Involving “anarchism” or anything else other conservativism in an assessment of how the world reached its present state is like Leo Messi missing the net by a mile and complaining that the “vitriolic” “invective” of some spectator in row Z distracted him. Conservatives are much like artists. They scratch out some hideous glop and when too few appreciate it the masses are dismissed as hopeless degenerates blind to obvious brilliance. But there is another way to view things- a much simpler way, indeed. The painting is shit. The history of conservativism is one of failure from its outset to hold ground against any competing idea, even the most insane ones that have chewed people up and spit the bones. It’s only stabilizer has been the abominable youth prison system that it contrived to farm young men to die in pointless battles for pointless causes, yet even that has not made a mite of progress in its favour and has slipped through its fingers and made a snowball effect of belief in the most insideous statism.
Conservativism is a flop for the ages. Now, what fool wants to board that sinking ship?
It’s true that people haven’t really been offered a mapley-bacon donut in all of its sticky glory, but what I did and do argue is that such a thing might not have its market, because if there was a desire for it, there would’ve been some sort of high-interest/immediate need among the “consuming public of political systems” for this anarchism. The fact that on the contrary, there is a much greater profit to be made in expanding the state shows that the state is somehow superior to anarchy.
I guess one response against the above argument would be to point out the number of anarchist governments throughout history (somalia, the pirates and pirate nations (that date back to the ancient world), the earliest cultures in egypt and mesopotamia, etc.) as evidence of the natural appeal and marketability of anarchism but I do find the lack of instances for anarchy (as it relates to the provision of law) to be evidence of the lack equilibrium between that system and the values of people.
That is impossible, much less a fact. Everyone can’t profit simultaneously from a zero sum transfer. You can only keep that up by tricking everyone else into thinking that you unilaterally exploiting them is actually beneficial to them. Which is how it goes, as in the phantom called “representative government”. “We owe it to ourselves!” Egad! Like anything else, the fewer people are looting the more profitable it is. That is why you don’t see things like election candidates promising to confiscate all wheel chairs, melt them down for scrap and distribute the proceeds to non-disabled. It isn’t worth it for pennies. On the other hand, it is worth it to borrow the entire pool of funding and let the saps in the distant future worry about the economic apocalypse.
Ask yourself why conservatives are on here by the score pining day in day out about everything they find unrealistic. When you come up with the answer, share it.
True, not everyone can profit from a zero-sum transfer but at least some people do and indeed, statism seems to offer some high psychic profit which is above that offered by freedom: The whole world is falling over itself in the race towards bigger states -they seem to hope to reach that lower-equilibrium called totalitarianism!
If you accept the Nockian-Rothbardian thesis that the state, however small, is nothing but legalized crime then it should be easy to see the absurdity of your characterization of minarchism. A sufficiently small amount of crime does not somehow become good, no matter how much less dire its consequences than more severe crime would be. Also, the advances of modern civilization are at most correlative to the changes in government. The Scientific Revolution began well before the end of monarchy in Europe, the Industrial Revolution also began while all of Europe was monarchical and grew most rapidly during the 19th century where all of Europe, except France, was monarchical. The 20th century is supposed to be a triumph of democracy but it is a mixed bag, at best… it is also the bloodiest century in human history, a fact which Hans Hoppe has shown to be no coincidence.
I’m not going to try to persuade you that the State is criminal… if you don’t already see it, my yammering won’t change your mind. I’m only saying that given that the other posters you were addressing largely accept the Nockian-Rothbardian thesis, you should not be surprised that they do not view minarchism as a positive, merely as less negative than megarchism.
Human society is logically antecedent to any sort of governance/oversight. Human ancestors were roaming the plains of Africa and forming complex social groups long, long before there was anything that could be characterized as a “territorial monopolist of law and security.” In fact, now that I think about it, I suspect that the Agricultural Revolution was a logical antecedent to government.
Not if they’re educated about the history of the greatest experiment in Constitutional limitation of government in the history of the world, the United States. The Constitution has spectacularly failed to do its “job” of restricting the Federal government.
