Austin Petersen's "5 Reasons I'm not an Anarchist"-rebutted

[joej]

I wrote a rebuttal to Austin Petersen's, editor for The Libertarian Republic, "5 Reasons I'm not an Anarchist."  <http://thelibertarianrepublic.com/5-reasons-why-im-not-an-anarchist/> I tried to contact him with the rebuttal and have him publish it on his own site but obviously that was a long shot.  I'm pursuing a career in writing and would love some input on it.  

 

Below is my rebuttal:

 

“5 Reasons I’m Not An Anarchist” by Austin Petersen-Rebutted

 

I stumbled onto this article which evoked a sense of curiosity in me.  I have been a Libertarian since I started to form my own political beliefs.  This quickly led to advocate Minarchism, the belief in a minimal state.  I saw government as a “necessary evil” as Thomas Paine famously asserted.  When I discovered Voluntarism, the belief that all human interactions should be voluntary and noncoercive, I realized the only way people can have freedom is when we abolish The State.  It became apparent that the problem with contemporary Libertarianism is that they’re not willing to fully implement their morality.  We cannot have freedom if the advocates of freedom are willing to compromise.  Voluntarists are the consistent, honest, and fully practicing advocates of freedom.  Voluntarists are the only people on earth who will never say, “I believe in freedom but, ….”.  

For years, pressure, propaganda, and ostracism was likely what held me back.  Perhaps it was the sense of betrayal it made me feel.  As a former U.S. Marine I, up until quite recently had an extremely hard time viewing the American Government, especially in regards to foreign policy, from an objective perspective.  But, no emotional discomfort or desire for conformity can change the facts of reality.  There is no good reason not to be an anarchist, unless you want to impose your will on others through the use or threat of force.  

I opened this article with high hopes, I have heard some very good arguments and questions about how a society free from government could organize themselves.  Unfortunately, the arguments I found seem to originate from someone who has never dispatched any real sort of intellectual vigor to the subject.  This is a normal reaction to the idea,  when introduced to the notion that every Pledge of Allegiance, “Supporting the Troops” campaign, or assertion of the virtue of democracy is an outright lie, it is not surprising that this would evoke negative emotions in one’s mind.  This is a blatantly obvious reaction seen in the author’s opening paragraph.  He begins his writing by insulting anarchists, claiming they have “(a) complete misunderstanding of the basics of force, fraud, life, liberty, or property.”, but as I will show you below, it is the Minarchists who lack any sort of knowledge on the above stated subjects.

The first reason listed for a minimal-state as opposed to no state is “Rights are Guarantees”.  If the author’s statement was in any way resembling the truth, we would never have our rights violated.  If rights were guarantees, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, kidnapping and imprisoning over 100,000 Americans for being of Japanese descent would’ve never been carried out.  If rights were guarantees, The Patriot Act would’ve never been signed into law.  Obviously, the Constitution is exceedingly inadequate at protecting people’s rights.  It took only 10 years after the Constitution was ratified for The Alien and Sedition Act to be passed in 1798.  This law which threatened fines and imprisonment against those who spoke out against the government was clearly a violation of the First Amendment that supposedly “guaranteed” rights to the citizens.  Clearly, rights are not guarantees, but privileges that can be taken at the stroke of the pen of a politician.  

He also mentions the right to a lawyer being inalienable, something one is entitled to as an American citizen.  But as seen in the case with Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, a 16 year-old U.S. citizen who was murdered by drone strike in Yemen while attempting to visit family.  Abdulrahman had no trial, no lawyer, and no due process.  Any idea that these are natural rights guaranteed to us by our all virtuous government is simply a fabrication and wishful thinking.  The “rights” afforded to American citizens are not rights at all and to think that an organization of people can protect said “rights” when it is built on the foundation of violating property rights through taxation is laughable at best.  

In his second reasoning, the author asserts that “An anarchic society is unable to protect it’s citizens from foreign invasion”.  This is a completely legitimate concern, and one that causes alarm in the mind of any anarchist.  What type of person would fight for a free society only to be overrun by a potentially more oppressive government?  Anarchists are not against a military force by any means whatsoever, we just recognize that funding one through taxation is a violation of the non-aggression principle (NAP).  We are also aware that government often produces less than optimum results for the money.  The best way to have an efficient defense would be to have competing agencies attempting to provide the best service for the lowest price, a free market for defense.  Being that these competing agencies would have to offer the lowest price, they could not afford to be on the other side of the world creating all sorts of unforeseen consequences all too common with the status quo.

