Market Anarchism

I find that many people that I know on social media call themselves “libertarian” and yet seem to miss the whole point of the thing. To be a libertarian means that you reject the coersive aggression into the lives of the people by the entity called “The State” that claims a monopoly on the legitimate use of force within its geographical boundaries. In other words, a libertarian is a “live and let live” kind of person who thinks voluntary cooperation among people is the standard we should strive for.

What is a libertarian? From the Mises Wiki we see:

Libertarianism is a political philosophy^[1] that views respect for individual choice and individual liberty^[2] as the foundation of the ideal society, and therefore seeks to minimize or abolish the coercive actions of the State as that is the entity that is generally identified as the most powerful coercive force in society.^[3][4] Broadly speaking, libertarianism focuses on the rights of the individual to act in complete accordance with his or her own subjective values,^[5] and argues that the coercive actions of the State are often (or even always) an impediment to the efficient realization of one’s desires and values.^[6][7] Libertarians also maintain that what is immoral for the individual must necessarily be immoral for all state agents, and that the state should not be above the natural law.^[8][9] The extent to which government is necessary is evaluated by libertarian moral philosophers from a variety of perspectives.^[10][11]

The “libertarian” label is now used since the “liberal” of “Classical Liberalism” came to mean the opposite of liberty after the socialists started calling themselves “liberal” decades ago. If one looks at the liberals of the 18th and 19th century he will see where the libertarians came from; their heritage. I once saw a writer claim that it all boils down to the assertion that all libertarians believe in the Non-Aggression Principle. I think that is a fair litmus test, after all, the only way to minimize coercive actions in society is to try to make everyone adhere to the non-aggression principle.

There has developed over time the notion that the very nature of the state prevents the state from being able to follow the non-aggression principle and therefore we must reject it. That leaves anarchism which is defined as having no monopoly ruler. So very many then ask us, “what in the world happens then”? They think that gangs of roving bands will rape, rob, and pillage the people of every town. What force will keep the peace?

There are various labels for the nature of the society that we envision, but “market anarchy” is as good as any and some say it is better than most. It is the doctrine that the legislative, adjudicative, and protective functions should be entirely turned over to the voluntary, consensual forces of a market society. These functions are now unjustly and inefficiently monopolized by the brutal, coercive, aggressive State. The term “market” turns a lot of people off as they are trained to hear “Wall Street Banksters” when they hear “market”. But here we just use the term “market” as in “free market” to mean the voluntary exchange of goods and services among willing trading partners free of coersive intervention.

Market Anarchy can be defined as “the doctrine that all forms of government are unnecessary, oppressive, and undesirable and should be abolished.” In its essence anarchism is a negative in that it holds that the state (some say “government”) is evil and should be abolished. Other than this doctrine it would be difficult to list the many various beliefs that all anarchists hold. What will come after the state is defeated could take many different forms and there have been various groups predict or advocate various ideas.

Anarchists see a common thread behind most of mankind’s problems, namely the state. After all, we saw a hundred million people murdered by various governments around the world during th 20th century. This is an endless historical pattern. The state arises and then the rulers and their minions live by looting and enslaving the population. These ruling classes have tended to use their ill-gotten gains to build armies and then wage wars for various reasons … mostly false ones. Even when not at war with some other state a nation’s government is continually looting the people and making their lives poorer than they otherwise would have been.

Market anarchy has been more broadly known as “anarcho-capitalism” and I use the two terms as synonyms. Market anarchists believe that in an anarchist society people would expand private property to encompass the entire social realm. While no anarcho-capitalist has ever denied the right of people to voluntarily pool their private property and form cooperatives, jointly owned land, worker-owned firms, or communes — they believe that these attempts at private socialism will fail as they always have in the past.  Market anarchist see private property as the bedrock of an anarchist society. They also believe that several property, including business organizations like corporations, are not only perfectly legitimate but likely to be the predominant form of economic organization under anarchism. Market anarchists generally place little value on equality, believing that inequalities in income and wealth are not only perfectly legitimate, so long as the means of getting the wealth was legitimate under the non-aggression principle, but are the natural consequence of human freedom. They believe that different people have different beliefs, habits, talents, and desires — there are vast natural differences among people.

