The same happens with food and health for example.
About harming other people, I interpret this as doing active damage like assaulting someone.
In a libertarian place everyone would have access to water (for example) through the market.
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This looks ideal, only if there is fair competition. How there can be a fair competition if there is no regulations to avoid things like monopoly, price dumping, cartel, and all other practices that hurt a fair market?
That is one thing that libertarians still didnt gave me a acceptable answer.
Saying that the market regulates itself is to ignore all the monopolies, dumping, and cartel created on the past that were held by market regulation laws.
Like in this case of water, someone monopolize the water supply of a big enough region he puts very high price that only very rich people can pay it. No one else can enter the competition to bring prices down because de monopoly already owns all water sources on a big area.
All he have to do is have a price low enough that it makes not profitable to anyone to bring water from places outside the region.
To ilustrate:
The fair price (costs+acceptable profit) of extracting water on a big region would be $10,00 per gallon.
The price to bring water from outside this region (extraction+transport costs+profit) would be $200,00
The owner of the water monopoly only need to set the price to $199,00 so that no one outside the area would have interest in selling there.
Is if a fair market? Meanwhile, people start doing horrible things and breaking the no damage rule only to survive.
BTW, is the No damage rule applied if the damage was done in name of basic survival, like having water to drink?
What keeps the people from voting with their feet and leaving? Assuming the monopolist is profit oriented, he leaves the people with enough money to survive after water costs.
What keeps these people from collecting rainwater? What keeps other businesses on the periphery of the region to bring in water cheaply. In your example I assume this would not be possible, maybe the people live on an island or on a different planet?
It seems to me that fixing the price at 199,99 creates incredible incentive for competing businesses to find efficient ways of transporting water to that region.
Lastly, Libertarian theory does not claim that an anarcho-capitalist society would be a utopia where terrible situations do not exist. It merely claims that society would be more just. Is it morally okay to let someone die if you could save their life by giving them half your money? Is it morally okay to force someone to give up half their money in order to save someone's life? Definitely both situations are morally questionable, but the former is perfectly just while the latter is not.
How can it be just if if the market can be put in a state of unfairness?
How can people "vote with their feet" when they have no resources and are dying?
How can you be sure that the monopolist wouldn't only exploit the resources, leave the land dry and dead, then leave to another place to do the same thing, without leaving anything just and fair behind?
So, someone finds a way to provide water lower costs at the region, why wouldnt the monopolist just buy all this new water supply than what people could afford on the market for a higher price only to avoid other product than his to reach the market?
How is letting someone die more just than creating a mechanism that allow people to survive?
All the arguments i hear so far about libertarianism seems that creating unjust and unfair situations doesnt matter as long as everyone can do whatever the hell they want.
Well Cubans have been doing it for decades, and us Venezuelans started doing it recently.
This doesn’t sound as a sustainable business model. Don’t you agree?
People survive and reach prosperity in countries that respect freedom and the free market. That’s why the migration is always towards countries with a lot of economic freedom, not to countries with totalitarianism-socialism-communism
Libertarianism is about creating a rights respecting society, when your rights are your life and the result of your work. How can that be not just?
Another subject is the possibility of achieving and sustaining a society like that, which I think isn’t possible, for now. But crypto can help with this in the long term
Fair enough, but is everyone able to do that? Some people still dont have means to leave. If they could, they probably would. Cuba the government prohibits It and It is an island, but Venezuela have borders with a lot of countries, and not everyone have the resource to leave.
Also, Cuba and are the opposit If the spectrum with rules and regulations working the bad way.
Not sustainable, but wouldnt matter to some of them If they make a big profit.
That’s why the migration is always towards countries with a lot of economic freedom,
Yes, and these countries have regulations that allow a more Fair market. The big ones win lots of times, but small ones is can Join the competition to take his share of the market.
Crypto can definetly help with reaching a fair market, but push towards less bad regulations, but no regulations at all kills the competition.
Please note that "just" and "fair" are not synonyms. What's fair to you may not be fair to me. In the words of Bastiat: justice is the lack og injustice. Some action or inaction is just if no one's rights were violated. If you violate someone's property rights to safe a life, this is not justice but injustice. Undertake this action at your own peril.
To be clear, a right to water can certainly not exist, as it would be in conflict with another's right to property. It is important that a system of rights contain no contradictions, and therefore a law can only rise to the status of right if it is universal. Similarly a right to healthcare entitles you to a docto's labour which violates his rights.
