I'm into voluntaryism like most here, but I like to edify my arguments with the input of you sages.
Human nature is human nature and the best we can do is to try and preserve those things that truly yield the greatest happiness. I certainly believe in a defense financed voluntarily rather than coercively, but ultimately, wouldn't these agencies of defense likely conspire and unite and become a state? I'm familiar with the argument that you could withhold funds from certain agencies, you could diversify into various others so as to dilute potentially dangerous concentrations of power, and that there's an economic incentive for defense agencies to act prudently so as to maximize profits, but I still can't imagine corruption not occurring and not leading to a state.
But like I said, human nature is set and you can hardly change it but there are better ways to do things and there's obviously no way to ensure happiness ever after. I mean, if man were to be so easily enlightened and moralized, we'd not have the history we have had.
What are the best arguments for private societal defense vs compulsory state defense? State even the obvious. And if you wish to say this has been covered ad nauseum and want to post some links, then please do so. I talk with people of all walks of life about the state and of course national defense becomes a final point they'll typically boil down to.
Living in a society where you could choose the defense would definitely be a luxury I'd greatly enjoy, but beyond my questions about its long-term viability, my biggest personal quandary is how to get there. I'm in the United States and I would NOT want the U.S. to suddenly disarm 100%. If other states exist and currently my only defense is the state within which I reside, I'd rather my state be able to defend itself. Of course, I’m not referring to the US' imperialistic actions as defensive, but would prefer to have some of its military might to protect me against foreign invading states.
How could a state such as the US ever hope to safely go from a state-run security system to a private one and along the way not be seriously subject to coups and corruptions of all sorts? Would it ultimately simply have to be defeated by domestic, private defense initiatives, either defeated militaristically or thru some sort of apathetic attrition, where the state's system simply wanes to death as people see better choices? I can't imagine the US military going out with a whimper, however.
"The best way to bail out the economy is with liberty, not with federal reserve notes." - pairunoyd
"The vision of the Austrian must be greater than the blindness of the sheeple." - pairunoyd
Well, for one thing they'd be competing with each other for customers. The source of their money is direct from consumers whom can withdraw that money at any time.
So the question is really whethere there would be economies of scale in the production of security if you took that scale to the size of a whole society. Probably there would not be.
Because of that, any protection service that sought to consolidate and got too large would become suddenly more expensive than its competitors and begin losing customers and would be forced ultimately to achieve the most economical size to price itself competitively.
We in the US are not used to that sort of action, because companies here use the politicians to craft laws to protect their place in the market, to limit and hamper smaller competition, which unnaturally props up larger firms. This would not happen in a truly fee society without laws to be manipulated like that.
Now, as for national defense, it's quite likely that these many local defense organizations would have a backup plan where they would group together for purposes of national defense into a single organizational unit, much like you might have companies of troops. They'd do this largely on an ad hoc fashion, but they would be likely to think ahead and at least plan out how this could occur and perhaps even do drills together and work out a way to relate.
So, the only danger point would be if there were an actual large-scale war that forced the security agencies to become an army. Years of that and you might lose sight of freedom at that point.
It's important then that a free society develop a strong culture of freedom early on and not be disrupted by war early on. We need say 30+ years of peace and true freedom such that the next generation, the first free generation, can be born and begin the world's first libertarian culture from birth, never having known what it meant to live under statist fetters.
If we can get that in place, the sky is the limit.
This is why we shouldn't be discussing social outcomes, in the first place. What's wrong with the world today isn't "how it's working out", what's wrong with the world today is right in front of your face each day you wake up and get out of bed. Everything you do is infused by the coercion of the State, whether you are receiving it or giving it to others. The most basic morality shows that this is a repulsive and undignified way to live.
And we don't need a revolution. We don't need 30 years of peace to breed the first free generation. We don't need to dismantle anything. All we need is to teach people that the basics of right and wrong by which they live every other aspect of their lives also apply to the State and its agents. That's it. Once people throw off the propaganda and realize that basic decency and morality also apply to the State, it's game-over.
