Despite the fact that it’s slow, cumbersome, and protects users as much as tissue paper, government officials in the good ol’ UK have decided to keep Internet Explorer 6. Government, after all, likes to take it slow, be cumbersome, and protect its users as much as tissue paper. Next you’ll be saying that governments are against net neutrality…oh wait…

But for those of us who like freedom, security, and productivity…

…It’s called Chrome.

© Barry Belmont for UNR Students for Liberty, 2010.
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Government can’t avoid religion. This is in response to a question concerning terrorism and counter-terrorism. The author’s more disreputable conclusions is that to stamp out the ‘bad’ Muslims in the United Kingdom, the government should pour its money into the ‘good’ ones. While this is a fairly benign idea, maybe even a good one, the underlying principles are most intolerable: why should the government be giving any money to any Muslims (or Jews, Hindus, Christians for that matter)? A decision like this can only end poorly.

To outdo the her transatlantic cousins, Sarah Palin, and a whole slew of others are trying to prevent the building of a mosque near ground zero. Something about in the interest of healing, or its inappropriate, or it’s just unacceptable, as if it were every Muslim in the world who caused the Towers to fall. Some people are interpreting the creation of the mosque as a pissing on the greater glory of Ol’ Glory and are making a mockery of the the events that took place there. The real reason a mosque is being built there? Muslims live there and they want a place of worship, just like anyone else. Would anyone be up in arms about a church or a temple being built there?

And finally, the Huffington Post tries to beat everyone by asking if a civil society is possible in free economy. From the above two links, it seems only in the absence of a free market (that is, a society without government intervention) can uncivility be tolerated and promoted. Imagine if Apple or Microsoft or McDonald’s came out and said they were not willing to put up shop near a mosque. Or that they would only serve naturalized customers and no one else. Hatred and bigotry is some how seen as a crucial element in the inner workings of governments but is utterly disagreeable to us when we view it in light of companies whose reputations are built solely upon the free and voluntary interactions of the market.

Sometimes, I just really don’t understand how it all goes…

© Barry Belmont for UNR Students for Liberty, 2010.
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© Barry Belmont for UNR Students for Liberty, 2010.
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Comic Party Wins Iceland Election; Promises Disneyland at Airport, Transparent Corruption

Running on a platform described as “anarcho-surrealism,” Iceland’s Best Party (Besti Flokkurinn) is no longer just a big joke. The six-month-old party led by one of the nation’s best-known comedians, Jón Gnarr, won a stunning victory in the capital city of Reykjavik’s local elections, securing the largest percentage of votes (34.7%) and capturing six of the 15 seats on the city council.

The ruling coalition, consisting of the Social Democratic Alliance and the Left-Green Movement, fared poorly in the election, a likely result of voter unhappiness over an economy that was crippled by the 2008 financial crisis.

Analysts say Gnarr stands a good chance of becoming mayor of Reykjavik. He told the local media that people shouldn’t be alarmed by his party’s rise to power. “Nobody needs to be frightened of the Best Party because it’s the best. And we only want what is best—if we didn’t, we’d be called the Worst Party or the Bad Party.”

During the campaign Gnarr vowed, if elected, to add a polar bear to the city’s zoo and build a Disneyland near the airport, among other promises listed in his party’s music video, which claims that his is the “bestest of parties.” Gnarr has also promised “topnotch stuff as a general rule,” and “a drug-free parliament…by 2020.”

A couple of Gnarr’s other campaign promises:

“I want to become mayor, so that I can do a lot of good things…for my friends and relatives.”

“We want to abolish corruption…by doing our own corruption in plain sight.”

Apparently inspired by the amplifier in Spinal Tap, Gnarr stressed that “Every party has values. Most parties have five to ten values. But Besti Flokkurinn has twelve. This is because Besti Flokkurinn is the best party in everything.”

And how many Americans can relate to this appeal from the Best Party video: “All by yourself on Election Day, the ballot looking lifeless and a little gray, you have to choose. It’s all such a mess. Vote for us; we’re the best.”

© Barry Belmont for UNR Students for Liberty, 2010.
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Chantal Sebire (the woman) has said she won’t appeal the courts decision but she intends to find life-terminating drugs through other means. “I now know how to get my hands on what I need, and if I don’t get it in France, I will get it elsewhere,” she said.

Can anyone really believe in the benevolence of the State anymore? I’m sorry Ms. Sebire has suffered and I can only hope through her own efforts and those around her willing to help, she will end it once and for all.

© Barry Belmont for UNR Students for Liberty, 2010.
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A Society Without a State

In attempting to outline how a “society without a state” – that is, an anarchist society – might function successfully, I would first like to defuse two common but mistaken criticisms of this approach. First, is the argument that in providing for such defense or protection services as courts, police, or even law itself, I am simply smuggling the state back into society in another form, and that therefore the system I am both analyzing and advocating is not “really” anarchism.

This sort of criticism can only involve us in an endless and arid dispute over semantics. Let me say from the beginning that I define the state as that institution which possesses one or both (almost always both) of the following properties: (1) it acquires its income by the physical coercion known as “taxation”; and (2) it asserts and usually obtains a coerced monopoly of the provision of defense service (police and courts) over a given territorial area. An institution not possessing either of these properties is not and cannot be, in accordance with my definition, a state.

On the other hand, I define anarchist society as one where there is no legal possibility for coercive aggression against the person or property of an individual. Anarchists oppose the state because it has its very being in such aggression, namely, the expropriation of private property through taxation, the coercive exclusion of other providers of defense service from its territory, and all of the other depredations and coercions that are built upon these twin foci of invasions of individual rights.

