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February 26, 2005
David Friedman: The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to a Radical Capitalism. Open Court, La Salle Illinois, 1970.
Friedman's text is a difinitive source on Anarcho-capitalism. Its influence has permeated every aspect of the libertarian movement and is integral to the analysis of any state institution from the anarchist framework.
My notes on the text are as follows:
Chapter 1: In Defense of Property
4. "The desire of several people to use the same resources for different ends is the essential problem that makes property institutions necessary. The simplest was to resolve such a conflict is physical force. If I can beat you up, I get to use the car. This method is very expensive, unless you like fighting and have plenty of medical insurance. It also makes it hard to plan for the future; unless you're the current heavyweight champion, you never know when you will have access to a car. The direct use of physical force is so poor a solution to the problem of limited resources that it is commonly employed only by small children and great nations."
16. Love is limited in its applicability in the sense that it is not effective in achieving complex ends such as intricate production processes because it does not accommodate for the divergence of opinions between different individuals. Trade works better than love at these ends. Love only works at shorter simpler ends in a familial setting.
28. Harsh conditions in the workplace.
This can be attributed to a negative product quality standard. All goods and services start out at lower levels of technology and standards than what they mature to be, even employment. People assume that the accomplishments in labor conditions are thanks to unions and regulations but the prison industry is just another example to demonstrate that it was actually the functioning market that set the standards higher. Private prisons got flack from activists, then competition set in see Benson.
30. Chapter 6. Monopoly I: How to loose your shirt.
Source: Gabriel Kolko: Triumph of Conservatism. End of last century business thought the future was in big. They conglomerated and got beat out by smaller competitors.
The size of the firm is dictated by the market. The larger a firm grows the further away top decision making management gets from the day to day demands of the customer. A firm can only grow so large as mass production will accommodate for. The state in general is recognizing this phenomenon hence its need to raise reliance on private enterprise to operate its individual tentacles.
This defeats Nozick's claim that one firm providing justice may rise to monopoly power without aggressing against rights. Nozick thinks that forced payment is not a rights violation, because it is an attempt to preserve the rights of the payers. Well this exposes that a firm providing military protection or justice services can only be so large as to not spread itself too thin of voluntary v. non-voluntary customers. The majority of the customers must willingly pay. The geographic size of this firm becomes arbitrary and eventually all customers must be voluntary.
81. Chapter 18. Counterattack.
Enforcement methods; each party would surrender a sum before arbitration took place, then arbitrator gives out the sum appropriate or blacklisting. This is only for civil arbitration.
115. Arbitration is only used for pre-existing contracts.
117. Capital punishment bargaining.
121. Wouldn't anarcho-capitalism be overrun by the mafia. No because mafia gets its power through bribery. Private enterprise would have lower prices as a result of more crime. Bribe has to be more than the value of the goods stolen.
Posted by djdamico at February 26, 2005 8:55 AM
Comments
Your note on chapter 6 points to a problem that I've always had with Friedman's analysis (and, from an email conversation I had with him, it's the same problem that his father has with it): it seems to "prove" that the monopoly of the state can't exist. Clearly, however, it does--and it appears to be defending its monopoly quite well.
I am interested in your thoughts on this.
Abe
Posted by: Abe Heward at July 15, 2005 11:31 AM