Adam,
Are you advocating a sort of “Freedom Club”, like an Elks, or a church-like organization?
I think it is concurrent. Remain constant or increase ones own individual libertarian effort does alter and abolish the state in ones own life. The altering is the state isn’t encroaching anymore in the trade-off (meaning state is encroaching but I’m finding ways to at the same time abolish some methods in which the state has or is encroaching). The abolishing is the individual is increasing their own libertarian effort. Every exchange in the free market meets this economic goal via the Unanimity Rule. Every moment an individual doesn’t initiate physical aggression against another meets the ethical-political goal. Every time I increase my capital, ie. stockpile of wood for winter warmth, gardening, etc… I’ve freed up capital (not buying oil for warmth or food at grocery store) to invest in the future which increases economic prosperity as opposed to declining into poverty. One may argue as to what delineates prosperity and poverty, but all I’m pointing out is without profit then it is loss and capital accumulation is profit.
overall I felt your post was being more positive than negative and enjoyed that. thanks.
I get you on that, but above I am basically asking what would motivate people to do something like this? I am trying to find reasons people would want to take the risk out of self-interest, but at the level of issue #10,000 I’m only finding reasons based on ideology. I mentioned a business because that’s the only way I can think of for something like this to attract people to it out of self-interest. If it’s only for ideology, I assume it would just be a few hardcore panarchists willing to take the risk of doing civil disobedience (albeit minor).
Jackson:
I’m advocating a coexisting community, not something that is submitted for approval to the existing community, in which case it is simply an approved club of the existing community.
Unless one believes it is in their self interest to have the state leave them alone. And even if the kernel of the movement is a purely ideological one, it can still serve as an example of how liberty benefits individuals, which could attract the more egoistic pragmatists.
I really like the idea of starting small, tackling the most seemingly unimportant encumbrance to freedom, maybe even just economic factors (like wilderness proposed), to keep the law off the movement’s back. I would also see entering local politics as a very important (and attainable) facet of this tactic. Rather than civil disobedience, how about civil dissolution via the political process?
Thank you Wilderness
I’m confused by the distinction. Wouldn’t you still have to play by the state’s rules (paying taxes, licensing, etc.) to avoid getting pinched? I don’t see how you could operate aside the current system, without being constrained by it.
AJ:
I’m making a few assumptions. If the assumptions don’t hold, then the example I’m using loses its applicability.
Assumption 1: a person wants to establish a libertarian community in his/her lifetime
Assumption 2: arguing, debating, and writing books that are aimed at changing the ideology of statists isn’t working, and may never work. It may never work because as long as the political realities are statist, and the “empirical” situation is statist (no alternative communities for comparison, or to give meaning to our “theoretical” arguments), then the statist’s convictions about what is real and what is possible are understandably reinforced by the fact that, as much as libertarians “theorize” about their envisioned society, the fact on the ground is it is nonexistent. Statists have their scholarship (their theoretical rationale) and statist society. Libertarians only have a theoretical rationale. That is why libertarian arguments don’t change minds. My argument assumes that this situation is recognized. That the reason libertarian arguments are ineffective is because there is no corresponding community to give meaning to libertarian words. Thus, for things to move forward from where they are, some kind of libertarian community needs to be established. Continuing arguments are not going to do it because of the underlying structural issue just described.
If a person doesn’t want to see a libertarian community in his/her lifetime, my example has little persuasive power.
If a person believes that arguing and writing more articles and books is going to take libertarianism from scholarship to reality, then there is not much use for my idea, since my idea is based on the assumption that, not only is it possible that arguments may never convince nonlibertarians to become libertarians, it is probably also the case that through argumentation, libertarians may never even be able to agree amongst themselves on a common vision of libertarian society. I think our discussions here on the forum and discussions throughout the Internet demonstrate that.
My contention is that someone, somewhere, sometime, is going to have to demonstrate a libertarian community, as opposed to simply arguing and writing about one. That is the beginning of the solution. That is my argument.
You mention risk. I agree with you. If there is no desire to establish a libertarian community, or, if one can be established by argument and debate, why would anyone want to take the risks associated with the kind of idea I proposed ?
I don’t understand part of your closing question.
If it were possible to establish a voluntary community in an entirely peaceful manner, easily, cheaply, voluntarily, and nonterritorially. And if by contrast, a bunch of libertarians could conceivably try to take over city hall, is it your position that only a few hardcore panarchists would be willing to establish the beginnings of libertarian society peacefully, while broad libertarian participation and approval can be expected for a plan to take over city hall by force ?