Nor is our definition of the state arbitrary, for these two characteristics have been possessed by what is generally acknowledged to be states throughout recorded history. The state, by its use of physical coercion, has arrogated to itself a compulsory monopoly of defense services over its territorial jurisdiction. But it is certainly conceptually possible for such services to be supplied by private, non-state institutions, and indeed such services have historically been supplied by other organizations than the state. To be opposed to the state is then not necessarily to be opposed to services that have often been linked with it; to be opposed to the state does not necessarily imply that we must be opposed to police protection, courts, arbitration, the minting of money, postal service, or roads and highways. Some anarchists have indeed been opposed to police and to all physical coercion in defense of person and property, but this is not inherent in and is fundamentally irrelevant to the anarchist position, which is precisely marked by opposition to all physical coercion invasive of, or aggressing against, person and property.

The crucial role of taxation may be seen in the fact that the state is the only institution or organization in society which regularly and systematically acquires its income through the use of physical coercion. All other individuals or organizations acquire their income voluntarily, either (1) through the voluntary sale of goods and services to consumers on the market, or (2) through voluntary gifts or donations by members or other donors. If I cease or refrain from purchasing Wheaties on the market, the Wheaties producers do not come after me with a gun or the threat of imprisonment to force me to purchase; if I fail to join the American Philosophical Association, the association may not force me to join or prevent me from giving up my membership. Only the state can do so; only the state can confiscate my property or put me in jail if I do not pay its tax tribute. Therefore, only the state regularly exists and has its very being by means of coercive depredations on private property.

Neither is it legitimate to challenge this sort of analysis by claiming that in some other sense, the purchase of Wheaties or membership in the APA is in some way “coercive.” Anyone who is still unhappy with this use of the term “coercion” can simply eliminate the word from this discussion and substitute for it “physical violence or the threat thereof,” with the only loss being in literary style rather than in the substance of the argument. What anarchism proposes to do, then, is to abolish the state, that is, to abolish the regularized institution of aggressive coercion.

It need hardly be added that the state habitually builds upon its coercive source of income by adding a host of other aggressions upon society, ranging from economic controls to the prohibition of pornography to the compelling of religious observance to the mass murder of civilians in organized warfare. In short, the state, in the worlds of Albert Jay Nock, “claims and exercises a monopoly of crime” over its territorial area.

The second criticism I would like to defuse before beginning the main body of the paper is the common charge that anarchists “assume that all people are good” and that without the state no crime would be committed. In short, that anarchism assumes that with the abolition of the state a New Anarchist Man will emerge, cooperative, humane, and benevolent, so that no problem of crime will then plague the society. I confess that I do not understand the basis for this charge. Whatever other schools of anarchism profess – and I do not believe that they are open to the charge – I certainly do not adopt this view. I assume with most observers that mankind is a mixture of good and evil, of cooperative and criminal tendencies.

In my view, the anarchist society is one which maximizes the tendencies for the good and the cooperative, while it minimizes both the opportunity and the moral legitimacy of the evil and the criminal. If the anarchist view is correct and the state is indeed the great legalized and socially legitimated channel for all manner of antisocial crime – theft, oppression, mass murder – on a massive scale, then surely the abolition of such an engine of crime can do nothing but favor the good in man and discourage the bad.

A further point: in a profound sense, no social system, whether anarchist or statist, can work at all unless most people are “good” in the sense that they are not all hell-bent upon assaulting and robbing their neighbors. If everyone were so disposed, no amount of protection, whether state or private, could succeed in staving off chaos. Furthermore, the more that people are disposed to be peaceful and not aggress against their neighbors, the more successfully any social system will work, and the fewer resources will need to be devoted to police protection. The anarchist view holds that, given the “nature of man,” given the degree of goodness or badness at any point in time, anarchism will maximize the opportunities for the good and minimize the channels for the bad. The rest depends on the values held by the individual members of society. The only further point that needs to be made is that by eliminating the living example and the social legitimacy of the massive legalized crime of the state, anarchism will to a large extent promote peaceful values in the minds of the public.

We cannot of course deal here with the numerous arguments in favor of anarchism or against the state, moral, political, and economic. Nor can we take up the various goods and services now provided by the state and show how private individuals and groups will be able to supply them far more efficiently on the free market. Here we can only deal with perhaps the most difficult area, the area where it is almost universally assumed that the state must exist and act, even if it is only a “necessary evil” instead of a positive good: the vital realm of defense or protection of person and property against aggression. Surely, it is universally asserted, the state is at least vitally necessary to provide police protection, the judicial resolution of disputes and enforcement of contracts, and the creation of the law itself that is to be enforced. My contention is that all of these admittedly necessary services of protection can be satisfactorily and efficiently supplied by private persons and institutions on the free market.

One important caveat before we begin the body of this paper: new proposals such as anarchism are almost always gauged against the implicit assumption that the present, or statist system works to perfection. Any lacunae or difficulties with the picture of the anarchist society are considered net liabilities, and enough to dismiss anarchism out of hand. It is, in short, implicitly assumed that the state is doing its self-assumed job of protecting person and property to perfection. We cannot here go into the reasons why the state is bound to suffer inherently from grave flaws and inefficiencies in such a task. All we need do now is to point to the black and unprecedented record of the state through history: no combination of private marauders can possibly begin to match the state’s unremitting record of theft, confiscation, oppression, and mass murder. No collection of Mafia or private bank robbers can begin to compare with all the Hiroshimas, Dresdens, and Lidices and their analogues through the history of mankind.

This point can be made more philosophically: it is illegitimate to compare the merits of anarchism and statism by starting with the present system as the implicit given and then critically examining only the anarchist alternative. What we must do is to begin at the zero point and then critically examine both suggested alternatives. Suppose, for example, that we were all suddenly dropped down on the earth de novo and that we were all then confronted with the question of what societal arrangements to adopt. And suppose then that someone suggested: “We are all bound to suffer from those of us who wish to aggress against their fellow men. Let us then solve this problem of crime by handing all of our weapons to the Jones family, over there, by giving all of our ultimate power to settle disputes to that family. In that way, with their monopoly of coercion and of ultimate decision making, the Jones family will be able to protect each of us from each other.” I submit that this proposal would get very short shrift, except perhaps from the Jones family themselves. And yet this is precisely the common argument for the existence of the state. When we start from zero point, as in the case of the Jones family, the question of “who will guard the guardians?” becomes not simply an abiding lacuna in the theory of the state but an overwhelming barrier to its existence.

