost cause, and not venting my frustration on a guy who, for the most part, I respect, I’m cutting myself off. I’ve said everything that needs to be said about the failures of market anarchy to live up to the real world. If that makes me a coercive statist, so be it. At least my eyes are open.

What I respect most about Mr. Tremblay is his philosophical consistency and his ability to get other liberty-loving folks to sit up and think. What I do not like about his belief system–market anarchy–is that the entire philosophy seems a bit like a teenager who’s watched A Beautiful Mind or read Freakonomics and now can’t stop raving about the amazing predictive ability of economics, yet hasn’t put much thought into the basic assumptions made by either market anarchy or economics or the limitations of both.

Market anarchy obviously is built upon economic models. Some of the assumptions that an economic model makes are perfect rationality (yeah, right), perfect information (people know EVERYTHING about what’s going on…), and that market value and real value are commensurate (I’m not even going to bother). When these conditions (and others) are satisfied, the model shows excellent fidelity. When these conditions aren’t satisfied, we see various levels of crappiness.

Furthermore, market anarchy takes the one inviolate assumption of all behavioral modelling, that individuals are self-interested, and then proceeds to make strange claims about how that self interest manifests itself. Not to mention making judgments on what we actually value.

Market anarchists hold that what people will always value life, liberty, and property at a high level. While there is good evidence for the first, and the third could be argued, the notion that liberty is highly valued is laughable.

From hormonal systems all the way through highest-order brain functioning, we are literally wired to seek comfort and security. Comfort and liberty are often, but not always, mutually exclusive entities. Furthermore, contrary to how many of us feel, most people would gladly trade their liberty for comfort. Hence my example of the serf. Liberty is an abstract. An abstract that in and of itself guarantees little or nothing in material wealth. Why should I pay a guy 10,000 dollars to keep other people from killing and stealing my property if he’ll let me starve to death? Surely I’d choose the guy who charges 15,000, performs the above services, but throws in a minimum level of food and shelter into the bargain? So what if he tells me I can’t do certain things (like not wear a seatbelt or leave the house past certain times) in order to be true to my contract? At least I won’t starve.

Mr. Tremblay tries to divert attention by saying that somehow people wouldn’t behave that way when free. Which explains why as I said there is no human society without a monopolizing power structure of some kind or another. He tries again by missing my point about monopolist systems. The structures themselves are remarkably stable. It’s merely the players that change rapidly.

Which brings us to another important facet of self interest: The quest for power. The man charging 15,000 is not merely after wealth but after power as well. He will manipulate the self interest of others, particularly their comfort-seeking, in order to gain power. At first, of course, it might be limited to material wealth. But it will turn itself to control of those under him. Such as restrictions on their behavior, etc. And if this man comes to control a sizeable portion of the total wealth in the population (which he will, given our innate tendencies), little could be done to stop him becoming a tyrant. Mr. Tremblay makes the quaint assertion that:

An anarchy can exist where 99% of people do not desire to be free, and they are free to assemble themselves in hierarchies as much as they want- but as long as some people do desire to be free, those people will be able to assemble and live their freedom relatively fully.

Because ambition has never led a man to want to control others. Oh sure, I guess the 1% could amass their fortunes and attempt to rise up. That’ll of course end well. Like the Alamo or Thermopylae.

Given this fact, there is no point in invoking hypothetical “invasions”. There is no such thing as an “invasion”, for there is nothing to “invade”. There is no “country” or “state” to take over. Another group of people who want to assemble together in a hierarchy is merely that- another group of people who want to live their lives differently. Can Nikhil tell us what is being invaded?

Well, I thought I was being clear about what invadable meant. Invasion is a term used in game theoretics to denote what happens when new players enter (or old players start to play differently) who play by different rules than the old players. Invasion occurs when the old system doesn’t work under this onslaught. Such as when, far from valuing liberty, people would actively yield it. And pay to do so. In this case, the invaders are power-mongers and comfort-seekers, as opposed to the utopian extant population who place a high monetary value on liberty.

Would a society where 99% of people reject rights be free? Not really. But a minarchy in that same society would make people even less free. So once again his point should be returned to himself.

I’ve never said that a minarchist society would be perfectly free. I’ve merely asserted that it would keep people the most free. Now, if you mean to tell me that a society organized along the lines of the intent of say the articles or the constitution (albeit with fewer federal AND state’s rights but more individual rights) would be less free than a society that’s 99% communist russia and 1% anarchist utopia?

Interesting proposition to say the least.

Nikhil keeps making veiled threats of coercion against anyone who disagrees with his ideal system. Unlike Nikhil, I have no wish to force those people to live the way I want. I am not a violent or utopian person. I simply wish for all to be free to live the way they want.

Apparently, this principle is very hard to understand.

I think I’ve done a good job of demonstrating that people won’t be free to live as they want. The majority will willingly choose the comfortable cage. And the ambitious men who guide them into those cages, taking money as they do so, will hardly constrain their ambition to just those many. Armed with the majority of societal wealth, it would be hard to stop such juggernauts from coming down like an armored fist upon those who really did value freedom.

So what we end up with is the market anarchist saying that ‘well at least I let people put themselves in a totalitarian goverment.’ Which seems to be the jist of it as he admits that people won’t necessarily choose liberty. So it doesn’t protect natural rights, by his own admission. But it is a convenient moral and philosophical high ground. Which I’ll concede. He’s more internally consistent, while I’m a violently coercive and oxymoronic statist claiming to defend liberty by chaining people to government. But at least I make sense in the real world.

By supporting ‘market anarchy’ you support a quick return to totalitarianism. Market anarchy is too far removed from the real world, takes too few factors into account, and makes some rather strange and un-thought-out views about human nature. In a lot of ways, they remind me of Marx. Starting out on the right track before veering off into the clouds with daydreams about what they want people to be rather than what we really are. But that’s probably just an assertion too.