Poor, wretched, and stupid peoples, nations determined on your own misfortune and blind to your own good! You let yourselves be deprived before your own eyes of the best part of your revenues; your fields are plundered, your homes robbed, your family heirlooms taken away. You live in such a way that you cannot claim a single thing as your own; and it would seem that you consider yourselves lucky to be loaned your property, your families, and your very lives. All this havoc, this misfortune, this ruin, descends upon you not from alien foes, but from the one enemy whom you yourselves render as powerful as he is, for whom you go bravely to war, for whose greatness you do not refuse to offer your own bodies unto death. He who thus domineers over you has only two eyes, only two hands, only one body, no more than is possessed by the least man among the infinite numbers dwelling in your cities; he has indeed nothing more than the power that you confer upon him to destroy you. Where has he acquired enough eyes to spy upon you, if you do not provide them yourselves? How can he have so many arms to beat you with, if he does not borrow them from you? The feet that trample down your cities, where does he get them if they are not your own? How does he have any power over you except through you? How would he dare assail you if he had no cooperation from you? What could he do to you if you yourselves did not connive with the thief who plunders you, if you were not accomplices of the murderer who kills you, if you were not traitors to yourselves? You sow your crops in order that he may ravage them, you install and furnish your homes to give him goods to pillage; you rear your daughters that he may gratify his lust; you bring up your children in order that he may confer upon them the greatest privilege he knows — to be led into his battles, to be delivered to butchery, to be made the servants of his greed and the instruments of his vengeance; you yield your bodies unto hard labor in order that he may indulge in his delights and wallow in his filthy pleasures; you weaken yourselves in order to make him the stronger and the mightier to hold you in check. From all these indignities, such as the very beasts of the field would not endure, you can deliver yourselves if you try, not by taking action, but merely by willing to be free. Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break in pieces. - Etienne de la Boetie, The Politics of Obedience (ca. 1550AD)
- Etienne de la Boetie, The Politics of Obedience (ca. 1550AD)
Clayton -
Clayton:[...] All we need is to teach people that the basics of right and wrong by which they live every other aspect of their lives also apply to the State and its agents. That's it. Once people throw off the propaganda and realize that basic decency and morality also apply to the State, it's game-over.[...]
I have seen parents castigate their children for bringing home a toy from school--God forbid you steal from our public institutions because that is when you really go to jail. However, when these same children take the food off of the plate of their siblings, they are merely yelled at while the children continue to take the food.
I yearn for the they when I come across a parent castigating her child for stealing a toy from another child by including the phrase, "don't you ever violate [the other child's] property rights".
To paraphrase Marc Faber: We're all doomed, but that doesn't mean that we can't make money in the process. Rabbi Lapin: "Let's make bricks!" Stephan Kinsella: "Say you and I both want to make a German chocolate cake."
Clayton, that De La Boetie quote is fascinating. I forgot that was in 1550AD, wow!
Clayton:And we don't need a revolution. We don't need 30 years of peace to breed the first free generation. We don't need to dismantle anything. All we need is to teach people that the basics of right and wrong by which they live every other aspect of their lives also apply to the State and its agents. That's it. Once people throw off the propaganda and realize that basic decency and morality also apply to the State, it's game-over.
That's a great Boetie quote, and I want to read that book, so I tracked down the Mises copy, free for anyone.
So what's going to trigger this great mass awakening? Because that's your problem. You need not merely people to realize this fact (they haven't realized it en masse after 500 years obviously) but to realize it more or less all at once for things to change.
Once people throw off the propaganda? How will they be made to see? Since propaganda relies on knowledge inequalities? Like a child who has not learned geometry, they cannot see the answer to finding the area of a triangle using cosines. They cannot fathom even the solution as possible. They do not see the state because they don't even have the concepts needed to do so. It is invisible to them, it is legitimate in their bones and an attack on the state feels like an attack on themselves.
This is the great social problem we face. You need to drive a wedge between individual and state, because state is infused in people's identities right now, and they question it no more than they question their own control of their arm.
But if you can get people living in a libertarian manner and subsume all the theory under the surface, they will adhere to that system as easily as they do to modern statist ones, will absorb those ideals, and prefer those ideals to statist ideals because of the prosperity and freedom they enjoy.