Well, I agree to an extent. I think too little thought is given - in anarchist/liberal circles - to the social and technological factors which have made governance possible. Take the invention of the printing press, for example. It is generally held that the printing press has made mankind freer because of the greater availability of information. But if the freedom of mankind was greater after the invention of a certain device, then there is a technological component to freedom. Certain technologies can leave us more or less free. The same goes for “social technologies”, that is, forms of human organization.
But, all-in-all, I think we are on a multi-millenial arc of evolution away from the alpha-male society where there are two types of individuals, those who are empowered to exploit others and those who are condemned to be exploited by the genetically and historically well-endowed and toward a society where everyone is ultimately subject, one way or another, to the same law (market law). It is getting harder and harder for the parasitic class to rationalize its parasitism and the tools which enabled them to get away with their parasitism - genetic advantage, religion, academic sanction, and so on - are being crushed under the inexorable wheels of evolution toward human freedom. Maybe it will take another 40,000 years but, sooner or later, Henry David Thoreau will be proven right,
“That government is best which governs least”; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe, — “That government is best which governs not at all”; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have." - Civil Disobedience
I don’t see anyone skipping down the street singing merry songs about totalitarianism. All I see is people regurgitating the same lines that the rest of us heard in school. When I was a totalitarian I found nobody that would agree with me. It is astounding how widely it can be believed that elections make states benefit the majority when this has always been false and no reason exists to believe it.
-The ancap argument is essentially a Marxian appeal to emotion;
If you had read Marx then you would have realized that there are no appeals to emotion concerning the inevitable progression of history toward a communist society.
Let me be clear: I said that the an-cap argument is exactly equivalent to the leftist emotional appeal that businessmen are evil incarnate –– no matter what they do –– their every action is obviously directed towards some nefarious and selfish end to spite the poor little worker. Ancaps apply that same appeal to the state and go on to dismiss unbelievers or even the mildly sympathetic as morally equivalent to Hitler or Stalin, as far as I can see. I did not mention anything to do with the inevitability of communism(?)
To address other points: Mises’s works only ‘imply’ anarcho-capitalism because people choose to interpret them that way. Did he himself write Human Action et al with an ancap utopia in mind? I’m not sure he did.
Moreover, just because Rothbard says the state is a criminal organisation doesn’t mean the world’s population will suddenly grasp that as some self-evident truth. People believe whatever suits their sentiments and prejudices. One can quite easily legitimise the plundering state if it directly benefits them, such as those who demand to rob peter to pay paul and those who expect some strong central authority to kill foreigners and beat up ‘degenerates’, for instance. Just look at the early successes of the French revolutionaries, the Bolsheviks, Mussolini’s fascists and the Nazis. They all had wide popular support of their immoral policies – until reality set in – so the masses simply threw their support unthinkingly behind the next best cause that came along.
The reality is that the modern world won’t become more totalitarian but will more likely resemble Idiocracy’s future, as I stated earlier – at least in the West. The majority of people probably don’t care much about academic arguments or picking up a academic text unless they are forced to listen, either by gunpoint or circumstance; they’re more interested in free lunches and gladiator fights. So the modern state we have is an expression of, or embodiment of, society’s current priorities since they vote for it and run for office in it. The state itself isn’t merely some cabal of evil-doers planting ideas in everyone’s heads for some grand plan of world domination – its guiding principles are derived from what society today values, such as easy money, quick fixes, vanity contests and bombing foreigners. Society has become its own worst enemy in effect.
So I don’t believe some an-cap utopia will remove that tendency for some to be naturally lazy or wilfully ignorant of the consequences of their beliefs. They’ll believe the state is criminal when it suits them and abandon that sentiment when it doesn’t. Please bear in mind that I’m not saying ancapism is ‘wrong’ but that it ignores that the ‘state’ (and whatever form it takes) will exist as long as humans do. Cavemen had their alpha males; the ancients their chiefs, tribal elders; the Romans their emperors and the medieval period their kings and queens and so on. Some of those leaders may have been illegitimate, cruel and stupid yet they existed nonetheless. Ancap land might have its business leaders and community chiefs as proto-‘government’, see?
(Here’s a some extra questions: would Ron Paul be as popular if he advocated a pure anarcho-capitalist line instead of his minarchism? If anarchy is man’s ‘default preference’, then why does he need to sell himself as a minarchist at all?)
