Questions for Anarchists

Let me start this by saying that I apologize for some of the graphic nature of my examples. I believe it is necessary to show the weight of these questions.

Let us say, there is no government. People rely on private defense agencies to protect them and their property. I offer such a service. The problem is, I am a fraud. I even run several "independent" rating websites, at least most of which put me at the top of the ranking. I read the news before we were liberated from the oppressive hand of state. Old folks are easy to fool. They got taken in by schemes all the time. And when their house is broken into or their property or persons are otherwise violated, and my resources are nowhere to be found, who can they turn to? And, when enough people have realized they've been had, I just take their money, close up shop, and move to the next town, undercutting the prices of all the "competition" with my fraudulent service. I do, of course, maintain enough of a force to put on a show or defend against any reprisals on my way out of town, but this hardly requires the resources that actually protecting my clients would.

When I go to the store, I bring my child, led along with hooks through his face. The store allows it, along with the armed bodyguards I keep with me. It is no secret what I do to the child, but who can act against me? Sure, you can boycott the store, along with your friends. Maybe that will force the store to stop allowing it. Maybe that will make me stop doing it. Until then, of course, my kid is still being dragged along by hooks through his face.

I run a newspaper without ads. I present it as if it were a truly objective source of information paid for by subscriptions alone. I also accept bribes to lie about certain client companies and their competitors. I defraud my customers, but what of it? Who even has the right to investigate it? I rule by disinformation. Even if another news source tries to expose me, what makes them seem more reliable?

I have a farm with high fences. You can still see my slaves through them, though. I collected them, vagabonds and independent sorts who thought they could live without a defense agency. But, anyone can be taken by surprise. So, I took them, and now they live on my farm, watched carefully, tongues removed so they can not make any contracts with anyone. Using my slaves, I make good money, selling in places where my media outlets (see above) refute any source that says that I use slave labor.

How do you propose anarchy would deal with these situations? I propose that governments, however flawed they have been thus far in execution, are capable of protecting the weak in ways anarchy is not, and that the strong have at least some obligation to do so, albeit by the least intrusive method possible. Of course, some anarchists say that people only have "rights" if they can assert them, and discard the stupid, the foolish, the weak, as deserving what comes to them. Deserve, my friends, is a dangerous word. As William Munny said, "We've all got it comin', kid.".

And, when enough people have realized they've been had, I just take their money, close up shop, and move to the next town, undercutting the prices of all the "competition" with my fraudulent service...

That's still an improvement on today, when the fraudulent provider has no need to close up shop, and continues operating indefinitely. When the victims come to complain, they're ignored. If they're persistent, they will be tased, arrested or even shot.

When I go to the store, I bring my child, led along with hooks through his face. The store allows it, along with the armed bodyguards I keep with me. It is no secret what I do to the child, but who can act against me?

What fraction of the population has that kind of power in an anarchic society? They would have to afford a private army, more or less, to pull that off. In our current society, we know exactly where to look for people with such power: from the Arkansas governor who brutally raped a supporter, to the President who groped a grieving widow in the Oval Office, to the lowliest local sheriff, we know where to look. And not a single one of those people, right down to the dog catcher, has survived serious scrutiny without crimes of one sort or another being exposed. So despite the lack of scientific statistics on the matter, I'd be pretty comfortable picking any perverted aggression you could think of and giving you even odds that any randomly-selected politician is guilty.

How do you propose anarchy would deal with these situations?

How would government deal with them? Remember, anarchy doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to be no worse than what we've got. For every crime stopped by government force, fifty others have been committed using government force.

--Len

Tongueless Slaves?  Kid with hooks through his face?  Even the easily defrauded elderly that perpetuate this sadists income will either get a clue or die of old age.

What makes you think anarchists, who oppose the state, are not also opposed to "loopholes" in dealing with miscreants?

Contracts can be broken.  The contract does not usurp the freedom to change one's mind.  So whether the tongueless slaves could make contracts with anyone is irrelevant.

