What does the "ideal" future look like?

[inteja]

I'm new here and have been watching Stefan's videos with interest. There seems to be a lot of information about what doesn't work (e.g. socialism) and why, but I'm keen to learn what the alternative ideal future scenario would look, not just in general terms, but specifics. Can anyone point me to definitive, comprehensive resources that detail solutions for the multitude of problems we face?

 

I watched Stefan's recent video "What's Wrong With Socialism?" and it made sense on many levels, but I'm still struggling to see what the alternative might look like.

 

For example, if there was no social safety net at all, are we just relying on the goodness of individuals and charities to look after those who, for whatever reason, can't look after themselves i.e. the severely disabled or mentally ill etc through no fault of their own?

 

Taking it one step further, what about the minority of people that Stefan specifically refers to who currently can but won't look after themselves / live off the system, have no incentive, ambition or drive to work, waste their social security money on cigarettes, alcohol and gambling etc? Without a safety net, yes some of these people would undoubtedly be forced into being more responsible but others would turn to crime, placing more of a burden on the rest of society (i.e. it doesn't just effect them). Is it cheaper to provide a living wage or spend more on security and policing, or does neither option fit into the "ideal"?

 

On policing and security I'm also confused about what that might look like in an ideal libertarian / anarchistic future? Are we to maintain national and global defence and police forces or local, decentralised, self organising community and/or corporate security forces? Won't the latter just result in a dystopian future with roving bands of local gangs and militia?

 

In a related point, short of global revolution or catastrophe (wiping the slate clean), how do we get from where we are now to this ideal future when there's some very powerful, well-funded and well-armed government and quasi-government forces intent on maintaining the status quo?

 

I'm confused and would like some clarity on what an "ideal" future would look like rather than a critique of what's wrong with the current systems.

 

Thanks in advance.

[Mister Mister]

Hi there!  Welcome and thanks for your interest and curiosity.  You may not realize it, but you are unique among most people, as most would not even ask these questions but rather attack or avoid entirely.  Stef has addressed these questions, in his book Practical Anarchy https://freedomainradio.com/free/#pa as well as his earliest podcasts among others.  Economists such as Murray Rothbard, Bob Murphy and David Friedman have also addressed these issues very well in my opinion.  However I can try to give a summary of Stef's thinking in this area.

  The basic idea is that the Non-Aggression Principle applies to everyone, self-defense is a Universal right, and this extends to defending others and their property.  The government however, claims a monopoly on the provision of security and protection of property, and demands payment by coercion.  Because these "services" are supported coercively, there is no incentive to actually provide the best service at the lowest price, as opposed to goods and services provided by the free market.  Just think about it.  For anything which the government is supposed to be necessary to provide, does anyone involved face any negative consequences for a failure?  Do the police face any liability for violent crime?  Does a judge face negative consequences for convicting a guilty man?  Does the Dept. of Transportation lose money when there is a traffic jam?

  A voluntary provider of such a service, accountable to its customers, and susceptible to competition, would have to be liable for its failures.  Such a provider might act like an insurance company.  Because a security provider would be liable for violent crime, they would want to figure out how to most easily prevent violent crime.  The most effective way to do this, based on the best science we have to date, would be to reduce and eventually eliminate child abuse, as in the overwhelming majority of cases, violent offenders suffered violence as children.  Thus, it is an inter-generational approach, in a future where children do not suffer violence, there will be no criminals and thus not an excessive need for protection from crime.  This in particular is Stef's unique and most important contribution to this issue in my opinion.

  Having said all of that, the real answer is "nobody knows" , it is impossible to predict what a future would look like as the consequence of such a revolution in ethics.  Anarchy and voluntaryism are fundamentally philosophies of interpersonal relationships: what separates this show and this community from the other libertarian/anarcho-capitalists is that we are concerned with what aspects of life we can put these ideas into practice NOW, resolving psychological and interpersonal dysfunctions, living free in an unfree world.  Many people still impose their will on friends, spouses, employees, and especially children, so the idea of an entirely voluntary society is unthinkable to them.  So people must see anarchy in their lives before accepting it in the larger society.  This means learning what it means/looks like to practice negotiation, reason, non-violence, in sex, family, friendship, and business.

  Thanks again for your fine questions, I hope my answers made some sense and gave you some places to look; I look forward to your response.

[labmath2]

Just as an aside, goverment is not a monopoly, but a geographic monopoly.

[Frosty]

Generally speaking we do not know what a future outside of government force would look like, it's impossible to predict far into the future based on social changes, I think the general argument is that it doesn't matter how it looks, what matter is that we stop the use of force/violence/aggression to get what we want, improve our moral behaviour and leave the rest up to chance, let the chips fall as they may.

 

Stefan uses a good argument from time to time that we didn't know how we'd pick the cotton in the fields that slaves worked when we wanted to abolish slavery, but that wasn't relevant to the moral issue that slavery is wrong, so we abolish it to achieve better ethical behaviour and consequences be damned. It turned out that fields ended up being farmed with large machines because people had to innovate to make such a large amount of work plauisble.

