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Minarchism vs. Anarchism
One of the main reasons I am a Minarchist instead of a Anarchist is because of some concerns I have with Anarchy. The main one being that I don’t know what would stop a powerful or influential person from ruling over others in an Anarchist society. I am open to ideas on how to solve this issue. Can the Free-market stop oppressors or is a State solution necessary?
I think that depends more upon the culture of those who somebody is trying to control. If you had a culture who is more open to the ideas of true human freedom, I think even without a state solution they would find a way to solve the problem. A culture who is more likely to submit to another person’s rule might require state means.
So a culture of freedom minded people is necessary. I think that is true from both points of view. I’m not sure if that is secure enough to ensure that everyone remains as free as possible. Culture changes and can be influenced, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worst. My concern with Anarchy is how can I be sure that the culture around me isn’t, over time, influenced into accepting rule from a power hungry individual within that Anarchist society. A hypothetical question I know; but I think it is a valid one.
…I don’t know what would stop a powerful or influential person from ruling over others in an Anarchist society.
What is stopping it now? In fact, isn’t it the norm that a large part of the people around you, perhaps even you yourself, actively give an enthusiastic thumbs-up to at least one (*understatement*) powerful or influential person ruling over others?
If powerful and influential people ruling over others is your concern, then anarchy certainly couldn’t be any worse than what we already have.
What is the difference between the people you are concerned about and the people you might vote for?
Oh I don’t agree with how it is now. Let me try asking it this way: How do we ensure that our society remains an Anarchist one and isn’t overthrown by someone with a lot of influence? If I may use this hypothetical scenario: Imagine a rich oil millionaire decides to hire a number of gunmen to force a group of people to drive a certain car. How do we stop the oil millionaire from doing this? Please keep in mind that I have great respect for Anarchists and if there was a choice between what we have now and Anarcho-capitalism, I would choose the latter every time.
I think Brad was trying to say something like “how does a minarchy solve this problem?” or maybe “before there can be a coup d’état there has to be an etat.”
I think this question looks more interesting from a different angle.
The question is not “how can an anarchic society remain stable?” it’s “how can an anarchic or minarchic society ever come into existence with significant population and secure territory at all?” Unless you think they will be created by waving a magic wand, or reforming an existing state via politics (which is more plausible?), such societies would probably take birth from crisis and can only grow by absorbing territory and population from existing states. (seasteading?) Their period of critical vulnerability would arrive at or near the beginning of their history, when they would make a very tempting invasion target for nearby states, especially the state that previously controlled their territory.
After that point, anarchists think you can’t rule without a state, and minarchists (anyone else have their autospell turning that into “monarchists”?) think you can’t become a tyrant unless the constitution says you can.
Okay, that was snide.
Minarchists hope to discover tyrant-proof safeguards, maybe new improved versions of nullification, dynamic jurisdictions, subsidiarity, etc. The anarchists hope that the would-be tyrant and his gang are not much different from the nearby states and other armed gangs that would like to come rob them, and can be treated the same way the mafia would be treated. So, assuming they got this far, they ought to be able to keep going.
As a note, all posters here have to be members of the minarchist group on L.me, so your responses may be somewhat skewed.
Imagine a rich oil millionaire decides to hire a number of gunmen to force a group of people to drive a certain car. How do we stop the oil millionaire from doing this?
First of all – nothing can be entirely prevented in any political system ever. I would encourage you to reframe your question: “in a ____ system, what forces and incentives *might* prevent this?”
I’ll try to answer anyway.
1) People want the government to do a lot of oppressive things. But very few people spend a lot of effort trying to make their views a reality through government – all they’ll do is talk and vote, which have very low costs. This seems to indicate that if people had to pay directly for sin laws, etc., that very few people would choose to do it. Who is so passionate about drug laws that they’re willing to spend lots of their personal money to have people locked up?
Conclusion: having to pay to force your preferences on other people is a lot more expensive when you have to pay for it yourself, so it wouldn’t tend to happen in an anarchist society.
2) The costs of the particular scenario you proposed are exceedingly high. You’d have to somehow replace all the cars people owned beforehand (and people with guns and defense agencies generally don’t react well to theft). Enforcement would require policemen and cameras everywhere. Gunmen not only need hazard pay, but demand for those jobs will probably be low due to their corrupt nature, making the salaries of these gunmen very high. And so on and so forth.
3) The scenario you proposed is much easier for the millionaire to pull off if there’s already a government. Remember that lobbying can have an insane 22000% return on investment. There’s nothing stopping the millionaire from bribing officials, lobbying for import tariffs, getting the government to pay for replacement cars, etc.
If your answer is “some of those things aren’t allowed in minarchy!”, remember that constitutions are only pieces of paper, and are thus only as powerful as the will of the people to overthrow a government that doesn’t follow it. Historically, government overthrows won’t happen unless people are literally starving in the streets. People rationally choose to accept a government that steps outside its bounds rather than potentially get themselves killed in a revolution. This means a near guarantee of power creep over time, and the more power the government has, the easier it is for millionaires to force their preferences on people.
