To the vast majority of individuals the above question seems absurd. “Of course we need government,” they argue, and for various reasons. These reasons are what I'm going to look at in this installment of The Tao of Arizona Atheist. I've covered some (silly) objections in the past, but with this post I want to cover some objections that are usually considered to be insurmountable according to opponents of anarchism. With this piece it is my hope that once you reach the end these objections will seem illogical, if not outright silly.
As I noted at this post I plan on only covering a handful of objections but will provide good references for those interested in learning more about anarchism and answers to more objections than I cover here. I was originally going to write something much more substantial and detailed but when I realized there were already many books available detailing answers to these many objections I changed my mind about doing such a thorough piece. I figured I would explain some of the most common objections and then list book recommendations for anyone curious to learn more since most questions and criticisms I've come across are answered in the books listed at the end of this piece.
The State of Nature is “Nasty, Brutish, and Short”
This is one of the classic arguments against anarchism proposed by Thomas Hobbes in the 17th Century in his book Leviathan. It argues that without a state to curb our selfish, violent, and destructive natures society would become unlivable. The answer to this state of affairs, argues Hobbes and other statists, is to have a central authority delegate the rules and morality of society and enforce said rules. There is a contradiction with this argument though. If man, by nature, is selfish and corrupt, then those who were delegated to become the ruling class would also suffer from the same moral corruption.
To quote Francois Tremblay,
In either case, [democracy or monarchy] we must concern ourselves with the individuals that compose the ruling class. At best, we cannot expect these individuals to be any different in character from the other individuals that compose the general population. In the case of democracy, where the most duplicitous and manipulative individuals rise to power, we should expect rulers to be generally inferior to the general population in terms of moral character. […]
Now, if we assume that the state of nature is corrupt and leads to constant war, then, as Hobbes concluded, we have no reason to believe that ruling class individuals are exempt from this rule. If this is the case, then we should not desire for these corrupt individuals to gain the power to coerce an entire population to serve their interests. Any state composed of corrupt individuals must be corrupt as well. If everyone is corrupt and seeks to dominate his fellows, then eliminating the biggest source of violence and exploitation, the State, should be our first priority; not maintaining its parasitic existence! [1]
With the countless acts of police brutality and government scandals and examples of corruption the above seems to be only common sense but many people seem to fall for it despite this strong objection.
Some may object that this abuse of power is what the separation of powers is supposed to help curb, but history clearly refutes this absurd objection. Even right now as I type president Barack Obama has broken the government's own laws by bypassing congressional approval for military action, as required by the War Powers Act of 1973, for his war in Libya. [2]
The Public Goods “Problem”
The public goods problem (which the national defense issue is an example of and I will cover that here as well) is a major complaint about anarchism, but I do not see why this is so. I like both Tremblay and Friedman's answers to this question so I will quote them both on this issue.
Tremblay writes about how national defense is a public good and how it might be solved in a state of anarchy (which as I've said before is a situation with no government, not a state of chaos),
While it is true that common defence is, to a certain extent, a public good, the problem of its provision is actually very easy to solve. Individuals value their common defense, and security agencies would benefit by offering it as a part of a package deal for their customers. Anyone who wanted to support the common defense of their territory would buy such package deals. In practice, it is likely that the biggest consumers of security would end up subsidizing everyone else's defence to a certain extent, but the costs would be generally spread around society. In fact, it is likely that the security companies themselves would only legitimize other companies that participate in the common defense. After all, the very survival of their market depends on their territory remaining safe. If a foreign State ever takes over, it is game over for all these security companies. [3]
Aside from protecting their own interests (by staying in business) from potential invading companies I would like to add that the success of these security companies depends on their reliability of their services (defense and safety) therefore, being a business on a free market wishing to continue making profits, will do their best to provide the best service possible because if a security company fails in its duty to protect its clients then their reputation suffers greatly and they will lose masses of customers, if not go out of business all together.
David Friedman writes,
A public good is an economic good which, by its nature, cannot be provided separately to each individual, but must be provided, or not provided, to all the members of a pre-existing group. A simple example is the control of a river whose flooding injures the land of many farmers in the valley below. There is no way that an entrepreneur who proposes to build a dam can protect only those farmers who agree to pay part of the cost of the dam. An individual farmer may refuse to pay, arguing that if the others all pay he will be protected anyway and if they do not his contribution will not be enough to build the dam. The small probability that his contribution will make the difference between the dam being built and not being built, multiplied by the value to him of the dam, is not enough to justify the expenditure.
This is the traditional problem of the public good. It is a problem because if there are enough farmers like this, each acting rationally on a correct calculation of his own self-interest, the dam will not be built, even though the combined value to all the farmers is more than the cost of building the dam.
