while molyneux defended anarchy valiantly, it cannot be denied schiff debunked it alpha to omega live on his show.
schiff-
destroys anarchy
shows the abolition of slavery as an analogy to abolition of state is nonsense.
shows analogy of social anarchy to government anarchy is fallacious, it is a comparison of apples to oranges
shows government can function based on fees, randian style non taxation.
stays realistic and points to the relative success of limited government and nonexistance of any sort of success of anarchy(yes yes smarties, the ireland and iceland examples were not actual anarchy despite how you like to fantasize it, look it up)
shows paradox of revolutionaries overthrowing government and then the power vacuum remaining unused
The link to tonight’s show will be up soon at http://schiffradio.com/ , The molyneux discussion starts at about 30 minutes in.
“stays realistic and points to the relative success of limited government and nonexistance of any sort of success of anarchy(yes yes smarties, the ireland and iceland examples were not actual anarchy despite how you like to fantasize it, look it up)”
The only type of anarchy Schiff could refute is this kind:
I always find it strange when people talk about “debunking” anarchism or minarchism or whatever. I could understand it in a context where someone says “In the year 900 Iceland was an anarchist commonwealth” – that statement could be shown to be true or false. But you can’t debunk -isms because they aren’t true or false. You just have to demonstrate why anarchism or minarchism wouldn’t lead to the desired consequences, or why it is impossible, or why it rests on faulty premises, or something like that.
Its just kind of funny and sets up all sorts of weird rebuttals. Like if you said Mises debunked soicalism, I would say “no way dude, look at Cuba. It exists.” Or “Lenin was a real person, therefore communism.”
Can you provide some evidence of how Ireland and Iceland were not anarchist societies. Although some Irish law may not have been very libertarian, and in many ways it was socialistic, it seemed pretty anarchistic to me, although not fully:
The way Peter Schiff tried to refute the moral case for anarchy was to use collectivist arguments. [Paraphrasing because I don’t want to listen to it again] He said that as long as the government does things that benefit all of us (and are not redistributions) it should be able to collect taxes (which he admitted by definition are compulsory).There are two obvious problems with this and I’m surprised Molyneux was so weak here.
All tax collections must be redistributive. You will force people that buy private security, and don’t need the state’s security to subsidize everyone else.
Even if taxes were not redistributive, the government could levy a 99% tax because of monopoly. The whole concept of taxation for the general good stinks because you are not guaranteed a fair price. A fair price has to be a price agreed to voluntarily, and taxation as defined is compulsory. Any minarchy will always give the citizens a crappy deal in terms of costs, this should be obvious to all libertarians.
Peter thinks taxes are ok if you can avoid them. This reminds me of the collectivist argument “If you don’t like it here, you can move, otherwise you must accept all the mandates and laws we throw at you.”. It ignores the fact that people have the right to free contract. You can also avoid taxes on income by not working, that doesn’t make the income tax moral. This reasoning also implies ad absurdum that it would be ok if the government taxed everything except bread, because you can always just buy bread and avoid everything else.
Peter said that taxes on imports are not aggression because the government is not forcing you to do anything. But it is prohibiting you from engaging in free contract. If Peter is right then prohibitions and mandates are not act of aggression.
Peter also argued that people must be forced to pay taxes for defense purposes because otherwise there would be free riders. Now replace “defense” with “healthcare” to see how silly that should be to a libertarian.
The rest of the discussion was useless because they just argued that neither anarchy or minarchy can work. Molyneux should have stuck to arguing the moral case, and refuting the inconsistency with minarchy. I’m disappointed.
Bottom line Schiff eventually agreed that anarchy would be preferable to minarchy if anarchy could sustain itself. Given that, that was the worst “debunking” I have ever seen. Minarchy is socialism, so if you support it be willing to admit that.
schiff conceded that state was evil, but a necessary evil. yes anarchy is preferable all other things being equal. but other things arent equal! thats why we the people must struggle to keep the state constitutional as the founding fathers intended. the state is a beast, so it is a struggle to control the beast. but if you overthrow the government? you just set the beast loose, you cut the chain! then it will come and eat you! that is why the anarchism of the would be revolutionaries and the internet theoretizers is bound to get bound.
I’ve listened to everything from Schiff since 2009, read all his books except for the newest one, I’ve also listened every episode of his show with the exception of maybe 10 episodes.
There is NO WAY Schiff debunks anarchy, because he makes the case for anarchy every day: you can’t let government touch anything important because government is inherently corrupt, and then he goes on to host guests and tell stories of government ruining utterly everything it touches.
Also, there is no universe where Molyneux wouldn’t completely rip Schiff a new one. I’ve been waiting for this episode my whole life. I’ll post back when I’ve actually finished it.
Listening to the podcast now, you’re right. Schiff provides a lukewarm defense of the state (I’d imagine he bases his position in anticipation at another run at public office), but he doesn’t come close to debunking anarchy. In the beginning of the conversation he has with Molyneux, it seems that Schiff provides a case for competing security agencies (reluctant to make the claim that the state is a monopolist of security as Molyneux scrutinizes him on this point). Molyneux seems to be holding back- there’s a lot more that he could have said.
