Libertarian anarchism responses to ten objections by Roderick T
long. I want to talk about some of the
main objections that have been given to libertarian anarchism
and my attempts to answer them. But before I start giving
objections and trying to answer them, there was no point in
trying to answer objections to have you unless you have been
given some positive reason to hold the view in the first
place. So I just want to say briefly
what? I think the positive case is for
it before. Going on to defend it against
objections. The case for libertarian,
anarchism problems with forced Monopoly.
Think about it this way. What's wrong with a shoe
Monopoly? Suppose that I And My Gang are
the only ones who are legally allowed to manufacture and sell
shoes. My gang and anyone else I
authorized, but no one else. What's wrong with it?
Well, first of all, from a moral point of view, the question is,
why us, what is so special about us now, in this case?
Because I've chosen me, it is more plausible that I ought to
have that kind of Monopoly. So maybe I should pick a
different example, but still, you might wonder where do I in
my gang? Get off.
Clint claiming this right to make and sell something that no
one else has the right to make and sell to provide a good or
service. No one else has the right to
provide at least as far as you know, I'm just another mortal.
Another human like unto yourselves more or less.
So from a moral standpoint. I have no more right to do it
than anyone else. Then, of course, from a
pragmatic, consequentialist standpoint.
Well, first of all, what is the likely result of my in my gang
having a monopoly on shoes? Well, first of all, there are
incentive problems, if I'm the only person who has the right to
make and sell shoes, you're probably not going to get the
shoes from me. Very cheaply.
I can charge as much as I want. As long as I don't charge too
much that you just can't afford them at all, or you decide
you're happier. Just not having the shoes.
But as long as you're willing and able, I'll charge the
highest price that I can get out of you because you've got no
competition. No.
Where else to go. You also probably shouldn't
expect the shoes to be a particularly high quality
because after all as long as they're barely serviceable and
you still prefer them to going Barefoot, then you have to Them
for me. In addition to the likelihood
that the shoes are going to be expensive and not very good.
There's also the fact that my ability to be the only person
who makes and sells shoes gives me a certain leverage over.
You suppose that I don't like, you suppose you've offended me
in some way. Well, maybe you just don't get
used for a while. So there's also abuse of power
issues, but it's not just the incentive problem because after
all suppose that I'm a perfect saint.
And I will make the best use, I possibly can.
And I'll charge the lowest price.
I can possibly charge and I won't abuse my power at all.
Suppose. I'm utterly trustworthy.
I'm a prince among men not in Machiavelli, since there was
still a problem which is how do I know exactly that I'm doing
the best job I can with these shoes after all, there's no
competition. I guess I could pull people to
try and find out what kind of shoes they seem to want, but
there are lots It's of different ways.
I could make shoes. Some of them are more expensive
ways of making men and some are less expensive.
How do I know given that there's no market?
And there's really not much I can do in the way of profit and
loss accounting. I just have to make guesses.
So even if I'm doing my best the quality I make the quantity I
make may not be best suited to satisfy people's preferences and
I have a hard time finding these things out.
Government is a forced Monopoly. So those are all the reasons not
to have a monopoly on the making and selling of shoes.
Now Prime Aphasia. At least it seems as though
those are all good reasons for anyone.
Not to have a monopoly in the provision of Services of
adjudicating disputes and protecting rights and all the
other things that are involved in what you might broadly call
the enterprise of law. First of all, there's a moral.
Question, why does one gang of people get the right to be the
only ones in a given territory who can offer certain kinds of
legal services or enforce certain kinds of things.
And then there are these economic questions.
What are the incentives going to be?
Once again? It's a monopoly.
It seems likely that with a captive customer base.
They're going to charge higher prices than they otherwise would
and offer lower quality. There might even be the
occasional abuse abuse of power. And then, even if you managed to
avoid all those problems and you get all the saintly types and to
government, they're still a problem of how do they know that
the particular way? They're providing Legal
Services? The particular mix of Legal
Services. They're offering the particular
ways. They do.
It are really the best ones. They just have to try and figure
out what will work since there's no competition.
They don't have much way of knowing whether what they're
doing is the most successful thing they could be doing.
So, the purpose of those considerations is to put the
burden of proof on the opponent. So this is the point when the
opponent of competition and legal services, has to raise
some objections. Ten objections to the
libertarian. Anarchism.
Number one, government is not in the chaos of Monopoly.
