Interesting Argument Against Anarchism

Economics Political Theory
1

Hey,

I’m having a debate with a statist. He is claiming that denying someone the right to use a service (or charging an absurdly high price) is just as much coercion as any type of physical coercion. He brought up an interesting thought experiment that seems to have some validity to it. In preparing my response, I am going to first argue that if you believe withholding a service is coercion, you are saying that any decision a person makes is coercion. By his logic, if I buy a loaf of bread I am coercively denying someone else from buying that loaf. If BestBuy refuses to give me a plasma screen tv for free, they are coercively withholding it and I should have the right to steal it (since coercion is appropriate in response to coercion). So his logic clearly has its own flaws to it. None the less, his thought experiment does raise questions. Here is his scenario:

" FOURTH: WHAT IS COERCION?

This was an open challenge to you. By your claim, the difference between a government and a PDA is that a government is a coercive PDA. To properly understand how this is a difference, I wanted you to tell me what is coercion and what is merely exchange of services.

A government obviously makes laws. It then acts on its own members with (non-)lethal force in accordance with these laws.

A PDA also has to excercise (non-)lethal force. There is no other way to preven a lunatic from stabbing you with a knife. It actually does this towards non-members.

Maybe the thing here is that a PDA only excercises force to prevent others from excercising force. Essentially, you forbid the use of force for any other purpose than to prevent the use of force. Is this correct?

If so, what is the qualitative difference between physical force (i.e. muscle, gun, pistol, whip, fucking Egyptian pickaxe, Teutonic knight with a heavy lance) and other forms of force? Why is the use of the first kind of force necessarily evil (after all, by your claim, governments are evil, coercion is evil, and this is the reason you want AnCap - to get rid of governments)?

Here we go: We have an isolated room. In this room there are only four people. These are as follows:

  • Healthy adult male.
  • Crippled twenty year old girl, paralysed neck and down.
  • Twelve year old boy.
  • One year old girl.

Also, there is a machine in a corner. This machine, when a code is entered, dispenses food and water. As it happens, the only person to know this code is the healthy, adult male.

Now, by your claim, the healthy adult male should not excercise any physical force (this is evil, and we get a government, which is bad, while AnCap is good). Thus, he cannot take any physical action towards any of the others.

However, by your claim, the healthy adult male is entirely in his right to use other, non-physical means of coercion. Seeing as the other three people in question are completely incapable of getting food or drink on their own, it is obvious that the healthy adult male will completely dominate this group. Using his all-powerful means of coercion, he can make the twenty year old girl suck on his weener (else, after all, she is not getting any food, and she will most likely comply to this). He can do anything he wants to - he holds absolute power, and I figure people are going to be outraged if I start going graphical on what he does to infants, paralysed girls and a twelve year old by.

He would also have held this power if he was allowed to excercise physical force. Both AnCap and good old evil self-interest lead to the same thing. Clearly, there is something non-good about how we are defining coercion here.

It doesn’t take extreme amounts of insight to realize you can have similar situations in real world examples, if less extreme. The main idea is that some form of non-physical power can be used in the exact same tyrannic way as physical power.

Now, let’s add a twist to our thought experiment. We add three burly biker men to this room. Still, only the adult male knows the sercret code for food and water. We now have two possible scenarios again:

PDA, i.e. physical coercion is out:

  • The burly biker men are completely powerless, and are subject to healthy adult’s male every whim. They are disgusted to see what the paralysed girls consents to do. Coercion by non-physical force is, after all, not coercion. However, being good AnCap’s by nature (even as laughable as the idea is, seeing as AnCap by your claim is not in human nature), they are powerless to do anything to stop this. Healthy adult male (if maybe somewhat twisted of mind) rules our room with an iron fist and orchestrates the sickest of orgies.

Non-PDA, i.e. physical coercion is in:

  • The burly biker men tell the healthy adult male Hey, fuckwipe, stop mouthfucking paralysed girl or we fucking feed you your own poop.. At this point, we have the typical hostage situation: If neither party backs down, the healthy adult male chews down his own excrements and is killed, whereupon all others die of starvation. If either party backs down, the other holds supreme power. If they come to an agreement, (i.e. burly biker men do not feed adult healthy male his own (and their) excrements, adult health male does not oralize paralysed girl, healthy adult male provides food and drink for all parties in exchange for reasonable services, such as backrubs and occasional worship), we arrive at a much better equillibrium that the PDA-equillibrium.