Schiff ends the segment with The closer we can get to anarchy probably the happier, the freer the more prosperous we will all be; he doesn’t provide a limit to how small the government should be, nor why it should not be eliminated entirely. He claims that paying taxes is voluntary and that he has a problem with taxes when they are taken from A to benefit B (this is what is done with every tax), he claims that taxes should be voluntary (and then says that they should be mandatory), and he argues that governments only exist for protection purposes. Molyneux hit it, I think, when he said in the beginning of the interview, “You’re a tricky debater, Peter. It’s almost like you’ve run for office.”
This argument sounded a lot like one I had when I first grappled with anarchy (I then sounded a lot like Schiff does here).
Schiff is a minarchist and minarchists are simply small-time socialists (though they waffle if anyone points this out). If socialism doesn’t work with business, industry, or education then it’s not going to work with law or security either. Minarchists praise the efficiency of the market, but somehow cannot grasp the fact that this concept extends to law and order as well. It is incorrect to assume that this “neccesary evil” (what ever that may mean) is going to somehow turn itself into an angelic institution with regards to providing social services such as law and order (which are the most important). As a last resort, the arguments of the minarchists parallel those of the socialists “if only the right people were running government.”
As for the “anarcho-capitalism has never existed” argument: it is only appropriate to counter this by pointing out that the detractor’s ideal society has never existed either.
Just finished listening to it. Schiff does nothing to even remotely debunk anarchy.
That said, this was probably the worst Molyneux interview ever, which is incredibly dissapointing since it was probably his most important. I can only imagine that his goal was to win over some Schiff listeners by not utterly destroying Schiff, similar to how Romney won’t just completely attack the crap out of Ron Paul because he values the chance that some Ron Paul supporters may switch. Also, in usual Schiff style he gave the guest almost no time to talk at all. Without exception every single time Molyneux talked he was interrupted, usually within 5 or 10 seconds—that isn’t to say he wasn’t able to rush and finish a thought once or twice while he was being interrupted.. Once, Schiff finished like a minute of blabbering, only to completely cut off and interrupt Molyneux response within like 3 seconds, to which everyone else in the room (we’re all listening to it) was baffled.
Overall terrible interview, but I’m more dissapointed in Molyneux’s weak performance than the usual Schiff. Anyone who’s seen some pretty standard Molyneux content would expect him to be at least…3 times more aggressive than this!
Schiff is not a philosopher. And he knows about Rothbard et al. You can hear Rothbard in his rhetoric sometimes.
I was disappointed with both of them. Molyneux’s, “I’ve got a history degree” and “you sound like a politician” lines were … i have no words.
Schiff has said over and over that he resides in the minarchist camp with the belief that political power decides society. He gave the same tired argument my family gives me, “No government would mean the strongest group gets in charge and exploits or popresses and what have you.”
It went right over Shiff’s head that anarchy is not brought about through an election (which to him is ultimately a singularity of political power being collected, then dissolved), it is a collective understanding and individual state of mind if it ever comes to be. Molyneux stresses the morality of anarchy in a way to get people think about their own lives and the political implications that extend in the normal political field.
Schiff even appeals to the SEC in trying to turn attention to the pump and dump NIA.
I thought Molyneux was holding back because they know each other from libertarian events. We’ve all heard both of them argue with people that they don’t like. It was a bad interview because they like each other.
schiff conceded that state was evil, but a necessary evil. yes anarchy is preferable all other things being equal. but other things arent equal!
As I mentioned before he said anarchy was preferable if it could be sustained, if that’s what you mean by “other things equal”.
but if you overthrow the government? you just set the beast loose, you cut the chain!
Most of human history is a history of anarchy. Simple tribes that still exist today do not have a state and they do not necessarily live in chaos or have risk of developing a state. You can argue that it doesn’t scale to larger societies, that wasn’t mentioned in the interview. I believe Jefferson thought anarchy was desirable but couldn’t be sustained in large industrialized societies.
Ultimately what you are saying is that because we don’t have the technology yet to get rid of government, we shouldn’t try and we should settle for trying to control the state. That seems defeatist and it seems like we’ve lost the argument if we follow this reasoning. You can say the same things about any current function of government. Social problems will inevitably lead to people voting for socialism, so why not just settle and mantain redistribution and the fed, but make sure that only the needy get the money and the fed keeps the price level stable. Why not just preserve the status quo, but tweak it a bit?
I’ve often thought that minarchy wouldn’t be so bad, if only it could sustain itself…
You would need a population of educated libertarians to sustain a minarchist state - a population so educated and libertarian that they might as well live without a state.
Molyneux is hardly the best defender of anarchy (he has some lucid, even poetic moments, but he’s not an organized thinker, IMO). And Schiff isn’t exactly the most professorial guy, either. So, a poor assessor of the arguments given by a weak defender of anarchy is hardly persuasive evidence that anarchy has been “debunked.”
