I don’t buy that for a second. For one thing, I think a lot would have to change before Schiff would throw his hat in the ring again. Second, there is no way Schiff was just putting on a fake argument just for political expediency. He’s not a liar, and I honestly don’t believe he cares that much about what people think.
I personally don’t see how someone could listen to that and think Schiff didn’t actually believe everything he was saying. He obviously does. I thought it was clear as crystal that Schiff just hasn’t gone that deep yet. He’s obviously at an advantage, having a father like his, but he obviously just hasn’t invested the time in education of political philosophy to get to that next level.
It takes quite a bit to get there. I would argue it probably takes just as much to cross the threshold from minarchism to anarchism as it does to get to Peter’s level of minarchism from any other place on the spectrum. In other words, yes Schiff is so close…but the difficulty in making that next step is just as great.
I think it’s kind of like the road from, say, European socialism to minarchism doesn’t tend to be extremely difficult per se, but it tends to be rather long. However, the road from minarchism to anarchism isn’t very long at all…as they aren’t so far apart. (You can easily tell this just by listening to Schiff in this interview…where a great deal of the time he’s making Molyneux’s case for him). However, as you can also see, Schiff has a difficult time buying into the idea…almost on just a comfort or familiarity level. It’s almost an appeal to ignorance in a way…as in his biggest problem is he just simply can’t imagine how it would work. But of course, who among anarchists didn’t go through that phase?
It just requires the proper amount of time, research, education, thought, and possibly interaction with like-minded people, to get there. And Schiff just obviously hasn’t put in that time. In fact, I would argue he’s only as far along as he is because of who his father is.
Bingo. I think virtually all anarchists did.