We shall see.
He starts off with a “monopoly on shoes” example that I hope he doesn’t intend to extend, because the political and economic realms cannot be conflated successfully for the purposes of examining law. There is nothing about shoes that makes manufacturing shoes as a monopoly a necessity, however the nature of law is such that it -must be- monopolistic. This is not a non-sequitur.
He asks:
“So, from a moral standpoint I have no more right to do it than anyone else.”
The answer is the right of law to exist is drawn from the consent of the governed.
“Well, first of all, there are incentive problems. If I’m the only person who has the right to make and sell shoes, you’re probably not going to get the shoes from me very cheaply. I can charge as much as I want”
Our current government can indeed be viewed as an entity that sells protection from aggressors at monopolistic prices. However, the price charged can be curtailed constitutionally. It simply wasn’t in the case of American government. Since the ability to tax can be constitutionally prohibited, this is not an innate aspect of nor essential to the nature of a government, meaning taxation is a feature of an abusive government, not of all government.
His economic analysis is well off to, as he assumes people cannot substitute:
If I’m the only person who has the right to make and sell shoes, you’re probably not going to get the shoes from me very cheaply. I can charge as much as I want, as long as I don’t charge so much that you just can’t afford them at all or you decide you’re happier just not having the shoes. But as long as you’re willing and able, I’ll charge the highest price that I can get out of you — because you’ve got no competition, nowhere else to go.
In an economic scenario where you don’t like what’s on offer, such as this, you can make your own shoes or begin substituting in sandals, boots, etc.
All of this ignores, again, that reasoning that competition is good in the market does not mean competition is good within the same government in the same region.
"Government Is a Forced Monopoly"
Yes, but it is so because law, by nature, must exist as a monopoly within a jurisdiction to function. Your author needs to brush up on his philosophy of law.
Now, as I predicted, your author made an economic argument and now attempts to switch context over to government:
“So those are all reasons not to have a monopoly on the making and selling of shoes. Now, prima facie at least, it seems as though those are all good reasons for anyone not to have a monopoly in the provision of services of adjudicating disputes, and protecting rights, and all the things that are involved in what you might broadly call the enterprise of law.”
Here’s what Rand had to say about competing governments:
A recent variant of anarchistic theory, which is befuddling some of the younger advocates of freedom, is a weird absurdity called “competing governments.” Accepting the basic premise of the modern statists—who see no difference between the functions of government and the functions of industry, between force and production, and who advocate government ownership of business—the proponents of “competing governments” take the other side of the same coin and declare that since competition is so beneficial to business, it should also be applied to government. Instead of a single, monopolistic government, they declare, there should be a number of different governments in the same geographical area, competing for the allegiance of individual citizens, with every citizen free to “shop” and to patronize whatever government he chooses.
Remember that forcible restraint of men is the only service a government has to offer. Ask yourself what a competition in forcible restraint would have to mean.
One cannot call this theory a contradiction in terms, since it is obviously devoid of any understanding of the terms “competition” and “government.” Nor can one call it a floating abstraction, since it is devoid of any contact with or reference to reality and cannot be concretized at all, not even roughly or approximately. One illustration will be sufficient: suppose Mr. Smith, a customer of Government A, suspects that his next-door neighbor, Mr. Jones, a customer of Government B, has robbed him; a squad of Police A proceeds to Mr. Jones’ house and is met at the door by a squad of Police B, who declare that they do not accept the validity of Mr. Smith’s complaint and do not recognize the authority of Government A. What happens then? You take it from there.
Ayn Rand. The Virtue of Selfishness (Kindle Locations 2023-2036). Penguin USA, Inc..
This helps explain why law must hold a jurisdictional monopoly.
As for his 10 points:
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He conceeds that an explicit social-contract, ie: law, would be fine. His objection is to an implicit contract. In that we agree. (and his example is silly, wearing hats?).