Now one objection that sometimes raised isn't so much an
objection to anarchism as an objection to the moral argument.
For anarchism. We'll look, it's not really a
coercive Monopoly. It's not as though people
haven't consented to this because there's a certain sense
in which people have consented to the existing system by Within
the borders of a particular territory by accepting the
benefits of government offers and so forth.
They have an effect consented just as if you were, I walk into
a restaurant, sit down and say y'all have a steak.
You don't have to explicitly mention that you're agreeing to
pay for it. It's just sort of understood by
sitting down in the restaurant and asking for the steak, you
are agreeing to pay for it. Likewise the argument goes if
you sit down In the territory of this given State and you accept
benefits of police protection or something.
Then you've input plus Italy agreed to abide by its
requirements. Notice that even if this
argument works, it doesn't settle the pragmatic question of
whether this is the best working system.
But I think there was something dubious about this argument.
It's certainly true. That if I go onto someone else's
property, then it seems like there's an expectation that, as
long as I'm on their property, I have to do, as they say, I have
to follow their rules. If I don't want to follow their
rules, then I have to leave. So I invite you over to my house
and when you come in, I say, you have to wear the funny hat and
you say what's this? And I say, well, that's the way
it works in my house. Everyone has to wear.
The funny hat. Those are the rules.
Well, you can't say I won't wear this hat, but I'm saying,
anyways, these are my rules. They may be dumb rules, but I
can do it now, suppose that you're at home having dinner and
I'm your next door neighbor, and I come and knock on your door.
You open the door and I come say, you have to wear the funny
hat. And you say, why is this and I
say, well, you moved in next door to me.
Didn't you by doing that? You sort of agreed?
And you say, well, wait a second.
When did I agree? Do this.
I think that the person who makes this argument is already
assuming that the government has some legitimate jurisdiction
over this territory. And then they say, well, now
anyone who was in the territory, is there for agreeing to the
prevailing rules, but there are so many the very things they're
trying to prove namely that jurisdiction over the territory
is legitimate. If it's not, then the government
is just one more group of people.
In this broad General geographical territory, but I've
got my property and exactly what their arrangements are.
I don't know. But here I am in my property and
they don't own it. At least they haven't given me
any argument that they do. And so the fact that I'm living
in this country, means I'm living in a certain geographical
region that they have certain pretensions over.
But the question is, whether those pretensions are
legitimate, you can't assume Zoom it.
As I mean sir. Proving it.
Another thing is one of the problems with these implicit
social contract arguments is that it's not clear, what the
contract is, in the case of ordering food in a restaurant.
Everyone pretty much knows what the contract is so you could run
an implicit consent argument there, but no one would suggest
that you could buy a house in the same way.
There are all rules and things like that when it's something
complicated. No one says you just sort of
agreed by nodding your head at some point or something.
You have to find out what it is. That's exactly in the contract.
What are you agreeing to? It's not clear.
If no one knows what exactly the details of the contract.
Are. It's not that persuasive.
Okay. Well, most of the arguments I'm
going to talk about are pragmatic or a mixture of moral
and pragmatic. Objection.
Number to Thomas. Hobbes says government is
necessary for cooperation. Probably the most famous
argument against Anarchy is Hobbs Hobbs.
His argument is well, look, human cooperation.
Social cooperation requires a structure of law in the
background. The reason we can trust each
other to cooperate is because we know that there are legal forces
that will punish us. If we violate each other's
rights. I know they'll punish me if I
violate your rights, but Also punish you if you violate my
rights and so I can trust you because I don't have to rely on
your personal character. I just have to rely on the fact
that you'll be intimidated by the law.
So, social cooperation requires This legal framework backed up
by force of the state. Well, Hobbs is assuming several
things at once here, first. He's assuming that there can't
be any social cooperation with Outlaw second.
He's assuming that there can't be any law, unless it's enforced
by physical force, and third, he's assuming, you can't have
law, enforced by physical Force, unless it's done by a monopoly
state, but all of those assumptions are false.
It's certainly true that cooperation can and does emerge.
Maybe not as effectively as it would with law, but without law.
Robert elections book order without law, where he talks
about how neighbors managed to resolve disputes.
He offers all these examples about what happens if one
Farmers cow wanders onto another Farmers territory and they solve
it through some mutual customary agreements and so forth.
So there's no legal framework for resolving it.
Maybe that's not enough for a complex economy, but it
certainly shows that you can't have some kind of cooperation,
without an actual legal framework.
