Damn Massachusetts and the Vesta arc.

There several arcs ahead of Vesta, both in the pipeline and under development, but I wanted to introduce the concept now. I

Should that read "They are"?  It seems more likely than "They're" where "They" are Scott and/or Neil.

Nice pop culture reference on today comic page, but would be even more fun to have immigrants come from Vermont 

So here is the question : When does a Market organization become a government ?

There is one and only one difference. I'd like to hear what you and the the other Forum members think that is.

When the power to coerce a third party is granted to any individual or group, then government has formed.

We have a winner...!

There several arcs ahead of Vesta, both in the pipeline and under development, but I wanted to introduce the concept now. I

Should that read "They are"?  It seems more likely than "They're" where "They" are Scott and/or Neil.

Sorry, my bad. "There are." Just talking about EFT. We have a number of arcs in the pipeline and I have others in development.

As explained, the situation is too simplistic.  Sounds like a group of immigrants initiated a government (constitution?) upon the existing population.  If said population was multi-generational  sovereign individuals, I don't see how.  On the other hand, if the population was made up of relatively recent immigrants, a slick public relations campaign could have started the dance.

The prophet Samuel predicted that if the children of Israel created a government, they would wind up paying ten percent income tax, and suffering conscription and eminent domain.  No one paid attention.

Samuel was judge in Israel, and there was no one widely accepted as suitable to follow him:

[4] Then all the elders of Israel gathered themselves together, and came to Samuel unto Ramah,
[5] And said unto him, Behold, thou art old, and thy sons walk not in thy ways: now make us a king to judge us like all the nations.

…

[10] And Samuel told all the words of the LORD unto the people that asked of him a king.
[11] And he said, This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you: He will take your sons, and appoint them for himself, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen; and some shall run before his chariots.
[12] And he will appoint him captains over thousands, and captains over fifties; and will set them to ear his ground, and to reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war, and instruments of his chariots.
[13] And he will take your daughters to be confectionaries, and to be cooks, and to be bakers.
[14] And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your oliveyards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants.
[15] And he will take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and give to his officers, and to his servants.
[16] And he will take your menservants, and your maidservants, and your goodliest young men, and your asses, and put them to his work.
[17] He will take the tenth of your sheep: and ye shall be his servants.
[18] And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye shall have chosen you; and the LORD will not hear you in that day.
[19] Nevertheless the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel; and they said, Nay; but we will have a king over us;
[20] That we also may be like all the nations; and that our king may judge us, and go out before us, and fight our battles.

At first the king rules by merely requesting people to volunteer for war and public service, but in due course …

[7] And he took a yoke of oxen, and hewed them in pieces, and sent them throughout all the coasts of Israel by the hands of messengers, saying, Whosoever cometh not forth after Saul and after Samuel, so shall it be done unto his oxen. And the fear of the LORD fell on the people, and they came out with one consent.
[8] And when he numbered them in Bezek

There several arcs ahead of Vesta, both in the pipeline and under development, but I wanted to introduce the concept now. I

Should that read "They are"?  It seems more likely than "They're" where "They" are Scott and/or Neil.

Sorry, my bad. "There are." Just talking about EFT. We have a number of arcs in the pipeline and I have others in development.

No problem; I wouldn't have said anything if I were sure which was meant.  I guess one is a bit sloppier in one's writing when not getting paid for it  .

BTW, thanks for acknowledging my answer to the question.  Frankly, I thought it was a pretty easy one for most of the folks here.

Does this mean we're going to have a serious examination of the drawbacks of market anarchism and some possible solutions to those problems?

The Vestan regime is moving with astonishing swiftness from regulating some real or imaginary minor market failure, to regulating everything that moves.  

Slow boiling the frog tends to be safer.

Fast boiling the frog, as in 1949, usually results in crisis followed by the government temporarily retreating.  Over the years the crisis gets quietly erased from history.

In the US the government has abruptly moved towards European levels of statism and crony capitalism, with the unsurprising result that we now have European levels of unemployment and under employment.

This will probably be partially reversed - and instead of an abrupt move left, it will be back to slow creep left.

As a method of protection, creating government is on a par with tossing a fluffy blanket over your head and singing the Smurf song as loudly as you can.  You still get mugged but you can neither see nor hear your mugger.  Since you believe the blanket does protect you, you can only think, Cheez! If it's this bad with the blanket, it must be ever so much worse without it!  So, too, government:  when your elected/appointed/anointed neighbors rob you, cheat you, renege on their promises to you, send you off to commit crimes you would never have committed otherwise, you can neither see nor hear this as being crimes against you. 

You are not in fact any safer.  John Smith is just as likely to be a liar/cheater/thief/killer as "Senator" Smith or "Officer" Smith as he is as just plain "Citizen" Smith -- but you hallucinate that his having a title makes you safer, as if being in office magically changes his nature from "normal cussed human goat" to "semidivine border collie". 

Pointing out the arbitrary ruthlessness of the whims of warlords in, say, Somalia only means you don't see the arbitrary ruthlessness of your government agents acting on their whims in defiance of all the laws they've passed.  You're getting mugged just the same but it doesn't "count" 'cos it's being done by The Elect(ed).

God damn. That is definitely quotable.

