A common argument brought about statists for standing armies is that they keep us safe.
I was recently talking to a friend about this issue (friend is a statist), and he says that ancapiland will never succeed in the world because it can be easily teared down by the state through war/conquest.
And as such, i ought ot defend ancapiland. I need to flesh out some arguments here…
Assuming, that ancapiland is a relatively large area, probably around the same area as brazil or other country around the same size, it would be reasonable for us to suppose that a state will want to conquer ancapiland through means of war (as ancapiland wil not have a standing military). Also we must assume that ancapiland is the only anarchist piece of land that exists, and is surronded by other statist states.
I said to my friend… Suppose that this ancapiland was a center of trade for other states. Other states may not be hostile to ancapiland so we must assume that a large number of states trade with ancapiland due to ancapiland’s great economy, and production. Because of this, a state may be discouraged from invading ancapiland as it will damage relations to other states that may be trading with ancapiland.
So my friend said, lets assume that the state invading ancapiland gives 0 fucks about other nations relations with them.
There will be high demand for police, and security, and eventuall private companies may hire privatized armies to protect the citizens that pay. And as such, ancapiland may be defended in this way. Competing private armies will probably have to work together to defend its citizens as to keep the profits going.
What about the citizen that doesnt pay the private army? Will only his house be ransacked and then itl all be good?
Well no, the private armies will have to defend even the unpaids land, as an enemy breakthrough in a certain area may make other areas hard to defend (the statists could make a spearhead through a certain area that didnt pay the private army, and therefore would make it harder for the private army to defend areas that are actually paying them).
If ancapiland has good relations with another state, that friend state of ancapiland may aid in its defense against the state that is evil. Production licenses, and trade of resources will probably give ancapiland technology (if it doesnt already have) to combat the enemy state’s invasion.
What other things should i mention? I know that at the moment the arguments that im making are not that great. What other things should i say?
Ancapiland would treat war as a crime, and private police would respond to any encroachment on private property. And, we know they would handle it because if they didnt, they would be out of a job.
“There will be high demand for police, and security, and eventually private companies may hire privatized armies”
The first two are more likely than the last one. You don’t address the public goods problem, which, when it comes to defense is the single biggest problem which anarchism would theoretically face, and the most difficult one to overcome, specifically because it is one of the cases of “market failure”
What do you mean by public goods problem? Can you explain?
I must also add to the argument that any citizen can own whatever kind of weapon they choose, adn that guerilla warfare will screw over a military tring to invade it.
Theres no market failure, just positive and negative externalities. People who have wealth invest in protecting it. Other people can benefit as a result, its cool.
Public goods are realistically the only really good case for government intervention in the economy. While most modern theorists focus upon the reasons for it, I think that more important point are the implications of it which comes down to the fact that any acting individual makes choices upon a marginal basis.
This plays into the prisoner’s dilemma, but let’s take the area of national defense. If you had to holistically choose between there being national defense and there not being national defense which would you choose? National defense of course. The problem? You will NEVER be asked to make that decision, it’s not within your power. Let’s say that you make an average 50K a year and that theoretically you would be willing to forego everything for national defense. Now let’s say that tomorrow that the United States becomes an anarchist state and that (for the sake of argument) there is only one defense company which functions on a budget of 100 Billion a year. We’ll say that this amount is what it takes to defend against foreign invasion, any more and the system fails and the U.S is invaded and reverted to a state.
Well what incentive do you have to pay any money towards defense? As counterintuitive as it seems, you have no incentive to pay because your donation doesn’t matter. If you gave every last cent you have to the cause, well your contribution has made less than .01 percent of a difference to the income of the company. The contribution of your entire monetary wealth has given the company perhaps the ability to hire one more soldier… Do you think that a war will be won with a single more soldier? No, of course not. Therefore if we say that there are 200 million middle class Americans then if every person just chipped in 500 bucks then guess what? The areas fine and we can all go on living our life. Thusly we see marginal rationality, save the 500 bucks and cause less than a .0001 percent difference in defense spending, a change that’s pretty much unnoticeable, which adds up to collective insanity. Everyone is better off if everyone pays, no one is better off if they pay.
Now some of these things are questionable, including the idea that it would cost that much to defend the society, what would happen if the system failed, and what the level of income inequality would mean since even in this relatively large example there are still those who could make a noticeable percentage difference in funding in they were willing to provide enough of their money. Nonetheless, I think that this displays the problem fairly nicely.
I think it important to note that if someone is arguing for statism on anything other than something which is ultimately a public good then it’s probably an argument which can be criticized by reference to simple market forces
Neodoxy, I’d like to point you out to D. Friedman’s great point that just because something is a market failure it doesn’t mean government can handle it any better.
The ultimate failure of government results from the fact that it suffers either from the tragedy of the commons or the public goods problem itself. I would also like to say that the only realistic argument for government, in my mind, is specifically the one from national defense being a public good, and I think that if the anarchist state ever comes to be, then the challenge for its survival will be to either solve the problem or to make it irrelvant.
To put it in more theoretical terms, Coasian bargaining may fail on the market, but I don’t find much literature that explains why govt actually reduces transaction costs. Also, Austrians critique the Coase theorem as well, so that might be worth looking into.
There is no argument for government. There are plenty of smaller (weaker) states that are presently not being conquered by larger (stronger) states every single day. If an anarchist state ever came to be, it would be an order of magnitude harder to “conquer” as there’d be no parasitic gov structure for the conqueror to overtake. Also, “national” defense may be a public good – defense is not.
If an anarchist state ever came to be, it would be an order of magnitude harder to “conquer” as there’d be no parasitic gov structure for the conqueror to overtake
I used to buy this, but my faith was shaked by reading about the conquering of medieval England.
There are arguments for government. If you think that the issue is entirely one-sided then there’s something that you’re missing
That’s an oversimplification of the matter. There are specific reasons why those specific states have not which may not be the case for the anarchist society. There have been smaller, weaker states in the past which have been conquered and we cannot foresee the political atmosphere that would necessarily surround the anarchist society.
It is true that it would be quite difficult to conquer the anarchist society, but this depends partly on the resilience of the people within the society and in the conquering state, both of which are highly variable, and I think an important question to ask is how many people are we willing to have die to uphold voluntarism over minarchism.
Your last sentence holds a good point, but the fact is that there are definite “chunks” of defense which need to be provided and economies/diseconomies of scale at each one of these “chunks”. This is to say that it’s a lot easier to defend my house if I can prevent invaders from entering the town that my home is in, which may well be easier to defend from an overall monetary aspect. At any rate merely pointing out the fact that defense does not need to be national does not erase the entire issue.
An existent and stable propertarian anarchist territory would absolutely unacceptable to those who rule the world. It would reveal the lack of necessity for a state, and the intellectual foundations for statism would be crushed in the face of a supposed miracle. This would be completely unacceptable to them. The Religion would be broken and the foundations of their authority, true belief, would dissolve. False flags thus ensue, upon which the world powers crush the anarchist territory. Power will not give itself up lightly.
A minarchist territory then, neither invites the malice of the great states of the world and also can provide for itself defense.
A bitter irony: that which needs X cannot have it, and that which has X would not need it.
Um, what? In which period? England had relatively strong (compared to anarchy) state-structures within a couple centuries of the migrations. Have you looked at the long struggles to subjugate Wales and Ireland? The societies in those places were much more anarchic, and much less willing to submit.
Anyway, to answer the OP, it really depends on the circumstances. Not all states can defend themselves against states - does that mean the losing state structure is flawed for that reason alone? Not necessarily, and not very likely at all.
