The Question of Anarchy

The following is a transcript of a post I made regarding this question in that hallowed venue of polite and honest intellectual inquiry, an internet debate.

How are we going to get anywhere with this post? It covers so much...I don't even know where to begin.

Alright. I guess first we need to know whether anarchy is something we want before we talk about whether its some place we can get to. Its important to know where you're trying to go before you set off down the road.

The first question is one of pure philosophy. Before we can start applying any doctrines to politics we have to answer one question: Deontology or Utilitarianism?

This question, thankfully, can be answered rather quickly. Group calculation of the utilitarian sort, is impossible because of the economic calculation problem so even if one is a supporter of utilitarian ethics, one must agree that government can't identify what increases utility the the most, therefore a utilitarian government is impossible.

So if we're going to talk about a just social order, we have to place it in deontological terms. For this, we need a philosophy of property rights.

It is clear that property rights are naturally occurring. If nobody had any right to anything, men would sit around and wait to die, since nobody would have a right to utilize nature for his own benefit. Even in the purely communist society, property rights exist. All property rights are simply invested in the soviet, rather than in any individuals. Somebody then, has the right to transform nature for his benefit or the benefit of others. Who?

Well, man was born into the world, or initially appeared in the world, basically naked, with nothing but nature and the tools given him by God to survive. It seems then, to me, that all of the nature around man was virgin land, having never been appropriated, and thus in a state of no-ownership.

Man then, attains property rights by taking nature which previously had not been appropriated, and doing so. Transforming it into things which are useful to him. Doing what John Locke called mixing his labor with the land. Once he has done so then, this property has become his, and he has attained sovereignty over it. It is then the case that, since he is sovereign over his property, it cannot be moral to take it from him by force. The only moral way to transfer this sovereignty is through a mutually voluntary exchange between man and his fellow men. Any other way of taking it requires coercive aggression against the man and the looting of his property, through which he went to the trouble of laboring to transform. This barbaric, and indeed cannibalistic practice can never be considered moral. And, because of the economic calculation problem, we know that no possible end can make it moral. The utilitarian argument has been dispatched because of the impossible nature of the problem it tries to address. So then, we must treat any seizure of man's property as pure theft, regardless of the ends the thief wishes to achieve, and regardless of the special hats or badges that he may wear by which he claims to have a right to this property. All non-voluntary exchange can only be treated as petty theft in our proposed order, if we are serious about establishing a just order.

What then, about theft? Certainly it would arise.

It seems clear to me that if man coerces another, and takes from him the fruits of his labor, he has no claim over this property. It must be immediately returned to his fellow.

What if this man is gone? Perhaps he has died since this property has been stolen from him. If this is the case, it must be any identifiable heir of man who has sovereignty over this property. Still, the property must be taken from the thief and given to the heir.

And if there is no identifiable heir? Well, then, this property passes into a state of no-ownership. Those who were sovereign over it are gone, and the man who has pretended sovereignty has no valid claim, so the property then belongs to whoever comes along (other than the thief himself) and appropriates it towards some end. The thief can never make any claim over it.

This is the same if the thief's heir now controls the property, and the true owner's heir can be identified. If, however, it is the case that no heir of the original owner can be found, and an heir of the thief currently owns the property, it must be the case that this property has become the valid exchange of the thief's heir. This is because, at one point or another, the property passed into a state of no-ownership, and the thief's heir then appropriated it, becoming its valid owner.

So this is what we have established. Property can only be originally attained through original appropriation. It can only be exchanged voluntarily. It can never validly pass into the hands of a thief, but may only pass into a state of no-ownership, to be later appropriated by some other actor.

This of course, means that the only just deontological order that we may establish is one of pure laissez-faire capitalism. Any other proposed system relies upon both thievery (taxation) and the impossible attempt by utilitarians to overcome the economic calculation problem.

Before get to the latter, it is important to address the former. Is taxation thievery? Does not the social contract make taxation by the state morally valid? It does not, for three main reasons.

The first is because any contract must be based upon mutual and voluntary exchange. However, the social contract was not. Rather, it was applied to already existing states, having been assumed to have been signed at some point lost in antiquity. Of course, it never was, and no evidence of the signing of such a contract can be found. All states are born in the fires of war & conquest, and thus have no claim to have ever signed any contract with their people.