Your solution to the great problem of change requires everyone to become suddenly interested in politics, to become in essence libertarians.
My solution requires only that they follow self-interest and move to a libertarian-predicated society which offers them greater wealth and opportunity--the same draw that made the US what it is now.
I think states only continue to exist because of the absence of an alternative. I'm afraid that your theory of tossing off legitimacy can only occur if a statist regime fails economically or by failing at war. Until that happens, the state has so much power that it cannot be delegitimized realistically. Are there any historical precedents? Only one I can think of is the communist revolution in Russia, which happened largely because of the Czar's failure at war.
What will be the wedge that causes the average man to question legitimacy?
What if he sees a nation that works as well as any other that also doesn't confiscate 50% of everyone's taxes? Don't you think that might give people pause, cause them to question their assumptions? I do.
Let us rise up a new libertarian nation, outside the boundaries of the states, and show another way in actual practice, and you can delegitimize any state prior to internal failure by bold comparison of checkbooks!
We don't need to trigger anything. We don't need a mass awakening. We already have the upper hand because we are on the side of truth. We're not the ones in the position of constantly needing to make up propaganda to rewrite history to suit our hidden agenda. The people with the agenda - the State - are the ones who are fighting gravity. We just need to pull the retaining pin out. The dam will collapse under the weight of gravity.
Once people throw off the propaganda? How will they be made to see?
Well, it already comes natural. Nobody wants to be robbed. Taxes/inflation/debt are robbery. They'll figure it out.
I think it was Rumsfeld who was talking about the immense task facing the government in stopping terrorism - basically, the terrorists can try as many times as they like and they only have to get it right once, whereas, the government has no margin of error... even one mistake is game over (implied: a suitcase nuke in Manhattan or something like that).
The government's task in stopping the truth is no less immense. The proponents of liberty have the luxury of choosing the time and the place where we will strike; when and where we will stand up and speak the truth. And we only have to keep speaking the truth and the entire system is doomed to collapse. The State, on the other hand, must really quench every last ember of liberal philosophy and, even then, the spontaneous combustion of the human spirit means there is never any permanent security for the State.
Liberty is not a "mass movement". It does not require a "critical mass" to progress. Each and every individual who emancipates his mind from the system is instantly freed. Now, he drives whatever speed he judges to be prudent, whether solely on the basis of safety considerations or additionally on the basis of the threat of expropriation at the hands of the State's highway robbers (traffic patrols). He does not obey because he gives mental assent to the legitimacy of the rules. He merely chooses when he will or will not conform, as it suits his own purposes. Hulsmann has called this "originary secession." Your individual secession is not contingent upon anyone else's. Just decide it and it's done.
Since propaganda relies on knowledge inequalities? Like a child who has not learned geometry, they cannot see the answer to finding the area of a triangle using cosines. They cannot fathom even the solution as possible. They do not see the state because they don't even have the concepts needed to do so. It is invisible to them, it is legitimate in their bones and an attack on the state feels like an attack on themselves.
Well, yes, there are the hopeless core of through-and-through statists. Nothing can be done about that for the time being so we shouldn't waste energy agonizing about them.
I think you're over-generalizing a particular demographic... the coddled middle class, the dependent welfare class and the political class. Yes, nothing can "get through" to these people because - whether they consciously understand it or not - they are actually materially dependent upon the State.
But the productive class and those among the poor with enough self-respect to eschew dependence on the State, the class of people who have been put through the meat-grinder of State regulations and victimless-crime laws... these people understand either consciously or unconsciously that the State is not their friend and in no way has their best interests or the best interests of anyone - except itself - at heart.
And then I think there is also a fringe around the "respectable statist class" that has some remnant of conscience or angst. These people are particularly pivotal and we should really reach out to them because they represent the proselytic potential... in the terms of corporate America, this is the "growth market". Those who have been screwed over by the State - whether by excessive taxation, abusive laws, etc. - already hate the State at some level, however inarticulate they may be. So they're already on our side, even if they've never hear of LvMI or LRC or considered the idea of supporting Ron Paul. But those in the pro-statist camp with a nagging problem of conscience... those are the ones I think we should really target.