Or are you saying that if libertarians invoiced one another for a penny an hour, thus establishing their own wage and trade agreement coexisting with the wage and trade agreements of the state of which they are compulsory members, that this is more risky than the attempt to take over city hall by force?
Or is your point that anything done concretely to establish a libertarian society in nascent form, aside from arguing and writing, is risky, and in your opinion, there are only a few libertarians who can be expected to participate in any real and concrete plan to establish a libertarian community that goes beyond debating and writing books and articles ?
Do you intend to say that libertarians don’t consider the establishment of some kind of libertarian community as in their self-interest? They will be unwilling in your opinion to take any risks to establish a libertarian community because they don’t view it as in their self-interest?
Can you succinctly state your point or concern?
Jackson:
Could you please illustrate using my example? For the sake of discussion, assume that ten thousand libertarians begin invoicing one another by e-mail attachment for a penny an hour for intellectual services.
Apply your analysis to that example.
I’m pretty sure I have to pay tax on my internet bill. (not sarcastic, I just don’t have it in front of me right now.)
This is good, and I agree. (Although I don’t really think the lack of empirical evidence for anarchy is a big deal myself, given the history of common law and the anarchy in everyday life. If people don’t accept that as empirical evidence I don’t see that a real live libertarian community would fulfill their standards for evidence either, given that it’d also be in the shadow of the state. Not to mention that providing empirical evidence would stop being an important issue once the community was complete enough to constitute anywhere near a level of empirical evidence to rival the evidence already out there.)
Short version: Even committed libertarians won’t view taking the first few steps as in their self-interest unless they think those steps will advance libertarianism, but those steps will only advance libertarianism if enough people view those first few steps (and every step along the way) as in their self-interest. Chicken and egg.
Longer version: The flipside of starting from the most minuscule issues is of course that the immediate material benefit gained for each person in taking those particular steps is negligible, or actually negative since there is some risk involved. Hence it would not be in anyone’s self-interest to form such associations unless they believed that doing so would either effectively advance libertarianism or eventually promote their self-interest in some other way.
So my question is, how do you get people to believe that forming such associations would advance libertarianism? I know you want to avoid making a concrete prediction about how things will unfold, and that seems prudent, but it likewise seems hard to convince people to do something risky without talking about how what they’re doing is supposed to help. How to get around that apparent dilemma?
Of course anarchy could be unstable. I’m not so naive to think that social order will emerge in anarchy under any institutional conditions whatsoever. And as Boétie’s Law shows, any society requires the support (or at least not active opposition) of its constitutive members to survive. As Long writes, social “structures exist only insofar as they are continually maintained in existence by human agents acting in certain systematic ways.” So to answer your question, the people living in the anarchist society will maintain it, through (primarily) not establishing governments themselves and fighting the imposition of governments by others.
Not if the imposition is itself nonaggressive. You seem to be defining “imposition” to be necessarily aggressive. I’m using it to mean “establish by force.” So by this definition, an imposition could be aggressive or nonaggressive (i.e. defensive). What I’m talking about is nonaggressive imposition.
What I have in mind is the market anarchist society as explained by Rothbard and Friedman: competing protection agencies protect people against aggressors, and competing courts resolve disputes. Market competition and moral convictions will lead these agencies to follow the NAP. Since there is free entry into these industries, the system is not a state.
But if we define the state to be necessarily aggressive, then “voluntary statism” is a contradiction in terms.
Of course Rothbard supported any voluntary society, given that his entire philosophy was built on the nonaggression principle.
But libertarian anarchism is promoting a “certain concrete “objective” vision of how society ought to be”: the objective vision that all human relationships in society ought to be voluntary. If panarchism just means “explicit and unequivocal tolerance for all types of voluntary association”, then there’s no difference between panarchism and libertarian anarchism.
So do you think the definition of “aggression” is just a subjective belief? If so, then doesn’t your panarchist position fall apart? How can you advocate “explicit and unequivocal tolerance for all types of voluntary association” if you don’t have a fixed conception of voluntary association? For example, someone might define statism as voluntary association, and you would have to count this as panarchist.
Hi AJ:
EDIT
Never mind. I’ll say it a different way.