AndrewR, did you read my post? Do you see why continuing to say “an-cap utopia” makes you look foolish? IT isn’t that minarchists are morally equivalent to Stalin, it’s just that their theory is utterly flawed. It’s no more dogmatic than refuting someone arguing that gravity doesn’t exist.
I’ll certainly never claim that my own sentiments are somehow infallible or better than yours but it doesn’t change my mind that ancapism lends itself to the same pitfalls as any human philosophy promising salvation. Randian minarchism may fail miserably, but so might ancapism too. We could both end up looking foolish.
My overall point is that the state isn’t necessarily evil or bad, but can easily transform into hell amidst a society whose priorities shift over time. I once remember reading that Carl Jung described the Nazis as the physical embodiment of the German subconsciousness and its attendant desires. So I believe that each state can be viewed as a mirror to the overall nature of a people. The state isn’t evil for evil’s sake, its incompetence and bloodlust (and so forth) is the result of voters without a clue or an axe to grind.
So can you remove the ‘tool’ (government) without another one merely replacing it?
My overall point is that the state isn’t necessarily evil or bad
you keep saying that…but if you define non-voluntary relations as evil then it is and must be. So either define your terms or stop saying the same thing over and over again
So who does the defining? You? Me? Someone else? One can classify any action they wish as evil or immoral with the right amount of rationalisation. If a state enacts policies that the majority consent to, vote for or publicly approve of then how can that be non-voluntary? Sure the policies might be stupid but the people get what the people want.
If you can convince as many people as possible that government coercion is pure evil then great, although you might encounter comments like “well what have I got to complain for?”, “Those rich pricks deserve to be taxed until they squeal!”, “Those illegal immigrants should be shot at the border!”, “we must raise the minimum wage to protect the poor!” and so on.
Unless people are faced with stark choices, they’ll cling to whatever fallacies they like and rationalise government coercion as a good, especially if they benefit from it. Can ancap philosophy reach such people? I’m not sure.
No. Anarchy doesn’t gaurantee anything will happen. We could all start killing one another. But the question isn’t what will happen, the question is what is likely to happen. The incentive structure of the state lends itself to tyranny while the incentive structure of anarchism lends itself to voluntary cooperation. There will be exceptions to all these rules, such as benevolent kings or mutant zombies, but we have to ask which social system gives humanity its best shot.
My overall point is that the state isn’t necessarily evil or bad
Yes it is. I’ve seen objections to using the word ‘evil’ along religious lines before. No word, though, is more appropriate for ‘states’ and ‘statism’. The people who parasitically thrive on the statist ideology accomplish absolutely nothing without first initiating violence. No goods or services which would be otherwise provided as any other in a free society are given by the state without first initiating violence via taxation or military conquest.
So I believe that each state can be viewed as a mirror to the overall nature of a people. The state isn’t evil for evil’s sake, its incompetence and bloodlust (and so forth) is the result of voters without a clue or an axe to grind.
This is an invalid excuse. Ignorant barbarism and tribal fashion fuel modern electoral politics. Simultaneously, a current of voluntary trade and the explosion of knowledge that the internet age has brought us, exposes statist fallacies and leads us toward a future of anarchy as law. The same “unwashed masses” of modern egalitarian utopias will submit to any system that brings order and comfort. The revolution is both statist failure to deliver on promises and anarcho-libertarian entrepreneurship.
So who does the defining? You? Me? Someone else? One can classify any action they wish as evil or immoral with the right amount of rationalisation. If a state enacts policies that the majority consent to, vote for or publicly approve of then how can that be non-voluntary? Sure the policies might be stupid but the people get what the people want.
who are the people? stop arguing in collectives, they don’t act. I’m using the terms that are generally used on this site, according to NAP and private property, the state would be evil. So if you have another argument either define your terms or argue against nap and private property.
If the majority approve slavery for black people, that makes slavery a voluntary act?
What does that even mean. Why do other’s priorities become law for me? You are making a lot of assumptions that you are not defending or even making explicit.
Do we as anarchists really want to rely on this argument? I hear it so often, but all I can think is “I don’t want a world with a huge bully like the US attacking others constantly.”