You would have much more control over a competitive market of groups. Your claim is like saying that you'd rather there only be a single restaurant available rather than a group of restaurants, because then you only have to worry about one restaurant poisoning you or otherwise providing bad service.
"You would have much more control over a competitive market of groups." In other words gangs? Are you seriously suggesting that we devolve back to paying protection money to the most "competitive" mafia family? What happens when one family finally emerges as the winner? Whoops... you're back to a monopoly only this time you can't vote them out because they'll murder you.
Christ. Some days I love reading HN and other days I feel like I'm looking through a window to a childishly naive bizarro world.
This libertarian polycentric government system is not like having multiple restaurants to choose from. To me it sounds like you're at one restaurant (the place you live at), and there's multiple cooks, instead of choosing they are going to decide what food is best for you (they all cook different kinds of poison food), and compete with each other over who gets to give you the food.
If that's not how the libertarians envision it, and you can actually choose what government you want by actually moving into one governments influence (so you are without the influence of another) then what you describe is basically Europe. Is Europe the libertarian dream?
(Ironically, in Europe there is the problem of too many inhabitants of poor more liberal (corrupt/lawless) countries migrating to rich euro-socialist countries)
I don't speak for all "libertarians," but the way I envision it is that it's precisely like restaurants. In other words, anyone can start a restaurant anywhere they choose that offers any services they choose with any restrictions (geographical, etc.), and any individuals can choose whether to pay for any services that are made available to them.
Certainly some restaurants will only be available in certain regions, either because physical distance makes providing the service impractical, or the restaurant chooses to only serve customers in one region.
It's also very possible that one region won't have any restaurants of a certain type which you like (there weren't any Indian restaurants where I grew up in rural Missouri). If that is sufficiently important to make you move to another region, then you are free to. Of course, you are also free to open an Indian restaurant in that area.
But there is no restriction (other than economical) on the number of restaurants that can simultaneously offer services to one particular region.
The problem is when it comes to force. I've read a couple of libertarian leaning books after having similar conversations on HN and they all seem to believe that a monopoly won't spring up on force due to market forces and people wisely deciding to pay someone else to stop a company getting to large. It just seems naive, one of the key premises of the free market is that those who do a job better (cost/quality) grow (if they're scalable) because more people want to do business with them. When they have enough force they can leverage that to force to keep competitors out of the market and to force "customers" to pay them. It may not happen instantly but the system is unstable and it only has to happen in one geographical region for that company to have a strong source of income to pour into others to gain market share.
I do not see how this is any better than the admittedly imperfect current system.
It's notable that a role of government is to regulate against monopolies. There is no such thing as natural market equilibrium (which is an underlying false assumption you see a lot) and this is a reason you need external governance for a healthy functioning market. You can argue over quality and whether interests are fairly protected but that's a different question. Also worth considering the history of firefighting which used to be organised along more libertarian lines and was a complete disaster that required centralisation.
You're suggesting that the possibility of market failures justifies government power. Unfortunately, government is also vulnerable to market failures, and I don't know of any argument for why government's market failures (also known as "government failures") would be less common or harmful than market failures.
The difference is that other things also tend to justify government power.
If we were to use your logic, the fact that there exist companies susceptible to market failures would mean that we should get rid of corporations entirely, even though there are valid reasons to justify the creation of corporations. The conclusion is absurd because the logic is absurd.
Similarly, the conclusion that markets efficiently allocate economic resources does not lead to a conclusion that markets can, by themselves, fairly allocate other types of resources (to say nothing of non-resource allocation functions of government).
Instead of looking at a bad government and saying that the problem is government, you need to look at the bad government and realize that the problem is that it's not good government, and then fix the government to not suck. I won't claim it's always easy but most things worth having are not easy otherwise everyone would already have them.
I'm not suggesting the possibility of market failures without government but the inevitability of them, as can be trivially observed by the existence of monopoly regulation. It's strikingly naive to think there is an equivalence between the market and a democratic government - the key difference being one person one vote.
That's certainly a valid criticism, and one that advocates of polycentric legal systems think about a lot. It's pretty clearly that some parts of a "defense agency" would enjoy economies of scale, while others wouldn't. Purchasing weaponry would scale well, while providing local service "on the ground" (e.g. police, detectives, etc.) probably wouldn't. I wouldn't claim to be able to prove that a monopoly couldn't possibly arise, but I don't think anyone can prove that it would.
I haven't developed this thought fully, but I wonder why there are a lot of governments today, despite the fact that one or a few of the largest ones could easily conquer the rest, at least in traditional military conflicts. Why doesn't the US completely conquer and annex Mexico, for instance? The Texas national guard wouldn't have much trouble crippling the Mexican military. But this is only considering the parts that enjoy economies of scale, like weapons manufacturing.
Of course, a more rhetorical approach to this criticism is that even if it happens, you're basically left with a government.
