This is "anarchism and minarchists: an appeal
to libertarians".
Anarchists and minarchists do a lot of bickering,
but they have more in common than not. They
are both for radically less government, and
both often call themselves libertarians. While
we should strive to, as much as possible,
put aside the ideological differences and
work towards our mutual goals, there is always
some benefit to having friendly discussions
about the virtues of the two philosophies.
What follows is a sort of “intro” to anarchism
(more specifically, anarcho-capitalism, or
one of its plentiful synonyms such as capitalism,
voluntaryism, or anti-statism) for minarchists.
The basic moral premise of anti-statism is
that no man should ever aggress against another
man who has not first aggressed against him
(the non-aggression principle, or NAP). Aggression,
of course, includes stealing, or taking anything
from a man against his will. Involuntary taxation,
then, is a form of stealing by majoritarian
consensus (or democracy). The penalty for
refusing involuntary taxation is to be kidnapped
against your will and thrown in a cage (jailed).
To violently resist this would of course lead
the state to kill you. The most basic inherent
principle of the state, then, is violence
and aggression, as it must be.
Of course, many will say that everyone implicitly
agrees to taxation via the social contract.
However, this is a form of collectivism whereby
the individual, even if radically opposed
to the “social contract”, must conform.
In other words, if I disagree with the contract,
then it’s not really a contract, it is merely
the imposition of force under a euphemism.
Some believe that anarchism runs into a problem
with hierarchy, for example, in religious
institutions; however, anti-statism is not
opposed to hierarchy. It is opposed to involuntary
hierarchy. People are free to voluntarily
submit themselves to any form of hierarchy,
or even aggression, they so choose. The only
stipulation is that the individual should
always have the option to opt-in or out of
a contract, as opposed to subjection to the
will of the forceful collective. The case
for government, then, is the utilitarian/pragmatic
argument for risk mitigation. In other words,
though we know it’s immoral to aggress against
a peaceful individual for any reason, we will
do it anyways, in order to defend against
a supposed greater evil. Then again, as libertarians,
we know that the utilitarian/pragmatic argument
is always a compromise of principles.
On the other hand, the basic economic premise
of anti-statism is quite simple: government
never does anything as economically efficiently
as the private sector. In keeping with the
principle of the “tragedy of the commons”
– no man protects another man’s property
(or money) as well as he protects his own.
Most libertarians and even mainline conservatives
will generally agree to this premise. The
problem of course comes in the practical implementation
of anti-statism. One useful conception, instead
of “no government”, is complete privatization.
So for example, we might privatize the taxpayer-subsidized
city police force into a subscription-based
force, whereby you and others in a community
hire Force A to protect your homes. In fact,
we would probably see a market for police
forces – you might pay Force A to protect
your home, and your neighbor might pay Force
B to protect his home. The most important
thing here is that you can truly vote with
your dollar. If a cop from Force A abuses
his power in some way, you would probably
immediately withdraw your subscription to
Force A and hire Force B alongside your neighbor.
Cops in a private market would therefore NEVER
have an incentive to abuse their power, as
there is true accountability to the consumer.
A state monopoly on force is not a good thing,
it is demonstrably bad, for these reasons.
In the same way, we might privatize the US
military. So the Army, Navy, Marines, Air
Force, Coast Guard, etc, might each be sold
off (perhaps even in divisions of 50% or 10%
or whatever) at market price to the highest
bidder, such as Boeing or Lockheed. People
of a region (say, the east coast) would subscribe
to Boeing, Lockheed, or whichever force they
feel most adequately and efficiently protects
that region.
One important piece of the puzzle is that
if a defense force did start to act out of
hand, we would expect its monetary base (its
subscribers) to immediately rescind all monies
and support from that force, and in fact to
send their money to a competing force to protect
them from force A. Thus it is in the rational
best interests of each company to fulfill
its contractual obligations to its subscribers
and in fact to work together with the other
companies on many things (reciprocity agreements,
etc), even though they are market competitors.
This addresses concerns about rogue private
armies.
Another important realization is that anti-statism,
or anarchism, does not mean “no law”,
it means “no rulers”. The law still prevails,
no matter what. In this case, it would be
the common law, which might be rooted in the
NAP. Of course, the implication is that there
would be private law agencies as well. We
already have precedent for this today in private
arbitration agencies. In fact, in studying
ancient Israel (books of Judges, Samuel, etc),
they had a very similar societal structure
– without a king, government, or any ruler
(other than God) – for 450 years.
For some more specific solutions to some common
questions and objections, there is a brief
essay called “Objectivism and The State:
An Open Letter to Ayn Rand“. It addresses
a lot of these tougher issues in a way that
Rand supporters can appreciate.
It is of course natural to have reservations
about all this. It’s natural to have questions
and doubts as to whether there are solid answers
or things could actually “work”. But the
most important question to continually consider
is this: which is the greater evil? Is it
a greater evil to advocate a system whereby
you inherently endorse theft from your neighbor,
or a system where, whether or not the functional
micro-details are all ironed out, you do not
support said principles of aggression, violence,
and immorality, which empirically and inevitably
becomes the leviathan state we fight today?
Do you stay true to your principles, or will
you cave to the utilitarian, pragmatic argument
of “compromise”?