A final caveat: the anarchist is always at a disadvantage in attempting to forecast the shape of the future anarchist society. For it is impossible for observers to predict voluntary social arrangements, including the provision of goods and services, on the free market. Suppose, for example, that this were the year 1874 and that someone predicted that eventually there would be a radio-manufacturing industry. To be able to make such a forecast successfully, does he have to be challenged to state immediately how many radio manufacturers there would be a century hence, how big they would be, where they would be located, what technology and marketing techniques they would use, and so on? Obviously, such a challenge would make no sense, and in a profound sense the same is true of those who demand a precise portrayal of the pattern of protection activities on the market. Anarchism advocates the dissolution of the state into social and market arrangements, and these arrangements are far more flexible and less predictable than political institutions. The most that we can do, then, is to offer broad guidelines and perspectives on the shape of a projected anarchist society.

One important point to make here is that the advance of modern technology makes anarchistic arrangements increasingly feasible. Take, for example, the case of lighthouses, where it is often charged that it is unfeasible for private lighthouse operators to row out to each ship to charge it for use of the light. Apart from the fact that this argument ignores the successful existence of private lighthouses in earlier days, as in England in the eighteenth century, another vital consideration is that modern electronic technology makes charging each ship for the light far more feasible. Thus, the ship would have to have paid for an electronically controlled beam which could then be automatically turned on for those ships which had paid for the service.

Let us turn now to the problem of how disputes – in particular disputes over alleged violations of person and property – would be resolved in an anarchist society. First, it should be noted that all disputes involve two parties: the plaintiff, the alleged victim of the crime or tort and the defendant, the alleged aggressor. In many cases of broken contract, of course, each of the two parties alleging that the other is the culprit is at the same time a plaintiff and a defendant.

An important point to remember is that any society, be it statist or anarchist, has to have some way of resolving disputes that will gain a majority consensus in society. There would be no need for courts or arbitrators if everyone were omniscient and knew instantaneously which persons were guilty of any given crime or violation of contract. Since none of us is omniscient, there has to be some method of deciding who is the criminal or lawbreaker which will gain legitimacy; in short, whose decision will be accepted by the great majority of the public.

In the first place, a dispute may be resolved voluntarily between the two parties themselves, either unaided or with the help of a third mediator. This poses no problem, and will automatically be accepted by society at large. It is so accepted even now, much less in a society imbued with the anarchistic values of peaceful cooperation and agreement. Secondly and similarly, the two parties, unable to reach agreement, may decide to submit voluntarily to the decision of an arbitrator. This agreement may arise either after a dispute has arisen, or be provided for in advance in the original contract. Again, there is no problem in such an arrangement gaining legitimacy. Even in the present statist era, the notorious inefficiency and coercive and cumbersome procedures of the politically run government courts has led increasing numbers of citizens to turn to voluntary and expert arbitration for a speedy and harmonious settling of disputes.

Thus, William C. Wooldridge has written that

Arbitration has grown to proportions that make the courts a secondary recourse in many areas and completely superfluous in others. The ancient fear of the courts that arbitration would “oust” them of their jurisdiction has been fulfilled with a vengeance the common-law judges probably never anticipated. Insurance companies adjust over fifty thousand claims a year among themselves through arbitration, and the American Arbitration Association (AAA), with headquarters in New York and twenty-five regional offices across the country, last year conducted over twenty-two thousand arbitrations. Its twenty-three thousand associates available to serve as arbitrators may outnumber the total number of judicial personnel … in the United States…. Add to this the unknown number of individuals who arbitrate disputes within particular industries or in particular localities, without formal AAA affiliation, and the quantitatively secondary role of official courts begins to be apparent.

Wooldridge adds the important point that, in addition to the speed of arbitration procedures vis-à-vis the courts, the arbitrators can proceed as experts in disregard of the official government law; in a profound sense, then, they serve to create a voluntary body of private law. “In other words,” states Wooldridge, “the system of extralegal, voluntary courts has progressed hand in hand with a body of private law; the rules of the state are circumvented by the same process that circumvents the forums established for the settlement of disputes over those rules…. In short, a private agreement between two people, a bilateral ‘law,’ has supplanted the official law. The writ of the sovereign has ceased to run, and for it is substituted a rule tacitly or explicitly agreed to by the parties.” Wooldridge concludes that “if an arbitrator can choose to ignore a penal damage rule or the status of limitations applicable to the claim before him (and it is generally conceded that he has that power), arbitration can be viewed as a practically revolutionary instrument for self-liberation from the law….”

It may be objected that arbitration only works successfully because the courts enforce the award of the arbitrator. Wooldridge points out, however, that arbitration was unenforceable in the American courts before 1920, but that this did not prevent voluntary arbitration from being successful and expanding in the United States and in England. He points, furthermore, to the successful operations of merchant courts since the Middle Ages, those courts which successfully developed the entire body of the law merchant. None of those courts possessed the power of enforcement. He might have added the private courts of shippers which developed the body of admiralty law in a similar way.