So, as we can see by this example, ruling out physical coercion, while it does change the exact balance of power, is not necessarily beneficial for the whole group, nor necessarily harmful. It depends on the situation. While the typical scenario shows how physical force fucks shit up, this is clearly not necessarily the case.

The only thing which actually mattered in the above example was clearly a balance of power - total power, not physical. A total imbalance screws things up. There is nothing more balanced, in theory, about removing physical force from the equation.

And, thus, your only distinction between PDA and government (as far as you have presented it to me) vanishes. You either need to present a new one or rework your whole theory.

Appendix 1: You may want to claim that the core of the problem in the healthy-adult-male model is how he controls their access to food and water (which are necessary for life), and that there would not have been any problem if he did not. You may very well place each party in an individual, isolated cell which provided all they needed to survive. You now give healthy adult male the control of allowing these people to leave their cells to go to a common entertainment room for exactly one hour, before they are automagically returned to their cells. The adult male will once again be able to force the others to do just about everything.

Appendix 2: You may want to say that adult healthy male, by being the gifted man he is, should have all the benifits he is able to leverage from his power. By your claim, this is only true if his power stems from non-physical strength, i.e. sheer genius, technological advantage or sex appeal. The logic here is nowhere to be found.

Appendix 3: You may want to give the sucker argument that my hypothetical is unrealistic (it is, in truth, outright ridiculous). It does, however, merely illustrate, and accurately illustrate, what happens in any situation lacking balance of power. It also illustrates how physical force might just as well provide a balance as it might remove a balance.

Appendix 4: You may want to claim that adult healthy male is a sexually obsessed and twisted man, by no standards healthy, but very much both adult and male. Essentially, this is the hypothetical that people are not self-interested but altruistic, or that self-interest and altruism calls for the same behaviour is a given situation. This is, of course, ridiculous, but for the sake of completion, let’s go there."

It seems like there is a problem with this, but I can’t put my finger on it. Any other anarchists want to take a stab?

2

To undercut this nonsense, merely stipulate that it relies on a notion of positive rights/“freedom”, which is inherently self-contradictory nonsense. There are no such “rights” as a right to be provided with anything. There is no “right” to enslave.

3

I agree that his logic is flawed, but none the less he does present one scenario where coercion (on behalf of the biker gang) would lead to greater social prosperity. So that could be used to say that there are some situations where coercion is okay. It doesn’t destroy the anarchist argument, since I could still argue that even if if is beneficial in that one scenario, doesn’t mean it is beneficial for society when government uses it (which I of course agree with). Although it doesn’t destroy it, it does take out a leg from under it, I think, even though it in the process destroys the case for any type of government on its own behalf in the process..

If you’re interested to see the full response I gave him, here is the link to the thread, it should be the last post:

http://teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?currentpage=9&topic_id=67676

4

Well I read it in full this time - this guy has provided absolutely no context. How any of these occurs in the first place, that is. Therefore, whether or not the situation is in fact coercion or not cannot be established without further facts. As for the bikers, why is passive resignation or violence the only option? They could simply take these cripples with them, or offer something of value to the allegedly coercive individual &c. It is not nearly as clear-cut as the fool you’re arguing with would like to believe.

5

Inquisitor has already given some solid answers. I’d just like to point out that this is more or less a standard scenario: two men on a desert island, and one owns the only source of fresh water. This version doesn’t require technology or x-rated details. Then of course there’s the time-honored “two men and one parachute” scenario.

Since we’re survival machines, we know that we’d probably steal the so-and-so’s water if he tried to refuse us a drink, so we’re intensely motivated to rationalize it by calling his refusal “coercion” and our theft “self-defense.” I think that muddies the waters a lot. But as Inquisitor said, there are many other solutions than passively begging or violently taking. At minimum there’s trading, negotiating, and seeking alternatives.

One natural extreme is a village of bedouin owning the only water source. Hypothetically, they could leave an outsider to die of thirst. While that thought bothers me a lot, I don’t see how an invasion by Hell’s Angels would really improve things.

On the other hand it’s worth noting that bedouin culture regards hospitality as one of its two highest values (the other being revenge). They live something like the desert-island scenario, and they decided long ago that giving sustenance to strangers was a reasonable price to pay for the expectation of similar treatment when they’re in need. The tradition is so strong that a bedouin would extend hospitality to his mortal enemy, even though he planned at the first opportunity to kill him in a duel. That’s a good illustration why anarchy can work. People are smart enough to realize that charity is a form of insurance.

