Voluntary Monopoly of Force?

[Nerburg]

The free market doesn't actually have anything innately against the idea of an institution with a monopoly of force over an arbitrary geographic location, presuming that it's founding and funding is voluntary, no?

 

Suppose a group of people formed a stateless society and none of the states around them were hostile, or perhaps even in a future of global stateless-ness, this group of people agree that they think a centralized monopoly of force is the way that they want to organize the society, with the method of taxation, through, say, a flat tax of 20%. All of the people signing this contract are adults at the age of consent, and there are no people in the arbitrary geographic land mass who do not sign contract with the new State. They understand the non-aggression principle and so they educate their children rather than propagandize them. Bear with me for a moment.

 

When children come to the age of consent, and do not sign a contract of agreement with the state to pay 20% of their income to it, the State gives them a choice: You may live here without paying taxes, but you are subject to our laws and you have not the right to participate in the political process, or we will give you enough money to live a middle-class lifestyle for one year outside of our 'country', and then no longer have anything to do with you.

 

Assuming that the state did not break this part of the contract, would the taxation not be voluntary? This is no critique of anarcho-capitalism, but rather one of the ways a lot of anarchists describe the ambivalence to modern society, namely, "Taxation is theft and the State is a centralized monopoly of force over an arbitrary geographic location of lines drawn on a map".

 

Thus, technically, it is not an opposition to a 'monopoly of force', but more accurately, involuntary association. Please correct any errors in my thinking and/or discuss.

 

I'm bringing it up because I think it's one of the stumbling blocks in communication with non-anarchists.

[Marcus Clarke]

The free market doesn't actually have anything innately against the idea of an institution with a monopoly of force over an arbitrary geographic location, presuming that it's founding and funding is voluntary, no?

 

Suppose a group of people formed a stateless society and none of the states around them were hostile, or perhaps even in a future of global stateless-ness, this group of people agree that they think a centralized monopoly of force is the way that they want to organize the society, with the method of taxation, through, say, a flat tax of 20%. All of the people signing this contract are adults at the age of consent, and there are no people in the arbitrary geographic land mass who do not sign contract with the new State. They understand the non-aggression principle and so they educate their children rather than propagandize them. Bear with me for a moment.

 

When children come to the age of consent, and do not sign a contract of agreement with the state to pay 20% of their income to it, the State gives them a choice: You may live here without paying taxes, but you are subject to our laws and you have not the right to participate in the political process, or we will give you enough money to live a middle-class lifestyle for one year outside of our 'country', and then no longer have anything to do with you.

 

Assuming that the state did not break this part of the contract, would the taxation not be voluntary? This is no critique of anarcho-capitalism, but rather one of the ways a lot of anarchists describe the ambivalence to modern society, namely, "Taxation is theft and the State is a centralized monopoly of force over an arbitrary geographic location of lines drawn on a map".

 

Thus, technically, it is not an opposition to a 'monopoly of force', but more accurately, involuntary association. Please correct any errors in my thinking and/or discuss.

 

I'm bringing it up because I think it's one of the stumbling blocks in communication with non-anarchists.

 

Trying to understand a "centralized monopoly of force" is a bit hard to pin down on meaning.  One definition for the "centralized monopoly of force" (state) might be "a group of humans who institute the most threats of and carried out murders, assaults, and thefts in a geographic region.".  This is not compatible with the NAP.

 

Many of the words the come from violent language: "organize the society", "monopoly of force", "flat tax", "age of consent".  "Taxation" necessarily requires murder, because those who do not want to pay and do not want to leave the arbitrary geographic region will be killed if they try to defend themselves.  "Organize the society" has no objective meaning, except that if someone does not want to conform how society is organized, they can be murdered.  If people got together to pay people to do stuff without the threat of murder, they would call it a "monthly subscriber fee" or a "monthly service charge".  They would not enter into contracts where their children can be murdered if they grow up to not want to sign the contract and not leave the arbitrary geographic area.

[dsayers]

By "monopoly of force," do you mean monopoly on the initiation of the use of force? If so, this cannot be voluntary as the individual doesn't have a valid claim of the initiation of the use of force and therefor cannot delegate it to others.

 

"Organize the society" is the initiation of the use of force. There is no such thing as society as humans are not fundamentally different when standing alone and standing amid 100 or even 1 million others.