An obvious rejection to private defense agencies is that they could grow too large and inevitably become another government.  Even if we accept the premise that a private defense agency could potentially become a government, why is that a good reason to reject the idea?  If you’re diagnosed with cancer and upon the offer of treatment your doctor tells you that the cancer could one day come back, would that be a reason to not remove the cancerous cells?  Of course this would be a silly rejection to remove the entity causing you harm, just as the fear of defense agencies one day becoming governments is no reason not to abolish the current system.  

In the free market, if potential customers of the defense agencies were worried about this happening, which any intelligent customer would, they simply wouldn’t buy the service.  Private defense agencies would have to somehow guarantee to their customers that they wouldn’t start oppressing them.  In contractual agreements, consumers could stipulate that the defense agency would have to keep precise records of exactly how many guns, soldiers, ammunition, etc. they had in their warehouses and allow for it to be audited at any time by a 3rd party entity.  In the contract, the defense agency could be required to hold an extremely high amount of money in escrow to be paid to their customers if at any point the 3rd party auditors found that they had 1 more bullet than they disclosed.  If that wasn’t enough for you, then you wouldn’t have to buy their services and you could take your money to a competitor that did offer you terms that eased your fears.  At the end of the day, defense from invading forces is a vitally important requirement to a secure and peaceful society but it being so important is exactly why we cannot allow it to be monopolized by our “world police” that always seems so keen on perpetual war in foreign lands.  Libertarians generally agree that government is horribly inefficient at completing assigned tasks like controlling drug use, reducing poverty, and providing health care.  If you recognize the inability of government to do these tasks, why would one assume that government is the only entity responsible enough to have a monopoly on defense?

“Anarchy means the non-aggression principle is optional” is listed as the author’s third reason why anarchy cannot work.  I would object to the idea that in order to prevent people from violating the NAP we need a government that operates by violating the NAP on everyone in a geographical area.  This, at the most basic level is a logical contradiction.  An equivalent idea would resemble hiring a security agency to protect your home from theft whom, in order to provide said service, will steal up to 40% of your income for something to benefit you and all other “customers”.  The best part about their service is that you can never opt out, you’ll have their security for life.  Obviously no one would agree to this service so the only way to have others participate in the service would be to impose it on them.  

If when faced with the problem of people not abiding by the NAP, the only solution you can devise is to violate the NAP unilaterally, your proposed “solutions” to complex social problems shouldn’t be taken seriously.  Government’s fund themselves through taxation and taxation is theft.  It does not matter how “necessary” the taxation is to set up society, taxation still is, and will always remain theft.  You cannot advocate the defense of the NAP by violating it.  This would be analogous to an Abolitionist in the 19th century, enslaving blacks to help organize his rallies and protests.  To an observer with any sort of integrity, it would be blatantly obvious that the said Abolitionist didn’t really care about emancipation, but some twisted and logically inconsistent ideology of his own.  

In the author’s fourth reason for the rejection of an anarchistic society he continues on the problem of others violating the NAP stating, “The Non-Aggression Principle, I didn’t sign Sh*t!”  At this point, the author asserts that the NAP  is a “social contract”.  This is completely false.  The NAP is a not a social contract by any means, it is simply a principle that we apply to our lives.  It is by no means forced on you, just as the principle known as “Don’t rape” is not forced on you.  But the “social contract” in regards to the existence of government, is forced on you.  If you deny or want to opt out, you must leave your own property or face the use of force.  If you want to leave, you can only do so after paying thousands of dollars and spending years trying to revoke your citizenship; and then you still won’t be free, just under the rule of another government that operates similarly by violating the NAP.  

Social contracts are invalid.  A contract requires explicit consent, while able-minded, and lacking coercion or the threat of force.  This social contract in regards to a government is imposed on you, as a result of the geography of your birth.  Nothing changes the fact that no one has the right to impose their products or services on others without expressed consent, and being born somewhere is not consent.  Just like a mafia has no right to come into my business and demand protection money, the state has no right to come onto my property and demand taxation.  

