One thing that's always bugged me about traditional Libertarianism, is
the plain fact that no matter how willing we are, we're actually
still submitting to force when being taxed for things like law
enforcement and the military.
Some time ago, I came across an extremely compelling article over at
Freedomain Radio (http://www.freedomainradio.com/), that offers what I
think is the first really consistent - and believable - approach to
the Non-Aggression Principle that I've ever seen. I'll provide some
excerpts here, but you should really go to the site and check it out
yourself! Also, the article was made into a podcast
(http://www.freedomainradio.com/Traffic_Jams/stateless_society_take_2_320.mp3)
, and a video (http://youtube.com/watch?v=1B-5Lbpk_3Y)
==
The Stateless Society: An Examination of Alternatives
By Stefan Molyneux
...while most people are comfortable with the idea of reducing the
size and power of the State, they become distinctly uncomfortable with
the idea of getting rid of it completely. To use a medical metaphor,
if the State is a cancer, they prefer medicating it into an unstable
remission, rather than eliminating it completely.
This can never work. A central lesson of history is that States are
parasites which always expand until they destroy their host population
...Even the rare reductions are merely temporary. The United States
was founded on the principle of limited government; it took little
more than a century for the State to break the bonds of the
Constitution, implement the income tax, take control of the money
supply and the educational system, and begin its catastrophic
expansion. There is no example in history of a State being permanently
reduced in size. All that happens during a tax or civil revolt is that
the State retrenches, figures out what it did wrong, and plans its
expansion again. Or provokes a war, which silences all but fringe
dissenters.
Given these well-known historical facts, why do still people believe
that such a deadly predator can be tamed? Surely it can only be
because they consider a slow strangulation in the grip of an expanding
State somehow better than the quick death of a society bereft of a State.
Why, then, do most people believe that a society will crumble without
a coercive and monopolistic social agency at its core? There are a
number of answers to this question, but generally they tend to revolve
around three central points:
* dispute resolution;
* collective services; and,
* pollution.
Dispute Resolution
How can the free market deal with the problem of dispute
resolution? Outside the realm of organized crime, very few people are
comfortable with armed confrontations, and so generally prefer to
delegate that task to others. Let's assume that people's need for such
representatives produces Dispute Resolution Organizations (DROs),
which promise to resolve disputes on their behalf.
Thus, if Stan is hired by Bob, they both sign a document specifying
which DRO they both accept as an authority in dispute resolution. If
they disagree about something, and are unable to resolve it between
themselves, they submit their case to the DRO, and agree to abide by
that DRO's decision.
So far so good. However, what if Stan decides he doesn't want to abide
by the DRO's decision? Well, several options arise.
First of all, when Stan signed the DRO agreement, it is likely that he
would have agreed to property confiscation if he did not abide by the
DRO's decision. Thus the DRO would be entirely within its right to go
and remove property from Stan by force if necessary to pay for his
side of the dispute.
It is at this point that people generally throw up their arms and
dismiss the idea of DROs by claiming that society would descend into
civil war within a few days.
Everyone, of course, realizes that civil war is a rather bad
situation, and so it seems likely that the DROs would consider
alternatives to armed combat.
What other options could be pursued? To take a current example, small
debts which are not worth pursuing legally are still regularly paid
off and why? Because a group of companies produce credit ratings on
individuals, and the inconvenience of a lowered credit rating is
usually greater than the inconvenience of paying off a small debt.
Thus, in the absence of any recourse to force, small debts are usually
settled. This is one example of how desired behaviour can be elicited
without pulling out a gun or kicking in a door
...But let's push the theory to the max, to see if it holds. To
examine a worst-case scenario, imagine that Stan's employer is an evil
man who bribes the DRO to rule in his favour, and the DRO imposes an
unconscionable fine say, one million dollars on Stan.
First of all, this is such an obvious problem that DROs, to get any
business at all, would have to deal with this danger up front. An
appeal process to a different DRO would have to be part of the
contract. DROs