–Len.

6

It’s a nonsensical analogy. Pertains to nothing but the authors lack of imagination. You’ve got rape and forced starvation(both violent acts- despite your contentions), bikers, and vending machines. Honestly, you couldn’t have incuded monkeys or ninjas in it?

7

There are a few arguments that can be used against this scenario.

  1. You might point out that in order to refute your argument, he has had to manufacture a wholly unrealistic scenario. I can’t come up with an actual situation his scenario analogizes to. In real life, given proper access to the land (heh, anyone want to delve into that can of worms?), there is no binary yes/no capacity to utilize resources for one’s benefit, but rather a contium. And where is the child’s mother? Where is the paralyzed girl’s family? (The population is much lower, and therefore the degree of human variation much lower, than in a real life scenario.) And what is keeping the twelve-year-old boy from learning how to use the machine (by observing the healthy adult male… something twelve-year-old boys are quite capable of), thus usurping the man’s monopoly? However, despite this, the thought experiment remains interesting, thus I continue.

  2. Another thing to point out is that, in this scenario, there really is nothing preventing the three biker guys from using their capacity to use force in their negotiation… particularly, there is no government. A government is, almost(?) by definition, an organization granted the authority to do anything and everything to enforce the will of the deciders. If there were a soldier there (the only man with a gun in the room), enforcing “anarcho-capitalism” to rediculous extremes, the monopolist’s power would be nearly absolute (provided he kept the soldier happy). But this room is not governed by “anarcho-capitalist written rules.” It is governed by life itself. If the adult man has the authority of government on his side (as under statist-capitalism), his position is secure. Under anarcho-capitalism, however, he can only defend himself from the bikers using his own resources. The girl is of no help to him, and neither is the infant. The twelve-year-old is likely to sympathize heavily with the bikers wanting to defend the girl.

Simply put, under an anarchist sitution, Mr. Monopolist had better play nice with those that are willing to play nice, so he might have help against those that will not. He has to make an economic calculation: the costs and risks of attempting to fight off the bikers all by himself, or holding his monopoly on food and water over their heads; vs. the costs and risks of negotiating with them, or perhaps other options, inculding a divide-and-conquer strategy. All the while, he has to keep a wary eye on the boy, who is probably scheming to break his monopoly (seeing how there are no government schoolteachers in the room to dull his burgeoning and active mind), and offer better terms to the bikers.

If it sounds like a nasty situation, it’s because it is, and whoever put them in that situation is an evil mad-scientist, indeed (you should say, gently jabbing your friend in the ribs ;). Now shift the burden to him: demonstrate how the addition of my Soldier Boy, the Only Man With A Gun, improves the situation. Let me know how it turns out. :slight_smile:

8

This is addressed in The Ethics of Liberty, the chapter on lifeboat situations.

9

First and foremost, the Statist’s argument is a massive grab appeal to emotion. Now, I don’t like to get away from a point that is laid before me, but there are many variables which can greatly change the situation in that insanely hypothetical room (which I believe was in one of the Saw movies.) What if the machine only dispenses enough food to sustain one life, and even then at the bare minimum only? In that case, someone is going to starve to death regardless (though the infant and the crippled woman could possibly both survive, but not forever, if the adult male was actually a man.)

Have these people ever been a part of or will they ever return to society? Such a closed world as is proposed doesn’t have any bearing on the outside and its results are, essentially, inconsequential, though unfortunate. And who’s to say the male wouldn’t actually be a nice guy and share what food - little or plentiful - was dispensed. Of course, that is all immaterial to the argument.

As inquisitor said, it all relies on the notion of positive rights. If the male has all the food and the others will not trade, negotiate, offer what they can, then they damned themselves. Of course, the infant can offer nothing. But even if the unfortunate trio doesn’t at first offer something in return, and is starved, the male will ultimately be forced to grant a meager ration or he will lose all chances of receiving sexual gratification. Right away, you have the wonderful imbalance of power that the Statist mentioned - by way of a food strike, the trio can get what they need.

But who is willing to starve themselves to death? Well, as the Statist said it is an absurdly ridiculous hypothetical. So let us be absurd and ridiculous. Rather than feeding the ego and urges of a monster, at least not forever, who among us might not choose death or at least long bouts of starvation that are being threatened anyway? Now, does that refusal to gratify the male constitute coercion and, thus, does he have a positive right to sexual gratification?