Whenever you hear someone mention a social contract, prepare yourself, they’re probably about to suggest using force against you in order to facilitate what they think is the best solution to a problem.  If they truly had good reasons for whatever they’re advocating the government should do, they wouldn’t have to force others to fund it and participate in it.  I cannot go to my neighbor and say they owe me 20%, or any amount, of their income to help fund things I deem necessary.  I cannot round up everyone in my neighborhood, then go to my neighbor and declare he owes a percentage of his income.  If I, or even a group of people, doesn’t have the right to impose their will on others, why does the government?  I would argue that the government can’t justly behave in this manner; I cannot delegate a right I do not have to someone else, even if I give it the veil of the “social contract”.  

He continues to describe how people like Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and Kim Jung-un wouldn’t abide by the NAP because they didn’t agree to it.  The author claims that anarchists believe “someone pointing a gun at you is not a crime.”  This is simply a ludicrous generalization and oversimplification of what the NAP actually means.  If a mugger points a gun at me and tells me to give him my wallet, he is violating the NAP; just as the state is when they threaten me with kidnapping and imprisonment if I don’t pay my taxes.  The NAP not only applies to the actual use of force, but the threat of force as well.  The NAP also does not prohibit self-defense in any way shape or form.

A proposed “failure” of the NAP is described as Kim Jong-un pointing a nuclear weapon at Los Angeles. What the author glosses over is the events that led to the maniacal dictator deciding to point said weapon at Los Angeles.  It is not because he thinks Los Angeles is a cesspool of human evil or because good ol’ Kim doesn’t like an individual that lives there, it’s because the United States Government and the North Korean Government don’t get along.  Wars are never between the people of two or more nations, but between the opposing governments.  This by no means is suggesting the Kim is a good guy, or is in any way shape or form justified for his horrific behavior but, without the United States Government, the North Korean dictator wouldn’t be pointing a weapon at Los Angeles in the first place and many other countries would lack the excessive amount of loathing for our country.

In a stateless society, no lunatic with a nuclear weapon would have any reason for aiming his arsenal at a community of peaceful individuals, minding their own business from thousands of miles away.  If through some perfect alignment of the stars a homicidal madman was threatening a stateless society with annihilation; surely this society would first try to find a non-aggressive means to de escalating the situation.  If all peaceful solutions could not alleviate the tensions then this free society could hire someone to defend them, or even defend themselves.  Again, what the author seems to propose is that the only possible way to resolve such an issue is to set an organization that has the monopoly on the use of force.  This is the most common logical fallacy in the world.  Just because you lack the creativity to peacefully solve a complex problem doesn’t mean the only solution is The State.  

Next the author does bring up legitimate concerns regarding the intricacies of when and where pre-emptive force may be used and to what degree.  There is no objective way to define how much force can be used in retaliation.  If a woman is raped and sees her assailant the next day, is she justified in killing him?  I don’t know.  But, would she be justified in killing him to stop the rape while it was in progress?  I would say yes, as I’m sure most people would.  What about 30 seconds after the rape?  Anyone who has explored ethics has been tortured by these impossible to answer questions.  Every situation is going to be different.  But yet again, this is exactly why we can’t have a government in charge of this.  The matter is infinitely complex.  There is no organizational tool that we can sort every possible scenario into.  We need competing ideas working to deliver the best possible implementation of justice in a society, not a monopolistic government.  

To continue, in a stateless society, prevention would be key to developing the positive results we wish to see manifest in our society.  While deciding how to properly administer justice to a rapist would be very important, a stateless society would focus just as much, if not more, on how to prevent the crime from ever occurring in the first place.  Similarly, treating people for lung cancer is noble and needed for health, but a real solution to the occurrence of lung cancer cases is to stop people from smoking cigarettes in the first place.  I would implore one to explore what in people’s past contributes to their disgusting and animalistic desire of rape.  We can never take a crime away from a victim, so what any compassionate individual would do, is to do everything they can to prevent it from occurring in the future.  

In his final reason against a stateless society the author speaks about what defines private property and conflicting opinions on what people have rights to.  What he skips over is the fact that his proposed solution to this issue is to create a government that operates by violating property rights.  Though I would like to avoid sounding like a broken record, you cannot try to protect property rights by violating them.  This would be similar to taking up the noble cause of rape prevention by raping someone claiming, “If I’m raping her right now, no one else can.  See I’m preventing rape, aren’t I noble?”  Though he proposed it as a reason why we can’t have stateless society, this is, yet again, exactly the reason why we must  have a stateless society.  

