I think the idea that the poor, hungry and sick would just die on the streets in the absence of governmental provision is a complete furphy. The reason for our higher standard of living, including for the poorest, is not because of forced redistributions, but because of the higher quota of capital per head of population. Government interventions actively consume capital on a massive scale, force the poorest into unemployment, and cause or worsen social problems. The tax system’s *intent* is to take more from the rich, but in *effect* the rich are favoured because they can use tax deductions to get benefits in proportion to the progressivity of the tax.

Policing and justice services can be, and already are provided cheaper, quicker and better by private providers.

For example in commercial disputes, the contract often provides for dispute resolution by reference to an arbiter, i.e. a private judge, who is usually a respected senior in that field. The reason the parties don’t first have recourse to the government monopoly justice service is because it costs far too much, and involves too much delay. (If you have ever been to a court you will know that they regard their own time as infinitely valuable, and everyone else’s time as worthless.)

Interestingly, such alternatives show how a market for competing private *legal systems* would work. Assume an arbiter follows his own precedents, ie builds up a body of private case law. Consumers can choose different judges according to the qualities of their jurisprudence. Those with a reputation for wisdom, more mutually satisfactory judgments, and greater resolution rate, will tend to out-compete their less effective rivals. The cream will tend to rise to the top, as the best rules of the best judges will tend to become generally adopted; instead of everyone having monopolists impose on them an expensive and dilatory one-size-fits-all, that puts a premium on the prestige and salaries of the judge and lawyers ie the producers, and the client/consumer is just the schmuck who has to pay for it.

What stops such a better system from becoming...

...general is that the courts will not enforce contracts agreeing for such dispute resolution to be final, thus undermining and overriding the whole thing, declaring themselves to be the final arbiters of “the law” ie the monopoly law. Thus the law, whose original purpose is to do justice and protect property rights, is perverted into protecting instead the comfortable privileges and substandard service of monopolists based on their ability to use mere force to exclude competition – the opposite of justice.

Similarly with policing. The proof that the private security firms are better value for money than the police, is in the fact that the private firms exist - otherwise why would consumers not prefer the government service they are already paying for? People always tend to try to recoup some of their losses by first recourse to the police, otherwise the private firms would almost certainly out-compete the police if everyone were free to choose.

“Why hasn’t [stateless society] happened?”
There are two ways to obtain wealth: by peaceful production and exchange – the economics means; and by violent expropriation – the political means. People will do whichever is easier, and government is a machine for making stealing safer and easier.

The peaceful are at a natural disadvantage to those using weaponry for obvious reasons. The reason we’ve got governments is not because they have any moral or economical superiority over voluntary arrangements, but because governments are set up to use weaponry against you, and you can’t get rid of them without risking death or injury.

However the more restrained a government is in expropriating its subjects’ property, the less capital it will consume, the more capital the subject people can accumulate, the higher their productivity, the more prosperous they will be.

Societies with relatively greater rather than lesser freedom tend to out-compete others both in peace and war. More importantly, their states also become the most powerful, which is why the USA bested the Soviet Union. Ironically stronger states are due to relatively greater, not lesser freedom. A successful parasite does not destroy its host.

Peter Hume: "What stops such a better system from becoming general is that the courts will not enforce contracts agreeing for such dispute resolution to be final"

You say we don't need a monopoly law, because it can be done privately. Then you say private law doesn't work because the current monopoly won't enforce it. This makes no sense. Do we need a monopoly or not, and if not who is going to do the enforcing?

Peter Hume: "otherwise why would consumers not prefer the government service they are already paying for?"

A number of reasons. Some want more protection than the police will provide - for example 24 hour attendance at private premises. They could purchase it from the police of course, but it doesn't make economic sense to do so. It turns out that while there is a well armed well equiped police force to fall back on, most are perfectly happy to spend substantially less on people who just watch and call in the police when needed. When there is no standing police force that can be relied upon, that doesn't work. So in Iraq companies have to employ their own mercenaries - a standing army if you like. Guess what? It turns out those private armies cost far more to run than the domestic police force on a per capita basis.