Second. You can have a legal framework.
I'm work. That isn't backed up by force.
An example would be the law Merchant in the late Middle
Ages. A system of commercial law that
was backed up by threats of boycott.
Boycott is an act of force, but still, you've got Merchants
making all these contracts. And if you don't abide by the
contract, then the courts just publicizes to everyone.
This person didn't abide by the contract, take that into
account. If you're going to make another
contract with him. And third, you can have formal
legal systems that do not use force that are not monopolistic.
Since Hobbs doesn't even consider that possibility.
He doesn't really give any argument against it but you can
certainly see examples in history.
The history of medieval Iceland, for example where there was no
Center of enforcement. Although there was something
that you might perhaps call a government.
It had no executive arm at all. It had no police.
No soldiers. No nothing.
It had sort of a competitive Court.
Mmm, but then enforcement was just up to whoever and there
were systems that evolved for taking care of that.
Objection number, three lakh, three inconveniences of Anarchy.
Okay. Well more interesting arguments
come from Locke Locke argues that anarchy involves three
things called inconveniences. And inconvenience has somewhat
more weighty of a sound in the 17th century English than it
does in Modern English, but still his point in calling it
inconveniences, which still is a bit weaker was the that lock
thought that social cooperation could exist under some Anarchy.
He was more optimistic than hops was.
And thought on the basis of moral sympathies on one hand and
self-interest on the other cooperation could emerge.
He thought there were three problems?
One problem. He said was that there wouldn't
be a general body of law, that was generally known and agreed
upon in understood. People could grasp certain basic
principles of the law of nature, but their applications in
precise detail were always going to be controversial.
Even Libertarians, don't agree. They can agree on General
things, but we're always arguing with each other about various
points of fine. Detail.
So, even in the Society of peaceful Cooperative
Libertarians, there are going to be disagreements about detail.
And so, unless there's some general body of law that
everyone knows about so that they can know what they can
count on being able to do and what not.
It's not going to work. So that was locks.
First argument. There has to be a generally
known Universal body of law that applies to everyone that
everyone knows about ahead of time.
Second, there's a power of enforcement problem.
He thought that without a government, you don't have
sufficiently unified power to enforce.
You just have individuals forcing things on their own, and
they're just too weak. They're not organized enough.
They could be overrun by a gang of Bandits or something.
Third lock said, the problem is that people can't be trusted to
be judges in their own case. If two people have a
disagreement and one of them says, well, I know what the law
of nature is and I'm going to enforce it on you.
Well people tend to be biased and they're going to find most
plausible deer per interpretation of the law of
nature that favors their own case.
So we thought that you can't trust people to be judges in
their own case. Therefore, they should be
morally required to submit. Disputes to an Arbiter.
Maybe in cases of emergency, they can still defend themselves
on the spot, but for other cases, it's not a matter of
immediate self-defense. They need to delegate this to an
Arbiter, a third party and that's the state.
So Locke thinks that these are three problems, you have under
Anarchy, and you wouldn't have them under government or at
least the right kind of government, but I think it's
actually exactly the other way around.
I think that anarchy can solve all three of these problems and
that the state by its very nature, cannot possibly solve
them. So let's first take the case of
universality or having a universally known body of law
that people can know ahead of time and count on.
Now, can that emerge in a non State system?
Well, in fact, it did emerge in the law Merchant precisely
because the states were not providing it.
One of the things that helped to bring about the emergence of the
law, Merchant is the individual states and Europe each had
different sets of laws. Governing merchants.
They were all different and the court in France.
Wouldn't uphold a contract made in England under the laws of
England and vice versa. And so the merchants ability to
engage in international trade was hampered by the fact that
there wasn't any uniform system of commercial law for all of
Europe. So the merchants got together
and said, we'll just make some of our own.
The courts are coming up with these crazy rules and they're
all different and they won't respect each other's decisions.
So we'll just ignore them and we'll set up our own system.
So this is a case in which uniformity and predictability
were produced by the market and not by the state, and you can
see why that's not surprising. It's in the interest of those
who are providing a private system, to make it uniform and
predictable, if that's what the customers need.
It's for the same reason that you don't find any triangular
ATM cards. As far as I know.
There's no law saying that you can't have a triangular ATM
card. But if anyone tried to Market
them, they just wouldn't be very popular because they wouldn't
fit into the existing machines. When what people need is
diversity, when what people need is different systems for
different people. The market provides that but
there are some things where uniformity is better.