In our society the usual solution is to use government force -- taxation -- to make those benefited (and others) pay for the dam. The trouble with this solution, aside from moral objections to the use of force, is that the dam may be produced even when its total value is less than its cost. The government has no market mechanism for measuring the total value of the dam to the farmers. And since government decisions are made on political grounds, the government may choose to ignore cost and value entirely. In practice, public dams are often built even when the return on the capital spent building them, including a generous estimate of nonmonetary benefits, is far below the market interest rate.
There are several market solutions to the problem of providing a public good. For instance, the entrepreneur might estimate how much the dam is worth to each farmer, draw up a contract obligating each farmer to pay that amount on condition that every other farmer agrees to pay his share, and circulate it. Each farmer knows that, if he refuses to sign, the dam will not be built, since the contract has to be unanimous. It is therefore in his interest to sign. [4]
While national defense and “public good” issues seem like insurmountable problems, in reality, there are workable solutions that have been proposed.
Defense 'R' Us v.s. National Defenders, Inc.
Two security companies have a dispute, so how would they go about solving it? I've come across this objection myself and I've answered it I believe in the comments somewhere, but I like the thoroughness of Friedman's answer to this problem so I will quote him in full (I apologize but this makes up nearly an entire chapter).
He writes,
Inevitably, conflicts would arise between one protective agency and another. How might they be resolved?
I come home one night and find my television set missing. I immediately call my protection agency, Tannahelp Inc., to report the theft. They send an agent. He checks the automatic camera which Tannahelp, as part of their service, installed in my living room and discovers a picture of one Joe Bock lugging the television set out the door. The Tannahelp agent contacts Joe, informs him that Tannahelp has reason to believe he is in possession of my television set, and suggests he return it, along with an extra ten dollars to pay for Tannahelp's time and trouble in locating Joe. Joe replies that he has never seen my television set in his life and tells the Tannahelp agent to go to hell.
The agent points out that until Tannahelp is convinced there has been a mistake, he must proceed on the assumption that the television set is my property. Six Tannahelp employees, all large and energetic, will be at Joe's door next morning to collect the set. Joe, in response, informs the agent that he also has a protection agency, Dawn Defense, and that his contract with them undoubtedly requires them to protect him if six goons try to break into his house and steal his television set.
The stage seems set for a nice little war between Tannahelp and Dawn Defense. It is precisely such a possibility that has led some libertarians who are not anarchists, most notably Ayn Rand, to reject the possibility of competing free-market protection agencies.
But wars are very expensive, and Tannahelp and Dawn Defense are both profit-making corporations, more interested in saving money than face. I think the rest of the story would be less violent than Miss Rand supposed.
The Tannahelp agent calls up his opposite number at Dawn Defense. 'We've got a problem. . . .' After explaining the situation, he points out that if Tannahelp sends six men and Dawn eight, there will be a fight. Someone might even get hurt. Whoever wins, by the time the conflict is over it will be expensive for both sides. They might even have to start paying their employees higher wages to make up for the risk. Then both firms will be forced to raise their rates. If they do, Murbard Ltd., an aggressive new firm which has been trying to get established in the area, will undercut their prices and steal their customers. There must be a better solution.
The man from Tannahelp suggests that the better solution is arbitration. They will take the dispute over my television set to a reputable local arbitration firm. If the arbitrator decides that Joe is innocent, Tannahelp agrees to pay Joe and Dawn Defense an indemnity to make up for their time and trouble. If he is found guilty, Dawn Defense will accept the verdict; since the television set is not Joe's, they have no obligation to protect him when the men from Tannahelp come to seize it.
What I have described is a very makeshift arrangement. In practice, once anarcho-capitalist institutions were well established, protection agencies would anticipate such difficulties and arrange contracts in advance, before specific conflicts occurred, specifying the arbitrator who would settle them.
In such an anarchist society, who would make the laws? On what basis would the private arbitrator decide what acts were criminal and what their punishments should be? The answer is that systems of law would be produced for profit on the open market, just as books and bras are produced today. There could be competition among different brands of law, just as there is competition among different brands of cars.
In such a society there might be many courts and even many legal systems. Each pair of protection agencies agree in advance on which court they will use in case of conflict. Thus the laws under which a particular case is decided are determined implicitly by advance agreement between the protection agencies whose customers are involved. In principle, there could be a different court and a different set of laws for every pair of protection agencies. In practice, many agencies would probably find it convenient to patronize the same courts, and many courts might find it convenient to adopt identical, or nearly identical, systems of law in order to simplify matters for their customers.
