SuaveFeline

Sorry if I'm appearing to dwell on superficial issues. I agree with all the principles, these are just silly hypothetical situations either I've thought up to test my own stance, or others have questioned me with, and I apologize if I've wasted much of your time. Thanks for the video! I have a relatively better understanding of how your illustration works now, and the sweat shop explanation will definitely help me explain things to my friend. It's hard because, usually when I bring this up with colleagues we get stuck on hypotheticals because we're both used to a statist methodology of solving problems, and the tendencies of people wanting to take advantage of others. I would however like to hear how Intellectual Property is treated with this philosophy. I've always been a proponent of freedom of information, but believe if I get some use or enjoyment out of something I've pirated, I should pay the creator, so that he survives and can make even better content. I know this might be a controversial issue, but it is something I've been curious about for a while. I think Stefan holds that IP is just a government induced monopoly, but is there even a small a basis for it in Natural Law? What are your opinions on the matter?

NAP/self-ownership is still an idea worth spreading, and I second what Kevin and sayers have said. I wanted to ask (just out of curiosity), how much of the world's population is already at least turning towards the same principles, do you think? Look at Ukraine and Venezuela for example. I know a lot of my friends (who take philosophy, economic and political classes with me) have come to similar conclusions, or at least identify as libertarian. Most libertarians or anarcho-capitalists are competent businessmen as well (since economics is a large part of it) and, as slimy as it sounds, might someday be at the head of their own big businesses, influencing government decisions. Also, I don't think we should be shunning the government all together, and avoiding it at all costs. If you really want to make a difference you have to know the beast you wish to kill and confront it head on. It would be preferable if more of us got into the inner-workings of the state and started pushing legislation that dismantled socialist government programs, granted this would be very difficult to achieve. Hopefully we don't drink the statist powerade if we ever do get elected, but continue to hold to our principles. Hope that provided some encouragement! Keep having conversations, and welcome to the forums!

@Alan is that the only difference between the two? Would I be safe, when talking with someone who wasn't familiar with either, to use them interchangeably? I'm only curious because Anarcho-Capitalism has two roots which our society generally doesn't think very fond of (at least in the intellectual realm), whereas Voluntaryism sounds much more politically correct, at least to me. I'd think just for the sake of not turning people off to new ideas I'd favor the latter term when speaking to a large group. @sayers firstly I'm curious what exactly is going on in your avatar (sorry if you've been asked that too many times) anyway, thanks for the long response! This is why I wanted some info on vigilantism, because sometimes the judgement of an single outside party isn't correct. Let's say you see a struggling child being carried away into an alley. You could assume that the person is a kidnapper and use violence against him, when in reality it's just a father about to drive home a reluctant child after an exciting party. There are a lot of ambiguous cases I'm sure, which is why using force on sight, without some sort of trial or court system (DRO or otherwise) wouldn't be the most wise choice as far as I know. When I say "Sex trade" I mean human trafficking for the most part (though prostitution commonly has human rights violations as well, just because of the clientele they usually cater to). Also, I feel as though you assume that the perverse market would die out because no one would be as violent or inhumane anymore. I'm assuming that, realistically (and for the sake of argument) that there would still be closet perverts and violent people that existed in a free society. What I'm after is a solution to those types of people if they acted on their impulses. I guess I'm just not satisfied with, "everything will be fine because people will be respect each other's rights and condemn those that don't" because I know that much already. I'd rather have a theory as to how violent people are treated in special cases. And perhaps I'm asking an impossible question but I'd like to hear input. Another contention a friend raised was that most people don't care about human rights violations in this age, and purposely live in ignorance towards it for fear of experiencing guilt. For example: the plants that produce iPhones and cheap Chinese products (and most industries in China for that matter). I would wager that, if we all knew what transpired in those factories we'd refuse to buy products from Apple and cheap things from Walmart. Second is the matter of convenience. Looking into the background and morality reviews of companies requires time, and most people are more concerned with which product is cheapest and highest quality rather than the way it was produced. (there is a market for organics and *Made in USA type products, though most of that is out of blind national pride and concern for your own health rather than supporting companies you like). Oh one more thing. So if a person is invading upon your property, with an intent to harm you, have they surrendered all their rights to you? Since you have the right to defend yourself using lethal force if necessary, could you also take away other rights from that person besides their right to life, such as their own property or even possibly (and I know this is a stretch) enslaving them after their attempted invasion? What are the limits of self-defense, in other words? Thanks!

