I've been searching the Internet for explanations of the
fear that most of us feel toward anarchy.
Under anarchy, writes
Steve Kangas, "market failures, monopolies, flukes in
supply and demand and other external factors may lead to a far different result
from mistreated tenants and employees simply moving elsewhere."
Well, he's right. But with governmental controls in place, mistreated tenants and employees may be able to move elsewhere even under these conditions. This seems like
a good thing until you examine the costs. One cost is that of the initial
enforcement of the controls. Another is the loss of "
market education" or "the
school of hard knocks." The
unnatural aide provided by the government controls prevents the
natural growth of behaviors that
mitigate the problems caused by market failures, monopolies, flukes in supply and demand, and other external factors. As such unnatural aide appears more and more useful, it grows, consuming ever more of the resources provided by
taxpayers, and thus it slowly destroys them. Were such controls kept out of existence, mistreated tenants and employees would
discover,
invent, and
enhance ways to mitigate the problems rather than relying on the resources of other taxpayers to prevent those problems.
The arguments I have found against anarchy are all based in fear of stronger people. I recognize that stronger animals
prey on weaker ones and this is because the highest
value of the weaker ones is as
food. But humans recognize each other as valuable because they are
capable of producing more than they need and we tend to produce more when we are
happy. For this reason, I reject the underlying assumption that strong people will prey on weak ones. Rather, I believe that strong people will provide valuable opportunities to weaker ones to improve their strength and ability in
trading relationships in which both the stronger and the weaker benefit.
The
beauty and
terror of this argument is that to disagree is to admit a
belief that humans are inherently
evil - that it is natural for the strong to prey upon the weak - that the typical human is more valuable when unhappy than it is when happy. Can you argue against my faith in humans without that disgusting attitude toward your fellow man?
An argument has been made that without a government, people would hire private companies to protect them and when two private companies disagree on whether a client of one has perpetrated a crime against a client of the other, the two private companies have only
brute force left as a recourse. However, if anarchy were removed and a government was used to solve this problem*, the problem remains unsolved in that one or the other of the alleged criminal and the alleged victim will be left unsatisfied, his only recourse being brute force, now against a government instead of a private protecting company.
*
aswerfawf points out that the existence of war between states clearly shows that the argument I am rebutting is baseless; brute force is the final recourse regardless of the existence of a government.
Even still, using an earlier
definition of anarchy, neither of the proposed companies could exist as part of the anarchy because their choice to turn to brute force when they disagree on the definition of a crime turns them into
de facto governments. So the two clients, in order to exist in an anarchy, would have to become customers of companies that, under the same conditions, in which the two companies disagree as to the alleged criminal nature of the act, would not turn to brute force, but which would instead use other means to resolve the issue, including
waiting an
indefinite amount of time for clients and society to help them form an
agreement where they currently disagree. This uses the slightly specialized definition of anarchy in which
coercion is never used.