Your ATM card is more valuable to you.
If everyone else is using the same kind as well or a kind
compatible with it. So you can use the machines
wherever you go on there for the merchants if they want to make a
profit, they're going to provide uniformity.
So the market has an incentive. To provide uniformity in a way
that government doesn't necessarily.
On the question of having sufficient power for organizing
for defense. Well, there's no reason you
can't have organization under Anarchy in Turkey, doesn't mean
that each person makes their own shoes.
The alternative to government, providing all the shoes is not
that each person makes their own shoes.
So likewise the alternative, the government providing all the
legal services is not that each person has to be their own
independent policeman. There's no reason that they
can't organize in various ways. In fact, if you're worried about
not having sufficient Force to resist an aggressor.
Well, I'm an awfully government is a much more dangerous
aggressor than just some gang of Bandits or other because it's
unified all this power in just one point in the whole society.
But I think most interestingly the argument about being a judge
in your own case, really boomerangs against Locke's
argument here. Because first of all, it's not a
good argument for a monopoly because it's a fallacy to argue
from everyone should submit their disputes to a third party.
Two, there should be a third party that everyone submits
their disputes to that's like arguing from Everyone likes at
least one TV show to. There's at least one TV show
that Everyone likes. It just doesn't follow.
You can have everyone submitting their disputes to third parties
without there being one, third party that everyone submits
their disputes to. So, suppose.
You've got three people on an island, A and B can submit their
disputes to see And ANC can submit their disputes to B, and
B and C can submit their disputes to a.
So, you don't need a monopoly in order to embody this principle
that people should submit their disputes to a third party, but
moreover, not only do you not need a government but a
government is precisely what? Doesn't satisfy that principle
because if you have a dispute with the government, the
government doesn't submit that dispute to a third party.
If you have a dispute with the Permanent.
It'll be settled in a government court.
If you're lucky, if you're unlucky, if you live under one
of the more Rough and Ready, governments, you won't even get
as far as court. Now.
Of course, it's better. If the government is itself,
divided has checks and balances and so forth.
It's a little bit better. That's closer to their being
third parties. But still they are all part of
the same system. The judges are paid by tax money
and so forth. So it's not as though you can't
have better and worse. Approximations to the Principal
among different kinds of governments still.
As long as it's a monopoly system by its nature.
It's in a certain sense Lawless it never ultimately submits its
disputes to a third party objection, number four by Ian.
Rand private protection agencies will battle probably the most
popular argument against libertarian.
Anarchy is well what happens if and this is on Ranch?
Famous argument. I think you violated my rights
and you think you haven't? So I call up my protection
agency and you call up your protection agency.
Why won't they just go to battle what guarantees that they won't
battle to which? Of course, the answer is well,
nothing guarantees. They won't do battle human
beings have free. Will they can do all kinds of
crazy things. They might go to battle,
likewise George Bush, might decide to push the nuclear
button tomorrow. They might do all sorts of
things. The question is what's likely
switches likelier to settle its dispute through violence a
government or a private Protection Agency.
Well, the difference is that private protection agencies have
to bear the cost of their own decisions to go to war, going to
war is expensive. If you have a choice between
two, protection agencies and one solves its disputes through
violence, most of the time and the other solves its disputes
through arbitration, most of the time now, You might think I want
the one that solves its disputes through violence.
They sound really cool. But then you look at your
monthly premiums and you think well.
How committed are you to this Viking mentality?
Now? You might be so committed to the
Viking mentality. That you're willing to pay for
it. But still it's more expensive.
A lot of consumers are going to say, I want to go to the one
that doesn't charge all this extra amount for the violence.
Whereas government's, first of all, they've got captive
customers. They can't do elsewhere.
But since they're taxing, the customers anyways, and so the
customers don't have the option to switch to a different agency
and So governments can externalize the cost of, they're
going to warm much more effectively than private
agencies can. And just a quick side note,
isn't it funny? They're so terrified of like,
neighbor a thinking you stole my TV and then the other neighbor
saying, no, we didn't and violence.
Resulting. It's like, um, has there ever
been an example of government's going to war?
Like, you're really think neighbors are going to start
going to war. Let's see.
If this criticism also applies to your system.
Is there any historical examples of governments using It's may be
destroying property, maybe even killing innocent people.
I mean, you got a couple world wars, a couple genocides by
dictators. You got carpet bombings.
