The Bankruptcy of Minarchy

For a declaration of bankruptcy of minarchism, look no further than this blog post in one objectivist gazette by the name of The Objective Standard.

The objective standard. What a claim.

You'd think if that's their objective standard, it's their best shot. Yet the claims I had to read in that post are patently illogical, the author doesn't seem to have read even the basics on anarchism, and that whole tempest in a tea post amounts to one big fur ball fight randroid vs. straw man, a trap set by knaves for fools that never heard about anarchy except as in "chaos."

"Events last week surrounding the hunt for the Boston Marathon bombers were instructive regarding the contradiction that is anarchy."

On the contrary, as the pigs made a huge mess out of that manhunt, using excessive force against suspects who turned out to be innocent, and the case was solved by a civilian in the end, those events were in fact instructive regarding the contradiction that is the state.

"Anarchy, the absence of government, leaves political justice to the will of the general public."

Democracy leaves political justice to the will of the general public. Anarcho-Capitalism leaves it mostly to corporate professionals, but also to individuals, if they choose to accept the liability risks of taking the law into their own hands.

"Had there been no government… no law… how would these killers have been identified and apprehended? By individual citizens investigating and prowling around on their own?"

Not likely. That would be very inefficient. Capitalism leads to division of labor.

Also, that there are no governments in a free world does not mean that there is no law. In a free country, the law is made by corporations, by free, voluntarily cooperating individuals, just like everything else.

In our mixed economies, the state makes no bread, but that does not mean that there is no bread. In fact, thanks to corporate and individual bakers, we have more and better bread than the soviet slaves got from their state.

"By multiple private 'defense agencies,' … following their own favored practices regarding the use of force?"

Yes, law and security will be manufactured by private corporations, just like everything else. Why would any different practices regarding the use of force be a problem, assuming that they would not be standardized through a negotiated body of intercorporate law in the first place?

And why don't the obis have a problem with the fact that different governments follow different practices regarding their use of force, which have not been standardized by international law? By that logic, only a single world government would be permissible.

By they way, it's not like there aren't multiple agencies under government that get in each other's way. Only that they don't compete. So in that respect you already have the downsides of anarchy without the upsides.

"Over the course of that week, how many people were wrongly identified as 'suspects' by the police… Without… the rule of law and due process, how many innocent people would have been assaulted and possibly slain?"

Obviously, fewer than by the pigs that rampaged through Boston like Rambo. Who could the poor people of Boston call against the pigs raiding their homes? No one.

In Anarcho-Capitalism, any would-be pig has to be real careful not to "assault or slay" any innocent individual, as that pig would find itself at the receiving end of its victim's defense agency. The same is true for individual vigilantes. Defense agencies would try rogue security guards and vigilantes alike for murder if they ended up lynching the wrong person, so there is no additional incentive for lynch justice in Anarcho-Capitalism. In fact, there is less incentive for legalized lynching, as there finally will be someone you can call against the pigs.

Governments unjustly slay more innocent people than defense agencies would, precisely because democratic voting and the lack of competition permits the government to operate without reason or objectivity. Capitalist competition will lead to better standards of evidence than the ridiculously low standards the government uses and that get all those innocent people on death row right now.

"The hunt…  illustrates why the use of retaliatory force (outside of immediate self-defense) must be placed under objective control — that is, control of pre-established legal processes enacted by a government strictly limited to the protection of individual rights."

The eagerness with which governments aggress against the innocent accused is the one best argument against government. Government courts are little better than legalized lynch mobs, where you find little reason or objectivity.

And "outside of immediate self-defense"? Funny.

By the obi logic, self-defense would in fact have to be outlawed. If individuals are too nonobjective to mete out justice without harming the innocent, how can they be objective enough to defend themselves without harming the innocent? In a hypothetical obi land, the randroids would in fact have to stand, deliver, be raped, and be slaughtered rather than defend themselves, for fear of using "nonobjective" force.

And who exactly should or would pre-establish that strictly limited government? The people?

In other words, the majority? No one hates strict limits on government more than the majority does.

In democracy — or any other form of "one man, one vote" representative government the objectivists may prefer to egalitarian, direct democracy — it's the majority that elects the politicians. And it's the politicians that make the law according to the majority's wishes.

The majority does not intend to give up legalized looting. Nor does it intend to stop sacrificing liberties for sham security.

Only if the law is made by capitalist corporations in a free marketplace can things change for the better. In a corporation, the poor shareholders cannot gang up on the rich ones, as the latter get more votes, according to the number of their shares, which is, the size of their fortunes, which is, their productivity.

Anarcho-Capitalism rewards intelligence, merit, and productivity. Egalitarian government rewards mob rule.

In Anarcho-Capitalism, you're free to build a defense agency that does not sacrifice liberty for sham security, even though the majority may hate it. All it takes is enough customers, and wealthy enough customers, that vote for you with their wallets. With that money, you can fund your Navy, Air Force, and Army, strong enough to keep any rights-violating gangs and fascist nation states at bay.

The funny thing is, for all their harping on about governments' real and anarchists' hypothetical rights violations, the TOS obis committed a rights violation themselves in that post. The pic of Murray Rothbard they used is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license.

Yet I can find no attribution in the post. There's just a link back to Wikipedia, but no attribution to the Ludwig von Mises Institute.

I don't think it's fair use, as the post is on anarchy, not on Rothbard. The post doesn't comment on or even mention Rothbard.