Before labelling a society in which different people are under different laws chaotic and unjust, remember that in our society the law under which you are judged depends on the country, state, and even city in which you happen to be. Under the arrangements I am describing, it depends instead on your protective agency and the agency of the person you accuse of a crime or who accuses you of a crime.
In such a society law is produced on the market. A court supports itself by charging for the service of arbitrating disputes. Its success depends on its reputation for honesty, reliability, and promptness and on the desirability to potential customers of the particular set of laws it judges by. The immediate customers are protection agencies. But the protection agency is itself selling a product to its customers. Part of that product is the legal system, or systems, of the courts it patronizes and under which its customers will consequently be judged. Each protection agency will try to patronize those courts under whose legal system its customers would like to live. [5]
Anarchism Might Work On the Small Scale, but Is Not Practical for Our Modern World and Countries
This is another one of the most common objections I've received and Tremblay answers with the following,
Obviously, we don't value the use of “countries” as organizational units, as they are based on arbitrary borders, not anything relevant at the social level. The fact that the “country” level will cease to exist should not unduly concern us.
Beyond this simple rebuttal, the objection could be transposed into a scenario wherein the world is divided in little burgs that are hostile towards each other, spreading the same kind of mistrust that exists between States, but at a local level; in short, that Market Anarchy is not conducive to cohesion on a global scale. [...]
First, we can point out that statism has historically been equally problematic in the area of cohesion. Most European “countries” had to be unified from a number of independent kingdoms, which themselves had to be unified from a number of city-states. Besides, why should we value cohesion at all? Because cohesion engenders more cooperation and peace than the alternatives. Insofar as we can make a comparison, it seems that Market Anarchies have traditionally had the upper hand in those criteria.
Second, international business arbitration neatly disproves the claim that Market Anarchic systems are limited to small scales. Granted, an arbitration system is not quite the same thing as a whole society, but it seems to me that most of the new markets in a Market Anarchy would be somewhat less complicated than justice. [6]
Tremblay goes on with more answers to this objection but since this piece is not meant to be as in-depth as originally intended anyone interested can read his book to get his full response.
I would like to add my view about organization. I believe that before a society can organize itself it must first create a set of guidelines, which is done through the social contract, which will be the next topic under discussion in this series.
I hope I've given some idea about how society will go about doing this organizing, though, as I've said before, different anarchists have different views and not all agree on the same structure of society. However, the fact remains that ingenious solutions have been put forward. I think it's just the common individuals' ignorance of anarchism that they are convinced by these, and other, poor arguments against anarchism. I view it in a similar manner to many religious individuals who can't seem to understand how there is morality without their god, or cannot understand how evolution works. It all just comes down to their lack of knowledge on a subject. Or put more aptly, willful ignorance. I believe I can also point fingers at the state for the very effective indoctrination and propaganda that it spreads in order to keep the masses in line.
”But Who Will Build the Roads?”
I liked the title to Francois Tremblay's book so I borrowed it for this section's heading. This complaint is one of the most common and I've heard it often, of course, roads aren't the only things people have argued can't be done without the state. Security/Police, fire stations, and running water are among the many other examples that are often given. The fact is that most of these – and other services – have been successfully privatized in several cases. Here is a partial list of services that have been privatized along with the number of cities that have ditched their government for a better solution:
Refuse Collection...................489
Water Supply........................286
Street Construction/Maintenance.....206
Hospitals...........................107
Libraries............................88
Fire Services........................65
Full and Partial Police Services.....28
All of the above services, once privatized, not only ran smoother but cost a lot less than their government run equivalents. [7] Privatization is one answer to this common question and it most definitely seems to be an effective one. It must also be remembered that the government doesn't perform any of the above actions – people do. All governments do is pay the companies they contract with to fulfill the above services, and what usually happens when the middle man gets cut from the deal (in the case of privatization this is the government)? Services become cheaper and often more efficient, and this is exactly what we see when governments stay out of public services. [8]
Anarchy Has Never Been A Successful Way to Organize Society
This is completely false. I've noted some examples in the past and Tremblay has written about several other examples I did not cover, such as one striking example of the the successful 300 year existence of an anarchy in Medieval Iceland, which was composed of 70,000 people. [9] This surely will put to rest the belief that anarchism can only exist for short periods and with small numbers of people.
Conclusion
With this piece I've addressed six of the most common arguments against anarchism. It is yet to be seen how convincing these answers might be to certain statists but I believe I've answered their questions and given some workable alternatives to the oppressive ruling government. As I noted earlier about the several anarchist societies, I'd like the reader to take note of the fact that a number of these anarchist societies that thrived for a number of years occurred right here in the united states. Three of them were called Equity, Utopia, and Modern Times, and in his brief stories about them Harold Barclay, the former professor of anthropology at the University of Alberta in Canada, emphasizes the following fact,
What is most noticeable about these three communities is the fact that none of them failed because of their anarchism; all ceased to exist entirely because of external factors – conditions which would have crushed any community. [10]
Anarchism has been tried, and most importantly, has been successful many times throughout history. Now, with our technology a more connected community is now a reality, unlike the communities of the past, making anarchism a greater possibility than ever.
