How does a free-market territory prevent a foreign government from forcing a state unto them?
Theoretically a country like Kuwait could become Anarcho-Capitalist.
What if a neighboring country like Iraq who would possibly have a Government funded military and passionate patriotic citizens willing to keep paying taxes, decide to conquer Kuwait and make it´s citizens pay taxes to Iraq’s government.
Ever heard of a Private Defense Agency? Just hire a few of them to protect the territory’s borders.
A government could probably destroy an anarchic society if it did not wish to control them, but if it wishes to extort taxes from them, then they’re job will be much more difficult. An anarchic society has no central command point from which essential services flow outward from, no central cache of information. There is no central food store to sabotage and thus starve the population. There is no central energy source or weapons cache. What it is, is a decentralized, presumably wealthy, presumably armed population. Not only is it likely that the free men are armed, because of an absence of state-ban on arms, but they will have access to the services of PDA’s. To conquer the free society, the invaders will have to kill everyone. After that, what have they actually gained other than war-ruined territory? The state is kind of like the Matrix, where all the humans are plugged in and used as batteries for a central function. When there is no main apparatus that is subjugating these people prior to invasion, there is no simple way to conquer them. Actually conquering a free people means occupying militarily all the land that was once occupied by free people.
The scenario depends a lot on the ability of the people to feed themselves, so maybe Kuwait wouldn’t be a great scenario because it’s in the desert where it is hard to grow food. But the great empire’s of history have met failure at the hands of persistent, unconfrontable, and adaptable guerilla’s. What good way is there to invade a guerilla territory other than nuking the place? (and after it is nuked, what good is the land?)
I just chose Kuwait as an example because it is neighboring powerful military countries.
So There would probably not be a central defence agency. Each landowner and business would only hire enough defense to keep it´s own land and business secure.
If a neighboring military seizes food production starting from its border. The anarchist territoriy’s people can just obtain their food and supplies from another place.
But, a country like Iraq could simply buy some land inside Kuwait set up strategically located military posts there and since it is a bigger coordinated effort , it theoretically could surround and defeat uncoordinated private agencies’s range of jurisdiction, reducing them to small islands surrounded by a tyranical government willing to convert the free market society into more statist, tax contributing drones.
There are multiple factors at play here.
First of all, remember - even the existence of a state is no guarantee of survival. Countless states have fallen through history.
If you choose Kuwait, you might have some problems because of their small population. Yes, theoretically Pakistan could bomb them to oblivion with nuclear weapons if Kuwait doesn’t have anti-ICBM missiles.
Now, I am not certain that Kuwait wouldn’t have a “national” defense. Why not? Do you think that a free people will suddenly say “you know what? Screw national defense!” ?
The nation defense might not look like anything we’ve ever known. It might be some special division of forces created by defense agencies coming together for a common goal.
About your land-buying scenario: you’re making a common mistake that is residue from the statist mindset - yes, this is theoretically possible, but is it probable?
Think about it - you can’t just “buy” land in the middle of some territory. There has to be someone willing to sell it. If this person does sell it, he will certainly face a lot of opposition for, well, everything from then on - from buying food to transportation to water. I’d imagine there would be a system of contracts that bars sale of lands to hostile enemies. In case a court finds that such a sale has occurred, the sale would be invalid and the land transferred to some “responsible” entity (in accordance with the original contract).
the only possible way for a State to enforce taxes on “free market libertopia” is to make them slaves (at the point of the gun) and I mean not metaphorically. They have to go from one individual to another with bags and demand for cash. Otherwise, propaganda would not only be inefficient, but a really useless tactic. No propaganda can make me believe in “taxes”. Same with people in libertopia. So yeah, the state would have to directly agress upon them and not just appeal to “consciousness” like “without taxes you would die, pay us!”.
But slavery is very expensive tactics unless slaves believe they are free. So in short - that’s quite unlikely if not impossible.
Note that if we have a successful AnCap country, many others would likely follow…
the only real problem is from within. Sort of the same thing that brought down classical liberalism. People get so wealthy from the free markets, etc. and they forget WHY they got this way, because it doesn’t cost them anything if they don’t know WHY it is that they are rich. This means that individuals living in a free society are not punished for not believing in a free society, the more people that don’t believe in a free society the less likely one is to exist.
