Six questions for statist Again, I, I people often get embroiled
in this oh, communism versus fascism versus socialism and all
these different forms of statism.
But it seems like the problem, right the the actual problem, is
all under the canopy of statism itself.
So what are these six questions? Who is the author and what point
is he driving at in this essay? The author is a Canadian
philosopher, Stefan Molyneux, who sort of became popular on
YouTube some years ago. And what he's saying is, look,
there's a lot of technicalities when it comes to debating, you
know, things about the state. First they tell you to fight
about healthcare, then fight about agricultural subsidies,
then fight about tariffs, then fight about the bandarites
fighting in Ukraine. He goes, let's really get to the
root of what the disagreement is between people like himself and
our guests and people who advocate the existence of a
government, he goes. Here are the most productive
questions you can ask 'cause if you've ever been in a
conversation with a government believer, you know that the
conversations can last forever and get nowhere.
So here is his guide says question one, Does government
actually solve the problem in question?
So when people say, well, what if there's a dispute?
Now I can go to a court. In the absence of a government,
I couldn't go to a court. Well, first of all, there's tons
of private arbitration organizations all around us.
There's authorities within society.
Every, you know, company that you work with has some sort of
like HR department so that first of all, there are are
alternatives. Second, government courts take
years to render a verdict. There's an extraordinarily high
opportunity cost in time and monetary cost with finding a
lawyer, hiring a lawyer, not finding a corrupt 1 cause.
The lawyers that I've come across, some are either like the
greatest people ever or the absolute scum of the earth.
It's extremely risky because you have to go to law school to get
a license. Even if you know someone who's
brilliant on the law, they can't argue on your behalf unless the
state has granted them a protective license.
So claiming that, well, courts exist, that doesn't mean we have
a universal protection. Leftist will constantly say what
we should have is universal healthcare, as if the divide is
between either everyone gets it or only some people get it,
giving the state a monopoly on healthcare.
The state has the monopoly on education.
Is everyone educated. The state has a monopoly on on
policing. Does that mean everyone's
private property is always protected and no one ever gets
murdered? Of course not.
So governments don't always actually solve the problem that
people are claiming. Best example in America might be
something like Medicaid, where the divide is OK.
There's people who can afford healthcare and people who can't
afford it for those who can't afford it.
That's who we're worried about. Therefore, we're going to give
them something called Medicaid. And we've seen a drastic
increase in healthcare costs since the implementation of
Medicare and Medicaid under Lyndon Johnson, of course.
And they never apologize. So governments don't actually
solve the problems. That's the first one.
Second, can the criticism of the anarchic solution be equally
applied to the status solution? So when people say, well, under
a free market, you could have people only shopping at one
place, and this might lead to a monopoly.
However, the very existence of a state is literally a monopoly on
violence. If you try to compete with them
by doing whatever they do, issue taxes, issue tariffs, try to
regulate other people, you will go to jail because the state is
literally a monopoly. So if your claim is I'm
terrified of the potential of monopoly, therefore I'm going to
advocate a monopoly, you are certainly not thinking clearly,
and that was Molyneux's point there.
He said Third, is anarchy accepted as a core value in non
political spheres? So the examples he uses is
dating, career choices, education and so on.
That people will often make these decision based on profit,
incentive, how much money, how much they enjoy it and what
other other people can market or persuade them to do such a
thing. But they usually rule out
initiating force to achieve such an end.
So Molyneux's point is people love the anarchy they live but
tend to love the non anarchy that they just so happened to
have gone to school for 12 years to be told is terrible.
Not a coincidence. 4th of the 6th Molyneux says would the
person advocating statism perform state functions himself.
He's saying that if someone says, Oh yeah, well it's OK to
issue property taxes to fund public schools.
That's a very abstract statement and people are used to saying
it. They probably don't even think
about it. So his question is to say OK
before we talk about them this concept the state.
