Anarcho-capitalism

I posted this to Slashdot this morning in this post:

Here is one area that is very difficult to win the anarcho-capitalist debate on — the cartelization of this particular market in this particular industry sounds very insidious and hard to compete with without the government intervening and bringing the hammer down.

Most people believe that memory manufacturing is a VERY expensive business. This is true in terms of overall numbers (billions), but it is false in terms of actual products required on the market. Memory is used in much more than just computers (cars, microwaves, cell phones, digital cameras, DVD players, etc), and it is a huge market, possibly a trillion dollar one coming soon. When you have a big market, a big demand and a low supply of manufacturers, it doesn’t take much to raise the billions needed to enter a market where there is obvious collusion. 1 million Americans risking US$3000 in a market that you can prove is selling at a overwhelming profit is not a big risk — and many people were aware of the over-priced memory market back in the 90s.

Yet I think the debate is won by the free marketeers when you realize that one of the biggest reasons for the cartelization in this case is patent and copyright law. Memory chips are heavily burdened by patents, and many of those patents are cross licensed by those in the cartel. This smacks of government-paternalism and is one reason why patents generally help the cartels and the State rather than the inventor. The cartel:inventor ratio in terms of who is helped by patents is very very high (more cartels are helped than individual inventors).

I believe the government is wrong for starting class-action lawsuits. We all know that few companies are hurt by class-action lawsuits, and even fewer “victims” are helped. The lawyers (who are the biggest supporters of the expanding State) win the most! Why don’t we roll back before the cartel-State collusion and see what the real cause of this problem is? The biggest barrier to the market is NOT money — stop thinking that! No matter what the financial cost is, if there is a profit to be made, people will invest. I don’t care if it is quadrillions that are needed, as long as it is profitable (and cartels can always be beaten in price), people will risk money. The real barrier is the State — no one can raise enough “force” to overcome the force of government patents and copyrights.

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Fellow anarcho-capitalist Stephan Kinsella¹ had a hilarious post at the Mises Blog yesterday titled Taxing Astronauts and the President.². His thoughts are to look at government jobs that are definitely monopolized but that wouldn’t be considered jobs in the free market — in his article he details the role of the President as well as the role of NASA astronauts. In the latter, we see quite a few millionaires who have already put up tens of millions of dollars in order to fly to outer space (or just shy of it), and we really don’t know how many might put up money if the price were half of the current amount. While his article hints at the income taxes that these “public servants” are failing to pay, I’m seeing that this unique perspective is one that we should really put to good debate.

I’ve been thinking about his article this morning and even brought it up in a few morning phone calls with collegues and customers — what government monopolies exist that use huge sums of taxpayer dollars, but might be things that others would actually pay to do? I’m sure that most people would love the power of the Presidency — have your finger on the button that controls the world, and get paid huge sums of money to do it. As Kinsella shows, the President doesn’t just make a few hundred thousand dollars in income once you include all the campaign donations that people “gift” to him.

If you forget about your anti- or pro-political feelings in general, what job would you love to do (as a hobby or a job) and would you actually pay to perform the action, especially if there is a gain on the outcome? At first I figured it would be “great” to be a regulator of some kind — wield massive power over some industry or market, controlling the lives and directions of millions of people on a whim without having to back it up with any understandable data. Then I thought about being a military general (or even higher) — taking care of my frustrations against others and be protected by a myriad of law convenants that history has shown only punishes the loser in any conflict. Or how about being an IRS auditor? With that kind of power, I could snuff out the few that hurt me financially; there’s no one safe as long as I can bungle up the audit database enough to not point the finger at me — we all know that all of us are guilty of missing some tax requirement since the code conflicts itself repeatedly and even the IRS can’t give straight answers.

The few people I joked with this morning about the topic all laughed and said they’d never want me in a situation of control and power if they were required by law to follow through with my edicts. I asked them why I’d be a bad government hobbies and they replied that I was too moral — I might actually force them to do something that I considered necessary for society but what they didn’t want to do. Our new forum moderator and overall webtech Mike Bryson even said that he thinks I’d be the worst person to do charitable work on behalf of the People because he knows already that I spend so much of my time with charities trying to make people’s lives better — voluntarily.

Mike and the rest of the bunch are right, though. I’d be a bad government volunteer hobbyist. Sure, most of my opinions aren’t share by others, but isn’t that the overall fear of government to begin with? How many of the paid government workers are doing things in the way you’d do them? Even though they’re paid to be neutral, how many of the regulators control the lives of millions on a whim without having to produce data to prove that the regulation is really needed? How many generals take out their frustrations on an unseen unnamed “enemy” without fear of repercussions? How many IRS auditors fill the audit database anonymously against someone who may (or may not) have harmed them? How many times have you done something at work that may have minorly harmed an employee or a customer or someone who was getting on your nerves — and if you had that power, that “legal” monopoly on using force against another, would you? Would you do it if the chance of getting caught was slim to none?

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