Reddit reviews The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to a Radical Capitalism
We found 30 Reddit comments about The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to a Radical Capitalism. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Further Reading
Michael Huermer - 'The Problem of Political Authority':
[Hard Copy]
Henry Hazlitt - 'Economics in One Lesson':
[Audiobook]:[PDF]:[Hard Copy]
David Friedman - 'The Machinery of Freedom'"
[Illustrated Summary]:[Audiobook]:[PDF]:[Hard Copy]
Ludwig von Mises - 'Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth':
[Audiobook]:[PDF]:[ePub]
MisesWiki - Economic Calculation Problem:
[HTML]
Murray N. Rothbard - 'For a New Liberty':
[Audiobook]:[HTML]:[PDF]:[Hard Copy]
Murray N. Rothbard - 'The Ethics of Liberty':
[Audiobook]:[HTML]:[PDF]:[Hard Copy]
Frédéric Bastiat - 'The Law':
[Audiobook]:[HTML]:[PDF]:[Hard Copy]
Ludwig von Mises - 'Human Action':
[Audiobook]:[HTML]:[PDF:[ePub]:[Hard Copy]
Murray N. Rothbard - 'Man Economy and State, with Power, and Markets':
[Audiobook][HTML]:[PDF]:[ePub]:[Hard Copy]
AnCap here. I don't speak for all AnCaps anymore than any libertarian speaks for all libertarians. Here's my data point:
Prisons: Law would have to be reformed first. Instead of having a central legal authority we'd have different arbitration businesses who had market incentives to hold up their reputation. All law would become in the fashion of civil law as we now think of it, where enforcement becomes the recognized prerogative of the one who wins the judgement. People too poor to enforce the judgement themselves could sell part of the resulting proceeds to someone who can, or could use a rights enforcement organization to do the work.
This is not dissimilar to how a large number of historical legal systems have worked. I know David Friedman (son of Milton Friedman) is working on a book about systems like these, and his book The Machinery of Freedom has a more in depth explanation.
Prisons might be run by Rights Enforcement Agencies, or perhaps they would be companies that offer to house criminals to protect them from those avenging blood in exchange for the output of their labor. If you murdered someone and were afraid someone would be taking vengeance, you might hire a prison to shelter you while you work for them. How long you stay or how effective those prisons are at eventually helping you rebuild your life and on which terms they offer their services would determine which ones are successful.
Slavery: We catch flak for this? It's wrong. Forcing someone to work for you is wrong, whether it's in the fields, in prisons, or in the bakery.
Immigration and Borders: The only real borders are private property borders. Do immigrants use up social welfare programs? Of course-- you can't live here without interacting with government services and products. Would I do the same thing in their position? Probably. If they saw so much better opportunity here than there I can hardly blame them for doing it. Am I going to try to stop them in order to avoid them taking up social programs? No. Am I going to support social programs? No. By the time we're talking about who does and who doesn't get to cross the national border and participate in state programs, as far as I'm concerned, we've already 'divided by zero' and any solution is just as valid as any other: That is, not at all.
Race Realism: I don't care. There might be some evidence of aggregate differences between people of different genetic lines. I don't have any reason to believe these differences are likely to be larger than the differences between any two arbitrary individuals, so it hardly matters.
Even if it did matter, it's a red herring for the purposes for which it's used. I run my life, and other people run theirs. I should be free to work or not work, sell to or not sell to, buy from or not buy from, any person I please using whatever criteria I please. If I go to an establishment where I know they hate my race and try to order food there, I should expect I'll be refused. If they're forced to serve me anyway, I should expect they'll spit in my food when I'm not looking, and that I'll have more enemies in the process and no more friends than I had when I started. In such a case I'm free to build my own restaurant or patronize one that better values me. These tasks may be harder, but they give me the freedom to make my own destiny instead of depending on someone else to be nice to me, or to be forced to be nice to me.
As long as I'm not attacking or stealing from someone, or coercing someone, it's not an issue. Let people choose how they live their own lives. My expectation is that most racial tensions will eventually go away when we stop trying to either enforce them or force them to go away. Different groups will come up with different solutions, they will trade these solutions, and it will become in everyone's own selfish interest to get to know people from other races in order to profit personally. Then most of the divides will melt away of their own accord, though it may take a long time.
> how would you then fund a State without taxation?