Many people such as Benjamin Tucker, Lysander Spooner, Murray Rothbard, Butler Shaffer, Bob Murphy, and Walter Block have written about the free market’s ability to provide legal and protection services as all market anarchists believe. Most of the recent prominent market anarchy (or anarcho-capitalist) writers have been academic economists and have tried to spell out the workings of their preferred society in rather great detail but the simple message is that the state’s government is now abusing you to a great extent and that only by eliminating the state may we live in peace, prosperity, and voluntary cooperation.

The bedrock of freedom and liberty is the right to own and control property. If the state or the collective can tell you what you can and cannot do within the privacy of your home then you are not free nor do you really own your home since “ownership” means control over the use and disposition of a thing. At the present time government agents of the state can invade your home by breaking down your doors, kill your dog, tear up the house, and terrorize your family all at their whim. What, you still think the 4th amendment means anything? Your property belongs to the state and so do you yourself. The state owns you: you are enslaved.

Market anarchists can not tell you exactly how a world without a monopoly on force and brutality called the state would look like; but we can tell you that it would be vastly better than the evil we are living under today.

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. ~H. L. Mencken

Withdraw your support of the state.

Unending national emergencies and the nature of the state

The unending national emergencies of the present age are the natural outcome of the doctrine that the President has near-dictatorial powers during and emergency. Even the U.S. Supreme Court recognized the danger of using emergences to give tyrannical power to the Executive and the court derided Lincoln’s theory of supposedly constitutional dictatorship by saying in Ex Parte Milligan (1866):

“The constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and peace, and it covers with its shield of protection all classes of men, at all times and under all circumstances.  No doctrine involving more pernicious consequences was ever invented by the wit of men that any of its great provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of Government.”

Even the Supreme Court in those days understood that if politicians can get away with declaring themselves dictators under the guise of a “national emergency” then there would be a never ending series of such emergencies. And what emergency is greater than war? Thus we have in the present day a never ending “war on terror” along with a series of other “wars” like the one the plant food CO2, the one on people using whatever drug they choose, and government’s new war on privacy.

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.” ~ H.L. Mencken

The main hobgoblin of our present time is no longer the “evil empire” of the USSR as it was in my youth, but rather the “evil” Muslim and his so-called “desire to destroy America” (as if we were not already doing a bang-up job of it). Or at least that is what we are told over and over by the State and its minions. I am told that Disney World in Orlando, Florida would be ashes if it were not for our military killing innocent men, women and children in far away lands. Yes indeed, they would mount camels that can swim and cross the Atlantic and invade the USA. Horrors!

Government today has grown far too strong, interventionist, and invasive to be remotely safe for the people. There are no longer any citizens in the modern world, rather, it seems that there are only subjects to be ordered about, looted, and brutalized. The state consists of a gang of men and women exactly like you and me except they live by looting those who can produce to give to those who are parasites while taking a healthy cut themselves.

The most dangerous man to the US government is the one who is able to think things out for himself, like Edward Snowden did. These people can put aside the current myths and taboos to think rationally and then they inevitably come to the conclusion that the State is a gang of thieves writ large just as Murray Rothbard said years ago. These men will try to change the situation if they have the temperament and guts for that sort of thing, or they will try to spread discontent among those who do have that temperament. Either way, the discontent is growing and the state will fall before long. Ed Snowden and his NSA revelations did more to undermine the legitimacy of the State than most anyone in memory.

Modern Americans tend to regard the State as a quasi-divine, selfless organization from which all good things in life flow. The State by its very nature can not give you loving care as it was build to use force, fraud, and intimidation to loot the masses for the benefit of the few. It is know for demagogic appeals to the masses to frighten them for votes. Many individuals do need guidance from experts, but going to the state is like seeking advice from your wife’s lawyer in a nasty divorce case — it will always lead to a bad end.

It is absurd how many people think they are served by a coercive, demagogic apparatus when it exists to further its own. The ruling elite and their loyal minions will use fear, an endless series of imaginary hobgoblins, propaganda, and myth to keep you in line. The murder of millions and millions of innocent men, women, and children in country after country just to keep you subservient is the nature of the state.