On the other hand there are some ideas that humanity, or at least in the West, will never go back on. This is sort of a ‘progressive’ (literally, not as in code for socialist) view of history, but I just can’t ever see chattle slavery ever being on the table of ideas in the West again, same goes with a myriad of other things that used to be a perfectly accepted and unquestioned part of human culture in the recent (in terms of evolutionary time) past, that seem completely unpalatable to us today. Hopefully, oneday, humanity will see government in this same light. “how could people HAVE EVER beleived in something so OBVIOUSLY stupid”
Some territories are simply more difficult to invade due to geography. The United States doesn’t have much to worry about.
Since you used Kuwait and Iraq as examples, it’s worth pointing out that one of the best defensive policies is to avoid aggravating your neighbours. If you steal your neighbour’s resources from under their feet, you make war against yourself a far less costly policy relative to peace than it would otherwise have been.
It would always be best to make war against you an extremely costly option relative to peace. Make yourselves valuable to your enemy, and they will not want to be your enemy.
Murphy on this topic:
He also did a very technical peiece with formulas and everything about the possibility of one PDA emerging as a monopoly and the odds of that happening. Can’t seem to find it, might have to email Bob, so I can post it here.
To this point, that is why Patri Friedman would not allow people to use his seasteads (assuming they were up and running, functional and all that) as tax havens. He even goes as far as saying that he wouldn’t allow people to export drugs from his seastead. That way his seastead could keep in good company with the surrounding states. It would be like a floating Gomorrah. The states would welcome the more raccous elements of society leaving the border for an extended period, and the seastead would welcome the revenue and the company of that kind of crowd.
A free-market territory keeps foreign governments at bay by becoming increasingly like an actual state, with communities or associations banding together to form a common military under a central command comprised of representatives from disparate interests. Then comes funding for research and development, acquisitions, training and deployment that will necessitate an ongoing defense budget and a reliable revenue source; a merit-based hierarchy will require voting for civilian leadership of the military. And oversight of the military will require at least an over-arching civilian review board comprised of representatives, presumably elected. And so you have the rebirth of democracy. The truth is that a defense from enemies abroad is a legitimate function of government and remains a legitimate concern, even in the absence of a formal government. The only alternative is to have a small, representative, paramilitary nuclear installation with its proverbial finger on the button and a real willingness to use it to prevent or to punish invasion.
Above comment - lol. Free market - no centralized government. Learn the lesson.
It seems to me that the Somalis have been giving hell to imposed, colonial governments for going on a century now.
Clayton -
I didn’t realize that Somalia had turned from a warlord dictatorship to an anarcho-capitalist society. Or is there no distinction between the two? Maybe we should poll the average Somali about the benefits of their purely voluntary, non-aggression society. Now if their society were flourishing under free-market capitalism, so that they had lots of natural and man-made resources to attract war-like countries, and they still managed to defend themselves, it might be a little better example.
Somalia has never been a warlord dictatorship unless you define Siad Barre, or his colonial predecessors, as warlords.
It’s simply a red-herring.
LOL. The Western mind is so … geometrical.
Make up your mind. Is your argument that Somalia is too poor to be an example of a society that has resisted serious efforts to impose central governance? Or are you insisting that Somalia is a “warlord dictatorship” and therefore does not qualify as a stateless society? I’m confused.
Clayton -
(Sorry, I had trouble posting my response)
“Somalia has never been a warlord dictatorship unless you define Siad Barre, or his colonial predecessors, as warlords”
Report this to the BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-14094503
“LOL. The Western mind is so … geometrical.”
I think you mean linear…but that’s still non-responsive.
Make up your mind. Is your argument that Somalia is too poor to be an example of a society that has resisted serious efforts to impose central governance? Or are you insisting that Somalia is a “warlord dictatorship” and therefore does not qualify as a stateless society? I’m confused.
The question concerned how a free-market territory could defend against a foreign government trying to impose a state upon it. I was imagining such a territory inside the U.S., attacked by a modern foreign military–with a modern air force, navy, etc. So my answer reflected the measures necessary in that eventuality. Somalia is a not what I consider to be an ideal example, not solely because it is poor, but because it’s invading neighbors are poor, and because it is and it was no model of a free-market society to begin with. A stateless society is not necessarily a free market society. In a well-established free-market territory, one where voluntary agreements and private property rights are respected by most, there still has to be an element of united military deterrence in order to prevent through the invasion of a modern military the dissolution of the market system into a war-ravaged mess. I would have thought that obvious. That the invaders could not physically force inhabitants to follow their new system would not save their previous one from annihilation or save themselves from eventual extermination or imprisonment.
asked Bob, here is the link, be sure to watch it with the power point: http://mises.org/media/1465/Anarchy-and-Economies-of-Scale
Boy, I’m glad that you know exactly how a free market would evolve!