I think you are assuming there has to be a state. You can have law/courts/defense/police/roads without a central authority that gets its funding by threatening you with a metal cage. All of these services can be provided privately and competitively, without forcing people to pay for services they don't want to use. The idea is to let people group in smaller societies by shared values, instead of trying to force 300+ million people to be happy under one set of rules.
The Machinery of Freedom explains in great detail how such a society could function.
I'll bite.
First and foremost, there are many different breeds of libertarians (or people that call themselves libertarians). For instance, Glenn Beck has even used the word to describe himself as such--however, I don't think many libertarians really take him seriously on that claim.
More seriously, libertarians tend to be divided into two camps: those that want small government providing basic protection of individual rights (called minarchy) and those that want no government at all (usually labeled as anarcho-capitalists, voluntaryists, agorists, etc.). I consider myself a voluntaryist, which in addition to being an anarcho-capitalist, also qualifies me as someone who does not wish to participate in electoral politics and views it as an approach that really cannot help--and also means that I only prefer voluntary means through which to achieve a voluntary society.
To make matters more complicated, the anarchists of us have two different ways to speak of a free market: a David Friedman approach which concentrates on how free markets solve problems more efficiently than States, and a more deontological approach made famous by Murray Rothbard. Usually, you'll see us taking both angles--sometimes it helps to show how a free market is ipso facto better than a State, and sometimes it's better to show that we have the ethical high ground. (And some of us can be absolute in this sense--some might even recognize a failing of a free market but say that it still doesn't justify violating the ethics of libertarianism.)
There is, however a hurdle that needs to be jumped, I think, to truly grasp the libertarian position: familiarization with Austrian Economics. Austrian Economics is usually regarded as a fringe school of economics, and not taken seriously--it is taught in only a few of the colleges around the United States. In spite of that, Austrian business cycle theory, which puts the blame on fractional reserve banking, and specifically, the Federal Reserve, for the ebb and flow of today's marketplace, has proven itself time and time again. Frederick Hayek, the pioneer of this theory (and a winner of a Nobel Prize because of it), predicted the 1929 stock market crash, and more recently, Peter Schiff used it to predict the current recession. (It also explains bubbles that have inflated and popped in the past, when applied.) The best layman's explanation and the theory's real world applications that I can give you is the recent book Meltdown by Thomas Woods. It's not too long and does a great job at explaining Austrian business cycle theory.
There are many differences between Austrian Economics and the more mainstream schools, but I highlighted Austrian business cycle theory because that is the really important one. To emphasize this even more, I can say that if I could change one thing about the current State (sans abolishing it), it would be to abolish the Federal Reserve by establishing a free market currency. Unhesitatingly.
I personally arrived to my conclusion through a deontological perspective, and later familiarized myself with how free markets can provide services that most people widely regard as services that only States can provide. The deontological perspective essentially leads up to the non-aggression principle (NAP): aggression, which is defined as the initiation of physical force, the threat of such, or fraud upon persons or their property, is inherently illegitimate. (I can hammer out the details of the NAP's justification if you like, but I've chosen to omit it here in the interest of brevity.) The most important thing to realize about the NAP is that it is proportional: if you violate my property, I don't have the right to kill you (i.e., the idea that I can shoot a little boy that trespasses onto my yard to collect his baseball). As once I have quelled your aggression, any further aggression on my part is an over-abundance, and therefore an initiation of aggression--and that is illegitimate.
So with this in light, you can see that libertarians (at least, my style, anyway) are a bit of a mix: we simultaneously believe that libertarianism is the only ethical stance consistent with the idea of liberty, and its natural conclusion, a free market, is an inherently better solution to the problem of "infinite wants" and "scare resources" then centralized control through a State. That is, the State is both illegitimate and inefficient.
So the key to the free market, or capitalism, is to understand its most fundamental truth: two individuals voluntarily committing a transaction. What does it mean to commit a transaction? It means that I am giving you X in return for Y because I value Y more than X, AND because you value X more than Y. It's a win-win scenario, and not zero-sum: we both get something we desire.
For example, if my toilet is clogged, and despite my best attempts, I cannot unclog it, I probably need to call a professional. When the plummer comes over, he tells me that it will be $100 to fix my toilet. Immediately, his actions indicate, "I value $100 more than the value of my services as a plummer." When I agree to his proposal, my action indicates, "I value your services as a plummer more than I value $100." At this most basic level, we can see the Subjective Theory of Value in action brilliantly. That is, things don't have intrinsic value, only the value that each individual assigns.
