As an Austrolibertarian college student on a campus populated nearly exclusively by left-liberal “pragmatists,” I often find that the big stumbling block for me in explaining the mechanics of a free society is what I’ve come to call the “strongman and amassing army” critique. I wonder if anyone might direct me to another thread or, better yet, a set of articles or book chapters on this subject.
By “strongman and amassing army,” I mean the point in the conversation when the non-libertarian says, “Yeah, but what happens when a really rich guy just begins bribing the private courts and starts stealing property at gunpoint and with hired guns? What’s to stop that from happening?”
Though I can usually explain why this would not be advantageous or even necessarily plausible, I am in great need of a more systematic answer to this objection. It’s usually where my conversations end – with the others laughing in my face and thinking me a crank (which is probably not something that can be helped in a place like this one).
What happens when the rich guy bribes the state judges and politicians and starts stealing property using the state’s guns and agents under a monopoly of law?
What is to stop the government from fighting an unpopular war? What is to stop the government from handing money to the banks? Or raising taxes? Or spending itself into oblivion? Or spying on citizens? Or lying? Or committing torture?
Arguing with true-believer statist trolls is a big waste of your time. Work on people with an open mind, and don’t try to cram the entire libertarian agenda down people’s gullet all at once. Don’t overlook the low hanging fruit. The true-believers will come around when they are in a minority, since their position doesn’t rest on logic, but popular consent and mythology.
I don’t go looking for fights, mind you. I’m talking here about conversations I get roped into. I realize that arguing with a lover of the state is a waste of time – because it is. But I’m also not one to simply get up and leave the buffoons thinking I can’t defend my principles.
Wait, so plutocrats are more dangerous under a system where power is decentralized, than in a system where all power is centralized in a monopolist agency?
That’s a Hoppe book I’ve never read (my Austrolibertarian enlightenment happened only last summer, so there is such a great mass of literature still left to delve into). Thanks very much.
I think most of the time when you get these kinds of objections from people they are not usually rationally thinking through your point of view and then critiquing the mechanics of a free society. Typically these things are just knee-jerk reaction, not thought about very deeply. They are basically defending their beliefs by challenging your position. Arguing makes people even more defensive. Don’t try to prove them wrong.
Instead challenge their assumptions. In this case, “Why do you think people are evil?” is a great probing question to stay in control of the conversation. Happy Hunting…
LibertyStudent and Sage pretty much hit the nail on the head. Look, your friends are commiting the same fallacy that most neoclassical economists commit when they talk of the government, whereas they assume that market actors are utility/ profit maximising selfish actors, they assume that government participants are benevolent altruists, it doesn’t work like that and most left-liberals are usually the first one to point this out (if you want to communicate with your left liberal friends on this read Kolko’s The Triumph of Conservatism).
The key to the economic way of thinking is understanding that individuals will respond to incentives, so yes, if a private protection agency (or whatever else occurs, such as the arrangement in Somalia) believes that they will make more money by being the strong arm of a rich guy, they will do just that. Likewise, if numerous congressmen can get rich and gain valuable support by making the government the strong arm of a rich guy, he will attempt to do just that.
The question is whether or not you want to know that a potential group of thugs will face competition or not.
“What happens if someone gets a violence monopoly and starts abusing it?” This is exactly the present problem, where the State has an abusive violence monopoly.
In a really free market, once you have competition, it’s practically impossible to form a new monopoly again. Even if someone did come close to forming a violence monopoly, people wouldn’t accept your violence monopoly as legitimate.
One reason the State persists is that the vast majority accept its legitimacy without questioning it.
If someone has a violence monopoly and is able to abuse it, then they’re the government.