I second Tucci's comment.  I would love to quote this.  To give proper credit, would you prefer to be cited as mellyrn, or something else.  Feel free to respond to me privately if you prefer.

I would have assumed the physical facts of Vesta would remain a bit fuzzy until we get more details from Dawn. I was somewhat surprised you would start to flesh out another world when you always seem to make a good effort to do the background science in the strip. 

BTW, any ideas for retro-conning if Dawn shows us some surprises in 2015?

There several arcs ahead of Vesta, both in the pipeline and under development, but I wanted to introduce the concept now. I have blocked out Vesta and know where it is going, but I still have to write it. I hope it will address your interest. However, I think it will be more about what doesn't work as opposed to how a market anarchy does work.

I would have assumed the physical facts of Vesta would remain a bit fuzzy until we get more details from Dawn. I was somewhat surprised you would start to flesh out another world when you always seem to make a good effort to do the background science in the strip.

True, I do. However, I am willing to bet that there will be no big surprises that would affect my story. My setting will be in a settlement around Vesta's south pole and I will probably have something to say about smaller impact craters. However, we already know a lot about Vesta. 

BTW, any ideas for retro-conning if Dawn shows us some surprises in 2015?

I have no plan one way or the other. I guess I will just have to punt if Dawn makes me a liar. 

The Vestan regime is moving with astonishing swiftness from regulating some real or imaginary minor market failure, to regulating everything that moves.  

Slow boiling the frog tends to be safer.

Fast boiling the frog, as in 1949, usually results in crisis followed by the government temporarily retreating.  Over the years the crisis gets quietly erased from history.

In the US the government has abruptly moved towards European levels of statism and crony capitalism, with the unsurprising result that we now have European levels of unemployment and under employment.

This will probably be partially reversed - and instead of an abrupt move left, it will be back to slow creep left.

There's another factor that might realistically show up in the Vesta arc which makes "boiling the frog" by statists more difficult.

Perhaps impossible, even if they move like lightning.

In the asteroid belt, there's only microgravity to "nail things down." A government can do horrible-bad-awful-nasty things to people at the bottom of a gravity well because the model thereof ("A French bastard landing with an armed banditti, and establishing himself king of England against the consent of the natives...," per Thomas Paine) can establish a territorial jurisdiction, and fixed real property can't readily be gotten out from under.

In the asteroid belt, however, pretty much everything is portable.  Apply enough delta-Vee and the rock and/or the habitat where you've established your enterprise and domicile can be out of the Vesta "domain" quicker'n you can say "tax exile."

Would these emigrants from Massachusetts be capable of exercising coercive violent force to prevent the Belters of the Vesta cluster from picking up their figurative marbles and leaving for pastures less pestiferous?

Hm. Can a vacuum get any emptier?  In space, can anybody hear a statist scream?

The Vestan regime is moving with astonishing swiftness from regulating some real or imaginary minor market failure, to regulating everything that moves.  

Slow boiling the frog tends to be safer.

There's another factor that might realistically show up in the Vesta arc which makes "boiling the frog" by statists more difficult.

[...]
Would these emigrants from Massachusetts be capable of exercising coercive violent force to prevent the Belters of the Vesta cluster from picking up their figurative marbles and leaving for pastures less pestiferous?

Hm. Can a vacuum get any emptier?  In space, can anybody hear a statist scream?

It's also quite possible that the "Council" on Vesta has yet to do anything coercive, or at least no one has noted and granted the power to coerce to those on it.  If this is the case, "Nappy" is almost certainly likely to assume that such power has been granted (having been shown to be a natural bully), and thus get the natives to and attempt to correct his errant perception.   At that point things get interesting, depending on the level of support he gets from the Massachusetts folks, and whether or not those in the UW government get involved (my guess would be that they would, albeit somewhat tentatively, given their having been burned by Ceres folks rather badly).

It's also quite possible that the "Council" on Vesta has yet to do anything coercive, or at least no one has noted and granted the power to coerce to those on it.

Recall that when Saul was made King in Israel, Samuel predicted that he and his successors would coerce people in all sorts of horrid ways, (taxation, conscription, and eminent domain) but he seems to have been King of Israel for quite a while without coercing anyone.  Then, in response to some military emergency or other, implemented conscription, very briefly, for the duration of the emergency.   Taxes came later.

It's also quite possible that the "Council" on Vesta has yet to do anything coercive, or at least no one has noted and granted the power to coerce to those on it.

They've been granted control of the food, the water, and the air. I'd say they've got coercive power.

It's also quite possible that the "Council" on Vesta has yet to do anything coercive, or at least no one has noted and granted the power to coerce to those on it.

They've been granted control of the food, the water, and the air. I'd say they've got coercive power.

They claim, and quite likely believe, they have been granted control of the food, the water, and the air.

With existing governments, it usually happens that they issue commands, and the actual results of those commands surprise them.  Lenin complained about this at considerable length.

They claim, and quite likely believe, they have been granted control of the food, the water, and the air.

With existing governments, it usually happens that they issue commands, and the actual results of those commands surprise them.  Lenin complained about this at considerable length.

The good old law of unintended consequences.

Like the laws of physics and economics, it works whether you want it to or not.