How then did these private, “anarchistic,” and voluntary courts ensure the acceptance of their decisions? By the method of social ostracism, and by the refusal to deal any further with the offending merchant. This method of voluntary “enforcement,” indeed provided highly successful. Wooldridge writes that “the merchants’ courts were voluntary, and if a man ignored their judgment, he could not be sent to jail…. Nevertheless, it is apparent that … [their] decisions were generally respected even by the losers; otherwise people would never have used them in the first place…. Merchants made their courts work simply by agreeing to abide by the results. The merchant who broke the understanding would not be sent to jail, to be sure, but neither would he long continue to be a merchant, for the compliance exacted by his fellows … provide if anything more effective than physical coercion.” Nor did this voluntary method fail to work in modern times. Wooldridge writes that it was precisely in the years before 1920, when arbitration awards could not be enforced in the courts,

that arbitration caught on and developed a following in the American mercantile community. Its popularity, gained at a time when abiding by an agreement to arbitrate had to be as voluntary as the agreement itself, casts doubt on whether legal coercion was an essential adjunct to the settlement of most disputes. Cases of refusal to abide by an arbitrator’s award were rare; one founder of the American Arbitration Association could not recall a single example. Like their medieval forerunners, merchants in the Americas did not have to rely on any sanctions other than those they could collectively impose on each other. One who refused to pay up might find access to his association’s tribunal cut off in the future, or his name released to the membership of his trade association; these penalties were far more fearsome than the cost of the award with which he disagreed. Voluntary and private adjudications were voluntarily and privately adhered to, if not out of honor, out of the self-interest of businessmen who knew that the arbitral mode of dispute settlement would cease to be available to them very quickly if they ignored an award.

It should also be pointed out that modern technology makes even more feasible the collection and dissemination of information about people’s credit ratings and records of keeping or violating their contracts or arbitration agreements. Presumably, an anarchist society would see the expansion of this sort of dissemination of data and thereby facilitate the ostracism or boycotting of contract and arbitration violators.

How would arbitrators be selected in an anarchist society? In the same way as they are chosen now, and as they were chosen in the days of strictly voluntary arbitration: the arbitrators with the best reputation for efficiency and probity would be chosen by the various parties on the market. As in other processes of the market, the arbitrators with the best record in settling disputes will come to gain an increasing amount of business, and those with poor records will no longer enjoy clients and will have to shift to another line of endeavor. Here it must be emphasized that parties in dispute will seek out those arbitrators with the best reputation for both expertise and impartiality and that inefficient or biased arbitrators will rapidly have to find another occupation.

Thus, the Tannehills emphasize:

the advocates of government see initiated force (the legal force of government) as the only solution to social disputes. According to them, if everyone in society were not forced to use the same court system … disputes would be insoluble. Apparently it doesn’t occur to them that disputing parties are capable of freely choosing their own arbiters…. they have not realized that disputants would, in fact, be far better off if they could choose among competing arbitration agencies so that they could reap the benefits of competition and specialization. It should be obvious that a court system which has a monopoly guaranteed by the force of statutory law will not give as good quality service as will free-market arbitration agencies which must compete for their customers….

Perhaps the least tenable argument for government arbitration of disputes is the one which holds that governmental judges are more impartial because they operate outside the market and so have no vested interests…. Owning political allegiance to government is certainly no guarantee of impartiality! A governmental judge is always impelled to be partial – in favor of the government, from whom he gets his pay and his power! On the other hand, an arbiter who sells his services in a free market knows that he must be as scrupulously honest, fair, and impartial as possible or no pair of disputants will buy his services to arbitrate their dispute. A free-market arbiter depends for his livelihood on his skill and fairness at settling disputes. A governmental judge depends on political pull.

If desired, furthermore, the contracting parties could provide in advance for a series of arbitrators:

It would be more economical and in most cases quite sufficient to have only one arbitration agency to hear the case. But if the parties felt that a further appeal might be necessary and were willing to risk the extra expense, they could provide for a succession of two or even more arbitration agencies. The names of these agencies would be written into the contract in order from the “first court of appeal” to the “last court of appeal.” It would be neither necessary nor desirable to have one single, final court of appeal for every person in the society, as we have today in the United States Supreme Court.

Arbitration, then, poses little difficulty for a portrayal of the free society. But what of torts or crimes of aggression where there has been no contract? Or suppose that the breaker of a contract defies the arbitration award? Is ostracism enough? In short, how can courts develop in the free-market anarchist society which will have the power to enforce judgments against criminals or contract breakers?

In the wide sense, defense service consists of guards or police who use force in defending person and property against attack, and judges or courts whose role is to use socially accepted procedures to determine who the criminals or tortfeasors are, as well as to enforce judicial awards, such as damages or the keeping of contracts. On the free market, many scenarios are possible on the relationship between the private courts and the police; they may be “vertically integrated,” for example, or their services may be supplied by separate firms. Furthermore, it seems likely that police service will be supplied by insurance companies who will provide crime insurance to their clients. In that case, insurance companies will pay off the victims of crime or the breaking of contracts or arbitration awards and then pursue the aggressors in court to recoup their losses. There is a natural market connection between insurance companies and defense service, since they need pay out less benefits in proportion as they are able to keep down the rate of crime.

Courts might either charge fees for their services, with the losers of cases obliged to pay court costs, or else they may subsist on monthly or yearly premiums by their clients, who may be either individuals or the police or insurance agencies. Suppose, for example, that Smith is an aggrieved party, either because he has been assaulted or robbed, or because an arbitration award in his favor has not been honored. Smith believes that Jones is the party guilty of the crime. Smith then goes to a court, Court A, of which he is a client, and brings charges against Jones as a defendant. In my view, the hallmark of an anarchist society is one where no man may legally compel someone who is not a convicted criminal to do anything, since that would be aggression against an innocent man’s person or property. Therefore, Court A can only invite rather than subpoena Jones to attend his trial. Of course, if Jones refused to appear or send a representative, his side of the case will not be heard. The trial of Jones proceeds. Suppose that Court A finds Jones innocent. In my view, part of the generally accepted law code of the anarchist society (on which see further below) is that this must end the matter unless Smith can prove charges of gross incompetence or bias on the part of the court.