The second reason is because, if the social contract was signed in antiquity, it has become invalid since. For no contract may govern a man who did not agree to enter into it. For this reason, the social contract, if it was ever signed, became invalid as soon as the generation that signed it passed from the Earth. The social contract would have to be drawn up anew and re-signed every generation. Clearly, this is not the case.

Thirdly, for the same reason as the second, the social contract could only be valid if voluntarily signed by 100% of society. This would essentially mean that the government would lose its ability to tax, and, in fact, stop being a government altogether, being merely a firm providing goods and services for voluntary exchange. The existence of just one man in the entire society who does not adhere to the contract would make the state's authority over him invalid. For if the state believes that its rule is based off of mutually consenting contracts, it must agree that it has no right to rule a man who does not wish to contract with it.

If this is the case, then we must agree that Anarcho-Capitalism is the location which we want to reach. It is the only system which is fully consistent with the philosophy of property and of contracts that we have found to be just. It is the only system in which people may live freely, knowing that their property will not be stolen by men from the government.

But surely this is not enough? Because people can steal, certainly, even if they don't address themselves with the pomp and majesty of the state. If Anarcho-Capitalism is a philosophy of "Let justice reign, though the heavens fall!" the pertinent question becomes "Will they?"

Nobody who truly commits themselves to this motto believes that they will. In this case, they won't.

The reason is simply, because, law, order, etc, are desired goods and services. Currently, all or nearly all members of society who are specialized in defense protection services are in the employ of the state. From this, we do not conclude that they would simply disappear if the state did. Does anyone seriously believe that if the state stopped delivering mail, mail delivery would cease to exist as a service? Of course not. People would hire private firms like UPS and FedEx to deliver their mail.

We can presume, then, that the same would happen with defense protection services. Indeed, the very nature of marginal utility forces us to conclude that this is the case. Of course, we cannot rule out the existence of murderers, or of terrorists who desire to hurt their fellow men, or of shucksters who do not provide their promised services adequately.

The important point to remember is that neither can the state. What state law provides, its central service, is a promise that should you choose to wrong your fellow man, you will have to pay the costs of the state's justice. A fine, jail, whatever. Obviously depending on what crime it is that you commit. The only time the state provides the direct service of preventing crimes from being committed is in the exceedingly rare circumstance that a crime is committed in the direct and immediate presence of a police officer.

So certainly this service, the fear of consequences, could be adequately provided by a market. Indeed it would be provided more efficiently, for currently, if a man commits a crime, the state spares no expense in hunting him down. It brings the criminal to justice for his crimes regardless of costs. Of course, this will sometimes be inefficient. Because of the nature of marginal utility and of the economic calculation problem, we will never know whether it was even wise to hunt down the criminal, or if the resources invested therein could not have been better used for other ends.

Of course we have one final problem. How do we stop the providers of defense protection from being, themselves, violators of justice? Who watches the watchers?

The answer is, they are kept in line by other defense protection firms, via the market. Nobody will pay for a service they find inadequate or otherwise undesirable.

Clearly, this seems ridiculous, on face. At first glance. But it is the system that all of society already adheres to! For except for those who believe in a one-world total state, everybody believes anarchy works, to some degree. As realists love to say, the international order is anarchical. The only social orders that are respected between states are ones that are essentially voluntary in nature. It is, particularly, voluntary economic treaties that have been the most enduring. The anarchist view then, merely takes the belief that our international order essentially works, and applies to individual societies. And of course, someone who truly believed anarchy did not work would have to be puzzled anytime he saw humans living together without the immediate presence of a police officer. For if the law is not around, it must be the case that humans will immediately tear each other apart. Unless it is truly, as anarchists submit, the fear of consequences, and not the immediate presence of force, that governs men.

Of course, there would be instances of murder, of thievery, of wars of conquest and aggression, of grave injustice. The state, which ostensibly is our shield against these horrors, does not prevent them now. The anarchist society would work at least as well, and likely much better, since it would be based off of rational economic calculation, instead of irrational utilitarian groupthink.

If it is somewhere we want to go, is it somewhere it is possible to arrive at? Who knows. I strongly suspect that the answer is a regrettable no. However, the question is essentially unanswerable. Certainly the potential benefits of trying far outweigh the potential costs. Worst-case scenario, we end up right back where we started.