Gee, Doesnt Anarcho-Capitalism Sound Swell? Quotes & excerpts from Wikipedia: Private landlord armies exist in modern day Colombia. Many places evolved into feudal like structures, formalising obligations and allegiances and becoming household troops, and in some cases gaining the strength to allow them to usurp power from or create new states. With the collapse of the Somali central government, groups of rival warlords constituted the only form of authority in some parts of the country. The Congo Crisis (1960–1965) was a period of turmoil in the First Republic of the Congo that began with national independence from Belgium and ended with the seizing of power by Joseph Mobutu. During the crisis mercenaries were employed by various factions. The crisis resulted in the deaths of some 100,000 people. In 18th and early 19th centuries, the imperial Mughal power was crumbling and other powers, including the Sikh Misls and Maratha chiefs, were emerging. At this time, a number of mercenaries, arriving from several countries found employment in India. Some of the mercenaries emerged to become independent or independent rulers. With its focus on responding to threats of slave disorder and recording valuable transactions, colonial American slave law never provided for most areas of private law. Such matters as work, family, religion, wages and private property (by analogy to the Roman peculium), bequests to slaves, most torts against and by slaves, adoption (of a masters illegitimate child), and so on were essentially absent from local jurisprudence, and left to private ordering. -J.A. Bush The East India Company eventually came to rule large areas of India with its own private armies, exercising military power and assuming administrative functions. Shares of the company were owned by wealthy merchants and aristocrats. The government owned no shares. Under pressure from ambitious tradesmen and former associates of the Company (pejoratively termed Interlopers by the Company), who wanted to establish private trading firms in India, a deregulating act was passed in 1694. This allowed any English firm to trade with India, unless specifically prohibited by act of parliament. The Company sought a permanent establishment, while the Parliament would not willingly allow it. By an act that was passed in 1698, a new parallel East India Company (officially titled the English Company Trading to the East Indies) was floated under a state-backed indemnity of £2 million. The powerful stockholders of the old company quickly subscribed a sum of £315,000 in the new concern, and dominated the new body. Company rule in India effectively began in 1757 after the Battle of Plassey and lasted until the Indian Rebellion of 1857. The Company inherited a revenue collection system from the Mughals in which the heaviest proportion of the tax burden fell on the cultivators. Land revenues gave individuals and families separate property rights in occupied land. Since the revenue was fixed in perpetuity, it was fixed at a high level, which in Bengal amounted to £3 million at 1789-90 prices. According to one estimate, this was 20% higher than the revenue demand before 1757. Forced labour of the peasants by the zamindars became more prevalent as cash crops were cultivated to meet the Company revenue demands. Warlordism frequently appears in failed states, states in which central government and nationwide authorities have collapsed or exist merely formally without actual control over the state territory. They are usually defined by a high level of clientelism. Some critics argue that anarcho-capitalism turns justice into a commodity; private defense and court firms would favour those who pay more for their services. Robert Nozick argues in Anarchy, State and Utopia that an anarcho-capitalist society would inevitably transform into a minarchist state through the eventual emergence of a monopolistic private defense and judicial agency that no longer faces competition. Randall G. Holcombe argues that defense agencies could form cartels and oppress people. Paul Birch argues that the largest private protection business in a territory will develop into a natural monopoly. Philosopher Albert Meltzer argued that since anarcho-capitalism promotes the idea of private armies, it actually supports a limited State. Unleash the cops to clear the streets of bums and vagrants. Where will they go? Who cares? Hopefully, they will disappear, that is, move from the ranks of the petted and cosseted bum class to the ranks of the productive members of society. -Murray Rothbard, anarcho-capitalist private army, private military company, mercenary, warlord, East India Company, Company rule in India, Criticisms of anarcho-capitalism, Congo Crisis
Posted on: Wed, 26 Mar 2014 03:02:15 +0000