You got Mass arrests for victimless crimes.
You got stealing four trillion dollars annually, but at least
there's no disputes because under Anarchy.
There might be disputes in which bad things happen, huh?
Objection. Number 5, Robert Ben.
And I do know, final Arbiter of disputes.
One common objection. This is, when you find, for
example, in Robert didn't Otto, who's a randian, who's written a
number of Articles against Anarchy.
He and I have sort of had a running debate online about
this, his principal objection to Anarchy, is that under Anarchy?
There's no final Arbiter and disputes under government.
Some final Arbiter at some point comes along and resolve the
dispute one way or another well, under Anarchy since there's no
agency that has the right to settle things once and for all
there's no fun. Anil Arbiter and so disputes in
some sense. Never end.
They never get resolved. They always remain open ended.
So what's the answer to that? Well, I think there's an
ambiguity to the concept here. Are they a final Arbiter by
final Arbiter? You could mean the final Arbiter
in what I call the playtonic sense that is to say someone or
something or some institution that somehow absolutely
guarantees that the dispute is resolved forever that absolutely
guarantees the resolution. Or instead by final Arbiter, you
could simply mean some person or a process of institution or
something or other that more or less reliably guarantees, most
of the time that these problems get resolved.
Now it is true that in the platonic sense of an absolute
guarantee of a final Arbiter. In that sense.
Anarchy does not provide one. But neither does any other
system. Take a Min artist constitutional
republic, the sort that Ben and I do favors.
Is there a final Arbiter under the system in the sense of
something that absolutely guarantees ending the process of
dispute forever. Well, I sue you or I've been
sued or I'm accused of something.
Whatever. I'm in some kind of Court case,
I lose it. I appeal it.
It goes to the Supreme Court.
They go against me. I Lobby Congress to change the
laws in favor me. They don't do it.
So I try to get a movement for a constitutional amendment going
that fail. So, I try to get people together
to vote a new people in Congress, who will vote for it.
In some sense. It can go on forever.
The dispute isn't over. But as a matter of fact, most of
the time, legal disputes, eventually end.
Someone finds it too costly to continue fighting likewise under
Anarchy, of course, there's no guarantee that the conflict
won't go on forever. There are very few guarantees of
that Ironclad sort, but there's no reason not to expect it to
work. Objection number six property,
law. Cannot emerge from the market.
Another popular argument also used Often by Randy ins is that
market exchanges, presuppose a background of property law.
You and I can't be making exchanges of goods for services
or money for services or whatever unless there's already
a stable background of property law, that ensures us the
property titles we have. And, because the market in order
to function Suppose has existing background property law.
Therefore, that property law cannot itself, be the product of
the market. The property law must emerge.
They must really think, it must emerge out of an infallible,
robot or something, but I don't know exactly what it emerges
from, but somehow, it can't emerge from the market.
So, the argument goes, But their thinking is sort of like this
first. There's this property law, and
it's all put in place and no Market transactions are
happening. Everyone is just waiting for the
whole legal structure to be put in place and then it's in place
and now we can finally start trading back and forth.
It certainly is true that you can't have functioning markets
without a functioning legal system.
That's true, but it's not as though the first legal system is
in place. And then on the last day, they
Italy, finished putting the legal system together.
Then the people begin their trading, these things arise
together, legal institutions and economic trade arise together in
one and the same place at one. In the same time.
The legal system is not something independent of the
activity. It constrains.
After all, a legal system again is not a robot or a God or
something separate from us, the existence of a legal system
consists in people obeying it if We won ignored the legal system.
It would have no power at all. So it's only because people
generally go along with it that it survives, the legal system to
depends on voluntary support. I think that a lot of people,
one reason that they're scared of Anarchy is they think that
under government it's as though there's some kind of guarantee
that's taken away under Anarchy that somehow there's this firm
background. We can always fall back on that
under Anarchy. It's just gone.
But the firm background is just the product of people
interacting with incentives that they have.
Likewise when anarchists a people under an He would
probably have the incentive to do this or that, and people say,
well that's not good enough. I just don't want it to be
likely, they'll have the incentive to do this.
I want the government to absolutely guarantee that
they'll do it. But the government is just
people and depending on what the Constitutional structure of the
government is. It's likely that they'll do this
or that you can't design a constitution that will guarantee
that the people in the government will behave in any
particular way. You can structure it in such a
way so that they're more likely to do this or less likely to do
that and you can see Anarchy as just an extension of checks and
balances to a broader level. For example, people say what
guarantees that the different agencies will resolve things in
any particular way. Well, the US Constitution says,
nothing about what happens if different branches of the
government disagree about how to resolve things.
