I’m going to play devil’s advocate here for a little while. While I am vehemntly opposed to all forms of government, it seems as though many of the arguments made by Austrians don’t hold up. It is my hope that by posting on this forum, I can generate a discussion that solves or circumvents some of the below problems.
The Whole Point of Anarchy/Free Market:
This is more a framework question than an objection.
What grounds do we advocate the free market on? On general welfare? On the value of individual liberty?
It seems as though valuing individual liberty (alone) is a losing argument. If I can save someone’s life by violating a little bit of your liberty, I think I win my argument to do so.
General welfare is tricky too, because even though the free market does produce welfare, this does not mean that it is the BEST system for doing so. I think this is what free market advocates are saying. More on this later.
Defining Government:
Again, framework problem
In the state of nature, supposedly we all kill eachother without government. True or false, this is a typical justification for why the state has a monopoly on legitimate physical force. Why not others?
We don’t like violence. However, we also don’t like it when our spouses cheat. I know many people would rather lose a limb than lose their marriage. So it seems like there is a whole host of things, comparable to violence, that governments tend not to regulate at all.
Doesn’t this make them not “governments”? Since citizens can still mortally wound eachother (and in fact the state will protect my right to do so)?
This thought has been feeding into my view that fundamentally, what political elites do is just enough to maintain their power, and the cheapest way to do so is through violence, since guns are so cheap and lives are so costly.
I.e., that definitions for government never accurately categorize anything we call a government. Rather, a country is more accurately viewed as a system in which some people tell other people what to do, generally under threat of violence.
But this view blends over to anarchist views, where coercion by violence (or otherwise) is still possible. For example, if i voluntarily join a club, and they threaten to kick me out if i don’t pay membership dues, this is an example of coercion: “If you don’t do X, i’ll do Y to you”
Perhaps the problem exists with a definition of coercion. Consider “If you don’t pay me, I won’t give you water” (A sale). Is it ever possible for this to not be to some extent coercive? You can argue that coercion has to be someone going out of their way to harm, but in the water example, the vendor has gone out of his way to horde water…
If these problems really exist, then the challenge to free market/anarchy advocates is to distinguish somehow between types of coercion in a way that separates the free market/anarchy from government.
Mises’ Calculation Problem and Questions of Government Efficiency:
Mises’ calculation problem holds up on philosophical grounds, but there’s no reason we can’t fiat through it reasonably in some cases.
Example: Everyone needs at least X amount of water to live. If the government provides X amount of water to everyone (with the option to purchase more), then no one will go without water.
The point of this plan is that it causes minimal harm, since everyone would be buying at least X water anyway. The benefit is that now some people who can’t afford X water can now live, with a small cost imposed involuntarily on everyone else.
Objections might be raised on grounds that government is corrupt or inefficient, whatever. But these are really historical arguments from traditional models of government. Just because governments in the past have been corrupt and stupid does not mean that it is impossible to set up a government that will continue to be.
Certainly, a group of cavemen would report themselves as better off if I came in and forced them to manufactur my blueprints for a clean water filter.
It seems impossible to defeat the prospect of government, because we can always set up situations in which the (usually stupid) community is better off because of some regulation.
Some Challenges to Government:
While I have required again and again that we address government theoretically, it seems as though proponents of government cannot afford this. There are simply too many bad kinds of government that undermine their claims.
For example, the assertion that “We should have government to stop violence” is only true if this is not one of those governments that superkilled millions of people.
Whatever level of “bad” in the state of nature exists, it is possible to find or imagine a government that has done worse than this. So proponents of government actually have to find a model they’re going to use.
This does not exclude the possiblity of a utopian government however.
However, in the argument of anarchy versus gov, our opponents only have to find something better than anarchy (it need not be the ultimate best form of gov). But we’re still stuck with the burden of proving government as categorically illegit, something that seems insanely difficult given that the calculation problem is not always a problem, that government could be efficient, and that distinguishing between anarchy and government also proves difficult.
Help?
But its still possible for me to own something you need, and deny it to you. Which was my whole point, that there’s a moral dimension to property rights that libertarianism ignores.