Of course, the infant can’t even give consent to sexual acts and therefore if the male gives her food and gratifies himself in “payment,” he has really raped the infant and I would turn a blind eye if the boy stabbed him with the knife that I handily added to this absurd scenario. The bikers may of course trade, barter, or even be willing to take the spot of one or all of the victims.

Being locked in a box does not take the humanity out of people (well, it may in the long term, viz. prison,) but it does take AnCap out of the equation. In an AnCap situation, they’d be free to leave the box and find some nice adult male that only wants to play Hearts in exchange for food. In my opinion, the box is more a representation of a Statist paradise: helpless victims locked in a situation with no possibility of escape and dependent on a malefactor who rapes paralyzed women, juveniles and infants.

All I can say for certain is that if this was actually happening, not just in the imaginings of a statist, either in an AnCap society or in our Statist hell, I’d put on my boots, load the AK and drive my truck through the wall.

10

11

This vending machine scenario is not describing freedom. It closely resembles land feudalism or full socialism.

Its demonstrates, in an embarrassingly foolish way, why socialism is imcompatible with civil rights. Something that few people understood in the 1920s, but thanks to Hazlitt, is common knowledge today.

Complete statism is the only way to force a “one vending machine” scenario on society. Of course, socialist distrubition is rarelly described as coercive, it is described as some sort of pseudo exchange. But it is always built through coercion, as real as it gets.

12

I fail to see the problem in the proposed situation. If any of the characters in the story dies of starvation/dehydration (other than in the trivial case wherein the healthy adult male decides to stop using the magical food dispenser cold turkey) it is not due to or even an effect of the man’s inaction, but happens simply because that’s what humans do when they do not find nourishment. The man is no more at fault than he would be if he did not know the code to the machine and all of them died.

Your interlocutor is making the same fallacy that most or even (I think) all statists think by, viz. that a person’s dying a slow and painful death is somehow an unnatural occurance that everyone is obligated to try to prevent.

I noticed no one has brought up a certain very important parameter: to whom does the food dispenser belong? If its owner gave the code to the man on the condition that he distribute food to the others, then force, ipso facto, would be legitimate.

13

Never mind the example! The flaw is in understanding coercion. Libertarianism holds that it is wrong to initiate force, but defensive force and (appropriate) retaliatory force are moral actions. This force or coercion can be violent OR non-violent. Threatening somebody with a gun is non-violent, only shooting someone with the gun (or hitting them over the head with the gun-butt) is violent.

Initiating force or coercion is about violating rights, defensive force is about using force against initiated force, and retaliatory force is about using force after the fact to rectify rights-violations or initiations of force. The difference between PDA’s and government should be obvious: governments initiate force or coercion, thus violating rights, while PDA’s are intended to only use defensive and retaliatory force.

In his scenario, the girl could conceivably agree to fellate the guy, but she’s not given a choice–he is clearly using force, but not violent force, although one has to wonder how the situation came to be in the first place, and how it’s supposed to be an analogy to the real world. If the guy in the example is the legitimate owner of the food and water, and if there the others are free to choose other suppliers of food and water, then it would be more realistic. As it stands, the guy is taking advantage of a strangely unusual and uncommon situation that one would be hard-pressed to find in the real world, except under statist situations, not free market or anarchist situations.

For example, Wal-Mart, big as it is, cannot force me to shop at their stores–I can shop at K-Mart, Target, Sears, Family Dollar, Dollar General, Penney’s, QuikTrip, etc, and Wal-Mart can do little to prevent it. On the other hand, Oklahoma Natural Gas, American Electric Power, and the City of Tulsa all have a monopoly (a locked room) on natural gas, electric, and city water, and my options are to pay the price they ask or do without (there are alternatives, but they are not nearly as easy or convenient as my alternatives to Wal-mart).

The owner of a resource has a right to charge whatever he wants, and is not initiating force by asking for a high price. He is initiating force if he acts to prevent me from choosing alternatives for his good or service, which is exactly what governments and government-protected monopolies do.

14

Monkeys and ninjas, now that’s good reading.

15

I have to agree that this szenario is non-sensical. Regardless, reading through the szenario made me wonder

  • how did they all end up in the same room together

  • who is keeping them there

  • why aren’t they leaving

  • where is the rest of society

It seems to me that a 12 year old boy is old enought to open a door, push the women in the wheel chair out the door while having the toddler hold on to the wheel chair or having her sit in the woman’s lap.