I just recently found this site, and reading the literature section has convinced me that anarchy is the way to go. There is just one question that I still can’t answer: What caused government to form in the first place? Before there was government there was anarchy, but all around the world people chose government over anarchy. Anarcho-capitalism sounds theoretically flawless, but it must’ve had some practical shortcomings if just about the entire population of humanity opted for government in one form or another. What went wrong in its application? One response could be that people didn’t ‘choose’ government voluntarily, but that they were coerced by the military might of some leader. If this was the case though, doesn’t that demonstrate a failure of competing PDAs to keep in check the power of an outlaw PDA, or government?
Government evolved along with the very evolution of humanity.
Even among primitive man, the “dominant” males would take the lead in hunting and mating. In many ways, modern government is the logical product of the “dominant” male of long ago.
That is why I am somewhat skeptical of anarchy, although I have not come to a final decision on that yet. Anarchy would seem to be in conflict with a basic tenant of human nature, that being the whole leader/subject paradigm.
I DON’T believe that humanity has CONSCIOUSLY rejected anarchy. Rather they have just followed their basic human nature.
My interpretation is that, just as cannibalism is practiced in materially poor yet more-or-less anarchical societies, so too do customs of nascent statism pop up. This is because, just as people do not realize due to their present-orientation that eating a person has far fewer long-term benefits than cooperation, so too do they not realize the long-term effects of institutionalized aggression. However, were they to be a in a future-oriented society any kind of statist tendencies that attempted to emerge would be crush. The only way an anarchy could be suppressed by a state would be if A.) The state promised externalization of costs for the people in that anarchy, or B.) If they militarily subdue that anarchy. This is only possible if an anarchy is less materially wealthy than the state, as the large number of expenses for externalization of costs or difficulty in suppressing a more efficient and large anarchy would prevent a state from asserting its dominance.
Why would the statist tendencies be crushed if they have always prevailed in the past? What has changed? Option B seems to have won out 100% of the time. Does this not highlight an overlooked failure of PDAs?
Hoppe goes through this in his Democracy - the God that Failed, and his various lectures that can be found on Mises.org. What predated the state is a form of primitivism, not so much market or any other sort of anarchism. Most examples akin to market anarchism stem from the middle ages and afterwards, with the advancement of commerce.
I’m with Hoppe. Modern apes illustrate man’s original “social order”: tribal groups dominated by alpha males. That was the universal condition until 4,000-10,000, when the first cities arose, and they had a patriarchal structure based on the family group writ large. Statism arose as the patriarch came to be an institution. Anarchy has never actually existed, although at times in history the patriarch has been relatively weak, which gave scope to a kind of practical anarchism.
–Len.
Mankind went from cannabilism to slavery over God knows how many millennia. Now we’re working our way out of slavery. The democratic state was a last-ditch attempt of the exploiters to preserve slavery, with a veneer of legitmacy - no longer does the sovereign own everyone else, but “the people” own… well, each other. When that veneer is gone, there will be a final convulsion and then…? An historical event horizon. Perhaps we will enter into an era without institutional slavery.
Though I don’t agree with those such as Robert LeFevere who believed that the next step is one in which there is no violence, at all. That’ll be the day mankind goes extinct. We are violent creatures at the very core.
“Anarchy” worked, because in situations without government or state, people did what occurred naturally. Anarchism, on the other hand, complete with PDA’s, is a more recently conceived and developed political philosophy. People in early anarchies had no conception of anarchism, merely the absence of formal authorities, and thus were lead (or misled) to believe that anarchy could not be stable. The development towards an anarchist society, therefore, requires a deliberate and conscious development on the part of men, including the various aspects of anarchism that show that it can indeed be stable.
But shouldn’t PDAs have arisen naturally on the free market? Isn’t anarcho-capitalism supposed to work regardless of whether everyone understands the extent of it, as long as they can grasp the concept of free market? To counter myself here I would say that the reason it didn’t happen is because when people turned to government they had not developed money and were still using a barter system which would make anarcho-capitalism difficult, that would make the most sense to me anyways.
Why hasn’t an industry arisen to sell people air? Answer: because air is not perceived to be scarce. Similarly, when security is promised by god-kings, one doesn’t also run out to buy some. So one answer to your question is that security at market prices can’t compete effectively with socialized security, even if the socialized kind is inferior.
On the other hand, a security industry does exist, precisely to fill perceived needs. So the other answer is that they have arisen naturally on the free market.
–Len.
Sure, but the concept of the free market itself is relatively new, perhaps not much earlier than Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, which was published in 1776. Adam Smith talked about the concept of The Invisible Hand, but markets are really about the decisions of all the market participants. Nobody is going to do something before it’s been conceived, except perhaps by accident.
