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0 pointsenko12y ago0 comments

I think you'll find that the presence of effective, competent governance is pretty strongly correlated with the availability of both food and jobs.

You missed my point, anyway, which is that your comfortable notions of a safe, orderly society will go right out the window once the economy breaks down, which it would if you removed the framework in which it operates, which is basically indistinguishable from government.

"Any society is only three square meals away from revolution"

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2 comments · 1 top-level

snitko12y ago· 1 in thread

The proposition is not to remove the framework, but to de-monopolize it. We currently have a government framework of law, but nothing (except people not realizing it's even possible) prevents us from having multiple frameworks, each operating on its own client base (even when those clients physically live on the same territory) and negotiating with each other when disputes between clients of two different agencies arise.

The major difference in this situation would be that clients of such firms would voluntarily pay money to be protected by them. If they don't want protection or don't like specific laws, they stop paying or switch. The monopoly we have now extracts money from taxpayers at gunpoint and provides a rather crappy service.

dragonwriter12y ago

> The proposition is not to remove the framework, but to de-monopolize it.

To demonopolize it is to remove it. The monopoly is the essence of the framework.

> We currently have a government framework of law, but nothing (except people not realizing it's even possible) prevents us from having multiple frameworks, each operating on its own client base (even when those clients physically live on the same territory) and negotiating with each other when disputes between clients of two different agencies arise.

This kind of patron/client system is not novel, and most people do, in fact, recognize that it is possible.

> The major difference in this situation would be that clients of such firms would voluntarily pay money to be protected by them.

Unless there is some supervisory entity that does have a monopoly enforcing it (in which case, this remains a monopoly system with low-level enforcement farmed out, not a demonopolized system), voluntariness seems, well, dubious. You've just invented a system competing warlords (well, invented is too strong a term, its the basic model of primitive feudalism.)

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