Have you ever seen a government program so laughably inefficient that you instantly thought up a better way to do it? Ever think that maybe, if government can’t handle minor issues, that it shouldn’t be given sole responsibility over major ones? If so, then anarchism is right for you.
There are literally hundreds of reasons why I’m an anarchist; here are 5 of them:
#1. Rights are universal; objective, even.
A right is not a guarantee. There is no magical force which prevents your rights from being violated; if there were, these conversations wouldn’t be necessary, since the state never would have existed to begin with.
“Rights” are abstract concepts, like numbers. They are ideas for how humans can best interact peacefully. A right can’t be something that necessarily requires the labor of others, that is slavery. No, a right is only that which anyone has the morally justifiable stance to defend with force, and the core right which all other rights stem from is self-ownership.
I own my body and you own your body. I don’t have the right to control you, and you don’t have the right to control me. See? Universal. Every version of a “government” requires one group of people to claim rights over others that they don’t have: the right to tax (steal), the right to imprison (kidnap), and the right to ban and mandate behavior (enslave), just to name a few.
There is no legitimate way for them to obtain these rights other than by permission, by consent of the governed. But if it is consensual, then it is not “government”. To “govern” means to rule by force. It’s not optional. Government can’t both serve the people and be it’s master.
Even the idea that we need government to defend our rights is contradictory, since it must first violate our rights in order to exist. Government is and always has been the largest violator of rights.
Which brings us to…
#2. Government can’t defend from invaders.
The Marxist concept that “need” creates legitimacy is the core reasoning behind most statist rhetoric, but it’s an irrational point. Wouldn’t Christmas be better with a real Santa, bringing toys to all the kids? Doesn’t change the fact that Santa doesn’t exist. Even IF we were safer from outside forces with a state, it wouldn’t legitimize the state.
But it’s not even the case that it could, since it’s always acted as the conquering army after it’s invasion. It WAS the invading army. Like having a rapist in prison defend his victim from other rapists. No, he doesn’t love you; he’s guarding his bitch.
Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the Twin Towers, Pearl Harbor, Poland, and the Hawaiian islands all took major attacks and invasions. All had governments. When statists claim that governments are needed to prevent invasion, they forget the fact that most places which have been invaded, had governments. A government, in fact, provides incentive for outside invasion. The Hawaiian islands, for example, were easily conquered by locking a single woman in her room; because there was already a structure set up to take over. It’s like a burglar looking in a window to see all the valuables conveniently packed into a bag for them. Invading a state is like fighting a skeleton with obvious targets and mechanics, while invading a stateless society is like attacking a water puddle; it just regroups around your fist and laughs.
Switzerland, where the citizens all have guns, has never been invaded, and for the same reason the Japanese general famously refused a ground invasion on the US, because “there would be a rifle behind every blade of grass”. That’s right, a military famous for it’s actual suicide missions, refused to invade the heavily-armed US on the grounds that it was too dangerous.
Even the us colonists fighting the Brits were basically unpaid volunteers, and not apart of some governmental force. They were literally just farmers trying to protect their families from a bunch of violent tyrants; they weren’t a bunch of hopeful politicians and their fans trying to create their own constitutional Utopia. Just men backed into a corner.
To govern means to rule. It does not mean to defend, serve, or even “represent”. It means, “do what we say or get hurt.”
Any service that requires people be forced to pay will be worse than one that must convince people to pay. One must work to gain and keep customers, the other has no such incentive. It’s paid either way. It won’t lose customers if it invades other territories either, which is something I’d really like the territory of our invaders to be able to do.
Imagine if an invading force was funded voluntarily. Once the invasion began, some or most people there would quit funding it, and that would increase the bill for those who still support it, which would then dissuade even more from paying. Our invaders would be defeated by their own homeland.
Not to mention that without government schooling, the propaganda needed to convince people that invading others is somehow defending their home would be seriously diminished.
#3. Statism means the NAP is optional.
By now, you’ve probably heard that it’s wrong to initiate force against others. “Don’t hit others and don’t take their stuff” is the inter-personal morality ingrained in us since childhood, at least verbally. Libertarians call this the Non-Aggression Principle, or the NAP.
But if enough people “vote” for it, it’s somehow ok for a man with a shiny badge to stop your car with the unspoken threat of deadly force. What happens if you don’t pay your “taxes”?
The largest source of violence in any state is the government itself. Even in Islam, a bloodthirsty cult, it’s most dangerous form is that of a state. Cops and military are the most likely to commit domestic violence in the US. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. We are taught from a young age, not how to prevent violence and settle disputes ourselves, but to seek “authority” to settle it for us. Anarchy is ultimately about personal responsibility. Before escalating a situation to violence or bringing in a third party, why not try to talk it out rationally? Of course, if someone is seriously threatening you somehow, you should be free to defend yourself as much as you feel the need to. But in a statist society, that is often prevented through legal disarming and anti-self-defense laws, which create magnets for violent people. As long as they can hurt you before the cops arrive, what risk is there to them?
