this is why i don't claim to be anarchist anymore. because what is and isn't governmental oversight is open to interpretation, one could argue that if you are anarchist you must be against adults parenting their children because the adult is governing their children, so anarchists must be against parenting in general.

its much simplier if you just say either i like how things are now; and if thats not the case, i want them to move in this direction. so I want the government to be freer regarding trade or freer regarding our personal lives.

your idea is a bit of a reductio ad absurdum, even the most ardent of libertarians don't believe in a "truly free market" by your standards, since they would still require regulation prohibiting you from infringing on another person's freedom. Ultimately the freedom of a market is related to freedom in general, if a people have considered certain behaviour illegal then it is excluded from the legal free market mechanism. Though of course a "true free market" mechanism in the form of a black market will probably pop up.

Avo wrote -
"ok, lets say there was a free market by your definition. your first example is drugs. With all illegal drugs, other then possibly Pot, there is a vast majority of the population that doesn't approve of its use. Whats going to happen when someone tries to sell those drugs to children? they're probably going to die; the law isn't holding anyone back. Same can be said with theft, or murder, communities wouldn't tolerate it and because they're free to do whatever they want, the theives and murderers probably wouldn't last long."

And that was pretty much my conclusion that in such a system justice would become the province of the mob.

East wrote -
"your idea is a bit of a reductio ad absurdum,"

Actually it's a complete reductio ad absurdum.  As I said this wasn't meant as an attack on the idea, merely a ridiculous example to beg the question where do we draw the line and, more importantly, who decides.

V.Kemp wrote -
""True Free Market" = Phrase produced entirely as a strawman attack by socialists and general lovers of tyranny."

No "True Any Concept" = The principles of an ideal taken to their utmost extreme.  You are correct that it is a strawman meant to provoke people like Avo and East to point out that it would never logically go that far.  So since we've established that a "True Free Market" is utterly ridiculous as a concept (as most "true" concepts are) where would the lines be drawn in a "Functional Free Market".  What goods/services would be deemed illegal and who would make that choice (Federal, State, Municipal authorities?  Public consensus through boycott? etc.)

For the record I'm not a fan of socialism either and often point to myself as an example of why it would never work.  I support ideas that would work, and despite it's benefits I've little doubt that the Free Market concept would collapse once introduced to the human condition.  Same with socialism, altruism, pacifism, etc.

Define "democratic."

ultimately everything's controlled by the man!

The Little man!

I don't view lawlessness as a requirement or condition of free markets. The market is not anarchy, the decentralization of the use of force is what keeps the order. A lack of institutionalized government merely opens up the market for security. Law and order become functions of supply-and-demand, and it arises spontaneously from the voluntary contracts that result from individual, independent activity in the matrix of socio-economic interactions.

All of this centers on the basic idea that individual man is his own keeper. From Locke's proviso (conveniently quoted in my signature), we can derive that all human rights are property rights. We hold sovereignty over our body and our affairs, and thus enjoy an inalienable right to the fruit of our labor and justly acquired property.

Opponents will point out that this makes certain assumptions concerning human nature, and they are correct. But the assumptions are not necessarily without merit. It is self-evident that society is a natural extension of individual humans banding together in community. It is self-evident that delegating tasks of production to many different humans, or to the tools which have been forged by human hands, increases our productive ability ten-fold than if we were to produce everything we required by ourselves.

So enters the division of labor, which has its roots even further back than the hunter-gatherer societies and even occurs in primate societies to a limited extent, and it is this social construct that enables civilized society at all. This is the source of my belief that free markets are /emergent/ phenomena and are, therefore, an extension of our own nature.

So I say yes, humans are inherently good-natured; yes, humans want to cooperate with eachother; yes, humans want to coexist peacefully; and yes, a completely unregulated, unhampered market is the logical conclusion of this avenue of thought. It is the /only/ "system" under which we may live to our maximum potential as human beings.

The question that boggles my mind, DPS, is why would you assume there is no ethical component to human action in the absence of institutionalized government?

Buffets are much more orderly here in Las Vegas without much manager direction, probably because since they're usually inside the casinos, the prices are pretty low, allowing customers to be more familiar with the system.

Just wanted to throw that in. 

No

Democracy = Plutocracy

/me writes down Douglas in his little black book

you deny the necessity of the dictatorship of the proletariat??

EUROCOMMUNIST!!!

that new tag and this new avatar really crimp my snark

@avo:
"yeah, but i really just copied the OP's simplification of the truth."
yeah, I see that now. You still have an interesting view on anarchy, but it has changed a little if I'm not mistaken.:p Although I disagree still, I have to admit you're about the only anarchist ever in this forum with a somewhat interesting view upon anarchism, that is why I remember. The few other anarchists that came here weren't very brilliant.

@V.kemp:
Little Paul isn't the name of my.. er... you know! It is to separate 2 different Pauls in the dune theme.