You may test the hypothesis that the State is largely interested in protecting itself rather than its subjects in a manner first suggested by Murray Rothbard. Do this by asking: which category of crimes does the State pursue and punish most intensely—those against private citizens or those against itself? It is obvious that the state punishes crimes against itself far more often and far more harshly than crimes against mere people.

It is time to withdraw your consent to be governed by such an evil entity as the state.

The constitutionalism of Ron Paul

By the “constitutionalism of Ron Paul” I mean his many calls for returning to the original interpretation of the constitution as well as following it rather than ignoring it. He spent a lifetime in politics calling for the US to follow the constitution as well as his two runs for the GOP nomination for president. It seems to me that Ron Paul was always after an even greater goal than the US government following the original interpretation of the constitution. I think he was after a libertarian society and the quickest way to get there would be by first following the constitution and making the vast cuts in government that following the constitution would require. The quickest way to get to a libertarian society would be by making as much of government as possible optional or voluntary.

We need to forge a wide social agreement on the concept of voluntary self-government and tolerance and this means making secession at the personal level more and more of a reality. We live in a police state and empire at the present time and the brutality of the state grows with each passing day. Surely we can all agree that moving towards the laissez-faire economy and the non-intervention of government in our lives that was the hallmark of the first decades of this country would be a great movement towards real and total liberty. Even if it is difficult to see how cutting government down to size and making it follow the constitution might be accomplished, we can certainly agree that it is important as one of our goals in the liberty movement. This goal contrasts starkly with any more spreading of the government’s brutality, involuntaryism, coercion and cronyism. The power and reach of the US government has spread into more and more areas of life, here and across the world and it is time to put an end to the growth and start to reduce the long arm of the state.

Economics is simple really. Nearly the full extent of it can be taught in a small book, as has been done before. Look at Henry Hazlitt’s ‘Economics in One Lesson’ which is practically the full extent that any individual citizen needs to know about economics and you will see that the laissez-faire policies of the early republic were far superior to the fascist style interventionism of the present day.

Austrian economics has taught us that if we want to live a more comfortable life in a more comfortable world then we must live by the golden rule, or the non-aggression principle as we libertarians like to call it. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you —- or don’t aggress against anyone else unless they first aggress against you. This golden rule (or the N.A.P.) is not handed down by a supreme being, but it is the path to making the society approach a state of Nirvana none the less. The Taoists and their path (the Tao) told us a long time ago that intervention by “the ruler” was always bad and that we should let the people do things for themselves.

The fastest and easiest way to convince people that less government is more happiness by the masses is to reduce the size and scope of the government and let them see the incremental improvements. But there will be many road blocks along our journey to liberty. After all, the political class is not really running things. The political class is only the veneer of the state and not really the state itself. The state is the permanent bureaucratic structures and it is those institutions that make up the real ruling apparatus of the state. Look at the CIA for just one example.

No society can achieve any kind of justice based on the concept that some people have a “right” to have the state loot other people for their benefit. We see this today in the welfare state which has destroyed countless families and destroyed the morality of generations. Don’t forget that large, well connected corporations receive much from the state as well. We don’t call it “crony-capitalism” for nothing. We have created a power struggle that is endless, pointless, futile, and destructive. Only a return to the relatively non-interventionist government of the early days would be a good start towards a total freedom from the state. (that is, if you abhor the violence of armed revolution)

In truth there is no need for a “Constitution” to maintain peace and civility in a society. What is needed is a deep belief in the people that the initiation of physical aggression, intimidation, theft, fraud, and trespass are all morally reprehensible. That and the realization that assigning a monopoly power to an institution – government – is only going to yield in the end the utter brutality and cronyism we see around us today. When the people are compelled by a monopoly which interprets “the law” and uses violence to enforce its will upon the population, then it violates the individual’s right to choose which services one wants to use. We should have a right to choose which protective service we want to use for in a free, civilized society. No one should be above the law, and no one has any legitimate authority over anyone else without voluntary consent.

Ron Paul used a return to the constitution to try to teach the masses that government intervention is always the wrong way to go. Let us hope his message keeps on reverberating with the masses until they withdraw their consent to be governed by the evil monopoly we call the state.

