There are two main reasons to be a classical liberal (a libertarian or core conservative):
a) classical-liberal principles are morally good
B) application of classical-liberal principles produces better results.
Most of us tend to focus on one more than the other, but most of us also believe that both are true. (These are often called natural-rights and consequentialist approaches.)
Over the last decade and a half, I have come to the inescapable conclusion that the principles of natural law and natural rights are correct, good, and inescapably true, and that has been my primary focus. More recently, I have realized that when you carry those moral principles out to their logical conclusion, no involuntary governance of any kind is morally permissible. And so I have begun arguing for an evolution away from “democracy” and towards some form of voluntary order. But most people are not concerned too much about the finer points of moral philosophy. They want to know—will it work?
I believe it will.
The modern anarcho-libertarian tradition goes back well into the 19th century—it features rich, textured arguments made by some of the best philosophical and political thinkers Western civilization has produced. They make a robust case for how some sort of voluntary order can and would work. I have been substantially convinced by their arguments. But thus far, I have primarily been making the other side of the case: why involuntary governance and democracy are bad and we should move on from them. I now need to start talking about what we might be moving towards.
It’s scary to contemplate moving on from government. With rare exceptions, it’s all we’ve known as a species for 10,000 years. We’ve imbibed every form of statist quaff—from the argument that our choice is binary (government or chaos) to the mystique that “democracy” solves the fundamental moral problems of government. Neither of these is true, but if you have not given the matter much thought, then your choice is between the known and the unknown. And people will almost always choose the known.
In a comment-thread conversation with a loyal subscriber a month or so ago, I used the metaphor of a person clinging to a piece of flotsam after a shipwreck. The flotsam is the known—the ‘necessary evil’ of involuntary governance. There is an island to swim to—a better place, where a voluntary order is possible. But of course, no one is going to let go of the flotsam and swim there unless they can see it.
The ‘island’ is of course described in a variety of books by brilliant anarcho-libertarian thinkers (Rothbard, Hoppe, D. Friedman, the Tannehills, et al). But it’s hard to read four books while clinging to a piece of flotsam, so I have decided to begin summarizing the arguments. That is what this Building the Island series will do.
It will be piecemeal and somewhat random at first. Over time, I will coalesce the pieces into something more coherent. (Hopefully something shorter than another whole book!) I will begin with the first installment tomorrow.
Our focus will be on how we might accomplish, through purely private, voluntary systems, the rights-protective functions currently claimed by government. How do we protect people from force, fraud, theft, and breach of contract? How do we adjudicate legitimate disputes? How do we equilibrate competing expressions of legitimate rights (such as creating roads and thoroughfares to balance the rights of movement and property)? How do we deal with externalities like pollution? How do we protect consumers from bad actors in the market?
We won’t be spending much time on the morally illegitimate things governments do, like the forcible redistribution of wealth and property. However, we will briefly touch on ways that charity can be accomplished for those who truly need help.
Two final notes as general groundwork…
Remember that the choice here is not government vs. ‘people doing whatever they want.’ That is not what “voluntary” means here. The choice is between order being maintained by a single entity with a monopoly on the initiation of coercive force vs. order being maintained through voluntary associations with various agencies operating in a free, competitive market to provide security, justice, and other rights-protective goods.
Remember also that when you are reading about potential alternatives to government, do not compare the alternatives with some sort of idealized vision of government, compare them to what actually exists now. For example…
In a system of voluntary order, there will be conflict. People will hurt each other.
Probably so. But there is also conflict now. Criminals victimize the innocent now. Governments wage monstrous, total wars with terrible weapons at the cost of hundreds of millions of lives now.
The question is not whether voluntary order will work better than how government describes itself on is own brochure—as a mystically impartial protector that is doing its job perfectly and that we cannot possibly live without. The question is whether voluntary order will work better than what government actually is and what it actually does.
There are many open questions—many things we have to try before we can know exactly how they will work. I understand that the unknown is scary. I understand that we’ve all been spoon-fed statism for our entire lives. But involuntary governance shares all of its primary characteristics in common with slavery. Shouldn’t we at least consider the alternatives before consigning humanity to live with that forever?