But taking the most extreme example of what kind of evil could happen under anarchism is silly.  It makes too many assumptions such as the body guards want to work for a sadist, that this person can succeed in finding slaves to own.   That his hook-faced child will not have set him on fire in his bed.  That the elderly are always stupid....the list can go on and on.

Even so, I don't think the state is needed to combat a hypothetical villain.  Places in the world where people similar to this have existed without state intervention (most of the time the state perpetuates these people and gives them money...check out some of the Kurdish warlords for some recent examples) they are usually declared a threat to civil society and killed.  Often by their own body guards who sensibly see which way the tide is turning and would rather be seen as  a hero by an oppressed populace rather than suffer their retaliation. (see Laurent Kabila for an example of this).

But for your consideration in the world of bizzaro hypothetical questions:

What if a space monster arrived on earth and only ate people who filed their income tax returns?  Wouldn't we then need to abolish the IRS?

JC,

It seems almost like you're wanting some sort of guarantee that bad things won't happen to anyone in an anarchic society. But government can't offer this kind of utopia either. The question is a comparative one, which is better or which is worse?

Now, we could easily come up with bizarre and appalling hyophetical scenarios to paint the state in a bad light as well. Len Budney already gave a few examples, of things that actually do happen under the state. As for how children can be treated, well do you think that the state does such a good job with our children in its public schools and its Department of Social Services (or whatever it's called)?

Don't scam artists already get away with things today? And I think that the expectation that the state will protect consumers probably leads to consumers being more complacent, more gullible, etc.

Old folks? The state does such a wonderful job protecting them already, eh? No, not really.

What about slaves and clear child abuse? Well, since these things involve rights-violations and according to Locke everyone in society has a right to restrain criminals by whatever proportional force is necessary to end the rights-violations and end a serious ongoing threat, I don't see why these things can't be dealth with in an anarchic society. I'll tell you what though, having political connections or having political power oneself can protect you from justice far better than being wealthy in an anarchic society.

I'm curious how many and which of the major anarchist texts you've read thus far.

Yet another one of these threads?

-Jon

Len Budney:

That's still an improvement on today, when the fraudulent provider has no need to close up shop, and continues operating indefinitely. When the victims come to complain, they're ignored. If they're persistent, they will be tased, arrested or even shot.

That is a flaw with the current provider, but not necessarily one inherent to such providers.

Len Budney:

What fraction of the population has that kind of power in an anarchic society? They would have to afford a private army, more or less, to pull that off.

You don't need a private army, just a fearsome enough presence that people, who actually tend to be apathetic and cowardly, won't have their sentiments overwhelm their fear and apathy. There are cases of groups of people just standing by while robberies, rapes or murders occur. What makes you think people will be so much braver or more conscientious in the anarchist society. Indeed, what is to stop entire communities that accept such atrocities as a matter of course from arising? Entire communities of NAMBLA types, for instance. You can watch any one of those "to catch a predator" shows and see scores of men of every age, race and socioeconomic background flocking to have sex with underage girls.

Len Budney:

In our current society, we know exactly where to look for people with such power: from the Arkansas governor who brutally raped a supporter, to the President who groped a grieving widow in the Oval Office, to the lowliest local sheriff, we know where to look. And not a single one of those people, right down to the dog catcher, has survived serious scrutiny without crimes of one sort or another being exposed. So despite the lack of scientific statistics on the matter, I'd be pretty comfortable picking any perverted aggression you could think of and giving you even odds that any randomly-selected politician is guilty.

I'm not sure what you mean here, but if you mean what I think you do, I'm sorry, but you're full of it. Of course you only hear about the cases where scandals happened; the news doesn't tend to get ratings around stories stating "we found no scandal around politician x today".

Len Budney:

How do you propose anarchy would deal with these situations?

How would government deal with them? Remember, anarchy doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to be no worse than what we've got. For every crime stopped by government force, fifty others have been committed using government force.