“The main one being that I don’t know what would stop a powerful or influential person from ruling over others in an Anarchist society.”
Daniel, nothing can ever stop a person from attempting to control others with force. This is crime, and crime is a feature of the human condition, state or no state.
The difference is that in a free society, anyone who did that would be viewed and treated as a criminal. You might comply with a criminal out of fear (or not), but anybody who is viewed by society as a criminal lives his life at ongoing and substantial personal risk.
No matter how much money an individual has, in a stateless society he would have no legitimate basis for imposing force on others. In a state-dominated society, you have the opposite: a gargantuan hierarchical institution that takes from everyone by force (taxation) while claiming a monopoly on the production and enforcement of its self-appointed laws (note how Congressmen are constantly referred to as “lawmakers”).
There will always be oppressors in this world, those who seek to control others by force. The question is whether or not they get to attempt it as part of a horrifyingly powerful institution that claims social legitimacy.
I appreciate the responses guys, very helpful indeed. It would be a dream for freedom to come through peaceful means. History doesn’t support that dream to be one based in reality unfortunately. That being said, I look forward to a day when it is Minarchists and Anarchists who are considered the extreme opposites on the political spectrum. I think Minarchism is probably an easier sell to the population but I personally would be happy with either system. I still have a few apprehensions with Anarchism, all of which are greatly out-weighed by the system in place now. If you guys keep at it you just might win me over. (Auto correct of Minarchist is monarchist for me as well).
“It would be a dream for freedom to come through peaceful means.”
By “it would be a dream” do you mean “it is not possible?” It also is not possible to coerce people into being free. So by that interpretation, we can never achieve freedom.
On the other hand, there are many possible changes that both anarchists and minarchists would agree can improve on our current situation. Bitcoin provides a recent example.
So if we take things peacefully, step by step, maybe we can increase voluntary cooperation and reduce coercion. And since no one has any magic wand to transport us instantly to utopia, and all we can do is work toward these tangible, credible improvements, maybe the differences between anarchists and minarchists just aren’t very important.
The important difference separates those who use voting as part of their strategy and those who do not. This does not separate anarchists from minarchists; Rothbard exemplifies the anarchist who embraced politics as part of his strategy. I doubt that many minarchists reject politics on moral grounds, but given the current situation, I can’t believe many of them have high hopes for the immediate future. So maybe we even can unite, temporarily, on strategy (Education, Bitcoin, gray markets, etc.).
We need a good word for non-political strategies for increasing freedom like Bitcoin. Maybe agoratics? Agorism has a slightly different meaning, if I understand it, but maybe we can stretch it a bit. Was Satoshi doing agorist activism when he wrote the Bitcoin white paper?
Just for clarification purposes, I meant dream as in: I would very much like this to happen.
I would too, Daniel. Being an anarchist doesn’t mean I think we’ll see a stateless society in our lifetimes. It just means I believe it’s always wrong to initiate aggression against others, whether as an individual or as a group, even if that group is acting under cover of self-appointed laws.
Daniel Davis, you mentioned that you don’t understand how a free market could stop an oppressive dictator from taking over. Well it would require people being so socially evolved that they would understand the ethics of the free-market, even down to the police, military, and courts. Also, they must be willing to defend that understanding.
The state solution to oppressors is contradictory, because the state is an oppressor. So we need need an oppressor to protect us from other oppressors? What if I don’t want to be oppressed at all?
To be honest this discussion post was meant to be more of an inquiry than a political debate. I suppose I should have titled it differently. This is okay though because I try to welcome criticism constructive or not.
I don’t know why libertarians love debating about utopia so much, when neither the anarchist nor the minarchist flavor is a credible short-term option. What can we do right now to increase liberty? How do we get to the place where we might really need to know which one works? Can we cooperate on the way?
I think it’s great when people are passionate about things that matter. I’m open to changing my mind about anything when presented with reasoning that is more compelling than my current thinking.
As far as I can tell, nobody on this thread actually wants or is rooting for a state run society. The minarchism/anarchism question appears to boil down to whether or not you feel life would be more peaceful, free, and productive with a very small state (that somehow remained very small from generation to generation) or with no state at all.
Of course we’d all prefer as much peace, freedom, and abundance as possible. Ironically, I think minarchists see it as naively idealistic of anarchists to believe life without some sort of minimal state could flourish; meanwhile anarchists believe it’s naively idealistic of minarchists to think that the state can be constrained.
US history provides the best example I know of starting off with a minarchist state, only to grow into a state with more destructive power than the world has ever witnessed. Neither Constitutions nor wars nor courts nor protests could stop its exponential growth.
Minarchists, if I understood how a state could be constrained to minarchist standards with some kind of new approach or technology, I would certainly prefer to live under it than a leviathan state. I’d still philosophically remain an anarchist since compulsion is wrong, but I’d be rooting for your proposal to work!
This is very late coming but I would like to say again how great these responses have been. To me debating ideologies is fun when everyone remains civil and all of the replies have been. I have definitely learned something from this discussion. I love Liberty.me because the people here are the most respectful, generous, and intelligent people I have ever had the pleasure of conversing with.