Suppose, next, that Court A finds Jones guilty. Jones might accept the verdict, because he too is a client of the same court, because he knows he is guilty, or for some other reason. In that case, Court A proceeds to exercise judgment against Jones. Neither of these instances poses very difficult problems for our picture of the anarchist society. But suppose, instead, that Jones contests the decision; he then goes to his court, Court B, and the case is retried there. Suppose that Court B, too, finds Jones guilty. Again, it seems to me that the accepted law code of the anarchist society will assert that this ends the matter; both parties have had their say in courts which each has selected, and the decision for guilt is unanimous.

Suppose, however, the most difficult case: that Court B finds Jones innocent. The two courts, each subscribed to by one of the two parties, have split their verdicts. In that case, the two courts will submit the case to an appeals court, or arbitrator, which the two courts agree upon. There seems to be no real difficulty about the concept of an appeals court. As in the case of arbitration contracts, it seems very likely that the various private courts in the society will have prior agreements to submit their disputes to a particular appeals court. How will the appeals judges be chosen? Again, as in the case of arbitrators or of the first judges on the free market, they will be chosen for their expertise and their reputation for efficiency, honesty, and integrity. Obviously, appeals judges who are inefficient or biased will scarcely be chosen by courts who will have a dispute. The point here is that there is no need for a legally established or institutionalized single, monopoly appeals court system, as states now provide. There is no reason why there cannot arise a multitude of efficient and honest appeals judges who will be selected by the disputant courts, just as there are numerous private arbitrators on the market today. The appeals court renders its decision, and the courts proceed to enforce it if, in our example, Jones is considered guilty – unless, of course, Jones can prove bias in some other court proceedings.

No society can have unlimited judicial appeals, for in that case there would be no point to having judges or courts at all. Therefore, every society, whether statist or anarchist, will have to have some socially accepted cutoff point for trials and appeals. My suggestion is the rule that the agreement of any two courts, be decisive. “Two” is not an arbitrary figure, for it reflects the fact that there are two parties, the plaintiff and the defendant, to any alleged crime or contract dispute.

If the courts are to be empowered to enforce decision against guilty parties, does this not bring back the state in another form and thereby negate anarchism? No, for at the beginning of this paper I explicitly defined anarchism in such a way as not to rule out the use of defensive force – force in defense of person and property – by privately supported agencies. In the same way, it is not bringing back the state to allow persons to use force to defend themselves against aggression, or to hire guards or police agencies to defend them.

It should be noted, however, that in the anarchist society there will be no “district attorney” to press charges on behalf of “society.” Only the victims will press charges as the plaintiffs. If, then, these victims should happen to be absolute pacifists who are opposed even to defensive force, then they will simply not press charges in the courts or otherwise retaliate against those who have aggressed against them. In a free society that would be their right. If the victim should suffer from murder, then his heir would have the right to press the charges.

What of the Hatfield-and-McCoy problem? Suppose that a Hatfield kills a McCoy, and that McCoy’s heir does not belong to a private insurance, police agency, or court, and decides to retaliate himself? Since under anarchism there can be no coercion of the noncriminal, McCoy would have the perfect right to do so. No one may be compelled to bring his case to a court. Indeed, since the right to hire police or courts flows form the right of self-defense against aggression, it would be inconsistent and in contradiction to the very basis of the free society to institute such compulsion.

Suppose, then, that the surviving McCoy finds what he believes to be the guilty Hatfield and kills him in turn? What then? This is fine, except that McCoy may have to worry about charges being brought against him by a surviving Hatfield. Here it must be emphasized that in the law of the anarchist society based on defense against aggression, the courts would not be able to proceed against McCoy if in fact he killed the right Hatfield. His problem would arise if the courts should find that he made a grievous mistake and killed the wrong man; in that case, he in turn would be found guilty of murder. Surely, in most instances, individuals will wish to obviate such problems by taking their case to a court and thereby gain social acceptability for their defensive retaliation – not for the act of retaliation but for the correctness of deciding who the criminal in any given case might be. The purpose of the judicial process, indeed, is to find a way of general agreement on who might be the criminal or contract breaker in any given case. The judicial process is not a good in itself; thus, in the case of an assassination, such as Jack Ruby’s murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, on public television, there is no need for a complex judicial process, since the name of the murderer is evident to all.

Will not the possibility exist of a private court that may turn venal and dishonest, or of a private police force that turns criminal and extorts money by coercion? Of course such an event may occur, given the propensities of human nature. Anarchism is not a moral cure-all. But the important point is that market forces exist to place severe checks on such possibilities, especially in contrast to a society where a state exists. For, in the first place, judges, like arbitrators, will prosper on the market in proportion to their reputation for efficiency and impartiality. Secondly, on the free market important checks and balances exist against venal courts or criminal police forces. Namely, that there are competing courts and police agencies to whom victims may turn for redress. If the “Prudential Police Agency” should turn outlaw and extract revenue from victims by coercion, the latter would have the option of turning to the “Mutual” or “Equitable” Police Agency for defense and for pressing charges against Prudential. These are the genuine “checks and balances” of the free market, genuine in contrast to the phony check and balances of a state system, where all the alleged “balancing” agencies are in the hands of one monopoly government. Indeed, given the monopoly “protection service” of a state, what is there to prevent a state from using its monopoly channels of coercion to extort money from the public? What are the checks and limits of the state? None, except for the extremely difficult course of revolution against a power with all of the guns in its hands. In fact, the state provides an easy, legitimated channel for crime and aggression, since it has its very being in the crime of tax theft, and the coerced monopoly of “protection.” It is the state, indeed, that functions as a mighty “protection racket” on a giant and massive scale. It is the state that says: “Pay us for your ‘protection’ or else.” In the light of the massive and inherent activities of the state, the danger of a “protection racket” emerging from one or more private police agencies is relatively small indeed.