And where in your analysis did you address forceful expropriation by the state to collect funding for the military? It’s a non-sequitur.
Sure, you could have democracies emerge. But remember - democracy is not a system of government, but a system of decision-making. You do not have a state when people voluntarily come together to vote and have already agreed to carry through with the majority choice.
Plus, how does any nation defend itself in case of World War? If you apply your own logic, all nations must also be totalitarian states because during World Ward nations become totalitarian. Ergo, democracy and any semblance of a free society is moot as well.
Um, the first six words of that article make my point and refute yours, “Years of fighting between rival warlords…” Rival warlords do not a united tyranny make. What they do make is typical Western scrambling of Somali culture out of an utter and deplorable failure to step outside of the journalist-academia-“refugee” echo chamber.
Somali society is incredibly nuanced and complex. It is also very ancient, a fact lost on the Orwellian-memory-hole journalism of today where only those historical facts that are convenient for the Anglophile empire are remembered, all others forgotten.
The warlords are a symptom of foreign intervention in Somalia. During the late 90’s and early 00’s, the prospect of a government in Mogadishu was remote. The country was largely pacified during this time and the ancient legal code, Xeer, operated to resolve disputes between Somalis as it had for thousands of years, even under the most brutal repression by the Italians and British colonial rulers.
The whole concept of Somalia as a “country ruled by rival factions of warlords” is really a form of soft-racism, a holdover of 19th century European colonization of Africa. The implication is that these are backwards, ignorant, tribal people who wouldn’t know civilization if it bit them in the ass. The facts of the case are, unsurprisingly, quite different.
My point is that your thought-experiment is flawed. The whole line of thinking is inherently contradictory… a “free market territory” carved out of a larger political union and protected by encroachment from all the evil, aggressive governments out there by a bristling border is inherently contradictory. You must have a large, powerful central government to maintain the bristling border, and this means high taxes, high regulations and a very un-free market.
Somalia is not and never has been “free market” simply because this concept is a European way of thinking, just as collectivism, socialism and communism are European ways of thinking. These are our categories, not theirs. But Somalia is most certainly a stateless society and has been for going on 20 years now and a stateless society does not have taxes or economic regulations beyond those which arise out of necessity, that is, as a matter of the costs of bodyguards, security details, passing roadblocks, hiring guides, and so on.
Sure, but “free markets” are not an end in themselves. The problems with modern society are rather simple: taxation, regulation, monopolization. Fixing these problems is far from simple but it’s easy to set out precisely what is wrong with modern society and why it is wrong.
For the last two decades, they didn’t need that in Somalia. I’m not holding Somalia up as a model society and I’m not mentioning it in order to say “we should be like Somalia.” The point I’m making is theoretical. What is the point of invading a territory where there is no central power structure? There is no capitol city to seize? There is no flag to capture? There is no apparatus of governance, regulation, tax revenues and economic cartels and monopolies to be taken over? What’s the point? It’s all costs and no benefits.
That’s what Somalia is. It’s all headache, heartache and no money in pocket. It doesn’t serve any purpose to invade Somalia unless you’re a New World Order fanatic and the mere thought of one square inch of dry land over which there does not exist some kind of “legitimate authority from above” causes you to have stomach ulcers.
Imprisonment requires an infrastructure for imprisoning people. The CIA is using some old basement to imprison and torture people in Somalia. This is either very recent construction or its an old facility from the days of the Barre regime. Under the conditions of statelessness in Somalia over the last two decades, they had no need for prisons because Xeer does not comprehend the concept of imprisonment. There is no such thing as imprisonment in Xeer, only payment of awards or damages for torts. If you’re a real bad actor, you can be expelled from your clan, which is basically a death-sentence.
Without an existing infrastructure with which to punish, tax and distribute largesse, any attempt to impose government in Somalia has to build every damn piece of government infrastructure de novo. It turns out that this is a lot more costly than you might at first guess, especially if you can’t just leave piles of dead bodies in your wake like they used to do it back in the 19th century.
In fact, that just gave me a thought that perhaps the best defense a “free market territory” could set up would be a network of webcams and video streams which are maintained as a defensive measure in the event of invasion, in order to document and transmit to the rest of the world the crimes being committed, while they are in progress.
Clayton -