It was just another day of polite sparring with minarchists – those in favor of minimal government – when I realized that minarchists are actually anarchists! I was bowled over by the realization that limited government fans who won’t force me to participate in their government forfeit that organization’s claim to being a government.
Minarchism: Just Police, Courts and National Defense
Minarchists, to be clear, are those who think government is needed, but that it should be kept as minimal as possible. Many think government should be limited to just the protection of life, liberty and property. Minarchists don’t want their government interfering in economic matters and envision it as only consisting of police, courts and a national defense.
Minarchists Won’t Initiate Force
But when I deploy Stefan Molyneux’s “Against Me” argument, the minarchists inevitably fold. “No,” they say, “I would never force you to submit to my ideal government.” Or, “You can opt out,” they say, “as long as you don’t initiate force against anyone who does subscribe to my ideal government.” Minarchists understand the Non-Aggression Principle, so that’s not a surprise.
To be Government, its Powers must be Exclusive
“A government,” Ayn Rand said, “is an institution that holds the exclusive power to enforce certain rules of social conduct in a given geographical area.” Agree with her or not, but the key concepts of “exclusive” and “given geographical area” are indisputably unique to governments. If there are multiple governments holding the same powers over the same geographical area, by definition they’re not governments anymore.
If I Can Opt Out, it’s NOT Government Any More
All it takes is one person to opt out of a government in order for it to no longer be a government. If I can leave the minarchists’ government, I can also start my own and offer defense and arbitration services in competition with them. Since there are now two players in the market for defense services, neither is government because neither has exclusive power over a given geographical area.
Minarchy Inevitably Evolves into Anarchy
This puts my new defense and arbitration services company on equal footing with the Organization Formerly Known as Government (OFKAG, i.e., the minarchists’ limited government). The OFKAG is now just a private membership organization that collects dues from its members and renders services. A free market in “governmental” services has arrived. The state has been abolished. Welcome to anarchy!
No Force, No Government
This analysis illustrates a key point about government: without the use of coercion, it inevitably fails. Governments depend on the initiation of force to survive. Without force, it ceases to be a government. This is why people say that government is force. Many government fans have trouble integrating this key concept into their existing world view.
Minarchists Stick with AT&T (OFKAG)
Compare this to the 1984 breakup of AT&T. Instead of one phone (government) company for all, we now have multiple choices. The different organizations will compete strenuously for customers. Each month they’ll contact you offering a better deal than before. Some will prefer to stay with the old and established AT&T (OFKAG) while others will select the services they need a la carte from the new competitors (Sprint, MCI, etc.). People will be able to contract just those services they really want and switch from one company to another when they’re not satisfied.
Irrational Fascination with Limited Government
Minarchists are just anarchists who hold a romantic (yet irrational) fascination with limited government but don’t mind if the rest of us go off and start our own organizations to provide defense and arbitration services. Minarchists are really anarchists who want to stay with the proverbial AT&T in a new free market in those services formerly only provided by governments. Where there are determined market anarchists, minarchism will inevitably evolve into market anarchism. The progression is unstoppable.
Former Minarchists: Join us Market Anarchists!
If your ideal is limited government, recognize the contradiction inherent in that line of thinking now. Don’t delay! Join with the anarcho-capitalists, the voluntaryists, the agorists and/or other market anarchists in order to build the political space you need to do what’s right for you and your loved ones. Using government to realize your ideals is a contradiction anyway.
Are We Already Living in the Stateless Society?
In fact – in a sense – we already live in a stateless society. We’re simply besieged by a powerful and unscrupulous gang with a great con job going. They think they own us. They think they have the right to run our lives. A minarchist asked me “What if, in an anarchy, a majority try to take power?” Well, isn’t that the situation we face today? Now what are you going to do about it? I, for one, am moving to New Hampshire where I’ll practice agorism. See you there!
Photo credit: skitzianist. Photo license.
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Absolutely not. My planned training is for the defense of my own life and those of my loved ones. I hold as my principal and most sacred and inviolable moral precept the non-initiation of force.
Soldiers are trained to murder, brutally and using offensive weapons that inevitably lay waste to not only other weapons but also civilian infrastructure and innocent lives.
You may be technically correct in some sense that they are trained to kill, but they are used to murder. They’re very good at it and they’ve been doing it for a long time. When was the last time soldiers defended the USA? The War of 1812?
I agree there are private sector alternatives, but that doesn’t change my belief in the fundamental goodness of most government employees as individuals. I believe in our ability to wake them up as well; most government employees are motivated by a goal to make the country better, and that provides solid common ground. Most could contribute significantly to progress if transferred to the private sector.
The wake-up process is already happening, especially among soldiers who see the torture and unjustified force going on and refuse to do it despite orders, and they’re the soldiers I’m thinking of… those who are not murderers despite their training.
I agree we should defend against anyone who initiates force, whether following orders or not. For the rest, I believe honey will work better than guns.
I believe in the fundamental goodness of 90% of the population too. I’m just saying I won’t cut government employees any breaks.