The author claims, “In an anarchistic society, there is no commonly accepted definition”- referring to property rights.  Though he thought this was a sound and prudent rejection of the idea the author assumed that the government somehow legitimizes private property.  Under a government, you don’t own anything.  Think you own your home? Try not paying your property taxes.  Think you own the product of your labor?  Say hello to the income tax.  Under a government private property doesn't exist at all, only property allowances. Our government allows us certain property “rights” because it will make us happier and more productive, just as a farmer knows he can expect more output from his animals if he allows them to be free-range as opposed to caged.  None of this changes the fact that the farmer owns the animals.  As long as the cows rush to defend the farmer claiming, “Hey, he gives extra freedom compared to other farms, you should be thankful for that.  If you don’t like it you should try to change it from within!” they’ll never be free.  Obviously the cows can’t change it from within, it’s a system based on using the cows for food.  We can’t change the system of government from within to make it only for protecting rights, the government was made to violate rights - clearly opposing this article's argument.  

Of course there are going to be differing opinions in any area where two or more people are living, this is simply a matter of reality.  The great and revolutionary thing about Voluntarism is that we are allowed to disagree.  Under the paradigm of statism, disagreement is never allowed.  For example, if you think the best way to solve the problem of terrorism is to create a military funded through taxation and deploy them to kill the terrorists, I am not allowed to disagree if you get the government to do this for you.  When the government decides to do something, you can voice your rebuttal all day but you can’t act on it; you’re still forced to pay for it.  Similarly, a slave was allowed to disagree with the plantation owner’s slavery policy, but he wasn’t allowed to run away.  No one would say this “ability to disagree” would somehow validate the morality of slavery.  Beliefs like this, are the reason why the world doesn’t know freedom.  Under Voluntarism, beliefs won’t be imposed on anyone contrary to the solution known as The State.  

Simply put, Mr. Petersen’s analysis of the possibility of anarchy does not align with reality.  Just because an individual cannot develop a way to solve a complex social problem without government doesn’t mean that solution doesn’t exist.  I don’t know how a free society will prevent and solve every plausible scenario that could develop; no one does.  Even if I could solve every problem in the world, that would not give me the right to force others to go along with my plans.  Minarchist ideas are a burning effigy representative of why we can’t have government. Even people who claim to embrace the Non-Aggression Principle are too easily tempted to violate it through the violence of government.  

If you’re a minarchist reading this, I understand where you’re coming from.  For years I was stuck in the quagmire of minimizing the state to a manageable level.  The simple fact of the matter is that you can’t contain power.  When created, the US government was the most restrained in history, the most shackled.  Very soon it grew to the most gargantuan government ever conceived.  The founding fathers could have never dreamed of how large and intrusive their brainchild would inevitble become.  No individual, no group of dedicated activists, no amount of vigilance, and no words on a piece of paper can hold back the growth of the state.  The only way to hold back the state is to abolish it entirely.  

 

 

 

[Waffles]

I'll be honest, I only read about a tenth of that, but I think I agree.

 

" The only way to hold back the state is to abolish it entirely. "

 

And that is the challenge that the crypto anarchists have risen to. They changed the question from whether or not there should be regulation to whether or not there can be regulation.

[Libertus]

if you want people to read the whole thing, put a short version on top. Readers read the headline and think "hey, five quick points, with five quick rebuttals, I can get into that" only to be greeted with somebody's life story in a wall of text. Unless they know the author, they're not going to want to get into all of that. You're responding to a very well-structured article, so you should think about abiding by the structure. Start with one or two introductory sentences and get right to the meat.

Example:

#1. Rights are guarantees

"There's only one right, and that is the right to be left alone" or "all rights are property rights" (elaborate here)

#2. An anarchist society is unable to protect its citizens from foreign invasion.

This is a prediction based on an opinion which is based on a misunderstanding of the words "anarchist", "society", "protect", "citizen", "foreign" and "invasion". (elaborate here)

#3. Anarchy means the non-aggression principle is optional.

This is almost literally the opposite of what "anarchy" means.(elaborate here)

#4. The Non-Aggression Principle? I didn’t sign sh*t!

Well, too bad, then I'm not going to do any business with you, including selling you housing, water, energy, security services. You'd probably not even get through our borders. (elaborate here)

#5. Private Property

What it is and what isn't will be set by contract, and enforced by people, with guns who have signed contracts with each other. (elaborate here)