 

Taxation is theft. Theft requires the initiation of the use of force. If I agree to pay you X for good/service Y, it is incorrect to describe this as you taxing me X. Not trying to be annoying, but it's very important we're precise when talking about these things.

 

When children come to the age of consent, and do not sign a contract of agreement with the state to pay 20% of their income to it, the State gives them a choice: You may live here without paying taxes, but you are subject to our laws and you have not the right to participate in the political process, or we will give you enough money to live a middle-class lifestyle for one year outside of our 'country', and then no longer have anything to do with you.

 

This is an anthropomorphism. "The State" is not a person and is not capable of behavior. This is an important distinction here because your quote would be clearer if stated with precise language. "Person A gives person B a choice: You may live here..." In order for this to be a valid statement, person A would have to own the land in question to be able to morally decide who gets to live there. If person A does own the land, they don't have to offer anybody else anything to NOT live there.

[Bradford26]

This topic is interesting for me, so I'll take a stab at unraveling this riddle. 

Suppose a group of people formed a stateless society and none of the states around them were hostile, or perhaps even in a future of global stateless-ness, this group of people agree that they think a centralized monopoly of force is the way that they want to organize the society, with the method of taxation, through, say, a flat tax of 20%. All of the people signing this contract are adults at the age of consent, and there are no people in the arbitrary geographic land mass who do not sign contract with the new State. They understand the non-aggression principle and so they educate their children rather than propagandize them. Bear with me for a moment.

 

Once upon a time...

 

The story starts with a group of free people coming together with the goal of organizing society by using a centralized monopoly of force. Everyone within this group agrees that this is good and signs a contract implementing it. Upon signing the contract, the initiation of force is immediately removed from the equation, since any interaction between the state and members of this group is voluntary. This scenario only reinforces the concept of contract law and does not support the idea that a monopolistic state could arise from such an agreement.

 

For the sake of exploration, we can ignore this conclusion. We can assume that these people sign this contract. What does the contract say? It says that the contract is for life, applies to your descendents unto infinity and cannot be undone under any circumstances. If an entire population was still convinced that this was good, then I'd wonder where this determination for imprisonment came from and how this group ever found themselves as free people to begin with.

 

Lets break through that logical barrier as well. The entire population of this area are overjoyed with their new-found powerlessness. The state will save them from the terrors of freedom! What is the first act of this monopoly of the use of force? With a heavy gavel strike, the state decrees that everyone's personal property belongs to the state. Smartly, the state realizes that any young person who has not signed the contract could easily redraw the imaginary borders to exclude their private land. The state cannot abide getting smaller; therefore, ownership must be transferred to the state so land can't leave the contract.

 

Once this happens, there's nothing that can be done. The good people who signed the contract find that the state owns them, their property and their offspring. The state begins it's propaganda machine and the rest is boring statistics.

 

The Truth

 

Many people posit the tale that this is how countries are formed. That everyone has the option to sign the contract and decides to do so. This is not how countries are formed. The state makes the contract and the state signs it. Then people are informed of the property transfer when they are threatened with force.

 

If states were somehow a better alternative to voluntary association, then the story would have worked out fine because nobody would have chosen to remove themselves from the contract that they or their ancestors signed. Unfortunately, there is clear evidence that voluntarism beats out coercion in every respect. A society of free people would need to be brainwashed or contract simultaneous brain diseases for such an antithesis of freedom to form.

 

Happily Ever After

 

The imaginary society in this story consists of free individuals. Truly free individuals do not desire to organize society through coercion and would never give up their freedom or sell their children's lives without significant coercion.

[Nerburg]

I think some folks need to re-read the OP, because none of these replies are actually referring to the scenario above. I will edit this post and elaborate later when I am not on a mobile device.

[PatrickC]

In theory, any group of people in a given geographical location if there is consensus and they are able to buy out any remaining opposition. They can create whatever state, community they like.

 

If people voluntarily agreed to this, including those that came to live within their territory, then what you describe as tax would be more like a subscription. This would be akin to joining a mutual association or cooperative.

 

You are right to point out that what we have now is involuntary association. Therein lies the difference, which is why taxation is still force, because it's derived entirely from that enforced association. Anything else would be called donations, subscriptions or premiums, which are all derived from voluntary association. I would avoid trying to follow the statist line that taxation can be voluntary. It can't by definition. Remembering that definitions are important, not the antonyms people use in an attempt to falsely rephrase those definitions.