Robert Stempien Posted June 5, 2013 Posted June 5, 2013 I posted this originally on my blog but it did not get much exposure, so im reposting it here. 10 Questions Minarchists Should Ask Themselves Try and get these questions to any Minarchists you know. I want them to think hard about each of these. 1) If you were to find a functioning Voluntarist society that does not violate the NAP, would you attempt to impose a Small Government on them? 2) If your Small Government was funded voluntarily, wouldn't it be legal to compete with it? 3) Would you be alright with a group of individuals having a violent monopoly on police, military, and courts, if said organization did not call itself the state? 4) Would a Minarchist Government punish people for practicing tax evasion? 5) If it is OK for a state to secede from the federal government, then wouldn't it be OK for a county to secede from a state, or even, for an individual to secede from the government and declare his house a sovereign independent country? 6) What is the functional difference between a small government and a small benevolent Mafia? 7) Why can't a market function without a socialist, centrally planned monopoly sponging off it? 8) Do you loose sleep at night with the thought that you support a relationship that you know is abusive? 9) If I called myself a small government would I be able to steal from you just to support a small military, police and courts to prevent other people from stealing from you? 10) If a Mafia started calling itself a state and limited its functions to defending the people it stole "Protection" money from, would you be alright with it? If you are a Minarchist reading this, answer all the questions. If you are a Voluntarist, come up with your own ten questions for Minarchists.
Naddrin Kentlar Posted June 6, 2013 Posted June 6, 2013 1. It depends how it would be cheaper to get the resources they control. 2. Yes would be legal to compete with it. One should start to compete by finding it's own natives to steal their land, or some weaker nation to take over. I doubt there will be someone out there that would say, here's some land you can do whatever you want with it, and I you're extempt from aggression. Land is a limited resource, and noone would relinquish control over it, just because it makes sense. 3. Yes, if that group can defend that land from agression. 4. Yes. 5. Theoretically yes. But only viable if everyone around you belives in NAP. 6. none 7. Because there's limited resources in the world, and subsidies try to break the dependence of a nation on other nation's resources. Think Germany that subsidizes heavily green energy. Someone might think that they're eco friendly, some other might think that they're trying to break free from the dependency of Russian resources. 8. yes 9. Do you have any land ? 10. Does the mafia have any land ? Because mafia, by my knowledge only exploits internal weakness of the state.
Robert Stempien Posted June 11, 2013 Author Posted June 11, 2013 1. It depends how it would be cheaper to get the resources they control. I thought Minarchists atleast attempted to follow the non-aggression principle? 2. Yes would be legal to compete with it. One should start to compete by finding it's own natives to steal their land, or some weaker nation to take over. I doubt there will be someone out there that would say, here's some land you can do whatever you want with it, and I you're extempt from aggression. Land is a limited resource, and noone would relinquish control over it, just because it makes sense. No by competition I mean by the way firms compete on the market, my question was if I would be able to start a PDA that competes with the government military within its border. 3. Yes, if that group can defend that land from agression. What if your house was inluded as part of this organizations land? 4. Yes. Ok, thats a blatent violation of the NAP, but from the sound of things that probably doesnt matter to u. 5. Theoretically yes. But only viable if everyone around you belives in NAP. If everyone around you does not respect the NAP then it is no longer a Libertarian society, it is now a statist one. 6. none Then the burden of proof is on you for explaining why we must obey the criminal organization calling itself the state but not the criminal organization calling itself the mafia. 7. Because there's limited resources in the world, and subsidies try to break the dependence of a nation on other nation's resources. Think Germany that subsidizes heavily green energy. Someone might think that they're eco friendly, some other might think that they're trying to break free from the dependency of Russian resources. The fact that theres limited resources simply helps make the case for a stateless society, for only the market can create the most efficient allocation of resources. 8. yes Ok I guess thats a loaded question. 9. Do you have any land ? Well, I have a house, and Obama has a house, so I guess I have just as much a claim to rule as Obama does. 10. Does the mafia have any land ? Because mafia, by my knowledge only exploits internal weakness of the state. The Mafia tends to have as much land as the Feds, a small headquarters as a home base for them to branch out and harass private property owners from. I think your the wrong person for these questions, they are more meant for a commited minarchist or objectivist than someone who seems to comfortable with open ended state power.
Kirk Olson Posted June 14, 2013 Posted June 14, 2013 Great post. It's questions like these that turned me from minarchist to anarchist. Nice to have them neatly summed up though, comes in handy in discussions with those "Hey I want a small government too, but surely we need one for the courts/police/army/roads/dikes/whatever.... now do we?" people. And there are a lot of them out there.
