The puppets in the mainstream media have ignored advocates of actual freedom for as long as they could. But the idea of a free society has spread anyway, enough that now they have to resort to demonizing and scoffing at such a notion. As far as the well-trained talking heads are concerned, you’re allowed to be “right-leaning” or “left-leaning” as long as you’re an authoritarian collectivist, but if you oppose both flavors of tyranny then you’re just some crazy kook with silly, utopian ideas. (In case you haven’t heard, refraining from trying to violently control everyone else is now “utopian.”) Most attempts by those in the mainstream to refute libertarianism or anarchism fit the same basic template, which usually goes something like this:
“Well gee, it would be nice if we could all be free and stuff, but can we trust people? Do we really want to leave things up to the market? What if people are greedy and mean? People are short-sighted and selfish and would get nothing done if not for a centralized government making society work! We neeeeeeeed government controlling things and making things fair!”
The spewers of such bullpoop hope that people will wonder and worry about an unfamiliar concept—society without a ruling class—and run back to good old familiar “government.” But the statists who want everyone scared of freedom are never clear, generally or specifically, about what they are actually advocating. So as a public service, allow me to help them out by elaborating on what they must be proposing.
Some people talk about “the market” doing this or that, as if it’s some mystical, magical force, and then ask if we should trust “the market” to do this or that. But all the term “the market” means is the cumulative total of people trading voluntarily, people freely interacting without the interference of the state. So what statists are actually asking is, “Can we allow people to trade voluntarily?” If not, what’s the alternative? What would non-market options look like? If you understand anything, then you already guessed it: FORCED AUTHORITARIAN CONTROL. So when statists bitch about “the market,” they're telling you that people being allowed to spend their own money is a horrible threat to humanity … but that the violent domination of mankind isn’t.
Yes, in a free society some people will still choose to be deceptive, dishonest, nasty, even violent. And statists want everyone so scared of uncertainty and the unknown that they eagerly embrace the only alternative: subservience and slavery. Because if free people might make bad choices, then obviously freedom is bad! Of course, statists never phrase it that way; they are never honest about the alternative they are proposing when they ask if we should trust “the market.” But logic dictates that there is only one alternative to voluntary trade, and that is involuntary trade.
And that brings me to how silly it is for anyone to complain about voluntaryism. Whatever their concerns and complaints, it is self-evident that to oppose a purely voluntary society necessarily means advocating that some things be involuntary. There is another word for involuntary actions. That word is “violence.” To be pro-government is to be pro-violence. Likewise, whenever anyone, for whatever reason, objects to the non-aggression principle, then at least in some cases they must, by definition, be pushing the pro-aggression principle. And once again, that means violence.
So when some talking head is expressing his concerns about whether “the market” should be allowed to handle this or that, or about libertarianism being too simple and utopian to apply to real life, or when he complains that a stateless, voluntary society would never work, keep in mind that that person is condoning the initiation of violence against many millions of people he doesn’t even know. Including you.
If you want to reveal what statists are trying to hide, to expose the true nature of what they are condoning, it can be both useful and entertaining to make the discussion direct and personal.
“Since you’re scared of how ‘the market’ might handle things, and since you don’t like the idea of society being based on the non-aggression principle or purely voluntary interaction, then I have to ask, which involuntary stuff do you want forcibly imposed upon ME? In which cases should I not be allowed to spend my own money? Which trades and decisions would you force me to make, instead of letting me choose for myself? In which scenarios do you want ME to be violently controlled when I haven’t threatened or harmed anyone?”
But don’t hold your breath waiting for an actual answer. You won’t get one. Statists will never be direct, open and honest with you about what they believe and what they support; only about one in a hundred are even honest with themselves about it.