What’s the difference between government and a coordinated group of service providers?
A belief in the authority of some people to initiate violence against other peaceful people.
Service providers have to operate based on voluntary agreements and contracts using free market forces. They have to maintain not only a good product or service, but also a good reputation in their communities to not only maintain an effective workforce, but also vendors, suppliers, and customers. If they were to use violence in self defense, for example, their actions would be judged based on the consensus of those they interact with. The daily choices of the individual determine the fate of the service provider. If they stop creating value, they go out of business. If they harm those they are meant to serve, they go out of business.
Many will rightly say this model is far too simple and the world is more complicated than that. Let’s unpack that a bit. When “corporations” are formed, the government is involved, takes fees, and defines what the entity can and can not do within the imaginary lines on a map known as borders the State has defined. They also choose which entities survive and which don’t vis bailouts, regulatory capture, and revolving door politics. They literally use threats of violence to ensure their companies (those which pay them taxes or employ people who do) prosper while other companies don’t (see the history of the petro dollar for one example). Companies understand this and are able to export their harm on the world to areas outside the State’s borders so it has less impact on the community they survive on. Nation states use this activity, along with terrifs, sanctions, and more to further strengthen themselves and weaken non-allies. Companies can harm a village somewhere “over there” as long as that group isn’t part of their up or down supply chain, and they can distance themselves enough to not harm their reputation. As soon as their actions directly impact the community of people they serve, their ability to do business goes down.
This model is only as effective as the integrity and character of the customer and the extent to which the company can hide the harm they cause. Even if it becomes know that the company is, for example, destroying the environment, if the customer is not personally impacted, they could look the other way to get a deal. The economic environment they live in and the amount of competing choices they have will often dictate whether or not they support a harmful company. Beggars can’t be choosers, as they say.
This is actually a bit of an argument for the benefit of globalization. If a company served the whole world in a transparent manner without respect to borders, it would have nowhere left to export its harm, other than the environment which, eventually harms us all.
The other major way that governments and service providers differ is that governments control the very tool used to measure value itself. Fiat money, or “money by government decree,” can be created or destroyed at will and the interest rates, the cost of borrowing new money into existence, is a lever they can use which completely distorts everything and essentially destroys the beauty of price discovery within a free market system for individual actors to understand the current consensus on value. We are social species who understand our world through our relationships and the consensus of our peers. X is only worth $Y because the people we love and respect would congratulate us for buying <$Y and selling for >$Y. The same people that wouldn’t buy bitcoin at $4,000 becuase it was “too expensive” will FOMO (fear of missing out) buy it at $8,000 when the only thing that changed is the consensus story of its current value. This is a hard truth, but it’s one that has to be embraced to understand what props up the financial system and how all economic value is determined through shared story telling. When unemployment is skyrocketing, the stock market “story” is a great example of this. People are gambling on the story of value more than that story accurately reflecting the health and wealth of most companies.
Most will say, “Okay, so governments create monopolies and they control the financial stories, so what. Seems to work out okay for me. What’s the big deal?” The big deal is we mostly don’t see the externalities of our choices in the marketplace or the impact of financial policy changes on countries beyond our own.
So what do we do about it? Get hyper local. Create coops and community organizations with shared goals (DACs/DAOs may help, but it can be done without fancy technology as well). Create your own local, competing currencies within your community with transparent monetary policy, ideally on a blockchain so it is immutable and impossible to cheat. I see this as a path forward to move from governments to service providers.
Get hyper local
I am so agreeing with you!! I'm grateful that we know the lady who grows many of our vegetables in the next street. But I have chosen to deselect to this 'other' life here in Thailand.
Shared goals, shared beliefs, co-operation and collaboration. We are moving there and, in some places like rural Thailand, we are not needing to undo much to get back to a purer place.
Thank you for keeping this dialogue happening about who governs, and how, and how-why it should be different.
You are not dealing with how and why we have governments and nation states.
Governments have existed long before there was fiat money or even money at all!
The starting point is these fundamental realities of human existence:
In the modern era the nation state is the smallest group that can effectively fill the self protection role.
This is why some, limited, government is both essential and unavoidable.
Self protection requires taxation. So that too is unavoidable. The United States early history proves this. See Barbary Pirates Federal taxes and formation of US Navy.
Internal self protection also requires Courts and some form of police. This cannot work on market mechanisms, otherwise the rich and powerful would truly be beyond justice.
What you are left with is what the US Founding Fathers envisaged and set out in the US Constitution.
Eliminating fiat currencies and moving to crypto will help pare back government functions to these essentials.