References
1. ”But Who Will Build the Roads?”: Market Anarchy Explained, by Francois Tremblay, Xlibris, 2007; 23
2. The failings of government are many and varied, but have been cataloged in many places. A few books that detail these many failings that I recommend are Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, by James Bovard and Police Brutality: An Anthology, edited by Jill Nelson, and in economic matters, The Government Racket 2000: All New Washington Waste from A to Z, by Martin L. Gross, and The Pentagon Catalog: Ordinary Products at Extraordinary Prices, by Christopher Cerf & Henry Beard
3. ”But Who Will Build the Roads?”; 126-127
4. The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to a Radical Capitalism, by David Friedman, Open Court Publishing Company, 1989; 135-136
5. Ibid.; 115-117
6. ”But Who Will Build the Roads?”; 260-261
7. Every Man and Woman an Island: The Individual Human Being As Prime in the Universe, by Robert Clapp, Trafford Publishing, 2004; 119
8. See The Pentagon Catalog: Ordinary Products at Extraordinary Prices, by Christopher Cerf & Henry Beard, and Why Anarchism, Communism and Libertarianism are Pipe Dreams: My Response
9. ”But Who Will Build the Roads?”; 242-248
10. People Without Government: An Anthropology of Anarchism, by Harold Barclay, Kahn & Averil/Cienfuegos Press, 1982; 105
Recommended Reading
1. ”But Who Will Build the Roads?”: Market Anarchy Explained, by Francois Tremblay, Xlibris, 2007
2. People Without Government: An Anthropology of Anarchism, by Harold Barclay, Kahn & Averil/Cienfuegos Press, 1982
3. The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to a Radical Capitalism, by David Friedman, Open Court Publishing Company, 1989
4. The State, by Franz Oppenheimer, Black Rose Books, 1942
5. Privatizing the Public Sector: How to Shrink Government, by E.S. Savas, Chatham House Publishers, Inc.; 1982 – While this book is not advocating anarchism the issue of privatization and its implementation is discussed in detail.
6. Men Against the State: The Expositors of Individualist Anarchism in America, 1827-1908, by James J. Martin, Ralph Myles Publisher, Inc., 1970
7. Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas: Volume One: From Anarchy to Anarchism (300CE to 1939), Edited by Robert Graham, Black Rose Books, 2005
8. Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas: Volume Two: The Emergence of the New Anarchism (1939-1977), Edited by Robert Graham, Black Rose Books, 2009
9. Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas: Volume Three - Volume Three is Pending
10. Private Creation and Enforcement of Law: A Historical Case, by David Friedman - accessed 6-24-11
State of nature argument: This is a rather breezy dismissal of the state. The problem is that with all its defects (being made of people), the state still provides a structure for redress, optimization, and regulation so that our well-thought-out desires can be instantiated. Take gun control, for instance. In the state of nature, everyone has guns and can use them at will to settle disputes, however minor. As long as you have the social position to avoid reprisal by your victims, no law and no state means that you can kill anyone you like. I don't think that this is a desireable state of affairs, so to speak. It is the situation in the Afghan hinterlands, with endless blood feuds, going on for generations.
ReplyDeleteThe state is simply a superior solution, taking violence out of the hands of individuals, and giving them thoughtful & fair mechanisms of redress instead. In short, if you are robbed, would you rather be on your own (going after the criminal with your own posse, or more likely having a weaker defense and being robbed again and again), or "hire" a professional police force to do so? And which solution would be better for society at large?
Public goods: "Individuals value their common defense, and security agencies would benefit by offering it as a part of a package deal for their customers." This is a total fantasy, with all due respect. What motivation does Joe Blow's security agency have to defend me against attack from, say, Canada? Zero- they will save their own hides, take the money, and run, and declare bankruptcy later on after the smoke clears. This is a classic uninsurable risk- it is very rare (actuarially impossible to evaluate), it is not individual in nature, and it is not remediable by the usual resources of insurance, i.e. money. When the crisis comes, everyone will save their own skins rather than honor some "contract". I think our founders were smart enough to figure this one out, (being indeed under the gun), and you might consult some non-crank references, like the Federalist papers. (#8, perhaps).