Let it be clear that I find your sketched situation a very bad one and I pity the people, but also the situation is highly unrealistic
It is much more profitable for the monopolist to leave the area alive. In that way he does not need to move.
If the monopolist buys all this water his profits dwindle, and the market mechanism does its job. The demand for water is still not satisfied and more capitalists can come in and do the same.
They aren't, but they are related. This system allows the ones with most Power define what is Just and what is not.
Then the right to property is above the right to live? That seems pretty imoral (and evil)
Not that unrealistic. Real world have a lot of historical exemplas of Monopoly of natural resources. Here in Brazil there was a period where small communities were 'ruled' by big land owners "coronéis". They had the true Power over the community, not the government. There were no competition since they held all natural resources on the area, and other area owners wouldnt act on each other delimited areas.
Dont know How It is on other places, but here a doctor have the right to not accept an specific healthcare. It is still his choice. There is still a public health system that provides health services to those that cant afford.
But under medic oath (and law) It is still not allowed to a medic to not provide emergency procedures.
Maybe not. Maybe he is stablished in another area, and Go to this one only to exploit It for a Quick big profit and then go back to the área he lives is and dont exploit. Also, real life examples are there.
Or maybe they reach an agreement to forma a cartel and have an even bigger influence.
No. Our current system allows this. In an anarcho-capitalist society justice dealing is decentralized.
No. Your right to live does not include the right to be kept alive. You have the right to live, you do not have the right to force other to support your life.
We are going in circles now. Your idea of justice includes stealing from haves and giving to have nots. My idea of justice includes respecting everyone's rights. This includes the right to property AND the right to life. Your idea of justice does not include the right to property and this is where we disagree.
there is a paradox right there.
Wich is worth more? the right to live or the right to property?
If it is the right to live, then i am allowed to do anything in my power to attend my basic needs like food and water, including taking private property
If it is the right to property, then i can go against the do no harm since it is possible that i control the basic resources needed for people to live and refuse to share them at a fair price, wich might kill people.
Its not about stealing from who have and giving to dont have. Its about allowing a fair playfield for everyone. An things like monoply, cartel, price dumping make things unfair and unjust.
Why should people tolerate the seizure of their water by the water magnate?
Why should they leave, just because he seizes the water?
By what mechanism is it just he does so?
Seizure of natural resources, such as water, or by logging, has either to be modulated to make it just, and not monopolizable, or recognized as criminal corruption.
If the resources were not in use by anyone, then it is just for him to appropriate it. For example, if there was a flowing river that people drank from, it would not be just for him to claim this resource. If the river was polluted and he built a plant that purified the water, it would definitely be just for him to be the sole owner of that purified water. How could it not be? If he digs a well and draws water from it, who else is owner of that water?
Now if people rely on the water from his well as there is no other source of water there, then they still do not have the right to steal from him this water if they otherwise die. It is his water by right of appropriation and no one else's. He mixed his labor with nature and created value that he owns, and it is his to distribute.
It is preposterous to suppose a sole individual constructing such a facility alone, on their own dime. This is a straw man argument.
Corporations do this kind of construction, and they demonstrably and unfairly gain such resources despite other's use of them routinely, and characteristically.
That water is part of a water table, which isn't separate from the water in the surrounding area. Various communities try to regulate this commons, and are routinely and characteristically corrupted by corporations to favor them.
This is preposterous as well. What prevents me from appropriating the air you need to breathe, then? If I build a box around you, and prevent air from being exchanged within it, according to you I have done nothing wrong.
That is exactly the same argument as someone digging a well that then deprives others' use of water in other parts of the water table - and this is the extant state of government.
you need to have in mind things like monopolies, and cartels are usually related to government interventions with things like patents and permissions. In a real free market, having a monopoly would be almost impossible.
I think you are implying something that makes no sense, why would someone want to have dying and miserable customers? Why would I want to hurt my customers? If I were selling something, I want my customers to be happy, healthy and prosperous. Otherwise I will end up bankrupting my business because I won’t have any customers.
about the no damage rule, I think in a libertarian place there would be enough voluntarily supported charity organizations and I am sure every needed person would find support.
Ps: I still wonder why would someone want to make water so expensive decreasing the prosperity of the community? That makes no sense to me. I want everyone to thrive.
The artificial oligarchical hoarding of Steem is a marked example of doing so, even causing Steemit to retain less than 10% of accounts that were created in 2016, including bots and multiples.
It makes no sense - unless you're the one with the resource, and maximizing your wealth is your only concern. Cash is king.