They can hold back agorism indefinitely by great effort, but when they let go, the ‘flow’ or ‘Invisible Hand’ or ‘tides of history’ or ‘profit incentive’ or ‘doing what comes naturally’ or ‘spontaneity’ will carry society inexorably closer to the pure agora.
The profit incentive creates all sorts of collective action problems that cannot be addressed without a centralized authority. This is already a major problem and your approach would only make it worse.
The problem is externalities. Externalities are an economic term for when a particular action causes indirect effects, whether positive or negative. When a train station is built, businesses in the surrounding area become more profitable, yet the profit from this cannot be captured by the train itself, if the fares were that high, fewer people would use it and the benefits would be lost. When a factory emits pollution, the property values in the surrounding area plummet, and these costs are not borne by the factory owner.
Only though a centralized system can externalities be effectively managed. The pollution can be regulated or taxed, while public transit can be funded and run at a loss. This is particularly important in combating climate change, which has no profit incentive and therefore cannot be addressed through capitalism in any form.
Over time, as these parallel systems become more efficient and trustworthy, people naturally migrate toward them and the state’s influence begins to erode. It is not about confronting the state’s monopoly on force in a single decisive battle, but rather outmaneuvering it day by day, demonstrating in tangible ways that voluntary alternatives are more durable and harder to suppress than top-down structures. This shift has accelerated with recent technological breakthroughs which empower individuals and communities to coordinate on their own terms, further loosening the state’s grip.
I think you misunderstood my question. How is it that the supposedly inferior system of centralization won out over decentralization in the first place? If decentralization is so much more efficient and resilient, then why don’t we have it already?
Communities will inevitably exhibit some degree of local centralization to coordinate efforts of course, individuals and groups can still seek restitution from polluters who contaminate or damage their land or resources. They can also organize boycotts, leverage grassroots reputation networks, employ social pressure, and engage in direct negotiations to compel cleaner production methods.
Modern technological breakthroughs greatly expand how communities can address externalities and finance large projects. These developments weaken the state’s monopoly on authority and create avenues for voluntary collaboration on a scale that was previously impractical. Decentralization remains embryonic today not because it is inherently less capable, but because coercive structures have historically worked to stifle or outlaw alternatives. During humanity’s transition from tribal living to centralized states, there was little foresight to protect decentralized methods of organization, allowing emerging authorities to entrench their power.
individuals and groups can still seek restitution from polluters who contaminate or damage their land or resources.
Ridiculous. So what, every time a company releases C02, there’s a class-action lawsuit by every single human on earth?
They can also organize boycotts, leverage grassroots reputation networks, employ social pressure, and engage in direct negotiations to compel cleaner production methods.
Libertarians love boycotts as this magical solution for keeping companies in line. In reality, they very rarely work. And of course, to the extent that the do work, boycotts are just as effective at enforcing bad things as they are at good things. Before the Civil Rights act, decentralization allowed racist communities in the US South to withhold service based on race. If a business owner chose to tolerate black customers, they risked losing racist white ones. If you released certain areas from centralization, they would return to such practices, as well as discrimination along other factors such as sexual orientation.
But you don’t support that, so it wouldn’t happen. All the prejudices of these rural communities would simply disappear, because you don’t like confronting their existence, and again, the idea is confined to your mind where you can simply choose not to think about them.
What it comes back to is that boycotts are simply another form of power, and power can be leveraged to do both good or bad things. Because it is a less effective form of power, you’re able to romanticize it as harmless, but to the degree that it’s harmless, it doesn’t work to do good things either. Any power capable of doing good things like punishing polluting companies is also just as capable of punishing people for being queer. It comes back to what I said at the beginning, there is one physical reality and what happens in it is simply a question of who holds what power and what they do with it.
All you’re doing is romanticizing decentralization without actually examining the world and how it works.
The profit incentive creates all sorts of collective action problems that cannot be addressed without a centralized authority. This is already a major problem and your approach would only make it worse.
The problem is externalities. Externalities are an economic term for when a particular action causes indirect effects, whether positive or negative. When a train station is built, businesses in the surrounding area become more profitable, yet the profit from this cannot be captured by the train itself, if the fares were that high, fewer people would use it and the benefits would be lost. When a factory emits pollution, the property values in the surrounding area plummet, and these costs are not borne by the factory owner.
Only though a centralized system can externalities be effectively managed. The pollution can be regulated or taxed, while public transit can be funded and run at a loss. This is particularly important in combating climate change, which has no profit incentive and therefore cannot be addressed through capitalism in any form.
I think you misunderstood my question. How is it that the supposedly inferior system of centralization won out over decentralization in the first place? If decentralization is so much more efficient and resilient, then why don’t we have it already?
Communities will inevitably exhibit some degree of local centralization to coordinate efforts of course, individuals and groups can still seek restitution from polluters who contaminate or damage their land or resources. They can also organize boycotts, leverage grassroots reputation networks, employ social pressure, and engage in direct negotiations to compel cleaner production methods.
Modern technological breakthroughs greatly expand how communities can address externalities and finance large projects. These developments weaken the state’s monopoly on authority and create avenues for voluntary collaboration on a scale that was previously impractical. Decentralization remains embryonic today not because it is inherently less capable, but because coercive structures have historically worked to stifle or outlaw alternatives. During humanity’s transition from tribal living to centralized states, there was little foresight to protect decentralized methods of organization, allowing emerging authorities to entrench their power.
Ridiculous. So what, every time a company releases C02, there’s a class-action lawsuit by every single human on earth?
Libertarians love boycotts as this magical solution for keeping companies in line. In reality, they very rarely work. And of course, to the extent that the do work, boycotts are just as effective at enforcing bad things as they are at good things. Before the Civil Rights act, decentralization allowed racist communities in the US South to withhold service based on race. If a business owner chose to tolerate black customers, they risked losing racist white ones. If you released certain areas from centralization, they would return to such practices, as well as discrimination along other factors such as sexual orientation.
But you don’t support that, so it wouldn’t happen. All the prejudices of these rural communities would simply disappear, because you don’t like confronting their existence, and again, the idea is confined to your mind where you can simply choose not to think about them.
What it comes back to is that boycotts are simply another form of power, and power can be leveraged to do both good or bad things. Because it is a less effective form of power, you’re able to romanticize it as harmless, but to the degree that it’s harmless, it doesn’t work to do good things either. Any power capable of doing good things like punishing polluting companies is also just as capable of punishing people for being queer. It comes back to what I said at the beginning, there is one physical reality and what happens in it is simply a question of who holds what power and what they do with it.
All you’re doing is romanticizing decentralization without actually examining the world and how it works.