I want to talk about you do you have the right let's let's look
at this house over there. You watch the woman come out and
you say, do you have the right to cage that woman If she
doesn't give you 3% of whatever that state says her house is
allegedly worth? Do you have the right to cage
her and shoot her if she resists?
Just don't chip in to this education program.
Does the Catholic Church have the right to do this?
Because there there are Catholic schools where people learn a
lot. There's the Libertarian
Institute, which provides a free education on history, economics
and philosophy. Does everyone have the right to
do this? And if it's so justified, why
are people so hesitant to do it themselves?
When it comes to rape, kidnapping, slavery, murder,
people have no problem saying, hell yeah, I would have the
right to defend myself or use defensive force against someone
doing something terrible like that.
But when it comes to, well, how about issuing taxes?
And then they go, well, you know, we live in a society and
society has rules, and then they get extremely abstract because
it's so uncomfortable that they have to foam up some
rationalization. So because we should be very
optimistic, because if people truly believed that, they'd say
yes, I'd have the right to do it myself.
The fact that they get extremely uncomfortable when talking about
the implications of what they're advocating is what Molyneux's
talking about. He says #5 can something be
voluntary and coercive at the same time?
So many advocates of democracy, especially will say monarchy is
terrible, you just have someone rolling over you.
However, democracy is done through the consent of the
governed. This is a clear example of
something that people only believe because the process of
repetition has made them assume that it has to be something
that's legitimate. So since it's based on the
consent of the governed, it seems like it's not like you're
actually not able to opt out of funding the IRS or opt out of
engaging in these regulations and occupational licenses.
So if democracy's legitimate because it's based on consent
and people can't give their consent to disassociate with the
Lindsey Graham's of the world, how can you say that the very
thing that justifies your system, consent of the governed,
it then necessarily violates by definition.
That is Molly's fifth point. And finally, does political
organization change human nature.
So if you say you know, but so Sean Hannity was having a
conversation with Penn Jillette and Penn Jillette made some
pretty good libertarian points and and he just says with all
the confidence in the world, you know, those sound like, you know
sort of utopian ideas. I just have more of a dark view
of how humans are. I think people are bad and can't
be trusted, as if that justifies anything that came out of his
mouth previously. If people are so bad, what
species do you want running the government?
Who's going to run the FDA? Is it going to be a bunch of
owls and zebras? It's going to be people.
But hold on one second ago people were terrible and greedy
and couldn't be trusted, and now you give them the power to
coercively rule. It's one thing to say people are
greedy, and that's why we need a free market where we can
disassociate with bad actors because people are greedy.
What the Sean Hannity's of the world say is people are greedy,
and some of them should have the right to coercively rule over
others. And all these evil, greedy, lazy
people should be able to vote once every four years to
determine who rules over everyone else.
So whether you think people are all good, all bad, some evil,
well, that's actually an interesting one where you think,
well, people are mostly good, but there are some evil people
out there. What kind of personality do you
think is attracted to? Hey, you get to coerce people to
do things and they don't have a right to disobey you.
You think it's the average person?
No, of course not. It's the Lindsey Grahams and
Anthony Wieners and Kamala Harris's of the world, the most
psychopathic of them all. The average good person wants
nothing to do with that. So because the existence of a
state does not change the very human nature which that everyone
since every political philosopher since Thomas Hobbes
has used that as a justification for if there is a state, it's
because life would be nasty, brutish and short and people are
really bad. Well then we can't have a state
because the most evil people will be attracted to it.
And in the free market there are evil people but they still can't
get a penny out of your pocket unless you voluntarily give it
to them. I hear Steve Jobs was like a
total jerk, but thank God he didn't have some.
His security was a private security team for Apple,
protecting, you know, your material through things like
passwords. So even even the evil people in
the free market have an incentive to be good people to
cooperate with. That's why the understanding of
human nature and the implications are important to
understanding economics. That's what I love about
Molyneux's essay here.