Anarcho-capitalism

I’m not a fan of conspiracy theories, but I do like reading them from time to time. My favorite conspiracy theory was the doomsday Y2K mumbo jumbo. I saved my customers hundreds of thousands of dollars by helping them ignore the Y2K concerns — most of my industry market needed little more than a Windows update to overcome concern. Sure, some markets required major code rewriting, but my customers did not. My competitors who made huge profits on lying to their customers soon found themselves without work when their customers realized they had a non-problem that they paid huge invoices for.

Daniel Ellsberg has released the most recent conspiracy theory that is grabbing attention: he said that the U.S. government was capable of carrying out the 9/11 attacks.¹

I’m a fan of Ellsberg since high school. 15 years ago I had to do a report for my European History class. Ellsberg’s Pentagon Papers was the turning point for me — it convinced me to give up my Republican beliefs for an apolitical lifestyle. I was writing a paper advocating government’s requirement in pursuing war, and it was the Pentagon Papers that proved to me that government never cares about anything but more power and control. I failed that final assignment (and received a “D” in that class because of it) in a debate over discussing the Pentagon Papers with the class. My teacher refused to bring up the topic, so I refused to complete the assignment.

Ellsberg’s Pentagon Papers were confidential and top secret documents on the Vietnam war that he copied and published. I believe that the government can never have the right to any information or technology that the people don’t have. Some say that government needs top secret priviledge in order to defend the citizens, but I think the best way to defend the citizens is to give them any information they need to protect their property and their lives. If the government knows of a plot to take down a building, let us know about it. Who can better protect their workplace or their home: bureaucratic defense groups or individuals who can take the time to secure their properties and watch out for those looking to commit a crime?

Government never has the right to secrets — and they never have the right to compel individuals to tell their secrets.

I’m not sure I put much faith into Ellsberg’s conspiracy theory, but we’ll never really know. I’ve always believed that the best government is one that is publicly accountable 100% of the time. I truly believe that if one wants to be a politician, they should submit to 100% public display of their lives all the time. Can you imagine how much money the cable channel would make that follows politicians around 100% of the time, recording each conversation, each party, each political crony asking for help? They may not air much, but I can see huge profits to be made in following them all around. If you want to restrict government power, don’t do it by voting, do it by spying on your politicians all the time. They can’t get bribes with that camera rolling, and they can’t give preferential treatment when all can see it being done. Nixon learned that lesson because he spied on himself, what would today’s politician do if they were always being watched? What kind of leaders would even run for election if they knew their entire lives as a politician would be watched 24/7, with the best excerpts shown on TV?

Ellsberg’s Pentagon Papers are one of the most important study guides to read, especially if you are pro-government for any reason. The Vietnam war can be blamed on both parties — both sides had reason to support the war, no matter what they said on camera for or against it. Maybe Ellsber is right about 9/11, maybe he’s not. But I do like what he has to say: if the U.S. launches a war against Iran, question each and every “terrorist attack” that may occur before or after it. Even better, demand that the government release all top secret information immediately, so that individuals can take care to secure their lives and their properties in order to deter all the madmen of the world from considering an attack against anyone in the country.

Can you imagine how much information is out there that would prove of government’s collusions in so many conspiracies? Why can’t it be released? The law prevents whistleblowers from telling the public of government’s affairs. This is unacceptable in a so-called free society.

We can be an example of an unstoppable power not through huge weapons of mass destruction and the treat to use them against others — we can be an example of an unstoppable power by degrading the idea of a powerful nation into the idea of 300 million individuals all ready and willing to protect their properties. Taking down 1 nation is easy; taking down 300 million individuals is impossible. Look at Vietnam for proof of that — and Vietnam was a drop in the well compared to our population today. I’m not asking you to believe in conspiracies — I don’t. I’m asking you to believe in the facts, which we can only find if we’re allowed to.

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For years I have been contemplating how society could exist in a truly free market of anarcho-capitalism, or what I call a Unanimocracy — governing by unanimous consent and contract. I looked at all the various problems I see with the State and all the market that seem to rely on the State: health care, insurance, education, infrastructure, etc.

It has always been my thought that the great majority of the State could be replaced if we had a way to gauge someone’s reliability, but with a free market perspective. Right now, if you want a credit card, you have to have a State-controlled identification number so that creditors can look at your history. This number is your Social Security Number, a number that was originally illegal to use as identification but now is almost a requirement in order to live. Insurance companies keep their blacklist of bad drivers and fraudsters by using the SSN. Many schools use the SSN as a way to keep students identified, and health care companies also use the SSN to track medical histories. How could society exist in the way it works today with this identifier? The Competitive Feedback System (CFS) would come into play, for sure.

The current best example of a CFS is eBay’s feedback system. When a transaction is made between two parties, both parties are allowed to give feedback to the other party concerning the entire transaction. You can give them a +1 feedback for a good transaction, -1 for a bad one, and a 0 or neutral if the feedback is gauged as neither good nor bad. The feedback system at eBay is very consistent and incredibly useful for many eBay users. It takes less than 1 minute to leave feedback, and the system limits how many letters you can use to verbalize the transaction — this keeps the feedback system efficient for those who want to see details of a transaction.