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In an anarchist society, people would have to invest resources to their personal protection that they wouldn’t need in a law-based society. And there would be less trade than in a law-based society due to the trust factors Hobbes cites. That would have to be conceded even by an anarchist. Thus, Hobbes’ argument is a good one.
Today we have people delivering a billion dollars in goods on credit. Would that happen in an anarchist society? Perhaps, but not to the same degree.
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“Law Merchant” wouldn’t work in a large society, wouldn’t apply to criminals, and still allows Madoff-style theft without recourse.
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Hah, he actually addresses the Rand quote I gave above. And concedes it? And he later on assumes governments must tax–a non-sequitor of its own.
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He concedes that anarchy has no court capable of ending a dispute coercively. How is this helping your case exactly? A gov court can use responsive coercion to resolve an intractable dispute, so his assertion that no other system can provide a solution is false.
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Property was greatly improved when a third party was involved to recognize title. Previous to this, title meant holding the deed, and deed theft meant title transfer. There were princes traveling all over europe stealing deeds. Current system is far better. Furthermore, the title system is likely to be expanded with the use of location-aware GPS on all products and property.
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True anarchy as a society would be a return to historical tribalism or modern gang-warfare. There’d be no other guarantor of protection. Forget organized crime, it would be a return to coercion as a primary method of dispute resolution and relationship between people.
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I’m not really worried about 8. My concern is more about the ability of a slave-lord under anarchy to take slaves and then hire enough protection to keep them. Anarchists seem, amazingly, unconcerned about such. I think society needs an impersonal institution (police) whose job it is to stop aggression within society, whose proper role is to force the slave-lord to stop slaving. Anarchy has no equivalent. His solution of selling claims to damage is laughable.
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A market can only exist in a society where rights are respected. What you have under anarchy is barter. What use would money be in a society where counterfeiting is not stopped. So his appeal to markets under anarchy is silly.
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This is obvious. Tribalism would result and tribes would have the equivalent of law: the whims of the leader of the tribe. It would be a pure return to whim-worship and law made by autocrats. Why he makes the leap to a cartel I have no idea. The result would be many small tribal units.
Meh. Unfortunately I didn’t find much challenging to my ideas in his article, and even less of it based on principle rather than what he hoped would work.
If stopping aggression within a society is a desireable thing, then we can collectively set up a legal jurisdiction and an enforcement mechanism tasked purely with the ability to use coercion responsively, that is to only protect rights and protect against aggressions within that society, and make it also illegal for that entity to aggress itself. That is the proper role of government, and it’s been shown to work and to produce a prosperous and free society, even if today’s societies have on the whole gone far into the aggressive realm.
Meanwhile, the anarchists have to figure out how to create a society with no impersonal force to hold-back or prevent aggressions within society, none of which have been shown to be effective within a society. Thousands of societies around the world and not one has self-organized into an anarchist society?
What anarchy is really about today is a response to political over-organization. In the broad expanse of human history, every time we’ve had lots of freedom people said, “let’s organize!” and they did. Then things got too restrictive and people said, “We want freedom!” and they tore the restrictions down.
We’re in a restrictive phase, and those calling for anarchy are simply propagating the vast wheel of repeating history without the perspective to see that they’re doing nothing special or unique. They are little more than Visigoths standing at Rome’s gates, ready to burn the city.
The true departure from the wheel of history begins with the US constitution, that radical document of limited government power, that subjected government to ethical rules of behavior–something governments hadn’t been limited to previously.
Freedom is a middle concept; it is defined neither by too much independence from each other (anarchy) nor too much dependence. It is right in the middle, and “What is the right amount of government” has been the question since the US was founded. We can use the NAP to find that right amount. It is that government should be limited to responsive coercion used to end aggression, and limited only to that. Tha produces a free society, and also one that is completely ethical, indeed ideal.
The US constitution unfortunately left many loopholes for statism to grow, but the concept has proved a working one, and it’s up to us now to improve upon the document and either change our states or found new ones.