There is no way to know whether what you say is true, but even if it is, the flaws of current and past governments do not form a conclusive argument against government in general. I'm sure you can point out the places where our current government prohibits things it ought not, or allows thing within it that it ought not, but in reality, there is only ONE, count them, ONE government that has ever been truly formed on even the pretense of guaranteeing liberty, and the fact that it has deep flaws does not mean that a new government, seeing where it failed, might not be able to compensate for many of these flaws.

Jon Irenicus:

Yet another one of these threads?

-Jon

No kidding. And it seems like very time the critics of anarchism have forgotten all of the arguments the anarchists had made in the previous threads.

What if under anarchy a man built a dungeon to hold his daughter in for decades, raped her repeatedly and had children by her, and nobody knew or said anything?

Oh wait.

Indeed, and it seems they're so willing to assume the notion of a perfect government as the solution to all one's problems. Why not spend all this time conjuring up hypotheticals with the government in control instead? Or, why not spend it solving these potential problems instead? If one has the imagination to go into these flights of fancy, I find it scantly convincing that they can't do either of the former. What if Martians landed on earth, then what?

-Jon

JCFolsom:

Len Budney:

That's still an improvement on today, when the fraudulent provider has no need to close up shop, and continues operating indefinitely. When the victims come to complain, they're ignored. If they're persistent, they will be tased, arrested or even shot.

That is a flaw with the current provider, but not necessarily one inherent to such providers.

Actually, that's not true. It's inherent in the nature of the state. Oh sure, once in a blue moon it's possible to set up a limited state whose abuses are relatively mild and few at first, but they always grow into Leviathan.

JCFolsom:

There is no way to know whether what you say is true, but even if it is, the flaws of current and past governments do not form a conclusive argument against government in general. I'm sure you can point out the places where our current government prohibits things it ought not, or allows thing within it that it ought not, but in reality, there is only ONE, count them, ONE government that has ever been truly formed on even the pretense of guaranteeing liberty, and the fact that it has deep flaws does not mean that a new government, seeing where it failed, might not be able to compensate for many of these flaws.

That's based purely on historical examples. Even on purely historical grounds though, the track record of the state is horrendous. But there are strong theoretical arguments, which I get the impression you're not familiar with, that show why the state itself is the problem not just particular flawed versions of it. To quote Edmund Burke "The thing! The thing itself is the abuse!"

Geoffrey Allan Plauche:

No kidding. And it seems like very time the critics of anarchism have forgotten all of the arguments the anarchists had made in the previous threads.

JCFolsom:

You don't need a private army, just a fearsome enough presence that people, who actually tend to be apathetic and cowardly, won't have their sentiments overwhelm their fear and apathy. There are cases of groups of people just standing by while robberies, rapes or murders occur. What makes you think people will be so much braver or more conscientious in the anarchist society.

Hhmmm...maybe the fact that they know the state isn't around to do it for them? That the state can't serve as an excuse for not doing anything? Because people who live under an interventionist state become sheeple?

And what about all the examples we could conjure up of the state's inaction?

JCFolsom:

Indeed, what is to stop entire communities that accept such atrocities as a matter of course from arising? Entire communities of NAMBLA types, for instance. You can watch any one of those "to catch a predator" shows and see scores of men of every age, race and socioeconomic background flocking to have sex with underage girls.

What about Nazi Germany, which the US helped to create? What about the USSR? What about Mao's Great Leap Forward (or Backward, rather) program in China that results in the deaths of tens of millions? What about the Roman Republic and Empire? I could go on.

And you don't think decades of government intervention into the economy and into our lives hasn't perhaps made such perverted people more common than they would be under libertarian anarchy? The US government isn't responsible at all for changing mores, poor education (incuding moral), and social disintegration in our society?

What do you mean when you write "as a matter of course"? You think such perverted communities will be prevalent? Or just inevitable? I think it's quite a stretch to assert that they'll be prevalent. As for inevitable, well if this is what you meant then it looks like you're searching for impossible guarantees again, guarantees that the state can't provide either.

liberty student:

Instead of regard people as being critical of anarchy, why not regard it as inquisitive and questioning?

