In my previous post, I revealed my great hope for a future world of a mutual and voluntary society. The Icelandic Free State of 930AD-1262AD (some 3 centuries!) offers a shining hope for how a voluntary society might function. All of the normal functions one associates with the State (protection, dispute resolution, contract enforcement, policing and crime detection, legislation) were carried out by non-hereditary, entrepreneurial chieftains competing with each other for the clientship of the local population.
A few of my philosophically astute friends raised some significant questions and objections to using the Icelandic model in a modern political and economic context, specifically America, and I want to deal with each question the best I can. Caveat emptor: I am no supreme authority on polycentric law. I will try to provide links and bibliography to help those who want some more in-depth information. The Center For A Stateless Society, The Mises Institute and The Austro-Athenian Empire Blog are all chock full of endless reading, listening and watching. I borrow HEAVILY from all of these sources and will refrain from citing them within this entry specifically. If you want to be way ahead of the game, please listen to Professor Roderick T. Long's seminar on Libertarian Ethics.
What is anarchy? What do you mean by the state?
This is an important thing to get out of the way. My views of what anarchy means, what it entails, and what can be consistently called anarchy are not shared by all anarchists. Anarchy literally means "absense of a ruler". That definition does not rule out the possibility of law, order, government or organization. It is the enemies of anarchy that have attempted to conflate anarchy with chaos and lawlessness. There are many visions of anarchy, but the one I specifically adhere to is market anarchy, sometimes called left-libertarianism, libertarian anarchy, or anarcho-capitalism.
Since I have mentioned conflation, there is another important conflation to head off as well. It is often the case that people conflate the free market (that I advocate) with the system as we currently have it. That has two (at least) effects. On the one hand, people who have a serious beef with the current system see it as representing a "free market" and reject the idea of free markets out-of-hand based on their complaints with our current system. On the other hand, those who advocate free markets sometimes find themselves attempting to defend large corporations and other beneficiaries of the state's largess, thinking they must do so in order to defend the idea of free markets. To nip this problem in the bud, it is helpful to think of what I am advocating as "freed markets" implying that this is something that has not been, and we are working toward. To reiterate, our current system of crony, corporatist capitalism is not a free market.
"What, exactly, does this mean?" you might wonder. It means I adhere to the "Non-Agression Principle." The NAP states that it is not morally/ethically permissable to initiate force against someone. Entailed within this principle is the right to defend one's self against intiatory force.
The state I will define as a body who claims monopoly privilege over the adjudicating of disputes and the enforcement of adjudication over a given territory, and largely is successful in excluding competition.
Is America small enough for anarchy?
There is a hidden assumption in this question that I will speak to first. The assumption is that America is monolithic and homogeneous. I simply appeal to the obvious fact that "America" is simply a short-hand way of talking about all of the individuals that occupy a particular territory and/or identify with said territory. I contend that each individual is capable of deciding to deal with other individuals by non-coercive, voluntary means.
So, rewording the question I believe makes it a little simpler to answer. "Are there small enough divisions of America that can survive without the State?" I contend, yes. The individual is small enough to decide to not use initiatory force on others. Even if you want to grant that we should still think of communities of people, it should not seem impossible that people should choose, given the choice, to decide to deal with other people without coercion. In fact, with the absence of taxation, we eliminate one very powerful incentive for people to wage war and violence. When one has to spend his own money on attacking people, one is more likely to think of more economic, peaceful means of dealing with people. It is the state that enables our "leaders" to externalize the cost of war on the taxpaying public and can therefore wage the never-ending war that we have had to live with (and pay for) for millenia.
What about external threats that do not adhere to the NAP?
This is a related question to the last. We live in a global world. A world of airplanes, the Internet and satellites. How can one hope to stear clear of outside threats to our society? Doesn't it make sense that there should be an organized system to defend against dangerous threats? After all, a single person is easy pickings for even a small organized military threat. Shouldn't we allow the state to at least provide security? Shouldn't we have an organized defense system??
Why, yes! However, it is not clear why there must be one territorial monopoly to fulfill this role. I will use an example given by Prof. Long. Imagine you need a pair of shoes. Wouldn't it be better if there was some organized entity that could coordinate the efforts and skills of people needed to make shoes? Why would anyone want to bring it upon themselves to learn all the skills necessary to bring about a pair of shoes? Does it follow from that line of thinking that there must be a single, territorial monopoly for shoes? Obvious case of the fallacy of composition (Everyone has a favorite TV show, therefore there is a single TV show that is everyone's favorite). Defense agencies can, and would, make protective, mutually beneficial defense contracts that would give coordinated, united resistance to an external threat.
As pointed out by John Locke, if you are worried about an organized threat that is hard to defend against, one should be wary of creating one, ie. the State.
I won't go into extreme detail since it is covered by Robert Murphy's "Chaos Theory" and Dr. Hans-Hoppe's "The Private Production of Defense". But, I am sure if you use a little imagination you can conceive of what it would mean to have a private defence agency. Both Murphy and Hans-Hoppe envision insurance companies providing protection service as a mutual insurance, like flood or fire insurance. There are historical examples, such as the Icelandic Free State and the American Western Frontier, that give us some idea of how this might work. This particular topic is a long and detailed one. Perhaps I will go into more detail in a future post to keep this one a manageable length. ;)
America enjoys, geographically speaking, a very enviable position as far as peaceful isolation goes. We are surrounded by the world's largest oceans, and two peaceful nations. Most, if not all, of our geographically close threats can be attributed to America's imperial foreign policy, more than the natural aggression of the nations in question. I'm not one to quote the founding fathers, but their idea of staying out of the entanglements of foreign affairs and letting our merchants and commerce be the ambassadors of peace and prosperity is good advice. It is not hard to think of a world without a belligerent America where we face no serious, ongoiong external threat.