American mercantilism?

We often hear the ignorant refer to the present American economic system as free market capitalism or mostly just “capitalism” where they mean free markets, and yet the American system has been heavily controlled, regulated, and interfered with by government for over a century with no free markets to be seen anywhere. Some say that the political control of the economy started from the very beginning of the Republic and the citizen’s right to do as he pleases as long as he harms no one else was violated with increasing frequency as time went by.

It matters little if you call the American system fascism, corporatism, crony-capitalism, “the third way”, a mixed economy, socialism, or even the more archaic term “mercantilism”. There is a spectrum that runs from laissez-faire free-markets (with no government intervention at all) to the fully government controlled economies of a North Korea or the old USSR. History and the Austrian School of Economics have shown over and over that any government intervention always makes the situation worse and normally makes it much worse for the poorest people. After all, as Groucho Marx observed “Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.”

Murray N. Rothbard wrote about mercantilism in Conceived in Liberty (1975), volume 1, chapter 32: “Mercantilism, Merchants, and Class Conflict.” He observed:

The economic policy dominant in the Europe of the 17th and 18th centuries, and christened “mercantilism” by later writers, at bottom assumed that detailed intervention in economic affairs was a proper function of government. Government was to control, regulate, subsidize, and penalize commerce and production. What the content of these regulations should be depended on what groups managed to control the state apparatus. Such control is particularly rewarding when much is at stake, and a great deal is at stake when government is “strong” and interventionist. In contrast, when government powers are minimal, the question of who runs the state becomes relatively trivial. But when government is strong and the power struggle keen, groups in control of the state can and do constantly shift, coalesce, or fall out over the spoils. While the ouster of one tyrannical ruling group might mean the virtual end of tyranny, it often means simply its replacement by another ruling group employing other forms of despotism.

In the 17th century the regulating groups were, broadly, feudal landlords and privileged merchants, with a royal bureaucracy pursuing as a superfeudal overlord the interest of the Crown. An established church meant royal appointment and control of the churches as well. The peasantry and the urban laborers and artisans were never able to control the state apparatus, and were therefore at the bottom of the state-organized pyramid and exploited by the ruling groups. Other religious groups were, of course, separated from or opposed to the ruling state. And religious groups in control of the state, or sharing in that control, might well pursue not only strictly economic “interest” but also ideological or spiritual ones, as in the case of the Puritans’ imposing a compulsory code of behavior on all of society.

If those people who say that the USA has a system of modern fascism are correct then “fascism” does not differ all that much from the above described mercantilism. I suppose that is to be expected since the father of fascism, Benito Mussolini, modeled his system along the lines of strict government control just as the mercantilists of Britain did years before him.

It is obvious that the state controls the economic activities of all entities with laws, regulations, and the like, but what is not so obvious is that the modern US government even controls the entry of individuals into various occupations and professions. Not only can you not become a Doctor without the state’s permission, you may not even cut someone’s hair without the proper licenser. Try to become a cab driver without the approval of the state and see what happens to you. Like under “mercantilism”, the present government seeks to control, regulate, subsidize, and penalize commerce and production in all areas of American life. What has changed? The regulating groups have changed. The church is no longer part of the mix and the special interest groups seeking political power and handouts are different; but nothing has changed in reality.

As long as we allow the federal government to control the economic activities of the people then we can expect lower standards of living than we would have otherwise, especially for the poor. With modern mercantiliism can not expect liberty or freedom but rather we can expect dependency, slavery, and serfdom. We will be endlessly subjected to arbitrary and punitive rules and regulations. The state and all its minions seek to dominate you in all areas of your life and it finds dominating you in your economic activities is the easiest way to enslave you.

The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself and to discover the true nature of government. Think of men like Edward Snowden who found out what the government’s NSA was doing and told the world about what he found. He told the world without any regard to the prevailing superstition that there were terrorists under every bed. If we ignore the propaganda, superstitions, taboos and utter heifer dust that we were taught in the government schools, we would discover that we must come to the conclusion that the government we live under is dishonest, insane, and intolerable. Like H. L. Mencken, I believe that all government is evil and that trying to improve it is mostly a waste of time and is often counter productive.

