OverclockedJesus Posted:

And without a government, you can’t get coercive monopolies.

You may not be able to have legislation in place to create coercive monopoly, but to say that those are the only means by which a coercive monopoly could exist is rather absurd.

Using the protective agency as an example, they would have some sort of violent means with which to establish protection from either outside forces or violent individuals within the area (Because of course everyone is free to own weapons, no matter how deranged, as long as they have money). The only thing stopping a large enough agency from creating a coercive monopoly would be their own conscience, otherwise they could easily set up protection rackets under threat of violence while actively destroying any potential competitors.

Organized crime groups will do this and their competition is the apparently horrendously corrupt state run police and of course other gangs. Obviously other gangs are a potential threat but for argument’s sake, let’s say that the company in question becomes rather large as they offered good deals for a long time and now pretty much own 80% of all protective services in the US. At this point they steal whatever employees from competing companies that they can while killing and threatening the rest until they own everything. They may start slowly with simple buyouts but once they have enough power they can become as overt as they want as there is no one to stop them. Who will help the populace who are being extorted? Any new groups could be crushed fairly easily with all their funds and supplies being confiscated to supply the ever growing company. As you said, war is financially unsound so such businesses from elsewhere in the world would not try to break in for fear of starting one and losing.

Your system relies very heavily on not only good people with a proper conscience and respect for others, but a drive to power to create and run these companies. This power however is the exact same corrupting force which governments have and like within a government those who are driven to power are those who will succeed while those with respect for each other will likely not be able to resort to the underhanded tactics of those who lack it.

Wal-Mart offers great savings and flourishes despite competition. But it does so by cutting corners in production costs at the expense of their workers. Overnight lock-ins, shutting down stores who try to unionize (Quebec), use of sweatshop labor overseas and strategic divvying of hours so that their employees don’t qualify for benefits. Yet their presence closes down more honest businesses and steals their customers which in turn adds to their power base. Are those who use sweatshops more moral than those who refuse to allow me to pay an extra 4000$ in order to jump line in an organ donation wait list?

Also to iIRZ – So far you are too cool to be banned even in CD, let’s see if this keeps up Log in to see images!