Moreover, it must be emphasized that a crucial element in the power of the state is its legitimacy in the eyes of the majority of the public, the fact that after centuries of propaganda, the depredations of the state are looked upon rather as benevolent services. Taxation is generally not seen as theft, nor war as mass murder, nor conscription as slavery. Should a private police agency turn outlaw, should “Prudential” become a protection racket, it would then lack the social legitimacy which the state has managed to accrue to itself over the centuries. “Prudential” would be seen by all as bandits, rather than as legitimate or divinely appointed “sovereigns” bent on promoting the “common good” or the “general welfare.” And lacking such legitimacy, “Prudential” would have to face the wrath of the public and the defense and retaliation of the other private defense agencies, the police and courts, on the free market. Given these inherent checks and limits, a successful transformation from a free society to bandit rule becomes most unlikely. Indeed, historically, it has been very difficult for a state to arise to supplant a stateless society; usually, it has come about through external conquest rather than by evolution from within a society.

Within the anarchist camp, there has been much dispute on whether the private courts would have to be bound by a basic, common law code. Ingenious attempts have been made to work out a system where the laws or standards of decision-making by the courts would differ completely from one to another. But in my view all would have to abide by the basic law code, in particular, prohibition of aggression against person and property, in order to fulfill our definition of anarchism as a system which provides no legal sanction for such aggression. Suppose, for example, that one group of people in society holds that all redheads are demons who deserve to be shot on sight. Suppose that Jones, one of this group, shoots Smith, a redhead. Suppose that Smith or his heir presses charges in a court, but that Jones’s court, in philosophic agreement with Jones, finds him innocent therefore. It seems to me that in order to be considered legitimate, any court would have to follow the basic libertarian law code of the inviolate right of person and property. For otherwise, courts might legally subscribe to a code which sanctions such aggression in various cases, and which to that extent would violate the definition of anarchism and introduce, if not the state, then a strong element of statishness or legalized aggression into the society.

But again I see no insuperable difficulties here. For in that case, anarchists, in agitating for their creed, will simply include in their agitation the idea of a general libertarian law code as part and parcel of the anarchist creed of abolition of legalized aggression against person or property in the society.

In contrast to the general law code, other aspects of court decisions could legitimately vary in accordance with the market or the wishes of the clients; for example, the language the cases will be conducted in, the number of judges to be involved, and so on.

There are other problems of the basic law code which there is no time to go into here: for example, the definition of just property titles or the question of legitimate punishment of convicted offenders – though the latter problem of course exists in statist legal systems as well. The basic point, however, is that the state is not needed to arrive at legal principles or their elaboration: indeed, much of the common law, the law merchant, admiralty law, and private law in general, grew up apart from the state, by judges not making the law but finding it on the basis of agreed-upon principles derived either from custom or reason. The idea that the state is needed to make law is as much a myth as that the state is needed to supply postal or police services.

Enough has been said here, I believe, to indicate that an anarchist system for settling disputes would be both viable and self-subsistent: that once adopted, it could work and continue indefinitely. How to arrive at that system is of course a very different problem, but certainly at the very least it will not likely come about unless people are convinced of its workability, are convinced, in short, that the state is not a necessary evil.

© Barry Belmont for UNR Students for Liberty, 2010.
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Keegan’s First Email

Hello Barry,

I hope all is well for your classes and such.  Mine are a bitch, which is probably why I spend so much time procrastinating with this discussion.

I did watch the entire lecture before replying, so there is no reason to be snide (unless you weren’t implying that I didn’t actually watch it–in which case, sorry I misunderstood).

My biggest objection would be in-group out-group mentality.  If you can show me that people do not do this, I still will not claim you are right (since there are too many other unanswered problems), but I will admit you are on the right track.

This is not the same as saying that people have empathy or altruism.  This is saying that people will not form groups which will help themselves above others, and/or help themselves at the expense of others.

If one of these books addresses this issue (not morality as a whole) then I will read it.  But I will admit it would take some pretty impressive evidence to convince that I am wrong on this issue (as it is evident in most human cultures and in most primate cultures).  ”Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”.

If you feel that this is an answerable question, and that you are on a role, you might want to also address why a thief or a murderer would ever willingly put himself under the authority of a court system.  They have everything to lose and nothing to gain.

And if you really feel like these are flies to be swatted down with the flick of a wrist, you might also want to address the issue of the courts and police being biased towards the people paying the bills.

I suspect that you, like me, have spent some time arguing with Creationists.  And if there is one thing that they all seem to do (aside from quote scripture at me), it is to give me a reading list of twenty or thirty books which prove Creation.  I don’t want to spend years of my life becoming a scholar to a theory I don’t believe in, and if you have been in my position I am sure you can understand my reasons for feeling this way.  I will read one book on why in-group/out-group mentality does not actually exist, and I will read one other book that you feel is in defense of anarchocapitalism.  More than that I will probably be unwilling to do.  And even that will have to wait until I get through the books currently on my plate.  There are four that I have to read, but I should be done with them in less than a month (I was also going to attempt “Tragedy and Hope”, but it is far too daunting and boring).

You don’t need to give me a lengthy response to anything.  I’m pretty good at being able to see the argument from the other side, so if you just give me the gist, I can fill in the meat of the argument myself (in this way you might be able to quickly cover the 12 (although only 10 are important) problems mentioned previously).

Keegan

P.S.  I would have expected you to respect a critical response, or at the very least to give positive lip-service to it.

Barry’s Response

Hello.