Some people have pointed to flaws in the eBay CFS when I’ve brought up the idea of a CFS-managed society. One flaw that is repeatedly brought up is the ability of someone to sell hundreds of very expensive items in order to gain many feedback points, then switch to selling a few dozen expensive items to mask the old points with newer “high priced” items sold, and then turn to selling really expensive items, collecting the money, never shipping anything and running off with the money, leaving a few people with nothing to show for the trade. I usually point out what I am familiar with that the free market provides to protect the buyer — insurance. When you transact a big purchase from Target or the car dealer, the chance of them running before they deliver the item is fairly low (if not almost non-existant). eBay, though, offers a higher reward (cheaper products) but a higher risk. In order to offset that risk, there are numerous insurance plans available to protect your purchase. Paypal offers one, many credit card companies have some built-in to your credit card agreement. As far as I’ve been able to tell, this debate topic is a non-issue and a non-starter — but I am interested in what others have to say about examples of scam-artists where the buyers never received their money or a product.

One thing I’d change about eBay’s CFS is the point value system. I don’t think that 15 items of different kinds and prices really should be rated as just +1 or -1. I think all users of the system should be given two values for feedback: one which is identical to the current system (+1, -1, 0) and one number which equals the amount of dollars of transaction history value. If you sell 15 items for $1 each, and you sell them all perfectly, you’d get +15 feedback points and +$15 “feedbucks.” If you sell 15 items for $100 each, you’d get +15 feedback points and +$1500 “feedbucks.” Now imagine you sell 100 items at $1 each positively, but try to sell one item for $100 and you blow off the buyer. You’d end up with +100/+$100 and -1/$-100 which would give you a net feedback of +99/$0. A simple code upgrade might even let different users display others’ feedback points differently, such as (Feedback/Feedbucks Positive, Feedback/Feedbuck Negative) which would display that last user as +100/$100, -1/-$100. This would also show you who the best providers are in any area.

Another area I think eBay is lacking but would be welcome in a CFS market would be “Historical Average Ability to provide” (HAA) data. This would work great for buyers and sellers alike. The HAA figure would be based on their current auction status — how many items they’re trying to buy or sell, and the total of those items, versus their historical average of the same figures based on the same period of time. If over the next 2 weeks someone is trying to sell 100 items with a total value of $10,000, their 2 week HAA would be 100/$10,000. If this person’s historical average for past 5 years was 5/$100 and for the past 1 year was 10/$200, you’d have to take caution with their current run. Of course they could be selling a car or a home, but you can easily see if what they are selling is something extraordinary to their average. Sellers could also gauge buyers the same way — how much have they bought, on average, in a certain period of time, versus their current buying attempts.

So how would a CFS work in today’s market? Every feedback point in every transaction could be tagged by both parties. If it is an insurance transaction, they can tag it “insurance” in their profile. If a buyer of insurance has an accident, the insurance company can flag their transaction with some negative feedback in terms of the value of the accident. This would not necessarily bring down their feedback totals as other parties that want to trade with the person who has the accident might sort their feedback values by ignoring insurance or education or health matters (or they might actually sort their numbers with those figures). If a person wants to pick the best insurance company, they could also sort insurers by feedback numbers to see which insurers offer the best safety and time to pay. It is very hard to beat that system through fraud since all previous history (with a timeframe you pick) would be visible.

What about parties that are targetted by a massive amount of “feedback spammers” who make transactions in order to defeat the party? Currently, eBay offers some third party arbitration for negative feedback, at a fee. This is an option - if the seller of an item is wrongfully spammed with negative feedback, they can choose to pay for arbitration. If the feedback spammer decides not to arbitrate, the feedback goes away. Also, every transaction that the spammer attempts costs them money. They have to buy an item in order to acquire the opportunity to leave feedback. If 10,000 feedback spammers try to harm someone, there is a great cost to the spammers to do so. Would a large company try to do this to their competitors? It is absolutely a possibility, but again it would require great financial capacity, and the company spammed would just need to prove delivery of the item bought to negate the feedback. UPS and FedEx have saved me from 2 negative feedback points on eBay when someone said I never shipped an item — it only took me faxing eBay the signed delivery receipts to get them to remove the negative values. For 30 days or so I had negative feedback, but it was painless and didn’t cost me a dime.

What about people who run up a huge negative profile and then sign on with another CFS? The market provides for these situations: other parties are less likely to transact with someone who has no history. If you decide you don’t like your current CFS, but you have a positive feedback score, you can always point parties to your old score but tell them to develop your new CFS profile from now on. Some parties might want to use multiple CFS providers (at a cost per transaction) in order to prove they are reliable.

I believe the Competitive Feedback System is a great way to overcome much need for the State. Each and every transaction has the opportunity to be judged by both parties, and there are almost no loopholes that I can think of to create the madness that happens with the State today. Look at the identity fraud that occurs with the State’s mismangement of the Social Security Number system — you have almost no recourse since the State has no competition in providing excellent service at an excellent price. eBay, though, has had to build consumer trust and confidence, or they would lose their business to others providing the same system.

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