How an Anarchist Society Would Work

A whole lot of answers in a small package

I have a theory. (Well, technically it’s a hypothesis, but who’s counting.)

Over the past two years, I have ended up in exchanges that play out something like this…

I make a series of arguments that explain exactly why

1. Involuntary government is absolutely morally impermissible (because it violates human consent, initiates coercive force against peaceful people, and grants government agents special “rights” that no one else has), and

2. That every government on Earth falls into this category, including…

   1. The United States government now,

   2. The United States government 50,100,150, or 200 years ago,

   3. The United States government on the day it was born in 1789, and

   4. The United States government as the Founders conceived of it in their “original vision.”

My interlocutor entirely agrees and then says,

“Yeah…and THAT’S why we need to get back to the Founders’ original vision!”

And then my shoulders slump, and I wonder what I am doing wrong.

My theory for why this happens is in two parts.

The Golden Age Fallacy

The first is the bias toward the past—specifically, the golden-age fallacy, a cognitive bias wherein people believe the past was somehow better or purer than the present. When blended with other cognitive-bias preferences for the past over the present (nostalgia, rosy retrospection, declinism, etc.), the result is a potent logical fallacy that colors many present discussions.

This produces a persistent belief, especially among patriotic conservative Americans, that there was a near-perfect “original vision” of the Founders, and that the flaws in our current circumstance are the result of corruption of that perfection: bad policies implemented by bad actors, driven by bad ideas.

Bad policies, people, and ideas certainly can make things better or worse. But on a fundamental level, this claim just isn’t true. There was no moment when some pure vision existed that did not run afoul of the moral problems stated in #1. above. However, since there have been areas in which decline from a previous state has occurred, there is enough of a kernel of truth to justify this durable cognitive bias.

This can make discussions with conservatives—who should be likely allies in any classical-liberal project toward greater liberty—quite challenging at times. There is no need to move forward, they contend—all we have to do is “get back” to the way things were. The way things were supposed to be.

This notion is wrong in so many ways, but it’s hard to shake. Indeed, I myself took years to shake it, so I totally get it.

A Failure of Imagination

The second issue is similar. Simply put, it is difficult for most of us to imagine anything beyond what we already know.

Creativity is not evenly distributed among the population. Sadly, it appears to follow a Pareto curve: most people are not at all creative, a small number are moderately creative, and a tiny fraction are hyper-creative. As a result, only a tiny fraction are able to envision significant leaps beyond the known.

This problem is pertinent to the concept of market anarchism. Many of us are capable of understanding the arguments for why involuntary governance is undesirable and fundamentally morally flawed, but then the $64,000 question comes up:

Okay fine, so what do we do instead?

That, I believe, is the biggest stumbling block.

It was for me. I had heard little snippets of anarchist arguments, but until I dove into the corpus of literature on how a market-anarchist society could work, I just couldn’t make that last leap from small-government libertarian/conservative/minarchist to anarchist. Until then, I kept a handhold on that little bit of minarchist flotsam, even after it was obvious that the statist ship had run aground.

I am creative enough to build on the work of the hyper-creative geniuses who have envisioned a future of market anarchism so clearly. But I was unable to think of the complete picture myself, and until it was done for me, I just couldn’t fully get there.

People ask me, Okay, so then how would X, Y, and Z work in this market-anarchic future of yours? Well, if you too are not one of those hyper-creative types who has envisioned what lies beyond the next huge leap in our evolution, then I highly commend the video below to you.

The video is actually an audiobook reading of Robert Murphy’s entertainingly named monograph Chaos Theory. I know that it’s over an hour, but if you are serious about wanting to know those answers, it’s worth your time, and it’s a lot faster than reading a massive book. (You can also read the text version here.)

There are two kinds of government actions:

1. Laws that are intended to secure and defend real individual rights, even if those laws are implemented in such a way that violates individual rights.

2. Laws whose intent violates individual rights.

The former is largely limited to security and justice (keeping people safe from initiated force) and roads (balancing the rights of property and movement). The latter is forced redistribution (welfare, corporate welfare, special interests, etc.) and all the other nonsense that governments get up to.

The audio below does not cover roads, but it offers some very creative ideas for handling security and justice without the involuntary state. These are not the only ideas out there, and you may still have questions. However, if you listen carefully to the information below, you will also find a lot of answers.