It is ironic that you should bring up your discussions with “creationists.” Most likely they are of the new flavor of ‘Intelligent Design.’ It is ironic because presumably you see through the flaws of their arguments quite easily: no intelligent designer is necessary to create the order and complexity we see around us. We know this because there is evidence that a bottom-up system called natural selection does this. In fact, evidence presented in favor of intelligent design (the human eye, the nervous system, prefrontal cortex, bacteria flagellum, etc) all not only point toward natural selection but would be really silly evidence in favor of an intelligent designer (for instance, why would an intelligent designer put the eye upside down and backward?). You are able to see quite easily the flaws in their arguments in favor of “intelligent design” but when you are asked to reconsider your beliefs in an intelligent designer, namely the State, you get just as up in arms as they do. Indeed, it seems you fall into many of the same traps they do.

Consider for instance that you are an anarchist to every other government but your own. You certainly do not recognize the legitimacy of the Egyptian government’s claim over you or France’s sovereignty over you. You don’t recognize the Queen of England as anything more than a figurehead, the same goes for the Pope and the Dalai Lama. You recognize the American government’s dominion over you simply because you happened to have been born under it. Had you been born in Egypt or France you would have claimed they had dominion over you. There is an obvious parallel to be made to which religion you happen to subscribe to. One supports intelligent design because they just happened to have been born a Christian in contemporary America. This Christian knows what it’s like to be an atheist to all other gods, just as you know what it’s like to be an anarchist to all other governments.

More to the point how can one coherently believe in a State without believing there should be a Total State? All the currently governments have lived in a state of anarchy amongst each other, have they not? If Amsterdam has marijuana legalized and America does not, who is to remedy this injustice? Or are laws as fickle as all that? And if they are, if laws are so arbitrary and context specific, why call them laws? If one advocates the existence of a State, invariably they must follow this logic to its bitter end with all people under the banner of a single (hopefully benevolent) State.

But as you said, there exists in-group/out-group (IG/OG) mentality within the human race. Fair enough. I can accept that. But how is this such a bad thing? We must separate the issues. In-group/out-group doesn’t mean anything by itself. People are either a part of UNR SFL or they’re not. I treat people who are members differently than those who are not. There is nothing wrong with this. The problem would come if I aggressed against someone because of this. But this is a separate issue. It’s not the IG/OG that’s bad, it’s the coercion. Mets fans may hate Yankees fans but so long as there isn’t any violence or threats of violence, then where is the harm? Do you see why we must pull these two issues apart? If there is no actual harm in being a part of a group, then, what exactly is wrong with it?

So say I want to be part of private society A and you wanted to be part of private society B. One like country, the other likes rock’n'roll. One likes chunky peanut butter, the other smooth. Just completely irreconcilable societies who won’t even trade with one another, that’s how much this bitter feud has gone on. So long as it’s all completely voluntary there is absolutely nothing wrong with it. What if, you may object, they hate each other so much that they decide to fight? But remember that is a different issue. It’s not the tribalism that is wrong there, it is the coercion. The exact same critique can be made of existing States: what happens if Canada finally gets sick and tired of America and decides to attack them? Or New Mexico decides to fight Old Mexico or Arizona. Detroit vs Luxembuorg. Certainly numerous scenarios can be presented as “What if A, *verbs* B?” As long as the *verbs* part is voluntary in nature (“loves,” “trades with,” “hates”…) there is nothing wrong with it. There can’t be…unless you think that there are voluntary actions which people should not be allowed to freely engage in. It’s when *verbs* becomes coercive (“fights,” “kills,” “invades”…) that problems arise.

I don’t think you would be so bold to claim that tribalism necessarily causes violence, but let’s assume you were. This claim has already been undermined by the fact that UNR SFL is tribal in nature and is completely nonviolent. Adherents to Jainism are tribal and by their very nature non-violent. There are tons of examples ranging from basketweaving classes to high schools to basketball teams’ fans to you name it that are very much prone to IG/OG mentality and yet are not violent to a significantly larger extent than would be predicted by chance alone. So this empirical claim of IG/OG -> violence is not viable.

Where does this leave us? I think I have shown that your objection to the idea of a purely voluntary society on the grounds of IG/OG is not strong enough to warrant casting such a society aside and replacing it with a coercive State apparatus. Simply because IG/OG mentality exists is not evidence in favor of the necessity of coercion, of taxes, of a monopoly of defense services. Indeed, imagine if your IG/OG argument was strong enough to overturn the idea of a voluntary society: it would necessarily be strong enough to overturn the idea of even a governable society on two accounts: 1) The governed and the governing would split into two groups that would not peaceably interact. If they could peaceably interact than the coercive apparatus between them wouldn’t be necessary. 2) What is to prevent the monopolistic agent of defense services, an in-group, from aggressing against all other out-groups, to the point of eliminating them entirely as they are the only ones with a sizeable supply of tools for eradication? What is to prevent IG/OG aggression  in this realm and not others? It is quite clear that if IG/OG dynamics wouldn’t reach a crescendo in such an environment as that between the monopolistic defense agency and all others (what could be easier than the military extorting us all for money?) then clearly IG/OG is not a sufficient criticism of a voluntary society.

I know you had more in that letter of yours, but I would like to ask that we try to remain focused in this series of letters. I don’t mind a tangential point or example periodically, but we should really hammer home one point at a time. For instance, I asked a very specific question when I asked you to participate in this: what are the conditions that I need to meet to convince you that anarchocapitalism is a good idea? In other words, I would like to know that you are willing to change your mind and what it would take to do this. We should be up front with one another about this. For example, I would renounce anarchocapitalism entirely if it turned out people weren’t mostly “not-bad.” Or I would believe in a benevolent dictator if it could be shown that it would vastly improve the human condition. Or I would believe in democracy if it turned out the majority was always right. These are very specific things which someone could convince me of. I would like to know that you are willing to be convinced that a voluntary society is possible. Because if you’re not, then we likely won’t have nearly as fruitful a conversation as I had imagined.