The only way to maximize prosperity and peace is to stop practicing the American mercantilist system and to move to laissez-faire free markets, and the only way to have no government intervention in the market is to have no government at all. The Irish did that for perhaps 9,000 years.

Like many people this time of year, I wish for peace among men throughout the world. I know that the only way to have peace, prosperity, freedom, and happiness is for mankind to throw off the evil of the state that enslaves us. In the coming year we should all endeavor in anyway that we can to end the state and live in a voluntary world. We must teach people to withdraw their consent to be governed just at the people did in the old USSR. The good of all mankind does not depend on you recycling your trash, conserving gasoline, or having the grocery store put your purchase in re-usable bags. The good of mankind depends on you helping to overthrow the great evil that is the state. Do your part whenever you can.

A Call for a Return to a Non-Interventionist Foreign Policy

The original American foreign policy of the USA in the first decades of its existence was one of non-interventionism. The idea was to trade with all nations and stay out of all squabbles between other countries. The policy was strict neutrality much like the Swiss have followed since 1815; always ready to defend against invasion but never ready to invade another people’s territory. The old idea of non-interventionism in foreign policy as been a dead letter issue in the USA for generations now. Advocates of America’s modern foreign policy of interventionism, as well as most common citizens, believe that World War II occurred because America returned to its policy of “isolationism” after World War I and that is said to prove that the USA needs to police the entire world.

The first thing to understand is that “isolationism” is not the same as non-interventionism and the term “isolationist” is used mainly as a slur to stifle debate on foreign policy. The USA has engaged in trade and otherwise interacted with other countries throughout its history. The USA has never been a “closed” society like the modern North Korea. Non-interventionism simply means that a country minds its own business and does not use force or coercion to make other countries do its bidding.

The second thing is that many today argue that our failure to adopt the Versailles Treaty and to join the League of Nations allowed Hitler to come to power. They then claim that the “appeasement” of Great Britain and France led Germany to launch WWII. If the USA had been true to the non-interventionist foreign policy of its founders and had refused to enter World War I then there would not have been the horrendous end to the war that the USA’s entry caused. There would have been a negotiated treaty in 1917 as all parties to the war were exhausted and tired of conflict. There would have been no harsh Versailles Treaty forced on Germany and that means there would have not have been the great discontent in Germany that provided the fertile ground for the German Nazi Party and its leader Adolf Hitler.

Additionally, If the war had ended in 1917 with a negotiated truce and then treaty, there would have been no successful Russian Revolution. The great evil that was totalitarian communism would have not appeared on the world scene. Think about that one for a while. There would have been no successful birth of Communism.

If the USA had followed its founder’s non-interventionist policies then there would have been no World War II. There are those would would argue otherwise, but Winston Churchill himself believed that the USA should have stayed out of WWI. It was reported by the New York Enquirer in August of 1936 the following that Churchill claimed the following:

America should have minded her own business and stayed out of the World War. If you hadn’t entered the war the Allies would have made peace with Germany in the Spring of 1917. Had we made peace then there would have been no collapse in Russia followed by Communism, no breakdown in Italy followed by Fascism, and Germany would not have signed the Versailles Treaty, which has enthroned Nazism in Germany. If America had stayed out of the war, all these ‘isms’ wouldn’t to-day be sweeping the continent of Europe and breaking down parliamentary government, and if England had made peace early in 1917, it would have saved over one million British, French, American, and other lives. ~ Winston Churchill

We can not go into the past and change the actions of the USA, but with millions upon millions of deaths caused by our failure to follow a non-interventionist policy we should at least learn from what happened. When we take action, even with the best of intentions, the law of unintended consequence comes into play. In the modern era the USG has kept its military forces in the middle east and now there is death and destruction all over the region. There is rebellion in the air and peace is nowhere to be found in the region. Coincidence? Of course not, it is the logical outcome of the invasion by the USA of so many countries in the region.

The USA must drop its ambitions to rule the world and it must stop intervening in places that it has no business in. I would like to see the breakup of the USA into smaller regions, but even if that is not in the cards we must work to stop the military/industrial/political complex from setting the world on fire with war.