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Comments on Bryan Caplan's interview with Dave Rubin...
Dave Rubin has a show on Youtube wherein he interviews various characters of a liberal/libertarian bent. In one of those interviews he chatted with Bryan Caplan on anarcho-capitalism and its corollaries.
Cool interview, huh? Below is an argument over a comment made by Caplan with regard to arbitration. [1]
Arbitration gets problems solved in a few days? Bullshit, try months or years, and with more money than most people have to pay for it.
This guy is a fraud.
This is how it works, get a loan from a bank to build a house, construction company builds your house not to code so the city won't let you live in it, bank forecloses on your house when you stop paying.
That's "anarcho capitalism" in the US. It's where the gov has set up a system where corporations are given the right to fuck people over and get away with it because arbitration and lawsuits costs tens of thousands of dollars that no one has.
Um... 2 things. In an Ancap situation there would not be a city code to keep you out of your cheap-ass house. You would just die when it falls over on you and your loved ones. So maybe next time find a better contractor to build your house?
2nd thing, without the current reliance on real estate propping up our economy and inflating home prices you might be able to just save up the money you need to to build a house.
If you can't afford it now, save up your money and find a way to make yourself more useful to others rather than complaining about your lack of initiative.
When you sue someone and they turn out to either a) hide their money really well, or b) they don't give a shit and don't pay, guess what, lawsuits are unenforceable.
And no, the city won't let me live in "my" house because the contractor is such a retard. It's not my job in life to fix the idiocy of others.
Why did you choose such a shit contractor? Where is your responsibility as an individual? It sounds like you didn't do your homework to mitigate your risk before embarking on a major financial venture. That was your job and you have no one to blame but yourself.
Your example fails to refute the arguments that Ancap brings to the table.
Edit: Now in terms of enforcing agreements I am sure Ancap lends itself to some pretty creative solutions. My argument's main point rails against your "This is how it works" claim.
And your response is exactly why anarcho capitalism, or any unregulated capitalism fails. People get hurt (I literally had 115K stolen from me this way), and there is NO mechanism in place to correct the problem. Corporations steal from people all the time, nobody goes to jail, and the government considers it under "civil" law.
Yet if I walked into the contractor's office, took the keys to one of his trucks and drove off with it, I'd be a felon (this falls under criminal law). This is where the government has gone horribly wrong, as this breaks down an economy when too many businesses are running as scams and getting away with it. Every bank that got free government money through bailouts, fuck them, let them fail next time.
I'm still just confused as to how someone who makes enough money to get approved for a likely sizable mortgage loan and goes through the effort of contracting and building their own house counts as someone who "lacks initiative."
As for the "why don't you hire better people," argument: A friend of mine does community development in Atlanta designing neighborhoods and individual houses, etc. He works for a major development firm, six figure salary, all that.
For one development, they hired a contracting firm they had worked with successfully before, that had been investigated and background checked for months before the building went through.
And that contractor still screwed them over and built an entire neighborhood full of houses that should have been condemned, explicitly hiding the shoddy workmanship to avoid getting rightfully fired.
This happened to a major, successful company with a good track record, whose only job for the past 30 years has been to contract people to build houses. But one layman who doesn't hire the right contractor is apparently just an idiot who deserves financial ruin because it should have been sooooo obvious, right?
What's his face probably doesn't realize some contractors run business like a ponzi scheme, ie., start a new project to pay for the one they haven't finished already. And when you live in the middle of nowhere like I do, it's the wild west and nobody cares.
Which is what really irked me about this "arbitration takes a couple days" statement that Dave's guest made, that is such a load of bull, the estimate I got was MONTHS, even up to and over 1 year even.
This "anarcho capitalist" is spouting the fake greatness of a system that a lot of people cannot afford to use... if only we had some organization... that enforced laws... and wrote laws that didn't just protect corporations... like the government perhaps... but no, companies write these arbitration lines in to contracts so YOU CAN'T SUE THEM.
In other words, the guest is a shill for corporatocracy, arbitration helps the corporations by keeping their screw ups away from juries. If you sue, a jury might not be as kind to the typical slew of attorneys and expert witnesses that conduct an arbitration. Corporations LOVE arbitration, Dave's guest was a joke.
So you know ALL the contractors or any other provider, vendor, professional, know how they work BEFOREHAND, how trustworthy they are, you know every single employee of theirs, how they work, if they are gonna screw up, if they up and leave, if they comply with the laws...you are an expert in every field and can see a fraud from a mile, right?