The larger issue is one of coherence. The anarchist state tends to disunion and atomization. The South would secede, this time for good. So would California. Soon every town would be on its own, and involved in contests over whatever grievances arise. This is not to mention the continuing existence of other states, ready to prey on the weaker entities. Security companies are of little help in this scenario. Indeed, from what I hear, security companies are run by people and have exactly the same deficiencies as government-run agencies. Some problems are just inherently ones for collective action.
... cont...
... cont...
ReplyDeleteTo say that "there are workable solutions that have been proposed." is completely insufficient, when the smallest steps toward actual anarchistic communities have all ended in tears. Your argument needs evidence, not fantasy.
"Each farmer knows that, if he refuses to sign, the dam will not be built, since the contract has to be unanimous. It is therefore in his interest to sign." Well, how often has this happened? Ever? The impossibility of unanimity had already been outlined by the writer just above. I am familiar with assessment districts, for such things as putting power lines underground in a local area. Unanimity is, as usual, impossible to attain, so some other level of assent is deemed sufficient, like 67%. How would you handle this situation?
"The man from Tannahelp suggests that the better solution is arbitration. They will take the dispute over my television set to a reputable local arbitration firm."
This is rich. Why do so many companies specify arbitration in their contracts currently? Because the arbitration system is totally biassed, in their favor. It is a stacked deck. The only legitimate form of arbitration is a democratically legitimated form.. i.e. the legal system. You may have heard of it. It is another common good that far exceeds the capacities of the private system to provide on a fair basis.
"The man from Tannahelp suggests that the better solution is arbitration. They will take the dispute over my television set to a reputable local arbitration firm." Sounds sort of like you are describing the evolution of the state here.
"'Under the arrangements I am describing, it depends instead on your protective agency and the agency of the person you accuse of a crime or who accuses you of a crime." But what if I chose to hire the Asshole security agency, which arrives with guns blazing every time and takes whatever it likes? They are a pretty profitable outfit, from what I hear.
History of medieval Iceland? You can quote rural Afghanistan even now- total anarchy. The question is- how successful is such a society (not terribly), and how well would it scale to a hundred million people (not at all). These societies all had very strong social controls- they are not anarchistic in reality, rather they have a mafia-type system where some are very much in control of others, but the groups all tend to be small and easily managed- manageable by implicit social means. Now Iceland seems to have a government and is very, very happy to have one. If you ask them, they would be very unlikely to look back on the stateless time as some kind of idyl.
I think you have a general problem of rhetoric and modeling. If you read only what you like and don't think through the consequences (either mentally, or through reading the relevant history, which is rather painfully clear on all these points), you can present anything as an "argument", and consider the issue "dealt with". I only say this because I respect your atheist position, and don't like to see you go off the deep end with all this anarchist stuff.
With best wishes...
PS- Your blog was attacked by some kind of redirection troll yesterday, rendering it unusable. Glad that is over!
There are several existence proofs of how easy it is to live without the state. You can see it in Haiti, the Favelas, or the Indian slums. The state has largely retreated even in some areas of the U.S.
ReplyDeleteHi Burk,
ReplyDeleteFirst off, thanks, but it wasn't an attack on my blog at all. I thought it might be at first but I found out later that day that there was an issue with some blogrolling.com code that was in one of my widgets. I deleted it and now it works just fine. There were several others I found who had the same issue.
As to your rebuttals,
State of nature argument: This is a rather breezy dismissal of the state. The problem is that with all its defects (being made of people), the state still provides a structure for redress, optimization, and regulation so that our well-thought-out desires can be instantiated. Take gun control, for instance. In the state of nature, everyone has guns and can use them at will to settle disputes, however minor. As long as you have the social position to avoid reprisal by your victims, no law and no state means that you can kill anyone you like. I don't think that this is a desireable state of affairs, so to speak. It is the situation in the Afghan hinterlands, with endless blood feuds, going on for generations.
I've said over and over that anarchism does not favor lawlessness. Society will be set up around a social contract with rules, guidelines, etc. that all people agree to. Privatized security, as I've said before, is a solution to unjustified force. Your rebuttal is based upon a strawman.
This is a total fantasy, with all due respect. What motivation does Joe Blow's security agency have to defend me against attack from, say, Canada? Zero- they will save their own hides, take the money, and run, and declare bankruptcy later on after the smoke clears.
And how do you know this would happen? Their motive is making profits. If they fail they, too, get taken over and lose all their business to boot, so where is the motivation to do such a thing?
In most cases, as I discussed private companies are better and cheaper than their state-run equivalents. The story you linked to only talked about someone misusing their taser in a spat, nothing about abuses by a private company.
To say that "there are workable solutions that have been proposed." is completely insufficient, when the smallest steps toward actual anarchistic communities have all ended in tears. Your argument needs evidence, not fantasy.