Peter Hume: "I think the idea that the poor, hungry and sick would just die on the streets in the absence of governmental provision is a complete furphy. The reason for our higher standard of living, including for the poorest, is not because of forced redistributions, but because of the higher quota of capital per head of population."

You are conflating people dying on the streets with a high standard of living. It is perfectly possible to have a high average standard of living, while the poor die on the streets. Indeed, that is exactly what the US manages to pull off. Once of the richest countries on the planet ranks 50th in life expectancy: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2102rank.html

Peter Hume: "Societies with relatively greater rather than lesser freedom tend to out-compete others both in peace and war. More importantly, their states also become the most powerful"

Yes, exactly. I agree you have been tirelessly arguing that societies without a central government will be the most economically advanced. I also agree when societies clash if there is a substantial economic difference between to two, the more advanced always wins.

But then you refuse to take those two points to their logical conclusion. After a few millennia of societal evolution, you would expect to see only societies without central governments. Yet, we don't. In fact, the reverse is true. Militarily, the strongest country on the planet (the US) also has by far the largest government as measured by expenditure.

1.
My unclarity. By not enforcing, I meant the court, seeing the parties contracted to confine their dispute resolution process to the alternative system, actively overrides the contract, thus using their monopoly power to violate property rights, confer privileges, and exclude competition, in their own favour. If they merely not-enforced it, i.e. respected its terms, the resulting competition would be better as I have shown.

If it were true that the absence of an overriding monopoly showed the need for one, then the same would apply to the citizens of different states, and justice and peace would require world government. Yet one big world government, a global monopoly of violent crime, looks particular dubious as a means to that end, considering governments have killed over 160 million people in the last century alone, mostly of their own subjects.

“…most are perfectly happy to spend substantially less on people who just watch and call in the police when needed.”

Meaning?

It is not valid to argue for government monopoly services on the basis that “most people” are happy to pay for them, for 3 reasons:
a) The electoral process provides no way of knowing whether most people are *in fact* in favour of a given law or governmental act. There is no evidence for the proposition.
b) Tax is a compulsory impost. It is by definition non-consensual. It is not valid to assume that anyone is “perfectly happy” to pay it.
c) But even if a majority were, since the issue is whether government should be providing the service in the first place, this begs the question why the minority should be bound by the preference of the majority, in matters of policing, any more than of pizza, socks, or sex.

As to monopoly services being more economical than competing private services, again, if that’s true and people prefer them, then there’s no need to fund them under compulsion, is there?

2.
The moral and social duty to provide for those whom nature has doomed, says nothing about the method of performing it. There is no reason to think that...

…doing it by way of confiscations and government bureaucracy will produce less waste, vested interests, and dysfunctionality than doing anything else by this method.

Besides, it is not valid to see the problem as being ‘out there’, having nothing to do with a government that takes 50% of GDP, explicitly to re-direct economic activity largely for purposes of social justice.

The argument against these interventions is precisely that they consume capital, and cause anti-social consequences. What you tax and regulate you get less of, and the state taxes savings, employment, investment and all productive activity. This actively causes poverty on a vast scale.

What you subsidise you get more of, and the state actively subsidises poverty, unemployment, sickness, mental illness, disability, and undermines the family by assuming its functions which it can never replace.

However it is true, as Jesus said, that ‘the poor are always with us’. Even without government interventions, the problem of poverty, though much smaller and less acute, would still persist. However every dollar the state takes for charitable purposes, is a dollar society can’t use for the same purposes. The desire to help the less fortunate is not exclusive to government; it arises out of society. Australia is a classic example of a society overflowing with voluntary goodwill to the less fortunate. The misdirection of this sentiment into support for the welfare state arises out of the earlier discussed fallacies, particularly considering only the visible benefits, and not the invisible downside, of government interventions.

3.
“After a few millennia of societal evolution, you would expect to see only societies without central governments.”

You would, and you may yet.

The USA’s finances are way unsustainable. Something’s gotta give.

As to why we don’t see stateless societies now, I think one has to understand it starting from the individual rather than the collective level. Individuals can benefit from a monopoly of crime at any given time even while the whole collective is going downhill. But doesn’t mean that the tendency to conquest and plunder is ethically or economically superior, whether it’s legal or not.