You check all the rules, reputation and backgrounds and you spot liars and can even tell the future and have never been deceased once. WTF?!?!?
Companies don't go out wearing t-shirts with "I'm gonna screw you over" now, do they? And NO, price is not always a factor in knowing good from bad.
Also, there is always a first time even in frauds.
It is how it works because even here there are many contractors who up and leave you hanging out to dry, companies who shutdown and run with the money or reincorporate under a different name and the system does not give a flying fuck.
You pay taxes for the system TO WORK, even pay a fortune to a notary to make sure things are all right but they are not responsible. It is not a matter of public vs private, it is a matter of doing things right or wrong.
That's not anarcho-capitalism. There is no compulsory government to give corporations the right to fuck people over in ancap.
You are describing crony capitalism, which is exactly what ancaps hate most.
+SpiderDemon
Those arguments aren't against Anarcho Capitalism at all! Assuming that your side of the story is true, and I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and just assume that it is, you have been wronged under the current system.
The current system is Crony Capitalism!
Saying: "The current system fucked me over so I'm against this other completely different system" makes no sense man.
An-Caps don't believe in the sort of protectionism that is required for that shit to happen. An an-cap is going to say that you have every right to collect full restitution for an improperly built house.
Well, I apologize in advance for the wall of text.
A minarchist is going to say that fraud is exactly the legitimate domain of government. But let's skip past that to the more interesting subject of a pure anarchist. There are several possible solutions, but due to length of explanation, I'm only going to cover one.
So, let's suppose that SpiderDemon lives in an ancap society and is interested in building a house. He goes to the bank to get a loan. The bank says alright, but there are conditions. First, SpiderDemon must maintain a certain level of homeowners insurance.
Additionally SpiderDemon's selected builder must be certified as competent for the project by an approved builders association who agrees to assume liability.
SpiderDemon selects a builder named Bob.
In order for the builders association to certify Bob as a competent builder, he must demonstrate his capability in some way (apprenticeship, prior work, whatever), he must assume liability, and he must agree to arbitration by an arbiter agreeable to all parties.
Notice that there's no laws here. Just a network of agreements.
Bob builds SpiderDemons house and botches it. Now, multiple agencies have a strong motive to resolve the situation. The bank wants its money. SpiderDemon's Insurance Agency has a strong motive to prove that the builder is at fault. The builders association wants Bob to pay that money or prove he was not at fault.
This can shake out one of a few ways, depending on what Bob does.
First he adheres to his agreement and pays the money owed. Whether this is from his own insurance, his private property, a bond, or whatever other method is up to Bob.
Alternatively, let's say Bob cuts and runs. The builders association is now required to pay.
This leads to a variety of possible actions on the part of the builders association. On one end of the spectrum, is to apply economic pressure. Simply threatening to blackball Bob is quite likely to bring him in line.
If it doesn't, Bob is ruined. Somewhere in the middle of the spectrum is simply seizing Bobs assets and auctioning them off to help recoup costs. At the far end of the spectrum, they can hire a private detective agency to bring bob back and force him to make restitution.
Now here's the thing: Basically all of this already exists. The big difference between what we have now and the structure above? These institutions are unable to bribe politicians to stifle competition and purchase the loopholes that that they currently use to hide. Sure, they might be able to bribe an arbiter, but word of that is going to get around in that industry very quickly and it'll ruin that arbiters reputation and career.
Now, I will admit that I tried to be brief, and I hope that I haven't left out something crucial. If you need me to clarify something, just ask.
Edit:
Oh, also? This is ignoring the obvious problem that the law that supposedly protects him now isn't getting his money back. So even if the above is a total failure, it isn't actually a change for the worse!
Capitalism is very regulated today and you still got screwed out of a bunch of money. I don't see your point.
And Caplan clearly states that the arbitration process can very depending on the case. The point was that it is generally much more efficient than government run courts where such small things as divorce proceedings literally take years and costs hundreds of thousands of dollars.
+sandollor you simply write in the contract that if the contractor does not fulfill certain standards they will have to pay restitution. Which will be enforced by the abitration court.
~~~
Also let us remember the average performance of actually existing private arbitration versus actually existing public courts. The government ones ain't so hot on cost or timeliness, being outdone by the private sector in both respects by a decent margin, but also being outdone on predictability. [2]
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