Fantasy? I give real-world solutions and actual examples of an anarchist society thriving for longer than the very state you live in (I'm assuming you live in the U.S.) and you call that fantasy? Hmmm...
Well, how often has this happened? Ever? The impossibility of unanimity had already been outlined by the writer just above. I am familiar with assessment districts, for such things as putting power lines underground in a local area. Unanimity is, as usual, impossible to attain, so some other level of assent is deemed sufficient, like 67%. How would you handle this situation?
There isn't always a simple solution to every problem but the above scenario takes into account that most people generally behave in ways that best suit them. If everyone doesn't think it's worth their while the dam will not be built. That's much better than the government coming in, stealing (and not to mention wasting) money, and forcing something upon people who don't want what they're trying to give. Perhaps those that do want the dam can convince those that don't to pitch in.
Cont.
This is rich. Why do so many companies specify arbitration in their contracts currently? Because the arbitration system is totally biassed, in their favor. It is a stacked deck. The only legitimate form of arbitration is a democratically legitimated form.. i.e. the legal system. You may have heard of it. It is another common good that far exceeds the capacities of the private system to provide on a fair basis.
ReplyDeleteAnd where is your evidence for this? Two companies cannot find a neutral third party to handle disputes? It happens even now with out of court settlements as one example.
Sounds sort of like you are describing the evolution of the state here.
Huh? Private companies are not a state.
But what if I chose to hire the Asshole security agency, which arrives with guns blazing every time and takes whatever it likes? They are a pretty profitable outfit, from what I hear.
This has got to be the funniest response I've ever seen. Private companies who go around killing people will not garner the support of the people, just as mass murderers are not supported today. If anything that's exactly the situation we have now with the police who go into peoples' homes looking for drugs.
History of medieval Iceland? You can quote rural Afghanistan even now- total anarchy. The question is- how successful is such a society (not terribly), and how well would it scale to a hundred million people (not at all). These societies all had very strong social controls- they are not anarchistic in reality, rather they have a mafia-type system where some are very much in control of others, but the groups all tend to be small and easily managed- manageable by implicit social means. Now Iceland seems to have a government and is very, very happy to have one. If you ask them, they would be very unlikely to look back on the stateless time as some kind of idyl.
Again. Huh? Not successful? It lasted longer than the U.S. at this current point in time. Yes, these societies had controls and structure, and were forms of anarchy. Again, anarchism is not chaos. Please re-read my second post in the series because your argument is based on a strawman.
I think you have a general problem of rhetoric and modeling. If you read only what you like and don't think through the consequences (either mentally, or through reading the relevant history, which is rather painfully clear on all these points), you can present anything as an "argument", and consider the issue "dealt with". I only say this because I respect your atheist position, and don't like to see you go off the deep end with all this anarchist stuff.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the last part, sort of. I'm sorry but I'm not the one ignoring facts. You are. I've addressed each criticism with real-world examples of not only how the structure of society might work but also actual examples of very successful anarchic civilizations, but you ignore all this, in addition resorting to strawmen in a few cases.
These are the facts and as rational people do, when the facts point in one direction, they will go where the facts lead. Anarchy has been tried and has been successful in numerous occasions and for longer than the US has currently been around. If that's not presenting facts then I don't know what would convince a dyed-in-the-wool statist such as yourself. I'd recommend you read some of the books in the reading list to get a fuller picture, particularly Tremblay's book, but judging by all of your responses up to this point I doubt anything could convince you, even if you lived in a successful anarchy.
I do appreciate your somewhat thoughtful response, unlike your last one that was nothing but a reply based on a strawman and ignoring the facts about Iraq (?) (and in this case you switch to Afghanistan). These aren't examples of anarchy. They are military occupations. Again, please re-read my second post about anarchism.
Thanks.
JSA,
Thanks. That's what I tried to show with this post but some people just don't want to pay attention to facts.
I'd like to add some thing about arbitration. Despite your not providing any evidence of bias, I looked into the issue myself. There are several cases it seems of explicit bias in favor of companies, though, as I've said the social contract is there to ensure people get their voices heard. All business interactions will be built around social contracts.
ReplyDeleteNow, businesses will obviously choose arbitrators who will rule in their favor, but an employee should be able to have a say in which arbitration service is used. This arbitration service, operating on a free market, will either have a good or bad reputation depending on the fairness of their rulings. Those that are biased will obviously be avoided by employees wanting to get a fair hearing. It should also not be a problem for the company to place in their worker's contracts a clause that says they will only use arbitrators that are known to be fair. Employees will need to go through their companies' contracts to ensure they are going to be treated fairly. If not, another company that will treat them well will get their man power. Remember Adam Smith's “invisible hand.” Those businesses that are ethical and treat their employees well will get the largest share of business and will get far more people willing to work for them than unethical ones.