Hello all! I'm fairly new here, but have been researching Anarcho-Capitalism/Voluntaryism (are they synonymous?) for several months now. Currently I'm throwing together a 30 minute senior thesis presentation defending it, but I do have a few unanswered questions I've been pondering if you all would be kind enough to advise me. These may be hypothetical, but they are worrisome all the same. And I apologize if you've answered these questions before, if so just post a link. 1. I assume the sex trade would probably still exist in a free society (if not grow larger due to no restrictions). Currently slavery is most prevalent in these businesses, at least from what I know. Suppose a prostitute gave birth and the child was taken and forced to work for a brothel or for clients with very particular tastes. I'll just cut to the chase here: how are the defenseless liberated in a free society without violating the rights of the slave owner or oppressors? Moreover how can people prevent helpless, orphaned/neglected children from being taken advantage of by businessmen (like in the Industrial Revolution) by pedophiles or by child-abusers? By comparison today we have social services which attempts to handle such cases, but in the process they violate the rights of parents by taking away their children. Do we just sit by and tell the children to resist their captors? Do we bribe the oppressors? (but in doing so we would empower them with more resources to continue their deplorable practices) Boycotting isn't particularly effective since most people who care about children wouldn't have been using the services these businesses provide in the first place. I would think perhaps the only viable solution is coordinated osteracizing, but we also have to consider the business partners of these evil people probably wouldn't be up to it. Another option may be covert non-violent rescue operations, but still there's the possibility of things going wrong, and the whole invasion of property thing. Lastly we could try reasoning with the evildoers, but there's no guarantee that they would listen when slavery is so lucrative. TL;DR: How do you rescue innocent/helpless people without using violence to violate other people's rights? 2. How do we stop a seemingly endless cycle of violence caused by crimes of passion, when both parties believe themselves to be in the right? For example feuds that used to rage for decades between families in the Appalachians. These feuds could cause property damage to third parties that have no quarrel. Usually when criminals are motivated by emotion rather than reason it is very hard to calm them and arbitrate without being perceived as a threat (since they think you are calling them liars or evil by not siding with them). 3. How should vigilantism be treated/viewed/handled? 4. How are anonymous criminals stopped? (Hacking, long range/stealth assassinations) Also how are crimes investigated without search warrants (assuming DROs don't have a contract for such things in place). It would be undesirable for investigators to have to break and enter (violating property rights) in order to prove crimes. I would assume that this problem could actually lead to more product or firearm regulation and tracking than we have today. In other words, firearms manufacturers would have contracts with DROs or investigation firms which would track the owner and exact usage of the firearm itself. 5. Would privacy be a lot less valued in a free society, since people who refuse to have public ledgers or 24/7 surveillance are more subjected to suspicion? A person's reputation would be paramount to their business so they would probably want to be as publicly readable as possible, just so that their customers are confident in who they do business with. I would think this is one advantage to a law system which adheres to the innocent until proven guilty idea. But as a consumer I view it as more risky to buy a product which has no rating, than a product that has a mediocre rating. 6. Also how does an economy recover from large natural disasters, market drops, massive blows to infrastructure, or terrorism? I know "there's insurance for that" but if the disaster is big enough, it could delay recovery for an extremely long time, or destroy the insurance companies themselves. Given that people get a lot more desperate when their basic needs aren't satisfied, rampant looting, crime, and other issues could arise (like we saw after Katrina). We can also look at the rapid rise of authoritarian governments when economies started to collapse after World War One. What could we do to try and stop this from happening in a free society? Immediate satisfaction of needs through a violent state seems a lot more appealing in the short term to the laymen (who hasn't eaten in days) than the philosophical ideal of the pure free market. This very fact may have been what kept feudalism going for so long. 7. One of my friends, when I was speaking with him, had a concern about how average intelligence levels may drop considerably when public schools are removed. Yes charity is probably the solution, but are there any statistics that I can use to show that general education thrives much more free of public financing? (or just historical examples if there aren't any hard stats) I also wondered whether free business-funded trade schools who educate children in return for a promise of X many years of work or apprenticeship would be a solution. (but again that dips into the tricky territory of child labor and all the possible abuses that go along with it) 8. Just one more thing (and I'm sorry this is long). One of my professors made a case against the elimination of government-funded public goods showing that in Redmond, or the general Seattle area, regular public transportation had to be cut or reduced since it was not making enough money. Why? Because big software companies were actually paying for transportation of their employees with their own private buses! This may sound good up front, but any non-employee who didn't have a car or friend with one was stuck because the lack of the old bus line. They couldn't get a ride anywhere outside the city so they were screwed (couldn't go to job interviews, work, or buy goods). When I tried to counter with "well there's a massive demand so someone will enter the market and make a killing on a new bus line" she claimed that the buses were heavily subsidized and no one with a brain would start a similar public bus line since it could never be profitable without government intervention. After thinking about it for a while outside of class I came up with this solution, which I'd like to get an opinion on: Couldn't businesses create free/cheap public services via advertising? It works excellently online, for example with Spotify, Free2Play games, Facebook, most Google products, and other free services. In fact, Google Fiber is providing completely free internet to select cities (just an installation fee, but after that no monthly payments!). They can do this since the Google advertising these people view while on the internet makes up for the minimal cost of the somewhat low-speed internet hookup. I could see this method funding public roads, mail, TV stations, or just about any service the government currently provides. Ads do get annoying, but if people don't like it, they can pay a fee for the service and eliminate them. But these services, like Facebook, free games etc, survive off of the personal info you feed them. It's essentially cheap market research for businesses. But this also raises the question of whether you have a right to your own information, and whether by necessity you'd have to give up that privacy to survive in a free society. (not here to start a flame war about intellectual property and whether it is a government construct or natural right, but if it gets brought up I'd love to discuss that as well). Thanks, hope to hear some responses! I've got a couple weeks before my written speech for the presentation is done, so no rush.