Robert Stempien Posted June 14, 2013 Author Posted June 14, 2013 Nice to have them neatly summed up though, comes in handy in discussions with those "Hey I want a small government too, but surely we need one for the courts/police/army/roads/dikes/whatever.... now do we?" people. And there are a lot of them out there. like my dad, if he didn't work so much I'd make him answer all of these, its kind of funny, usually children rebel against their parents by taking opposite political views, but i just took the more principled wing of libertarianism than my dad
Kirk Olson Posted June 14, 2013 Posted June 14, 2013 like my dad, if he didn't work so much I'd make him answer all of these, its kind of funny, usually children rebel against their parents by taking opposite political views, but i just took the more principled wing of libertarianism than my dad Same here, my parents are fairly liberal (mind you: the word 'liberal' in Europe still means what it originally meant, it does not have the leftist connotation it has in the US, I guess you would call them "classical liberals") I still have a hard time though convincing them I only take there views to the next logical step.
Robert Stempien Posted June 14, 2013 Author Posted June 14, 2013 like my dad, if he didn't work so much I'd make him answer all of these, its kind of funny, usually children rebel against their parents by taking opposite political views, but i just took the more principled wing of libertarianism than my dad Same here, my parents are fairly liberal (mind you: the word 'liberal' in Europe still means what it originally meant, it does not have the leftist connotation it has in the US, I guess you would call them "classical liberals") I still have a hard time though convincing them I only take there views to the next logical step. yah, my dad every so often tries to tell me that I'm not a libertarian, I'm an anarcho-capitalist, I think he's just trolling me when he does that though, my grandma though once that our debate was a bit pointless sense we agree on like 85% of things. I didn't realize liberal still had the old meaning in Europe, what do u guys call the new pinko liberals then?
Kirk Olson Posted June 14, 2013 Posted June 14, 2013 I didn't realize liberal still had the old meaning in Europe, what do u guys call the new pinko liberals then? They usually call themselves "social-democrats", to obscure the fact they're downright socialists. And there are an awful lot of them I'm afraid, still much work to do.
Robert Stempien Posted June 14, 2013 Author Posted June 14, 2013 I didn't realize liberal still had the old meaning in Europe, what do u guys call the new pinko liberals then? They usually call themselves "social-democrats", to obscure the fact they're downright socialists. And there are an awful lot of them I'm afraid, still much work to do. it sounds like the situation is a lot worse in Europe. at least in the united states all of our propaganda and history and founding documents point towards freedom, so we can always tell people that "this is what our founders would have wanted"
Kirk Olson Posted June 14, 2013 Posted June 14, 2013 it sounds like the situation is a lot worse in Europe. at least in the united states all of our propaganda and history and founding documents point towards freedom, so we can always tell people that "this is what our founders would have wanted" Actually, we sort of have a history like that in the Netherlands as well, although it's a couple of hundred years longer ago. We fought Spanish statist agression, and taxation, back in the sixteenth century, We won! and for a century we had a minarchist society that brought us unprecedented prosperity, it's still referred to as our "Golden Age". We seem to have forgotten these lessons though. People now tend to turn to the government for every single aspect of their lives, and, worse than that, the lives of others. But... nowadays more and more people actually start to realize the government is doing an extremely bad job on pretty much everything she does, and demands an extremely high price for it. You can feel this dissatisfaction not only here but all over Europe, what with the Euro crisis and all. Perhaps there's hope after all.
Robert Stempien Posted June 14, 2013 Author Posted June 14, 2013 it sounds like the situation is a lot worse in Europe. at least in the united states all of our propaganda and history and founding documents point towards freedom, so we can always tell people that "this is what our founders would have wanted" Actually, we sort of have a history like that in the Netherlands as well, although it's a couple of hundred years longer ago. We fought Spanish statist agression, and taxation, back in the sixteenth century, We won! and for a century we had a minarchist society that brought us unprecedented prosperity, it's still referred to as our "Golden Age". We seem to have forgotten these lessons though. People now tend to turn to the government for every single aspect of their lives, and, worse than that, the lives of others. But... nowadays more and more people actually start to realize the government is doing an extremely bad job on pretty much everything she does, and demands an extremely high price for it. You can feel this dissatisfaction not only here but all over Europe, what with the Euro crisis and all. Perhaps there's hope after all. its like Stefan has mentioned a few times, under a minarchist system there's so little government involvement that things get incredibly prosperous, but the small government grows under all that prosperity and eventually swallows it all up, and yet we still have people here in the united states saying "if the state simply stays at the size authorized by the constitution then evrything will be fine!"
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