Now, with that background, I think I can answer your questions:
(Wow, I went over the character limit for comments... yikes...)
A violation of the rights of the person being taken from.
Put simply, Anarcho-Capitalism is based on the common understanding of private property and the rejection of the idea that anyone, particularly the government, can legitimately override these property rights for any reason. Ancaps may abbreviate this as "The non-aggression principle", understanding 'aggression' to be "violations of person or property."
For a complete treatment of the crash from an ancap perspective see the book Meltdown.
It's not a problem, or to the degree that it is, economics puts a check on it.
Yes. By institutions that society does not treat as having the legitimate authority to violate rights. E.g. The agents of the State murder innocent people and get away with it. Private security agents, in the rare circumstances where they do murder someone, are much more likely to be held accountable. The State collects taxes and people accept it, while the Mafia collects 'protection money' and everyone knows it's a racket.
You should read The Machinery of Freedom and/or Chaos Theory. Both books build a case for market-based alternatives to the state better than anyone will do in this thread.
However, I should also mention that Robert Nozick – who some believe to have made the best intellectual case for libertarianism in his book Anarchy, State, and Utopia – came to the conclusion that government should provide basic protective services (and only basic protective services) including police, courts, and a military. He described his ideal state as a "Night Watchman State" – and is today usually associated with minarchism. His book is the opposite of an easy read, but if you really like to nerd-out or enjoy punishment, I definitely recommend it.
In any case, my point is that academic libertarians have largely answered your questions, either by describing how a stateless society could effectively provide protective services, or by making a case for a government that is limited to providing only basic protective services.
> https://www.amazon.ca/Machinery-Freedom-Guide-Radical-Capitalism/dp/0812690699
I've listen to enough Milton Friedman, and Friedrich Hayek to get a grasp of what they'll say. The guy will probably just want to plus one them and then go through this whole rigmarole as to how he plans to enforce private property rights without having some quasi feudalist control by societies elites, or some strange communal enforcement.
Hi, I sell books on Amazon. Those littlefreelibrary's are mainly full of what we call "penny books", which you can get essentially for free at garage/estate sales. So nobody cares when people just walk away with them. Let's take one of the #1 Anarcho-Capitalist books "Machinery for Freedom" as an example:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Machinery-Freedom-Radical-Capitalism/dp/0812690699
With shipping, the book costs roughly $15 to purchase. Now let's assume that half of the random people on the street who were to pick it up (a very generous estimate) were converted to Anarcho-Capitalism on the spot. Are you really willing to pay $30+ per person converted to the ideology? I wouldn't be, personally. I would think that just talking to people would prove to be a more viable option.
> But lawmakers and regulators are necessary (unless you are in favor of anarchy). If we as a people are not able to elect competent lawmakers how would you propose they be selected?
I actually am in favor of anarchy. Specifically, I'm an anarchocapitalist following the ideas of David Friedman. Ideally I would like to see systems of law develop in a competitive marketplace whereby to as large a degree as is practical, people get to pick the legal system that best meets their own idiosyncratic needs. (We already have that to some degree but I'd like to see more.)
> You at least admit that the laws do some good ("these laws do more harm than good") and yet call them "just plain evil". Which is it?
Both. The harm outweighs the good to such a degree - predictably and reliably so - that only somebody who is willfully blind to the negative side of the equation could favor these laws. Even the worst laws do some good and even the best laws do some bad, so I don't see a contradiction there.
> Before the era of labor regulation market participants had seemed to negotiate thousands of children into lives of hard and dangerous labor.
I think I am aware of the arguments for your position that child labor laws were necessary and good laws passed by good people with good intentions and producing a good outcome for the people who were affected by these laws. Are you aware of the arguments for my position that they weren't? If not, we might have to agree to disagree on this one.
Side note: I've actually worked in a factory that employed a lot of 16-year-old kids full-time. I think the lives of those kids and their families were enriched by the experience; narrowing their opportunity set by passing a law banning that work would not be doing them a favor. (I took this picture) So I find it easier than most people to extrapolate to the American situation and see some reason for concern.
> Our long term success as a society depends not on throwing out the system all together, but in learning what works and what doesn't.
The US was successful despite throwing out the system all together and starting fresh. Rand would like to return to something closer to that system - a constitutional democracy that was actually limited by its constitution instead of growing without bounds despite it. I'd actually go further and say that starting over fresh is a pretty good idea. Our ship of state has accumulated so many barnacles that it may be time to stop scraping and build a new ship.