Yes, in an anarchist society people will have to learn to take better care of themselves, rather than relying on the government to help them out (when the government isn't screwing them over), but is that such a bad thing? Of course not.
Besides, courts also have issues of bias as well. Here is a more recent example.
Hi, AA-
ReplyDeleteThanks for your replies. Let me focus on the "security company" aspect. Right now in our country we have exemplary anarchist organizations, established by voluntary self-organization, even in the teeth of state opposition. One might call them gangs, or organized crime networks. Whatever!
As you probably know, these predatory organizations are extremely durable and hard to eradicate, even with all the means at the state's disposal, given its commitment to legality, however tenuous. Some gangs continue to be run right out of Pelican Bay prison, indeed. Such organizations as the Norteños, Aryan brotherhood, Hell's angels, the mafia, etc.
How would I defend myself agains them? You recommend engaging a private security firm, say, HighSecurityCo. Now HighSecurityCo is paid to defend me, and thus they are a defensive organization. They can put barbed wire around my house, and frisk everyone around me, etc. But the gang may just send me a note that they will break my kneecaps the next time I get a haircut unless I pay them protection instead. A purely defensive organization can't cope with well-organized crime, and the "bad" security agencies (i.e. gangs) will drive out the "good".
To deal with them, we need an offensive organization that doesn't spend its time defending me, but rather spends its time taking down the gangs directly. This is a public good, benefiting everyone. How will it be paid for? While I may be generous enough to contribute my share, I would benefit equally if I didn't, and you can be sure that most rational people will make the latter calculation. Public radio/TV is a contemporary example. Most people who listen to it don't support it.
The need for public goods of this kind, and the need to fund them on a fair basis leads to the need for a state. They simply wouldn't exist on the basis of voluntary contributions. And the US is built on public goods, contrary to the common myth. It might do you well to study the growth of the Western Frontier, which featured, in place after place, ongoing transitions from anarchy to government. It wasn't because the settlers were snivelling statists, but because they perpetually came up against public goods problems that required common action. Legitimizing that action, via democracy, representation, etc. is an enormous problem, but it has to be done somehow. You may be interested in the political science work of Mancur Olsen, who describes the evolution of the state from banditry to banditry-in-place to increasingly benign forms.
One of the principle public goods is control of the laissez-faire system, which, left to its own devices, has an enormous number of defects (such as the depression we are now going through). I would suggest that your reliance on corporations to provide all your essential and common goods is highly problematic, to say the least, essentially betraying all the idealism that anarchism represents. (The video documentary on anarchism that one of your earlier posts linked to was very enjoyable, incidentally.)
Perhaps your best example is that of Barcelona in the civil war. It didn't last long, but it was a large scale, metropolitan anarchic system, of sorts. My take would be that you can drive a great deal of social solidarity by having an enemy, (the fascists), which took the edge off the mundane problems of running the city. But those mundane problems, from Orwell's account, posed serious problems in running an armed force (with no officers), as well as running the city, and it would not have lasted long whether or not the fascists won.
Burk,
ReplyDeleteOnce again I'm amazed by your caricature of these security companies. The state is more akin to the mafia because they steal your money and they claim they're “protecting” you. These illegal organizations likely wouldn't exist would it not be for the state, whose illegalization of drugs, etc. drives these underground markets and the profitability. The illegality also makes it so violence is the only solution to disagreements since the nature of the business can't be handled by conventional means (courts, arbitration, etc.). Because of this fact your description is highly unrealistic.
And who says private companies cannot go after law breakers? Are there not private police, even today? Of course there is. Again, as with the dam, if enough people wish to see these private firms go after people then they will finance it.
Your public good objection has already been answered.
You are continually ignoring these facts and ignoring the long-lasting anarchist societies, picking and choosing the societies that best fit your wrong-headed perception of what you believe anarchy to be. That's a tremendous bias you have, much like a theist who would rather believe there are no transitional fossils because there are no “crock-o-ducks” around. You'd rather continue to believe in this caricature you've been fed by the state about anarchism than look at the facts. There are answers to the objections you cite, and there have been long-lasting, sustainable anarchist communities.
Here we go again...You're ignoring the facts I present, my answers, or are trying to come up with more rebuttals without first dealing with the previous answers. This is why I had decided to not allow your comments before. I've dealt with similar forms of argumentation before, and in my experience, this is when a person begins to lose the debate. They are unable to respond to my answers to their objections to evolution and so they continue to spew more intelligent design propaganda, hoping one of these will “stick” and I won't be able to answer it, thus “proving” evolution false! That's the exact same tactic you're utilizing here. Please deal with the arguments and facts presented before moving on to something else.