It doesn't say what happens if the Supreme Court thinks
something is unconstitutional. But Congress thinks it doesn't
and wants to go ahead and do it. Anyway, famously.
It doesn't say what happens if there's a dispute between the
states and the Federal I meant the current system where once
the Supreme Court, declare something unconstitutional, then
the Congress and the president. Don't try to do it anymore.
Or at least not as much that didn't always exist.
Remember when the court declared that what Andrew Jackson was
doing was unconstitutional. When he was president.
He just said, well, they've made that decision.
Let them enforce it. The Constitution doesn't say
whether the way Jackson did, it was the right way.
The way we do it now is just the way that's emerged through
custom, maybe your for it. Maybe you're against it,
whatever it is. It was never codified in law.
Objection. Number seven, organized crime
will take over one objection. Is that under Anarchy?
Organized crime. Will take over.
Well, it might. But is it likely organized
crime? Gets its power because it
specializes in things that are illegal, things like drugs,
alcohol prostitution. And so During the years, when
alcohol was prohibited organized crime, specialized in the
alcohol trade nowadays, there are not so big in the alcohol
trade. So the power of organized crime
to a large extent, depends on the power of government.
It's sort of a parasite on the government's activities
governments by Banning things create black markets.
Black markets are dangerous things to be in because you have
to worry both about the government and about other dodgy
people. People who are going to be in
the black market filled. Organized crime, specializes in
that. So We're Goin eyes crime.
I think would be weaker not stronger in a Libertarian
system. Objection number 8, the rich
will rule. Another worry, is that the rich
would rule under Anarchy after? All won't Justice.
Just go to the highest bidder. In that case.
If you turn Legal Services into an economic good, that's a
common objection. Interestingly.
It's a particularly common objection.
Among Randy ends who suddenly become very concerned about the
poor impoverished masses, but under which system are the rich,
more powerful. Either the current system or
under Anarchy. Certainly, you've always got
some sort of Advantage. If you're rich, it's good to be
rich. You're always in a better
position, a bride people. If you're rich, then if you're
not, that's true, but under the current system, the power of the
riches magnified suppose that I'm an evil rich person and I
want to get the government to do something or other that cost a
million dollars. Do I have to bribe some
bureaucrat a million dollars to get it done?
No. Because I'm not asking him to do
it with his own money. Any.
Obviously, if I were asking him to do it with his own money, I
couldn't get him to spend a million dollars by bribing him
any less than 1 million. It would have to be at least 1
million dollars in one cent. But people who control tax
money, that they don't themselves personally owned and
therefore can't do whatever they want with.
The bureaucrat can't just pocket a million and go home.
Although it can get surprisingly close to.
All I have to do is bribe him a few thousand and he can direct
this million dollars in tax money to my favorite project or
whatever. And thus, the power of my bribe
money is multiplied. Whereas, if you were the head of
some private Protection Agency, and I'm trying to get you to do
something that costs a million dollars.
I'd have to bribe, you more than a million.
So the power of the riches actually less under Anarchy, and
of course, any court that got this reputation of
discriminating in favor of millionaires against poor.
People would also presumably have the reputation of
discriminating for billionaires against millionaires.
So the millionaires would not want to deal with it all of the
time. They'd only want to deal with it
when they're dealing with people poorer.
Not people richer the reputation effects.
I don't think this would be too popular, an outfit.
Worries about poor victims, who can't afford legal services or
victims, who died without heirs again.
The Randy ends are very worried about victims dying without.
Heirs, in the case of the poor victims.
You can do what they did. In medieval Iceland, you're too
poor to purchase legal services, but still, if someone has
harmed, you, you have a claim to compensation from that person.
You can sell that claim part of the claim or all of the claim to
someone else. Actually, it's kind of like
hiring a lawyer on a contingency fee basis.
You can sell to someone who was in a position to enforce your
claim or if you die without heirs in a sense, one of the
goods you left behind was your claim to compensation and that
can be homesteaded. Objection number 9 in the masses
will demand bad laws. Another worried that bitten Otto
has and this is sort of the opposite view that the ritual
rule is will look isn't mises right?
That the market is like a big democracy where there is
consumer sovereignty in the masses, get whatever they want.