I was going to respond to my portion of the conversation before I got blown away by the last few comments. You’re smearing a whole host of people who are, at worst, ignorant of your high philosophical principles (I shudder to think what you must feel about Ron Paul!) and are just trying to preserve civilization as they know it, misguided though they may be. I understand having principles, but you’ve got to remember your own good intentions before you turned into a fire-eating anarchist.
Even if you’re right that every initiation of force is the worst sin imaginable (which you have still not demonstrated to be a non-negotiable aspect of government), you’re definitely not going about convincing others in a way that will persuade and bring the majority of humanity to your side. You’ve forsworn violence — well then, you’ve got to tune up your peaceful persuasion tactics! Or would persuasion of any kind be considered evil (since we’ve been harping on the “consistency” motif in this thread)? If so, humanity’s got a looooong way to go before your society manifests itself.
Honestly, the only way your ideal is going to materialize is if civilization is almost wiped out the world over. Resigning yourself to that unlikelihood and working towards the best of the more possible scenarios is much less romantic and idealistic, and IMO, it seems that you would stand a much better chance of bringing liberty to more people in your lifetime.
No, at worst they clean, oil and load the gun pointed at my head. Sometimes they might even be the shaky guy in the movies who nervously holds the gun for a second while the regular gun pointer is injured or has to do something else.
People who process paperwork at the IRS are just trying to preserve civilization as we know it? Seriously? Soldiers who kill people in Iraq who have never lifted a finger against us? Who torture and defend torture? Scientists who claim the public needs to be forced to pay for their alleged scientific progress or skills?
That’s not civilization. Civilization won’t collapse without 1040’s, bloody foreign wars and suppressed global warming reports.
Sure there was a point when I wasn’t clear on the importance of the non-aggression principle. So what? What special breaks exactly do you guys want for government employees?
If your brother’s alcoholism was destroying his life and his wife was the one going out to buy his alcohol and serving it …. bailing him out of jail, running interference for him …. IOW _enabling his alcoholism_, would you say “Oh, she’s just trying to preserve my brother as we know him.”? Or would you say, “Hey, she’s the enabler. If I want to save my brother I have to challenge both of them.”
On why the initiation of force is an inherent and inescapable part of being a government:
Government is force because they can not exist without initiating it. Without taxes and inflation – both of which require initiating force – there would be no government.
Everything government does is an order backed up by a credible threat of force. Governments don’t offer services on the free market and negotiate with customers until a meeting of the minds is reached. No, government makes its rules and forces them on us. One can comply or face the consequences.
Government IS force because once a government stops initiating force it collapses or stops being a government.
Telling others what their tactics should be borders on condescension. Telling me my tactics don’t work misses the point (not to mention that there is evidence you’re incorrect).
Not true. All I need is more people like you who like government but won’t force their preferences on others. The stateless/voluntary society is not a new utopia that requires it be forced upon all of society in order to appear to be successful. No, all it requires is that people cease to initiate force. Have your government if you like. I respect your right to form, hold and act on your opinions/values/preferences. All I require is that you reciprocate that respect.
And, of course, once the organization formerly known as government no longer has a monopoly on a given geographic location, it ceases to be a government.
I’d love to hear what you think that is.
Thanks for your comments everyone.
George,
The more I think about it, the more I realize that we are differing primarily in style than in substance. A few points of clarification, though…
Please note that I said “civilization as they know it”; they take it for granted that the end of the state’s control would signal the end of everything orderly and good about society. You remember, don’t you, when you first heard of “anarchy”? Didn’t it sound ominous and chaotic to you? Do you understand that what you’re asking of people — to despise an institution that has supposedly been the backbone of every civilization since hundreds of years before the first recorded history — is a *tad* unsettling? I agree that the complete abolition of coercive state would/will be wonderful, so I’m not disagreeing with you. I just want you to know how you sound: like a passionate sophomore armed with heady, unrealistic dreams that include sweeping condemnations for those not as enlightened as you. Talk about condescension! Listen, I know that this characterization may well be more of a caricaturization, but when I tell you that you stand a good chance of appearing that way, take it as well-intentioned advice from a (mostly) like-minded friend.
Most military people I’ve known (including my own father and grandfather), joined the military not to initiate force, but to defend the homeland against aggressors. Our awful militaristic interventionism is probably not in the minds of most young teenagers who get signed up under the “defend our country” propaganda of the recruiters and reinforced by neocon fear tactics (“Take it to them over there or they’ll kill your family here!”). If you’ll pardon the condescension, I think you should allow some of LibSnip’s reasonable qualifiers. IRS — ok, losers to a person. But the Department of Health and Human Services? Hate it as much as I do (and I assure you, I loathe its existence on principle), I can see why they can sleep at night: they think they’re performing a vital role, and most Americans agree.