If political ideology were a flat line with totalitarianism monarchism on one end and anarchism on the other, the libertarian ideology would represent about 10-15% of the line on the voluntary end of it. So different libertarians have different ideal societies involving maybe a limited welfare system - to - just police and military and courts - to - no State at all.
That's all philosophical stuff though. In practice, what I'd envision anarchy looking like, as I am an anarchist, is very locally oriented emergent communities and social law determined by local markets, customs, morals, and cultures. Some of these communities may be highly cosmopolitan, some may be highly agrarian or industrial, some autarchic, some highly "international."
As for taxes and opt-in or whatever other details, a purely libertarian society would not have them -- libertarian communities would allow people to pursue whatever kind of voluntary defense or public goods arrangements that they wish. Other less-libertarian communities may have taxes for public goods or common defense. Details are fuzzy.
Machinery of Freedom by David Friedman is a good book on the topic. Also, if you were to post a question in r/libertarian, you might get a good amount of different ideas. I personally prefer not to be too specific precisely because I think the market will sort everything out. When people get too specific they tend to cling to that idea. So you'll commonly get the answer of "private defense agency" or something similar and it can get redundant. I tend to think things that work must be adaptable to reality and not hypotheticals so I'd like to imagine that a free society would be diverse in too many ways to describe.
Hope that answer helps. If not, then I may be able to clarify where you think it's confusing.
>you can't really believe that all taxation is wrong
Some people argue that, but I don't necessarily.
The real question I would ask, is whether taxation a net benefit or a net loss to the people within a given society.
While your knee-jerk reaction might be an immediate and profound 'yes', as though you've already considered the pros against the cons, ask yourself if you've ever considered democide's effects on markets, whether certain subsides have perhaps interfered with markets at all, and other such large-scale political corruptions. The enormity of such events can only, generally, be funded by taxation--no private firm could amass such capital to create such huge negative effects on markets.
There is actually a book (which can be purchased here or read online for free here), that attempts to put Governments on a cost-benefit analysis, and actually comes up with a very strong case against Governments entirely.
I'm not exactly an anarchist myself, but I find the conversation to be very interesting and, perhaps, even critical.
*peers
also, http://www.amazon.com/Machinery-Freedom-Guide-Radical-Capitalism/dp/0812690699
Ok. We should have contractual agreements for government. Despite your ignorance, this idea is taken seriously b well regarded economists, including a Nobel laureate (Vernon Smith). Here is an introduction.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Machinery-Freedom-Radical-Capitalism/dp/0812690699
http://books.google.com/books/about/Anarchy_And_the_Law.html?id=nft4e62nicsC
Giving a comprehensive answer for why the State shouldn't exist is really too lengthy for a Reddit post. Here are some of the main approaches and a few book recommendations.
Murray Rothbard favored a deontological approach. People have a natural right to private property and aggression (initiation of force) is never justified. A State must initiate force, so its existence is immoral. His book The Ethics of Liberty is a good summary of this.
David Friedman (son of Milton Friedman) favors consequentialist arguments to justify a stateless society. Monopolies will tend to give worse results and higher prices, and he argues that monopolies on law and policing are no exception. His book The Machinery of Freedom is a comprehensive analysis of how he thinks a stateless society would function.
Michael Huemer uses an intuitionist approach. What allows government employees to commit acts that private citizens couldn't do without being imprisoned? He doesn't think there is a legitimate reason for this, and goes through most of the well known arguments for the social contract theory in his book, The Problem of Political Authority. However, he does concede that a State could still be justified on consequentialist grounds.
I think you would be most receptive to David Friedman's ideas. The Kindle version of his book is only $2.99 on Amazon and it's a straightforward read. You would also probably get more satisfying answers in r/anarcho_capitalism. r/Libertarian is more for minarchists. I hope that helped.
Here is the mobile version of your link
One model is what David Friedman wrote about in "The machinery of Freedom": https://www.amazon.com/Machinery-Freedom-Guide-Radical-Capitalism/dp/0812690699
Basically, to summarize you have a market for "rights protection agencies" and everyone can choose which one they want or not have one at all. But I really think there's many ways to go about it.