The point I was driving at was that it’s only risky due to the fact that people believe libertarianism is being advanced.
We only call it something risky because we realize the situation: that libertarianism would be advanced, and that some people might try to stop it.
In your post you state that people will perhaps want to avoid risk, especially if they don’t believe libertarianism is being advanced.
But if libertarianism isn’t being advanced, why would they believe there was risk ?
Liberty isn’t emerging now, and we have no risk. Why would we change to a situation of “risk” while liberty is exactly where it is now with no advance?
The proposition that some assumed action would be risky is the acknowledgment that liberty was emerging, and that might not sit well with some, hence the “risk”…
I don’t see how you mean this. The State wouldn’t take action against someone because they were “advancing libertarianism” but because they were, say, violating the minimum-wage law.
I think we agree, although I wonder about the exact sense of “systematic” Long means. It seems a slightly odd word choice seemingly trying to straddle the objective NAP approach and the spontaneous order. (Could be just my imagination.)
Just to make sure I’ve got you right, your ideal conception is for PDAs and such to form now and for people to start following their decisions? The who and the what are: the entrepreneurs, and the starting up of PDAs and other firms that are part of Rothbard’s/Friedman’s AnCap machinery?
And I agree that this would not be imposing anything on anyone. However, it sounds sort of like a panarchist vision, so maybe I’m not getting you.
Well yes, in a sense, but I mean something akin to a Blockian voluntary slave contract if you know what I mean. Voluntary slave is also an oxymoron, but we understand that it means someone voluntarily gave up their right to voluntary interaction with someone starting at some point in time. Anyway, yes, voluntary statism is only statism in the sense that Block’s voluntary slave is a slave.
It’s not necessarily objective, and that also stretches the definition of “concrete” in comparison with the AnCap machinery and all the specific determinations of what is right and wrong in all sorts of areas.
Yeah, like I say, I see it primarily as a difference in emphasis, perspective, and/or strategy, probably born out of the dissatisfaction with more concrete visions. My own position basically sees panarchy as a possible strategy/perspective/heuristic.
*A difference in emphasis and perspective compared with AnCap, strategy compared with all other libertarian philosophies.
A word is just a means of tagging and communicating a concept or imagined state of affairs from one’s mind to the mind of another. My point is that the concept people associate with the word aggression in a political context differs wildly. In many cases we could even say that all the little particulars of what constitutes “aggression” in the mind of a given person just is their entire political philosophy.
Yes, I believe the panarchist position (as an absolute doctrine) breaks down to the extent that what I said above about the word aggression also applies to tolerance. I have no commitment to panarchism as a doctrine or complete philosophy, so will leave the defense of that position to any others who may hold it. I see panarchism/voluntaryism primarily as a strategy and a perspective, and possibly as a heuristic that might be more intuitive or consistently interpreted by most people than the NAP.
[On the relatively minor issue of which term - “voluntary” or “NAP” - is the more intuitive or consistently interpreted heuristic in the minds of most people, I might be persuaded either way but lean toward “voluntary” being more intuitively connected to the types of situations libertarians talk about and advocate for.]
That means you have to argue for your substantive position. Calling something aggression is not enough.
AJ:
I don’t see it that way.
If we take a series of voluntary associations that libertarians might form, not limited to my example, and if we take a series of actions that the state might conceivably take, each action referring to a specific law, then we would have something like this:
Libertarians establish voluntary association A…The state takes action based on law W.
Libertarians establish voluntary association B…The state takes action based on law X.
Libertarians establish voluntary association C…The state takes action based on law Y.
Libertarians establish voluntary association D…The state takes action based on law Z.
You are saying that the state would take action because law W was being violated. You are referring to the concrete “justification” given for each instance of state action.
I’m not referring to that.
I’m referring to the general principle that each time a voluntary society is formed the state takes action.
What is the reason for that general principle?
There wouldn’t be one necessarily, but the voluntary organization would have to operate within the framework of the existing state ie, abide by the laws. If the new organization begins to operate outside of that framework, aside the state, than it will automatically come into conflict with the state, since the state is a non-voluntary organization that has asserted a monopoly of law and ultimate authority upon its citizens.
Jackson:
Haven’t you just stated the general principle involved ?
Uh, maybe, I’m still a bit confused about what you are proposing.
Not operating outside the framework of the state (like any business or club, or church, or non-profit)
Yet distinct from all of those pre-existing entities by operating independent of the state?