Hayekian Anarchism

[Anenome]

@Serpentis-Lucis

I agree that the feedback loop that causes the government to grow centers around the locus of control in a society. Power to propose and veto legislation is not the most fundamental reason for the feedback loop, something far more basic is, and that is the desire for power.

Is this desire basic to human nature? Because it seems like there couldn’t be anything like a libertarian if it were. I think it’s a product of a mind uninformed in the nature of liberty, who hasn’t yet grasped the meaning of liberty, but that when people do they tend to accept it and reject a desire for power over others. Certainly you could not make me a dictator even at the point of a gun. Or at least, my first act would be to free everyone and also remove myself from power

@Serpentis-Lucis

Can you elaborate more on the political system you are talking about? At the moment I am confused, in that you seem to want a political system, but one that essentially has no power at all.

I’ve begun developing and advocating on these boards a new political order based on the principles of individualism. I wish I already had a thread in place with the full proposal laid out for examination but I do not yet, and I apologize. Maybe I should stop talking about it so much until then

About 90% of the proposal -is- laid out in this thread tho. The heart of the idea being to create a voluntaryist political order which fulfills the idea I talked about here, about a positive statement of freedom in the form of a political structure rather than merely creating a negative political vacuum as the fundamental expression of libertarian ideals.

Such a vacuum will always leave room for the statists to start something, to start a statist governemnt, and that something ends up being more powerful than the vacuum, because it is so easily grasped. The same was true of the American revolution which was a revolution to get away from gov power, but ended up being almost immediately co-opted by the federalists.

@Serpentis-Lucis

To which I would approve, if the ‘government’ had no real power at all then there would be no incentive to become a part of it, why bother having a ‘government’ if it has no power though? My questions might sound stupid, if so it’s because I don’t really understand what you mean, are you in fact advocating a ‘government’ or am I misunderstanding you entirely?

No, it’s not a dumb question, it’s an important one, because if the answer were not true then there would be no incentive to have a government. There’s a couple response I can think of:

1. As I’d said, to be the positive statement of how libertarian ideals should create a political order, in order to prevent a statist government from popping up in the same region. (Not a strong reason, but fundamental to avoid strife between us and statists).

2. Culture & society: people like living together, and the political order I propose will allow people of like mind to group together and create a political structure suited to their ideals via ad hoc law-creation and spontaneous order. Since it’s a voluntaryist order, they can also keep out those whom are misbehaving or discordant. Thus, if you wanted to setup an anarch area, they could group together and pass no civil laws at all. Alternately, you could also create a “socialist paradise,” except that all involvement would be voluntary and anyone could leave at any time. This acts as a release valve on society, allowing those who want to try something different to try it without suppression, because they are trying it voluntarily, and we will see which political experiment people choose.

3. Essentialism: Unlike the anarchs, I maintain that there are a few specific legitimate functions of government. These legitimate functions are derived directly from the concept of the non-aggression principle, meaning that the government is limited to using coercion that responds to aggression and suppresses it via prosecution. This includes a national military prepped to stop inter-state aggression, so primarily defense. It includes a law court, both civil and crimial, of last resort that does not have a monopoly on prosecution, but is the only court that can compel attendance in case the aggressing party refuses to come to the table, and includes all the usual protections we’re used to now such as a grand-jury and presumption of innocence.

@Serpentis-Lucis

I mean your post sounded like you were talking about a form of government but at the same time what you describe doesn’t sound like a government. A government which can’t govern.

Read that thread I linked if you like and it will explain a lot. If you think about it, a government predicated on individualism should be extremely different from one predicated on socialism. Until now, libertarians have often assumed that pure individualism would result in a state in which people don’t have a government, or the idea that a pure expression of individualism would mean having a government would be impossible. I’m challenging that.

We’ve tended to think that any government must be inherently an aggressor, and that any government must inherently be statist. But I believe I’ve found a means of translating pure individualism into a political structure such as no one has seen before which is neither of those things.

I think a gov needs to at minimum protect basic rights–that would be the governing you say seems to be missing. Everything on top of that is not essential. And it is those non-essentials of government that we want to do away with to maximize freedom.

Please tell me what you think of it so that it can be improved by any flaws you find

***edit: I’ll give you a classification for it: it is an Autarchist Republic.