Though I feel it isn't a main point (and giving this reasoning doesn't prove a monopoly will form) I will point out that on the ground sending a patrol to an area is inherently more efficient the more customers you have in that area and that this is a large part of police labour. I'll also point out that once a local monopoly/oligopoly forms if you wish to start a competing company you need to either accept the large capital investment of starting the company for 1/4~1/2 the area (say city) or alternatively you are surrounded by a larger force that has a reason to want you out.
As to whether or not monopolies will form (while in no way proof) I will offer as example that generally throughout history establishments of force (gangs, organised crime syndicates, city states, warlords, tribes, governments) seem to exert the majority of their force in areas of control and it is only at the edges between two of these powers that you have a choice between these powers (and often the area is more dangerous because of it).
As to why governments today aren't on a rampage. I will point out that these governments have effectively formed coalitions or come under the protection of larger allies to allow them to have sole or mostly sole control over their people (A situation that would not necesarily be as nice for a lot of the people if the governments were instead local monopolies on force with no obligations to the populous). Lastly I'd point out that many smaller countries complain about the US/China/Russia as bullies on the international stage and that they have bought force against "startup" force companies (tongue in cheek, obviously) such as say terrorists.
I realise you might be saying the cost of aggression is prohibitive, but I'd say it's the fact that the large players can't advance without being destroyed (MAD) that keeps the system somewhat stable. I'd also point out that the number of countries changes and that generally it seems like there is a trend to consolidation, even if it's playing out over decades/centuries.
>Of course, a more rhetorical approach to this criticism is that even if it happens, you're basically left with a government.
I don't disagree, but it would not be likely to be a government that the majority would want more than the current system (at least in first world countries, as I'm sure you'd agree). What it comes down to for me the fact that the market for force doesn't have as strong external/internal checks and balances. So it would (I believe) likely deteriorate to something worse than what we have now, before moving slowly back through the steps to something approaching our current systems.
(Note, I'm not dismissing libertarianism, I just want to understand this idea)
I understand the public services part of the idea, but the public services is not what I hear libertarians complain about.
What I hear complains about are the public restrictions, and their enforcements.
Suppose I live in Birmingham Alabama, and I do not want to be mugged. I would want to subscribe to the restaurant that offers me protection from muggers. But these muggers are smart, they subscribe to the restaurant that do not do anything to muggers. What happens now? Will my restaurant use force to protect me from them, infringing on the rights of the muggers? Or will they simply not be able to offer such a service? The result of that would be that a mugger simply is an outcast as no restaurant would openly service muggers?
> But these muggers are smart, they subscribe to the restaurant that do not do anything to muggers. What happens now?
That's a very common and intelligent question that immediately gets raised. I believe that such a restaurant would not exist, at least for very long. Assume that it does exist. Firstly, every customer of that restaurant is also vulnerable to being mugged without consequence, which many muggers might quickly realize is not ideal. Secondly, every other restaurant would probably use force to protect its customers from the muggers, like you ask here:
> Will my restaurant use force to protect me from them, infringing on the rights of the muggers?
I don't tend to use the concept of "rights" in my arguments, but if you please, then yes, the anti-mugger restaurants would infringe on the right of the mugger to mug people.
> The result of that would be that a mugger simply is an outcast as no restaurant would openly service muggers?
Restaurants would probably service people who have mugged, but not in the sense that they would enable the mugger to mug. Perhaps a serial and unrepentant mugger would eventually be completely outcast, but more likely, they would receive punishment for mugging and either stop mugging or suffer lots of punishment (e.g. forced reparation or imprisonment). That brings up the notion of prisons in a polycentric legal system, which is another big subtopic. But in short, I do think that prisons could and would exist in such a system.
In informal language, the market chooses winners and losers by "voting with their dollars." Obviously, no single individual has absolute control over any aspect of society in either system.
I'm not sure I understand how that gives you personally more control. It seems to give more control to whoever wants to hurt you as he is the one purchasing the services. So with one body of force, I only need to worry about them coming after me, but with multiple bodies, I have less control as any one of them can come after me (even worse, without my knowledge of their existence in the first place). What am I missing?
> I'm not sure I understand how that gives you personally more control.
Because you don't pay for the services you don't want, unlike with government. Government can decide to come after you and hurt you, after a lifetime of taking a large portion of your income. Again, it's just like any market. Obviously one individual doesn't have direct control over what bread a supermarket stocks, but a competitive market of grocery stores will lead to grocery stores stocking bread in an attempt to meet the demand of its customers. In that sense, you clearly have more control over your local break market than you would if all grocery stores were controlled centrally by government.
But you may still be subject to someone else's concepts of justice, with no control over that at all. It removes even the illusion of democratic control and makes you subject to the whims of others, especially if they have more money.
> But you may still be subject to someone else's concepts of justice, with no control over that at all.
That sounds like the current state of all governments, unless you're one of the tiny portion of society that gets to decide what government does.
> It removes even the illusion of democratic control and makes you subject to the whims of others, especially if they have more money.
I don't desire democratic control or the illusion thereof. In fact, democratic control "makes you subject to the whims of others, especially if they have more money," so I don't understand why you implied a difference between the two.