That's great when it's like refrigerators and cars and so
forth, but surely it's not a good thing when it's laws
because after all the masses are a bunch of I went intolerant
fools and if they just get whatever laws they want, who
knows what horrible things they will make.
Of course, the difference between economic democracy of
the mises sort, and political democracy is well.
Yeah, they get whatever they want.
But they're going to have to pay for it.
Now. It's perfectly true, that if you
have people who are fanatical enough about wanting to impose,
some wretched thing on other people, you've got a large
enough group of people who are fanatical enough about this.
Then Anarchy might not lead to libertarian results.
If you live in California, you've got enough people who are
absolutely fanatical about banning smoking or maybe you
live in Alabama and it's homosexuality instead of
smoking. They want to ban.
Neither one would ban the other. I think in that case, it might
happen that there. So fanatical about it that they
would ban it. But remember that they're going
to have to be paying for this. So when you get your monthly
premium, you'll see, here's your basic services.
Then you will go against aggression.
Oh, and here's also your extended service.
The extra fee for that appearing on to your neighbors window.
To make sure they're not either smoking tobacco or engaging in
homosexuality or whatever it is. You're worried about.
Now, the really fanatical people will say yes.
I'm going to Shell out extra money for this.
Of course, if they're that fanatical, they're probably
going to be trouble under menarche or statism to But if
they're not that fanatical, they'll say, well, if all I have
to do is go into a voting booth and vote for these laws
restricting, other people's freedom.
Well heck, I'd go in, it's pretty easy to go in and just
vote for it. But if they actually have to pay
for it G, I don't know. Maybe I can reconcile myself to
this. Objection, number 10, Robert
nozick and Tyler. Cowen, private, protection
agencies will become a de facto government.
Okay, one last consideration I want to talk about this is a
question that originally was raised by Robert nozick and has
since been pushed further by Tyler.
Cowen nosek said, suppose you have Anarchy.
One of three things will happen either.
The agencies will fight and he gives two different scenarios of
what will happen if they fight. But I've already talked about
What happens if they fight. So I'll talk about the third
option. What if they don't fight?
Then he says, if instead they agree to these, Mutual
arbitration contracts and so forth, then basically, the whole
thing just turned into a government and then Tyler Cowen
has pushed this argument further.
He said what happens is that basically, this forms a cartel
and it's going to be in the interest of this cartel to sort
of turn itself into a government and any new agency that comes
along. You can just boycott it.
That's great. The worst thing that could
happen on her. Anarchy is government.
So I'm an advocate government. Going on, just as it's in your
interest. If you come along with in new
ATM card, that it can be compatible with everyone else's
machines. So if you come along with a
brand-new Protection Agency, it is in your interest that you get
to be part of this system of contracts and arbitration and so
forth that the existing ones have consumers aren't going to
come to you if they find you don't have any agreements as to
what happens if you're in a conflict with these other.
These and so on, this cartel will be able to freeze everyone
out. Well, could that happen?
Sure. All kinds of things can happen,
half the country could commit suicide tomorrow, but is it
likely, is this cartel likely to be able to abuse its power in
this way. The problem is cartels are
unstable for all the usual reasons.
That doesn't mean that it's impossible, that a cartel
succeed. After all, people have free
will, but it's unlikely because the very incentives that lead
you to form the cartel. Also lead you to cheat on it.
Because it's always in the interest of anyone to make
agreements outside the cartel. Once they are in it Bryan
Caplan. The Economist makes a
distinction between self-enforcing boycotts and
non-self enforcing boycotts. Self-enforcing boycotts.
Are one where the boycott is pretty stable because it's a
boycott against, for example, doing business with people who
cheated their business partners. Now, you don't have to have some
iron resolve. Of moral commitment in order to
avoid doing business with people who cheat their business
partners, you have a perfectly self-interested reason not to do
business with those people. But think, instead of a
commitment not to do business with someone because you don't
like their religion or something like that, or they're a member
of the wrong Protection Agency. One that your fellow protection
agencies told you not to deal with.
Well, the boycott might work. Maybe enough people.
And maybe everyone in this cartel is so committed to
upholding the cartel that they just won't deal with this
person. Is that possible?
Yes, but if we assume that they form the cartel out of their own
economic self-interest than the economic self-interest is
precisely what leads to the undermining because it's in
their interest to deal with the person just as it's always in
your interest to engage in.