Hope this helps,

Barry

© Barry Belmont for UNR Students for Liberty, 2010.
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The Parable of the Pawnbroker

I was a pawnbroker… This guy came into my store, drew a chain out of his right-side pocket, and said, “How much will you give me for this fine gold necklace?”

…I politely looked at his necklace. It was fake. I pointed out to him the chintzy clasp, totally unlike what would be on a necklace of value. But he still insisted that it was real; so I cut the chain with a file, ready to test it with acid. But I didn’t need the acid: the inside was brown, not even gold in color.

The guy dropped the chain in his left pocket. He drew another chain out of his right pocket, and said, “This one’s the real thing.” This one’s the real thing? That was like admitting he’d known all along that the first one was fake.

I showed him that this one didn’t say, “14K,” like real gold would. It said, “14KEP,” meaning it was electroplate. It wasn’t even pretending to be real. But the guy still insisted it was real. So I cut it with my file, and showed him it was another fake.

Can you guess what he did then? He dropped it into his left pocket, pulled a third chain from his right, and told me that this one was real. I was happy to file this one too, ruin it, so he couldn’t try to fool anyone else.

He pulled out a fourth chain. He said it was real. I showed him that it wasn’t.

…First pattern: When this guy said a chain was real, that didn’t carry any weight. His apparent sincerity was an act or a pathology, not an indication of actual truthfulness. His saying something was legitimate didn’t make it legitimate, didn’t even increase the likelihood that it was legitimate.

Second pattern: This guy’s chains were fake. I had yet to examine his [next] chain, but I already believed it was fake.

I was willing to be surprised; if the chain turned out to be real, I would have accepted that. But I believed it was fake. And that was a justified belief, reasonable in the circumstances.

This story is analogous with my experience with political beliefs. Somebody will tell me that the human greed is a solid gold proof for the necessity of a State. I point out that it is patently absurd, and he pulls out another argument.

He doesn’t blush or backpedal. He makes no apology for having indiscriminately swallowed a lie and repeated it as a truth. He doesn’t tell his friends, “Hey, don’t be using thiss argument anymore.” No, he just tells me that the free trade is exploitative and thus this is an absolute proof for the State to exist. When I point out that this argument is no stronger than its opposite, forced labor and taxes, what does he do? Is he taken aback? No, he goes on to speak of defense services and laws and order and militaries and roads and airports and claims that none of this could have come about without the guiding hand of an intelligent designer. When I show that there is a grandeur to this view of life, that each and every one of those things can be provided freely through a market systems just as good or even better without the need of coercion, does he say he’d better rethink whether his government should really exist? Of course not. He pulls out another argument, and says, with all the sincerity of a seller of fake chains, “This one’s the real thing.”

© Barry Belmont for UNR Students for Liberty, 2010.
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If you haven’t heard about this, this is John McKenna getting the unholy crap kicked out of him. The full story can be read here. It should also be noted that when the police were first asked to explain McKenna’s injuries they said he was kicked by a horse…

© Barry Belmont for UNR Students for Liberty, 2010.
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Not only is it parroted constantly by those with the political insight of a wool sock, but it’s about as relevant to any discussion on political philosophy as what one eats for breakfast.

Briefly, You’re all hypocrites because you attend a public school. Now, before we begin, I’d like to just point out that even if we were “hypocrites” (or “fascists” or “nazis” or “stupid-faces”) this would in no way effect the claims which we make. Claims are independent of the claimant.  This is equivalent to saying we shouldn’t listen to X talk about evolutionary biology because X is a fundamentalist Christian. But it doesn’t matter what X is, only what X claims. Our claim that public schools shouldn’t exist is independent of the fact that we, unfortunately, attend them.

That said, one of the largest criticisms for state-sponsored schools is that they horribly mismanage funds and send contradictory signals to the market. By lowering the price of tuition they send two messages: demanders, demand more; suppliers, supply less. What are we as students but demanders of education? By artificially lowering the price, there is little that prevents us as partakers in a market, from seeking the biggest bang for our buck. Thus, we’re not so much as hypocrites as we are two entities: 1) People who know how markets work (and would love to see them work properly) and 2) People who are in the market. If a college cost a dollar a year, I’d attend it. Granted, I would know that such a system couldn’t sustain itself, but that is not my primary concern. Can I really be held responsible if I go to Bob’s Paint-a-Pet store only when he’s offering $1 paintings and no other times? No. I know that what I’m doing by participating isn’t helping the state-supplied system, but I don’t care. Why should I? I don’t care about my purchases at Wal-Mart or Taco Bell, why should I suddenly give a damn about the State?

Why is okay for you to attend and not others? I can’t recall anyone of us urging anyone else not to come to UNR or any other state institution. I don’t recall us ever saying it was okay for us and not for others to come. Strawmen of the world unite. But more to point, what is this criticism really driving at? I think it wants to force libertarians in general to be somehow HolierThanThou about everything, as if we weren’t normal people with normal desires. We’re against a State for a number of reasons, one of which is its rampant inefficiency. We believe it’s too easy to exploit it for money. The fact that we ourselves do this does not diminish our claim, but only furthers it: We stand and we say, look at how easy this is to exploit. I fail to see the point of this criticism.

Thus, to wrap this all up: the You’re-Hypocrites criticism is nothing more than an ad hominem attack directed at no one in particular that proves absolutely nothing. Anyone who squawks this line enough may come to believe it has some effect as all arguments from one side seem to die down — silence as interpreted as victory. And if this is what it takes for these pathetically sad individuals to feel good about themselves, then fine, let them chirp and sing and dance around proclaiming Hip-O-Cray-SEE and feeling they’ve done something. Who are we to say what they should do? We just don’t care.

Chirp and flutter and make all the noise you want, what does it compare to the absurdity of pooping in a cage all of your life…

© Barry Belmont for UNR Students for Liberty, 2010.
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