What Anenome5 is referring to is called Polylaw and it addresses all of your concerns without democratic coercion. If you are interested in learning the details of how this works I highly recommend reading this book. It's free!
http://daviddfriedman.com/The_Machinery_of_Freedom_.pdf
It's also available for purchase.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Machinery-Freedom-Radical-Capitalism/dp/0812690699
While we're making book recommendations, you should try this, this, or this. Or maybe these, or this, or hell, this if my summary of the current situation of the state as universal malefactor and the alternatives as looking better every day are unconvincing to you.
As for some misguided belief that the people will "rise up" in some faux revolution with onward marching and people's councils and all that kind of jazz; not at all, generally speaking, people are stupid. For example those that think that it's a paranoid fantasy the state operates in its own interests first despite the cacophony of evidence supporting this fact all over the world and the simple fact that it has always been so. But people also don't like being fucked over, and they're not stupid enough that they won't take whatever actions are necessary to directly counteract being fucked over as those actions become clearer and easier for them to take.
https://www.amazon.ca/Machinery-Freedom-Guide-Radical-Capitalism/dp/0812690699
You can have law enforcement without it being restricted to vigilantism or a single monopoly provider.
I can't really give you a complete answer in this medium. However, there's a lot of writing by libertarian anarchists on this topic; let me point you to a few resources:
Books:
Articles:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Machinery-Freedom-Radical-Capitalism/dp/0812690699
If you look at all the consequences, utilitarianiam isn't necessarily bad. There's a book-length argument for libertarian views based solely on utilitarianism: The Machinery of Freedom
If you're interested in this sort of thing, I think you'll find David Friedman's "The Machinery of Freedom" very interesting.
Watch this animated summary and tell me what you think: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTYkdEU_B4o
Here's the actual text: https://www.amazon.com/Machinery-Freedom-Guide-Radical-Capitalism/dp/0812690699
For convenience, here is the book list from Professor Casey, with links:
The Ethics of Liberty by Murray Rothbard (full text)
The Machinery of Freedom by David Friedman (full text)
Anarchy and the Law by Edward Stringham (full text: http://anarcho-capitalist.org/wp-content/pdfs/Stringham%20(Edward%20P.)%20-%20Anarchy%20and%20the%20Law.pdf)
Radicals for Capitalism by Brian Doherty
Lost in the Cosmos by Walker Percy
The Message in the Bottle by Walker Percy
Oh no doubt their have been some great minarchist's along the way. Though I would point out that at least in the case of Friedman both subsequent generations have rejected minarchy in favour of Anarcho-Capitalism. The son David Friedman, even went on to write the book on it so to say, "The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to a Radical Capitalism". The grand son Patri Friedman, is head of the Sea Steading Institute, working on building private floating cities at sea. It is true that current politics favour the minarchist over the anarchist since it is easier to fit in. But most definitely a debate for another time.
This is a short animated excerpt from his book The Machinery of Freedom, which goes into much more detail.
Also, did the video at least make you think? Do you accept that it's at least theoretically possible for an alternative system such as this?
I'm not going to discuss this with someone who hasn't done basic readings on the topic because it can be pretty laborious and it's such a radical idea as to put a lot of people off.
I will however point you into the direction of Machinery of Freedom by David Friedman if you'd like to learn more. It dispels a lot of common misconceptions about this type of ideology and has direct responses to some claims you've made in your post.
Good luck, friend.
I'm sorry your mind can't fathom a world without violence. And aside from the PDF, websites can't give your computers a virus. PDFs are still pretty damn secure, but if that's your weak argument ("I don't believe in voluntary societies because I can't download the PDF") then may god have mercy on your soul. Let me help you out here, since you can't be bothered to use google:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Machinery-Freedom-Radical-Capitalism/dp/0812690699
There, amazon.com, a trusted website and a paperback book (or are you scared about getting ink on your fingers, too?)
I think our conversation is done, troll.
One would be free to ignoring a judgement of a private court, but the consequences would be severe. One might be social ostracism, the vast majority of people would be unwilling to do business with a man who had ignored the judgement of a well respected private court, for both reasons of ethics and more importantly reasons of liability. Another possibility is a writ of outlawry, that is the man in question's legal rights and protections will have been considered forfeited leaving him vulnerable to theft, mob justice, and other undesirable outcomes. There are many intricacies in a system of polycentric law, and I do not pretend to be familiar with all of them. Books like The Machinery of Freedom and For a New Liberty as well as The Ludwig von Mises Institute provide some good information on the topic. If you're curious about historical precedents early Iceland provides a fascinating albeit imperfect example.
Anarcho-capitalism. Read:
After reading those books you will have a satisfactory answer.