On the contrary; as Butler Shaffer put it “almost all of your daily behavior is an anarchistic expression.” (See What is Anarchy?). Think about it, just how do all those people in the grocery store know what they intend to buy, cooperatively line up at the cash register, and be trusted to not steal from the store, all without any coercion?
I think it’s important to understand that people, once they accept complete freedom as a worthy pursuit, do so not so much because of the prosperity it brings or a revelation from an ethical-praxeological proof that it’s the right thing to do, though both are important, but because they’ve always (secretly) known with certainty that they were capable of living that way.
Hey I hope you don’t mind I used this quote in a debate I’m having on another forum, I opened up a topic to debate anarcho-capitalism, which has kept me busy enough for the past couple hours.. here’s the thread if anyones interested
http://teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?currentpage=4&topic_id=67676
Feel free to point out if I made any errors.
Nobody mentioned? Natural Elites, Intellectuals, and the State.
Even if most intellectuals have been corrupted and are largely responsible for the present perversities, it is impossible to achieve an ideological revolution without their help.
I feel like some ghandi quotes.
Government control gives rise to fraud, suppression of Truth, intensification of the black market and artificial scarcity. Above all, it unmans the people and deprives them of initiative, it undoes the teaching of self-help…I look upon an increase in the power of the State with the greatest fear because, although while apparently doing good by minimizing exploitation, it does the greatest harm to mankind by destroying individuality which lies at the heart of all progress…Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest…We find the general work of mankind is being carried on from day to day be the mass of people acting as if by instinct…If they were instinctively violent the world would end in no time…It is when the mass mind is unnaturally influenced by wicked men that the mass of mankind commit violence. But they forget it as they commit it because they return to their peaceful nature immediately the evil influence of the directing mind has been removed…A government that is evil has no room for good men and women except in its prisons.
“The Roots of Violence: Wealth without work, Pleasure without conscience, Knowledge without character, Commerce without morality, Science without humanity, Worship without sacrifice, Politics without principles”
Violence breeds violence…Pure goals can never justify impure or violent action…They say the means are after all just means. I would say means are after all everything. As the means, so the end…If we take care of the means we are bound of reach the end sooner or later.
Well, folks ought to take care of themselves, instead of vesting their responsabilities in caretakers. We fail ourselves and our posterity, when we let our liberties be fettered by etatist scum.
Not a mistake so much as an omission: it seems that most of your opponents are falling on the common fallacy that anarchy means lawlessness. Point out (if you haven’t already done so; I didn’t read very far into the thread) the difference between anarchy (a condition without a state) and anomy (a condition without law).
Actually, I did find one flaw:
Microsoft is a patent monopolist. You could use that as an example of how monopolists rely on the state to maintain their market share.
What has changed is that there is a greater stock of present goods for consumption, and as such present goods have a lower margin of utility and thus future goods have a greater margin of utility. As such, rules and principles that would have a greater cost on future goods production fall out of disfavor- you can see this in the customary law reform of feudal land law in England or adultery laws with the Kapauku Papuans. Given that we have even more capital to devote to security purposes and a greater chance for future-orientation, this anti-statist tendency would be greatly reinforced. Do not forget, the creation of the state took centuries, millenia even, to get around the customs of primitive people that are relatively more susceptible to present-oriented schemes of externalization of costs; the incentives against the state would be even stronger in our more affluent economic system.
I will try to point that out. People are bringing up the idea that the world would slip into chaos without a state, I’ve been arguing that if people were really that chaotic then we couldn’t have even formed government/relatively peaceful society in the first place, or if we did we would all live under military dictatorships.
And that Ghandi quote above is ballin, I’m throwing that in[H]
It takes a lot of guts to throw a “bomb” like that and single-handedly take on so many people in debate. Especially if you’re relatively new to it yourself and find that you don’t have answers for all their objections.
One of the most difficult points to argue about is idea that one doesn’t have all the answers, that the market process is a discovery process to find answers to problems that people want to solve. With enough research or experience, one can point to various examples of how things might work or have worked, or even, in some cases, how they work now, but it’s exceedingly arrogant to say that you know how millions of other people HAVE to do things, especially if your debators are presumably going to be some of those millions.
Huh? Are you saying I’m arrogant? If you read the thread, I don’t claim to know how everything will work, at several points I acknowledge that. I acknowledge that war might break out, and give the reasons why it would be less likely to than in state society, and I point out that PDAs would probably be provided through insurance agencies. Is there a specific part where you think I assumed too much?