How do you propose to bring about a voluntary society?
There is a specific movement in market anarchism called agorism. From the greek word agora which was a gathering place that eventually became the city market in Ancient Greece. The agorist idea is one of ignoring and replacing the state. Creating alternative institutions that replace the coercive monopoly of the state with competing, voluntary entrepreneurs. They call this idea counter-economics and they see all activity that hinders or does not benefit the state as counter-economic action. Private arbitration. Private security. Barter and alternative currency. Black and grey markets. Craigslist. Mutual aid societies.
So, my suggestion for those who desire to see a voluntary society is find ways outside of the state to fulfill functions currently being fulfilled by the state, and support ideas you find that replace the state's monopoly with ones founded on competitive entrepreneurship. Already there are privite arbitration companies harnessing the power of the Internet to provide dispute resolution outside of the framework of the state. For an historial example, see the Law of Merchant.
What about the centralization of power under the free market system?
The question was posed thus: "centralization is more likely to occur in a society where businesses profit from being centralized. Fords assembly line, and other productivity and efficiency heightened forms of production, benefit from being centralized. Not to mention the expansive systems we currently require for many of our services. Internet is arguabally centralized, i have few options for providers. Comcast or AT&T. Neither have to have good customer service."
People often think of the "economies of scale" and do not notice the "dis-economies of scale." While it is true that as firms grow larger, there are certain things that become cheaper and more efficient. However, there is a maximum size that is efficient for each firm. Currently, regulations, licensing and legislation that insulate and/or prop up firms from competition externalize the dis-economies of scale to the point where firms grow much larger, more centralized and bureaucratic than they would in a freed market. We don't see it, but try to start a local telecom company or car manufacturing plant, so you can provide better service for your customers. Good luck. Capital requirements, red-tape, regulations, licensing, political lobbying from the established firms, etc. will keep you out of the game. Google the term "rent-seeking".
Think of this simple example. As firms grow larger, let's say a company like Walmart, their need to provide product to a large geographic area increases. However, thanks to the federal interstate system, their transportation costs are not proportional to their usage. Large shipping companies, and the retailers, wholesalers and warehouses they serve, use the bulk of the services of the interstate system, provide the bulk of the wear-and-tear on that system, yet we, the taxpayer, subsidize this cost for them through our tax money. They are able to externalize this particular dis-economy of scale on us.
Licensing is another big example of this. Think of taxi services. This is a perfect example of a type of business that someone with little means would be able to provide. The only capital requirements are having a car and a cellphone. However, due to taxi licensing fees (in some places $100,000 or more!) people are excluded from being able to fill this service, and the government gives what amounts to a protected cartel to the existing taxi service providers. Or take the example of flower arranging in Louisiana. In order to be a florist in Louisiana, you must pass a very stringent exam, and your exam is judged by a panel of existing florists (your potential competition!) and you must pay exorbitant licensing fees.
Also, see Somolia's booming, thriving, bustling telecom business as a counter-example of needing centralization to have infrastructure.
What things must be present to create anarchist communities?
It is really the case that certain things should not be present. We do not need "culture, civic pride and tradition" in order to create a usable anarchy. All we need is the end of taxation and monopoly government. Voluntary communities, which we are mostly already organized in, must simply agree to not use violence or coercion to achieve their ends.
Franz Oppenheimer was fond of talking about two types of means for achieving ends.
"There are two fundamentally opposed means whereby man, requiring sustenance, is impelled to obtain the necessary means for satisfying his desires. These are work and robbery, one's own labor and the forcible appropriation of the labor of others. Robbery! Forcible appropriation! These words convey to us ideas of crime and the penitentiary, since we are the contemporaries of a developed civilization, specifically based on the inviolability of property. And this tang is not lost when we are convinced that land and sea robbery is the primitive relation of life, just as the warrior's trade - which also for a long time is only organized mass robbery - constitutes the most respected of occupations. Both because of this, and also on account of the need of having, in the further development of this study, terse, clear, sharply opposing terms for these very important contrasts, I propose in the following discussion to call one's own labor and the equivalent exchange of one's own labor for the labor of others, the “economic means" for the satisfaction of needs, while the unrequited appropriation of the labor of others will be called the "political means." (pp. 24-25, The State)
We must simply reject the use of the "political means" and embrace the "economic means" when dealing with each other. We must also stop thinking of converting the political entity "America" into the political entity "Anarchist America". We must simply stop seeing the arbitrary boundaries around us, and treat everyone as ends-in-themselves, to borrow from Kant. It is exactly that America is so diverse and culturally varied that we should break down the way we see the world into smaller units (the most logical being the individual). A thousand million sovereignties. A billion Petorias. Voluntary communities who celebrate their cultural heritage, beliefs and ideas and who live peacefully alongside other communites.
Further Reading
The 1% represented in the article are not responsible for the standards of living of the 99% as claimed. In fact, the 1% is not even responsible for their own standards of living. They are mostly rent-seeking kronies who have their government favored positions at the top of the heap thanks to lobbying, special interest politicking, and cartelizing protections from the State. Even the honest captains of industry who did not directly receive help from the State, benefit from the system indirectly in reduced competition, higher profits, and a distorted labor market.