Excellent points, but you seem to be reiterating the liberal myth of laws being a force unto themselves, without the need for enforcement. The so-called "Founding Fathers" of the US used violence against their legally legitimate government, pursuing their independence. There was no "contract" with the people, merely the victors unilaterally declaring all subjects within the boundaries of their newly won fiefdom to now belong to the US government. The Deistic theology of non-interventionist clockmaker god formed the basis of the liberal governments. The liberal belief that laws govern themselves, established the impersonal mechanical government in the liberal West. The US Constitution is merely a piece of parchment with no force. Authority of all governments derives from the point of a gun. The Americans in the Whiskey Rebellion and the Southern secessionist states learned the fallacy of believing that nation-state is a "contract" between the people and the rulers. The libertarian perspective is merely the ultimate logical extension of believing this liberal fallacy.
I am not "reiterating the liberal myth of laws being a force unto themselves".
That is a straw man you are beating.
See my reply to @lukestokes below for further details on my actual position.
I agree that ultimately all governmental authority derives from a monopoly on the use of force, but such monopoly depends on the support of the people. If too many people are unhappy with the government competitors for the use of force will arise and fight it out until one wins.
If too little is spent on defence by one government then another nation state's government will conquer it and make their monopoly area bigger.
Keeping people happy is best achieved by democracy and rule of law such as is set out in US Constitution.
When was the last time one nation state conquered another nation state to extract their physical resources or take their land? It happens, but rarely. Economic value in the world today is largely based on the economic output of the citizens, the infrastructure, etc which creates the tax basis for the rulers. Invading and destroying is far less profitable than cooperation.
Perhaps because you live in a nation (the USA) that has the most powerful military on earth and was last invaded over two centuries ago you believe this to be true.
But I live in a nation whose enemies have tried to attack and invade it to take its land and resources, murder its people and destroy its infrastructure almost every year for the last 72 years.
Every few months, enemies try to destroy my home and kill my children by firing missiles at my city and only the massive resources of a nation state (Israel) are able to protect me.
In my region, nations invade each other all the time, for natural resources such as oil (Iraq invasion of Kuwait, US invasion of Iraq? and Syria?) or human resources such as fertile women (Saudi invasion of Yemen) or for territorial expansion (Russian invasion of Ukraine & Georgia, Turkish invasion of northern Syria).
To the extent that large scale wars of conquest have been relatively rare in the past few decades it is only because the gargantuan power of the US military deters such actions.
Your view of the world is completely skewed by the very thing you'd like to get rid of.
Thank you for responding in detail and for sharing with me your live experience. Before I get into the points you made, are you familiar with democide and the 260 million deaths caused by government? If you're advocating for government, please also understand you're advocating for the harm it causes.
As for the middle east and Israel in particular, I have no lived experience there beyond the narrative of waring tribes, religious holy war, and territorial disputes that go back generations. Just as the Treaty of Versailles essentially ensured WWII would happen because the agreements after WWI were impractical, isn't it possible some of the treaties which have also negatively impacted the Palestinian people to the point where some have taken to violence? Is none of that blame to be laid at the feet of the Israeli government at all?
If one group of people literally wants to whip another group of people off the face of the planet as a genocide, then yes, I see how violence appears mostly unavoidable. That said, I do know of successes (even in the middle east) with tools like NVC: Violence Is a Tragic Expression of an Unmet Need.
It's clear that the Hobbesian Leviathan as the best approach to dealing with violence is the story that best fits reality for you. I'm sure nothing I say would convince you beyond your lived experience (why would it?) but I'd also ask that you at least consider the harm governments cause and especially the US government with the way it uses global financial banking to fund all sides of every war via the military industrial complex. Who builds those missiles and how are they funded? Once army, government, and war are consider viable solutions, all sides get turned into business opportunities at the cost of human life.
I'd prefer individuals be free to equip themselves as needed for protection. Personal defense drones and the like, things that today there is no market to create because governments have a monopoly on defense.
I don't disagree with you about the harm government causes and would prefer to live without it in complete freedom and liberty. I am libertarian and anti-authoritarian but a realist.
I just don't think the complete elimination of government is achievable, even from a theoretical perspective, while we remain vulnerable creatures of the flesh.
I am not advocating for government, just recognising that some government is inevitable and essential.
I think the best way to minimise the harm government causes while maximising its benefits is to recognise its core purposes and limit expansion beyond those core purposes as much as possible.
How do the demos arrive at a decision? It doesn't. After endless discussion of this, that, or other, the lowest common denominator is selected by no one in particular. The entire process of "democracy" hinges on the fallacy that men will obey a set of laws and reason them out themselves. This is the liberal myth of laws being a force onto themselves. Sovereignty and political decisions are made by someone with the ability to write new laws and the capacity to enforce the said laws. The nonsense political system "democracy" is no different from the libertarian idea that "market" laws will correct society and enforce itself. Both systems deny the necessity of personal rule, a sovereign decision-maker.