I get it — you hate all government as humanity has done it in the past. So did the Founders, which is why they set out to create something better than ever. They succeeded in creating something better, but failed at creating Utopia (and they were not ignorant of this). I simply think we should try for a non-utopian best case scenario. I am an advocate of States’ rights, including secession; each state could then decide what kind of government it wanted and include the option of dissolution of state. Ideally I would prefer a state whose services were all opt-in but which exercised jurisdiction over all (citizen or no) who violated the person/resources of those who did opt in. Call it a new kind of government, the anti-state, or whatever; call me an anarchist in denial — the distinction between us, at this point, is strictly academic, and I can imagine good grounds for calling you on aggression/initiation of force when you gleefully attempt to annex our system under the label “anarchy”.
All due respect, George, it seems you are here contradicting yourself. Believing that we’re anywhere near expecting “people [to] cease to initiate force” is utopian. The best we can hope for is people like me who want limited government and restrain those who don’t by strictly enforced (yes, “force”) laws. The intent of the Constitution was always to restrain government growth rather than create one to restrain people. (You may have noticed that Bastiat has influenced me strongly here.)
Nonetheless, I’ve downloaded the audiobook you linked to and will listen to it at work. I ran across an interesting article; I find myself agreeing the most with R.W. Bradford here. Friedman’s dissent from Bradford in favor of an agrarian society supports my contention that it will take a “wiped out” society with no high industrialization/density in order for the no-state solution to work. Interested in hearing your thoughts on the subject.
Best regards,
Stephen
Condescension is the showing of feelings of superiority; patronizing or doing something in a haughty way, as though it is below one’s dignity or level of importance .
That is an inaccurate characterization of what I said about government workers. What I am saying is that they can not be excused as good people who are just doing their jobs. They may be working under the false assumption that they’re doing something worthy but – objectively – they are doing something very very wrong.
Just saying someone is not blameless, wrong and/or contributes to evil is not condescension.
Results count, not intentions.
It’s not about utopias, it’s just about doing no harm; i.e., don’t initiate force.
How can a fictional thing like a state have rights? Only living sentient beings can have rights. If a rock or a non-profit organization can’t have rights, how can a state have them?
If you’re willing to let things secede, why wouldn’t you allow people to do so too?
The option of dissolving the state – that’s an example of putting one’s rights up to a vote. Everyone has a right to secede from government and it’s not subject to a vote for the same reason that you would reject voting on who will live and who will die.
So this government doesn’t force anyone to participate but exercises exclusive jurisdiction? It can’t do the latter if it allows the former. Governments simply do not survive without initiating force because inevitably someone will not want to participate in your ideal government.
So you’re thinking we would need to force people to stop initiating force? But that force would be defensive force, and _not_ an initiation of force. Therefore it is not a contradiction.
I don’t think so because 95% of the population passes its days without initiating force against anyone – except via government. Once the fact that government is force is adequately demonstrated to them, they will come around.
Hey I would like nothing better than a government so limited that it would not initiate force against me to keep me from opting out. Because that would be an anarchy within minutes.
I’ll check out the article. Thanks for your comments.
I agree that there is little difference between anarchist and minarchist when funding is voluntary, or more importantly, personal secession is allowed. Where Rand’s definition fails is censual private communities, of which there are many today, and probably would be under a free market. Would you insist that those contracts be broken? It can get a bit more complicated, depending on your view of covenants.
I can’t imagine myself insisting that a contract I’m not involved in be broken.
Thanks for commenting.
Nice post as usual.
I’m not in a position to read through all the comments just now, so forgive me if what I’m going to say has already been discussed. I think it’s unduly sanguine to say “Minarchy Inevitably Evolves into Anarchy”, whether talking about individuals’ outlooks or actual minarchic systems. If history tells us anything, it’s that minarchy is at least as prone to devolving into “maxarchy” (or totalitarianism or the strong state or whatever). With that in mind, I think the lesson is that minarchy is unstable (and I think there are many good reasons to ascent to this): to borrow from Ayn Rand, it’s a moral compromise between the good (the outlawing of aggressive coercion) and the evil (the legalizing of aggressive coercion); so at best, a minarchy is a tainted free society, and its adherents are prone to contradiction in the realm of ethics and morals. I think Rand’s valuable insight in this case is that evil benefits from a compromise with the good, but not vice-versa.
I’m sure this isn’t news to anyone here (even the minarchists who would doubtless disagree with me); but my central point is the caution against an optimism that might obtain if people were always rigorously logical.
Andrew, thanks for commenting. You make a good point. The intention of the article is to push minarchists closer to anarchy, so consider it in that light as well.
I’ve come to this same exact conclusion in debates with minarchist friends, but for some reason in the end they still go back to “but I believe there must be a state”. In particular – “But without my voluntary, dues-collecting, service-providing ’state’, who will provide objective laws?” It’s as if they’re not ready to recognize that this concept of the state, divorced of all that separates it from all other human organizations, is vapor, a non-idea, a mis-attribution based on some sense of tradition or nostalgia. Ayn Rand couldn’t do it in the decades of her near-awakening. It’s a hump I have difficulty understanding. After all, A is A.
Yes and it’s a hump more people need to come across. Thanks for your comment.
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