Some of the skeptics may be inquisitive, and I applaud those that are, but I get the impression from others that they aren't interested in learning at all. They aren't interested in discovering the truth. They're just interested in punching holes in anarchism when they haven't even bothered educating themselves on anarchist theories and arguments. These forum discussions really are no substitute for reading the major texts that put forth the theoretical and historical arguments for anarchism. Rehashing old arguments from time to time is fine and even expected, but we don't need a new thread on anarchism being started up every few days or every week. It would also help if anyone tempted to start up a new thread on a subject would look in the archives to see if it has been discussed before and read what was said rather than trying to re-invent the wheel every time. That said, I think we need a minarchist and anarchist reading list to refer people to so that we don't have to keep hunting down and posting links from scratch each time we need to refer someone to a particular essay, blogpost or book.

JCFolsom:

Len Budney:

That's still an improvement on today, when the fraudulent provider has no need to close up shop, and continues operating indefinitely. When the victims come to complain, they're ignored. If they're persistent, they will be tased, arrested or even shot.

That is a flaw with the current provider, but not necessarily one inherent to such providers.

Actually, it IS inherent. That's one of the critical assumptions underlying libertarianism of any stripe, and one which is thoroughly proven by Austrians.

The first principle of libertarianism is: all humans act in self-interest. (Whether this implies that saints can't exist, or merely assumes that they're rare enough to be ignored, is more of a religious discussion.) In particular, we can always assume that humans will refrain from making choices to their own detriment. A CEO will not resign against his own interests because it's in the shareholders' interests. A President will not step down against his interests because it's in the citizens' interest. A sheriff will not arrest himself. And so on. (The rare cases that seem to violate this principle can be lumped with the "saint" question above.) From this we conclude that the chief of police will protect himself against exposure of his own errors, incompetence or wrong-doing, and will protect his department from such things in order to protect himself, both from the public and from officers angry at his "betrayal." And so on.

In short, libertarians don't believe in saints, so we don't believe that anyone can have coercive power without using it for his own advantage. Even minarchists admit that power creates enormous pressure for its own misuse--they just believe that they can pit two people's self-interest against each other in such a way that power is "balanced" and "checked." (American history proves their error: whoever you pit against each other realize that both win big if they collude.)

Austrians prove it using praxeology. By definition, humans act in order to change a less satisfactory state into a more satisfactory one. Based on this axiom, the theorem that humans act in self-interest is proven with reasonable rigor. Add in Austrian monopoly theory, and we conclude that anyone with a monopoly on power will use it in his own self-interest. Which is the same as I just described above, but it's even more thoroughly reasoned.

Once again, the conclusion is that a monopoly provider of "justice" or "security" will not deal out "justice" to himself, nor provide security from himself.

'm not sure what you mean here, but if you mean what I think you do, I'm sorry, but you're full of it.

I mean that even my own personal experience, which is far removed from the political realm and tucked away in an insignificant corner of PA, I've dealt with a fair number of politicians, and so far each and every one has been guilty of one or more jailable crimes. That's an unscientific survey, but it's pretty d*mn compelling anyway.

So I don't know what you mean by "full of it," but if you mean that you'd have an easy time finding a politician who hadn't done something worthy of prison time, I would take your bet in a heartbeat, and I'd demand witnesses so you couldn't weasel out of paying up later.

Admittedly, the crimes I've witnessed have varied tremendously. Fixing citations for friends and relatives is a common favorite. Harrassing people they don't like using the police is fairly common. In a free society, some would be off the hook for their drug and prostitution habits, as would the magistrate in my town who fixed cases for her heroin dealer. Dereliction of duty by police is so rare, and so frowned upon, that there's a web site devoted entirely to venting outrage against the ones who do their duty.

There is no way to know whether what you say is true, but even if it is, the flaws of current and past governments do not form a conclusive argument against government in general.

It doesn't provide a conclusive argument of anything, you're right. But it's mighty darn convincing if you study the founders of the republic, especially Jefferson, and realize what a masterful attempt they made at creating a minarchy. It should give anyone pause before he starts claming he can do better.

--Len