Democracy has been a failure. How has democracy achieved happiness for its subjects, when the West is plagued with epidemic of mental illness, rampant addiction, and high suicide rates? Merely measuring shiny things that clink does not adequately evaluate social well-being. The duty of the government and the sovereign is to prioritise values and reorganise principles. The legitimacy of any government derives from the sacred, whether it be god, gods, or myths, not from the vulgar opinions of the populace. The liberal myth, which provides legitimacy to the current Western humanist governments, is dangerously flawed and needs to be reorganised.
I disagree with your claim that governments have existed before money, but it's possible we have a different definition of "government." I view government as a monopoly on the initiation of force in a geographic region. If you go by books like the Origin of Virtue, I think the concept of money (a ledger of value owned between people) has been around for a very, very long time. Long before what we call "civilization" or nation states.
I'm all for humans organizing and for voluntary leadership. I don't see that as at all the same thing as government (see Democide).
I disagree. There are many other ways to do it such as:
No it doesn't. People can self-organize for mutual defense without involuntary taxation.
Maybe give For a New Liberty a read to get ideas for how you can have courts and justice without the state.
The constitution is just a piece of paper that either was powerless to prevent what we have now (the largest standing army military the world has ever seen, the largest prison population, a complete break down of state rights, etc, ect) or it accomplished what was inevitable.
Interesting video but fatally flawed model that doesn't address external security threats at all.
It is the external security threats that necessitate the need for nation states, governments and militaries.
Internal law and security are a secondary consequence of that essential need.
In any case, even on internal law and security the model completely fails both in theory and in practice:
Criminals often don't have the means to pay fines or have carefully hidden their assets and are very expensive to lock up. So in a free market Dawn Defence will not pursue the mugger because it is not profitable. National Police are already pretty bad at following up all but the most serious crimes but private security wouldn't do it at all.
The idea that multiple security organisations having the ability to use force will co-exist peacefully and resolve things by mediation is completely false and disproven by every gang war, tribal war & civil war in human history.
When there is not a monopoly on the use of force, various force-wielding organisations will inevitably fight it out (and merge) until one wins in a particular defensible geographic area and monopoly is achieved.
Then they will call themselves the government and you are right back where you started.
The profit motive will ensure it, because when you have won, you have the monopoly on the use of force and can charge what you like and make monopoly profits - its called taxes!
So in a sense I agree with you, the government is just the security provider that beat all the other competing security providers and achieved monopoly on the use of force in a geographic area (the nation state).
However there are no alternatives.
We can only seek to limit government to its essential roles (external security, law and order) and keep it out of all the non-essential roles (including creating money).
I disagree because I think distributed, decentralized individuals taking responsibility for their own security are very, very difficult to take over even by the most well-funded technically excellent nation stat armies (see Afghanistan). In my opinion, this "you need us" narrative is pushed by the nation state to keep people in fear. Having a standing army puts the people at more risk, not less. Nations want to take over other nations because of the tax-farming opportunity which is enforceable by the violence of the state. If the people reject that, there is no opportunity to extract from them as they will fight the very concept.
I don't think 1 is accurate. See examples like Detroit Threat Management (now known as https://www.threatmanagementcenter.com/ ).
As for 2, your argument sounds like "We can't have freedom because some day over time it might turn into government." That's a silly argument, to me. I think tribal and gang wars would be less effective if there wasn't a monopoly on "keeping the peace" (which does nothing of the sort). Police respond to crime, they don't prevent. Private, distributed security guards, for example, actually prevent crime before it happens. That's a much better model.
I do think there are alternatives. Many alternatives. I hope humanity evolves its consciousness to consider them. I suggest giving The Most Dangerous Superstition a read. More thoughts here, if interested: https://peakd.com/anarchy/@lukestokes/the-myth-of-authority
I've reblogged this after upvoting @lukestokes, and I also shared it to my FB account (where I hope they can open the link)
You make some excellent points, and have cleared up a thing or two for me.
Thanks for that.
How about exchange of services?
I do your garden, you fix my roof, I take care of or yeach your child, you cook me a decent meal, etc.
We all have skills, likes, dislikes, knowledge we can share for free and basic needs. The price is what it is worth to you.
If it comes to the providers the example is badly chosen. You have to agree if you do not agree you have no internet. Once the contract is signed there is no service. They can easily shut you down or slow your connection down and make you pay the full price without any compensation or guarantee.
Happy day 💕
Barter, in my opinion, is not practical at scale and can only work in very high trust situations. Internet is an example of a government-created monopoly. Their regulations prevent competing service providers in the same area.
Should it all be practical on scale? For sure it will be in some way since people travel.