With government, there is a monopoly on law, so there is no way of defending oneself from the government outside of the options the government itself gives you. Can you imagine if you were being mugged, and could only use defensive tactics approved of or given to you by your attacker?
When there’s a monopoly on law, lawmakers and judges can be bought. We see this in corporatist ‘Murrica all the time. “Justice” is sold to the highest bidder.
Now in a free market of law, different courts would compete for customers. Who’s the fairest? Who has the best policies, the wisest judges? Courts would be little more than contract enforcement and private defense. There could be different methods of payment, like insurance. It’s been done before, and improved upon with the DRO business model.
Laws will not restrict the government, since the government writes and enforces the laws.
#4. There is no “social contract”. There is only natural law.
There are personal contracts, and then there’s the unspoken mutual understanding of ‘leave each other in peace, only bring good news’. Two predators in the wild generally respect each other’s territory, and know the repercussions of not doing so. “Government” removes repercussions from only one side.
A visual example of this is to imagine two humans facing each other. In wing chun theory, there are three types of positions in a fight: equal, dominant, and submissive. When they’re facing each other, they’re at equal advantage, since all of their limbs are equal distance from their opponent. If their opponent is at an angle, then he is at a disadvantage, since it takes his back limbs more time to strike. “Government” is the opponent facing us, and we are the opponent who is turning our limbs further and further away from them, giving them more advantage. We are practically facing completely around at this point.
Anarchy is equal advantage, or at least has the most possibility for equal power since there’s no monopoly. Statism is a constant dominator, always scheming for more and more power.
One mustn’t be able to recite the NAP to feel it internally and abide by it. Why don’t we agress against everyone around us every day? We are biologically opposed to violations of the NAP, which is why we evolved compassion and empathy. And of course, one must always calculate the risks. Resistance, punishment, later retaliation, and the harm to the whole community that must now spend more time watching over their shoulders instead of the productive things they’d rather be doing, are all subconsciously factored in.
Even cops get shot sometimes for violating people’s natural rights. No knock raids, for example, are indistinguishable from home invasions. Even some judges agree.
We must be realistic. Not many people will go out of their way to defend the rights of others without incentive. Anarchy provides the greatest incentive, an open market, and thus the most room for improvement.
A “limited government”, if limited by fear of revolution, can’t compare. Now, that’s a pretty low bar. I’d prefer one driven to make us the happiest, not one motivated only to do enough to not get shot. Who’d you rather date: someone who wants to make you happy, or someone who does just the bare minimum to not get dumped? Now imagine you can’t dump them, but must instead wait for them to dump themselves. Don’t worry, you’ll get to vote on it.
Again, cops don’t defend us, they enforce the laws of their bosses.
Even if we do need one organization to defend us all, how do we choose which one gets paid with all our pooled money?
The world is scary. North Korean dictators with nukes and a godlike reverence terrify us. But let’s not copy their model. The Bloods and the Crips are basically the same now, although some may’ve had good intentions at one time. They copied the model of their enemy, and so they became them.
There is no heavenly father watching over us, and no matter how hard we organize, vote, or ritualize court buildings, we can’t create one. We can’t grant a human or group of humans impunity from morals and expect it to turn out to our advantage.
#5. Privacy and property.
Although technically two things, they’re so intricately linked I just put them together.
Now an extension of self-ownership is property rights. Since I own myself, I own what I create, and that around me which I claim that I can use that isn’t already claimed. Now the other part of this is free association, and since different people have different opinions on what property is, like-minded people will tend to collaborate, like social networking groups.
Anarcho-communists think property should be collectively owned, shared, with no one person owning much more than what they can fit on their person. Anarcho-capitalists believe it should be privately owned by individuals. Both of us can coexist in separate communities or even different organizations. But as long as government exists, no one can privately or collectively own property, since government owns everything through property tax. And since you must pay property tax, you can’t really claim to have privacy. We’re not even free to be left alone, we have to pay tax to live.
To summarize,
Many of the functions of government can still exist without government. The only differences between statism and anarchy are whether or not it is funded voluntarily, and does it allow for competition. In anarchy, it would be. In statism, it is not.
It’s disingenuous to claim your way is the best way, when it’s what we have now, it’s horribly inefficient, and no one’s allowed to try anything else. Well, the truth can handle scrutiny.
Minarchy is compromise, and as Ayn Rand said, compromise always favors evil.
Minarchists can correctly criticize socialism for it’s inefficiency, so why do they want that same system for the most important things? Who don’t they trust? If people can’t be trusted to rule themselves, how can some of those same people be trusted to rule others?
I actually do support a limited government; limited by the same rules as anyone else. And that leaves us with no government at all.