 

Libertarianism just means to be free of aggression of other people, how we fix social problems will be open to the free market and the collective innovation of billions of people to provide solutions where we need them, it's unlikely that anyone could accurately predict what those solutions will end up being, and really it doesn't matter all that much, what matters is that we stop using violence against each other.

[inteja]

Thanks for all the responses. I'm getting a clearer view now. But I'm still confused about how we get from here to there. I can see that it might be possible to change the opinions and behaviours of individuals, families and small communities, but I'm not convinced that this grass roots progress would necessarily translate to nationalistic and global powers relinquishing their ability to exercise control over and wage war on their own citizens and other states.

[Frosty]

It's not easy to do it inside 1 generation, it's a multi-generational change, one of the best things we can do is encourage parents to raise children peacefully in win/win environments in order to teach them that violence isn't a good way to get what you want, children growing up with empathy will naturally tend to want to help other people rather than hurt them and tend to want to avoid systems that use force and instead opt in for systems that require cooperation.

 

it's kind of like trying to get rid of religion among the population, you can appeal to fresh minds really easily and in the UK at least the national census shows that religion is on the decline but that religious belief is highly correlated with age, those people in the 60+ range have high incidence of religious belief, teenagers have very little, and it's a fairly linear relationship in between. It turns out that to get rid of religion you make good arguments for a secular society and evidence based world view, lets children grow up freely in that environment and it goes away on its own. This is why Stefan focuses so much on peaceful parenting, it's going to be one of the biggest changes in society over the next few centuries as we become more educated about the effects parenting has on children we drastically improve society.

[thebeardslastcall]

"Take this parachute, put it on and jump out, the plane is going down!"

"But I can't see where I'll land, is there food down there? Has this parachute been tested?"

"The plane is going down, you need to jump!"

"But I don't know how we'll survive down there!"

"The plane is GOING TO CRASH MAN!"

"But..." * BOOOOM *

.....

And now for the ideal future...

"The plane is going to crash, grab this parachute and jump!"

"Holy crap, you're right!" * grabs the parachutes and jumps out *

* both people land safely and begin their search for food *

"Hey I found some mangos!"

"Hey I found some papayas!"

* they trade a couple with each other and sit down for a fruity meal *

* promiscuity ensues, children are had, fruit trees are grown and traded, peaceful fruity society begins *

 

[Mister Mister]

Thanks for all the responses. I'm getting a clearer view now. But I'm still confused about how we get from here to there. I can see that it might be possible to change the opinions and behaviours of individuals, families and small communities, but I'm not convinced that this grass roots progress would necessarily translate to nationalistic and global powers relinquishing their ability to exercise control over and wage war on their own citizens and other states.

I completely understand where you are coming from.  Given where the world is now, it is so hard to see how it can transition to Peaceful, Rational Anarchy.  The great thing about freedom however, is that no one person has to know all the answers.  As Milton Friedman demonstrated, no one person in the world knows how to make something even as simple as a pencil.  So asking how a free society would work is basically impossible for one person to answer.  It only happens when enough people understand the principle, and act on it with passion, sensitivity, intelligence, and creativity.  So the idea behind this show is that you see where, in your life, you can expand freedom, peace, reason, and understanding.

[Thomasio]

To my mind there is no such thing as an ideal world.

Humans are inherently egotistic, no matter whether as individuals or in groups of whatever size.

Look at yourself and consider:

The GDP of the entire world is about 75 trillion US$.

75 trillion divided by 7 billion people gives just over $1000 per year for everyone.

Can you imagine any kind of circumstances under which you would be willing to live from $1000 a year, given the buying power of $1000 in today's money?

Or do you believe you should have more of the cake, because of one or another reason?

 

Access to electricity doesn't give you the right to make enough money to pay for it.

Living in a rich country where renting a house is expensive doesn't give you the right to afford the place.

The existence of a job in your town that makes more than $1000 a year doesn´t make your efforts more valuable than the efforts of some guy in Central Africa.

 

From a really ideal point of view, all humans should have the exact same rights, all the exact same chances to make a living, all the exact same health care.

If someone then chooses not to work and has less because of that, that's another story.

 

So as long as you believe you personally need more than $1000 a year to survive, you yourself do not believe in an ideal world.

Do you believe countries like Germany should stay on their GDP of  $41,500 a year per person until the rest of the world has caught up or do you realize that would be an impossible task, because the rest of the world could never catch up while Germany permanently keeps such a large portion for itself?

 

If you believe we should elevate living standards across the world, you'd have to start by lowering yours, because as long as you insist on having more than the average in the beginning you will never reach equality on a global scale, simply because your own advantage on start will give you the option to increase it, where human egotism will definitely abuse the opportunity, especially in an anarchy.

[thebeardslastcall]

In response to Thomasio:

You're defining ideally as some sort of equality and then arguing against equality in an overly simplistic manner and saying equality is not ideal and concluding there is no ideal world. You introduced circular logic to argue against all potential ideal worlds as if this generalized equality (which is how I'm classifying it, but what you call it exactly doesn't matter) was the only possible ideal.