This is why I find discussing this issue with you so frustrating and why I blocked your comments for a while. Please deal with the facts presented or I'm just going to have to block your comments again.
Hi, AA-
ReplyDeleteShutting people's comments off is never a valid approach. Your annoyance with me stems from the success of my content, not the reverse.
Anyhow, in the interest of direct responsiveness, you said previously:
"Now, businesses will obviously choose arbitrators who will rule in their favor, but an employee should be able to have a say in which arbitration service is used."
I can make two points. One is that this is not the way the world works. Corporations routinely make the contracts read.. an arbitrator of their choosing, not yours. You have already signed the contract (employment, or software, or whatever). You have already signed away these rights, typically. (A typical discussion of these types of "agreements"- note the super-cuts case. Here is a sample agreement, where the arbitrating organization is pre-selected.)
The second point is: "should" according to who? Who decides what is fair here and what is moral? Corporations are amoral. They don't care and will/can screw their employees/customers as far as possible. The other party can negotiate about every detail if they like, but it is quite rare for employees to have the power, or the diligence, to alter these extensive contracts. The situation is inherently asymmetrical, in terms of market power, legal expertise, and attention to the bottom line. Who looks out for the little person? Right now, egregious contracts of these kinds can be brought to the state court and thrown out on fairness grounds. Without such recourse, where would we be?
Who keeps the arbitrators on their toes and fair, insofar as they are? taht would be the official legal and administrative system. You would say that the market is the ultimate recourse, but markets are inefficient, particularly in these kinds of asymmetrical sitations. Democracy is also a market of sorts- a market of ideas and legitimacy conferred by free political debate and election- a check on the many, many problems of the more conventional markets.
Burk,
ReplyDeleteI already answered that argument about immoral companies dying out, in a sense, due to the “invisible hand.” And it’s not the way the world works now. Why can’t an employee have a say in the conditions in which they work? In fact, they have with worker’s strikes and corporations giving more benefits to their employers. I’m simply saying workers should have more rights. Because the government so often supports these unethical companies this “invisible hand” concept won’t work because they are being supported by a bigger unethical entity: the state. These are the facts which you ignore. The above are also more facts you continue to ignore. There is no reason that the government must exist and you haven’t given a single fact in support of your argument. This is why I chuckled at your second comment. I see no problem deleting comments by a person who continually is not making a shred of sense, refuses to deal with the meat of my arguments, and ignores facts. Mr. Braun, you are a fundamentalist statist.
Like a Christian who can’t seem to understand why their arguments for their god fails you can’t seem to understand why the god-like entity you believe in - the state - is not necessary.
"Society will be set up around a social contract with rules, guidelines, etc. that all people agree to ..."
ReplyDeleteSo, ok maybe I'm missing something here, but how are a series of sufficiently complex social contracts (people as communities, then those communities with service companies, then those companies with other companies) distinguishable from government?
Isn't a company with a monopoly on security that resolves disputes through an arbitration company that also has a monopoly to enforce "social contracts" that dictate terms of payment and rules of behavior by the people in their service area indistinguishable from a government anyway? Payments and rules within the service area would still be, in effect, compulsory. Wouldn't they?
I'm not trying to shoot you down, but I just don't understand what checks your proposed system puts in place to prevent it from growing in complexity until you end up with a system pretty much like what we've already got anyway.
Hi Jack,
ReplyDeletePrivate companies are not a government because government is
defined as:
the political direction and control exercised over the actions of the members, citizens, or inhabitants of communities, societies, and states; direction of the affairs of a state, community, etc.; political administration.
I would say that the people are in control of their community. They decide the laws, they decide which companies are worth contracting with, etc. These businesses are not a monopoly because there is no government to feed them (like the government did with the big banks and auto companies, etc. not too long ago) if they act irresponsibly and fail. Because the people choose which companies to do business with the immoral ones will have less influence if not fade out of existence all together because no one wants to do business with them. These businesses, as they are now, are services people can hire or not and are not compulsory because there is no state to force people to do business with anyone, such as the state now does with compulsory auto insurance as one example.
What checks are in place? I mentioned this in a previous reply above. Are you familiar with Adam Smith? He came up with the idea that an “invisible hand” will guide markets. Essentially that “hand” are consumers (including the concepts of competition and supply and demand) who pick and choose which businesses thrive because they do business with them, or they fail because people don't. Like natural selection those businesses who are helpful will thrive, those that aren't will become less, if they are not entirely wiped out.
More existence proofs -- check out this, about privatized cities: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/09/cities-as-hotels.html
ReplyDelete