I think that's a different issue. What you're talking about is re-establishing a healthy social order. While I agree this is the long-run goal, I don't think you're just going to "do it" like that. Even the Amish have to pay income taxes. The point is that the political parasite, the power-worshippers with delusions of global power, the imperialists, the worshippers of the exalted Ego... these people cannot be simply ignored. And, at present, they cannot even be resisted. So, if you want to get to where you can ignore them, you must first be able to resist them. And to be able to resist them, you must first kick out their supports which are, ultimately, spiritual in nature.
Quite the opposite.
I think the myth surrounding exactly how the US came about is a bit romanticized but that's a separate topic. I don't think it will ever be duplicated in history.
I think states only continue to exist because of the absence of an alternative.
That's the thing - the State is like bad weather... it sucks and you and I have no control over it. But what we do have control over is building of shelter. I'm advocating that we simply teach our friends and neighbors how to build their own shelters, if they should so choose. One day, when enough people are building their own shelters, we may happily find that the bad weather has become less frequent and less severe. Either way, we stay dry.
Well, that's the thing... most people don't question it until the State comes after them. Then they start to question. That's why LRC is so important... it chronicles the abuses of the State for all to see. Believe it or not, humans are capable of sympathy... but it's human nature to need to see a face and a story in order for that sympathy to be evoked. Chronicling the running crimes of the State is the first step in invigorating the sympathetic moral response of the wider public.
What if he sees a nation that works as well as any other that also doesn't confiscate 50% of everyone's taxes? Don't you think that might give people pause, cause them to question their assumptions? I do. Let us rise up a new libertarian nation, outside the boundaries of the states, and show another way in actual practice, and you can delegitimize any state prior to internal failure by bold comparison of checkbooks!
As I said, please, do try it. I just don't think your strategy will work, that's all. I will be pleased as pie if you prove me wrong.
nation federal tyrany, takes a small percentage of income and has some rules and regulations
local tyrany, shoots you in the head for going to school and stones you for being raped.
pairunoyd:I'm into voluntaryism like most here...State even the obvious.
I thought it was obvious, but most people here aren't voluntaryists. Most people here support non-mutually-voluntary violence in defense or enforcement of their morals.
On an unrelated note, +1 to cab21's post.
on-mutually-voluntary violence in defense or enforcement of their morals
That is one slippery clause...
The truest thing I've heard you say. Almost...too slippery to.......stand on.
pairunoyd:I certainly believe in a defense financed voluntarily rather than coercively, but ultimately, wouldn't these agencies of defense likely conspire and unite and become a state?
Why would they? Wouldn't they face massive resistance (and thus losses) if they tried?
pairunoyd:Living in a society where you could choose the defense would definitely be a luxury I'd greatly enjoy, but beyond my questions about its long-term viability, my biggest personal quandary is how to get there. I'm in the United States and I would NOT want the U.S. to suddenly disarm 100%. If other states exist and currently my only defense is the state within which I reside, I'd rather my state be able to defend itself. Of course, I’m not referring to the US' imperialistic actions as defensive, but would prefer to have some of its military might to protect me against foreign invading states.
It's baffling to me how many people believe that so much as a standing army, to say nothing of a massive military-industrial complex, is necessary for the defense of the US or any other modern-day state. I think it's a testament to the pervasiveness of the "siege mentality" among people these days.
Tell me, who do you think would militarily threaten the US if it didn't even have a standing army?
pairunoyd:How could a state such as the US ever hope to safely go from a state-run security system to a private one and along the way not be seriously subject to coups and corruptions of all sorts? Would it ultimately simply have to be defeated by domestic, private defense initiatives, either defeated militaristically or thru some sort of apathetic attrition, where the state's system simply wanes to death as people see better choices? I can't imagine the US military going out with a whimper, however.
As soon as a state allows alternative methods of dispute resolution, it ceases being a state. That's why the state wages war on "mob" organizations, which arise because of the need to resolve disputes regarding activities which the state considers to be illegal (but for which there's still demand).
The keyboard is mightier than the gun.
Non parit potestas ipsius auctoritatem.
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