Well, for my house, I will never allow any member of authority of any kind in, and if they force their way in,will need to be carried out. Especially if they try to force their way in.
There are some deleted comments... It would be my thesis that societal organization at a level of complexity we have reached is not an immoral but an amoral issue.
Coercion. Coercive force. Begs the questions, what qualifies as coercion, coercive? What is force?
Are you familiar with the concept of "Double Discipline?" It's found in martial arts training. As well as in government "training." Internal Discipline and External Discipline. China practices it.
Internal Discipline is the combination of our human pre-programming of right and wrong, innate, and educational, cultural, familial, social programming. How we're raised, our environmental perceptions and stimuli. Propaganda and Censorship serves to form Internal Discipline. As does "reeducation."
External Discipline is the application of "pressure points." Intimidation, duress, detention, denial of goods and services, denial of the ability to earn a living and sustain oneself, fines, confiscation, imprisonment, violence, death.
Under Double Discipline governance the state attempts to influence the individual at every opportunity. Particularly at young ages when minds are more malleable. It's why nearly every mass movement concentrates its early efforts on children, particularly via education and entertainment portals into young minds. Hitler Youth. Mao's Children Revolution.
Once a government has exerted its influence on young minds, manufacturing a "proper thinking" population guided by Internal Discipline its need for penalties, force, violence, External Discipline goes down. This is considered ideal for authoritarian governing models. China has emptier prisons than the US for this reason, they have the minds of their population programmed to accept their submission, own it as their own desired value. Less sense of self, more sense of collective.
During a transitional phase from a free society to an authoritarian one is when External Discipline is at its peak. While young minds are shaped for future compliance and obedience the older population must be compelled to submit. A ruthlessness emerges for the most disobedient. Authorities don't care as much about changing minds of the older population, they will age out, die off as the younger "proper thinking" population is created. Authorities only want and demand the obedience of the adults. They don't have to be convinced, they may know with every fiber of their body that demands of them are wrong. They just must obey. The Cultural Revolution transition period in China was brutal. Struggle sessions, show trials, millions executed. Two out of three so far in the US and western nations. So far....
I think back to those who wore masks knowing it was wrong. Not their hill to die on. Maybe they were mesh, worn below the nose, had "F Biden" printed on them. Authorities didn't care about the message or improper wearing in most cases. The act of compliance was the goal. Submission. They didn't care if adults believed in masking, just that they did. The children, those are the minds they are after. It's why schools required masks long after the rest of society stopped. Shaping the Internal Discipline of the young.
A "perfected" Double Discipline society requires comparatively little force to govern. Which they consider kinder, more benevolent governance. We are in that transition phase. Where External Discipline is the feature facing disobedient-minded adults. And if we don't stand up and allow ourselves to be intimidated into obedience, believing that by simply knowing better about these authoritarians as we comply, satisfied with our "F Biden" masks thinking we're really showing The Man that we're on to them then we're missing the plot. The young, programmed with different Internal Discipline will not fight for their freedom. They will look at freedom fighters as selfish and dangerous, just as authorities declare today. Freedom will have lost, become Slavery.
We must pass on disobedience to the young by example. The concept of coercion, coercive force is being redefined, reimagined by today's authoritarians. Who truly believe their vision of our future is kinder, gentler.
What is coercion, coercive force? Sort of an important question. An anarchic model seems to be the only way to avoid it. Barring that development how is the shaping of Internal Discipline to be addressed? The role of parents? The role of entertainment? The role of education? Even Anarchists don't deny the role of parents shaping the Internal Discipline of their children. Where are the acceptable lines of influence to be drawn in a society of 8.5 billion people living together, interdependently? Or are anarchists only concerned with External Discipline coercive force?
As to the rest of this—fascinating stuff. I am pretty much right there with you.
(And I refused to wear f-Biden masks and the like for exactly those reasons. I literally said to more than one person, "See this—this is my face. You will not cover it up, nor will you get me to cover it up.")
The internal discipline is very much needed in an anarchic society. It's just that it looks nothing like the authoritarian version. Let's see what it might say instead. Something like…
Here is the rule:
Each person is a sovereign, rights-holding being whose consent must not be violated and who must not be subjected to the initiation of coercive force.
That's it. Don't hurt people or take their stuff.
That also means you are responsible to take care of yourself. You cannot force others to do it.
And you must live up to your responsibilities—contracts you may have signed, children you have sired, accidents you cause, etc. We will adjudicate all disputes fairly.
Oh, and one more thing— if you are clearly robbing someone and happen to get shot in your stupid robber face, oh well. You brought it on yourself.
A society that instilled THAT as its internal discipline would still need some external protective force to be deployed here and there, but it would not require anything like what the totalitarians want.
Which begs the question, who does the instilling of societal values? These authoritarians are doing it now, as described, their idea of societal values. Trans, climate, health, etc. How is the arbiter of societal values chosen?
No one is allowed to make a single choice for everyone. That, indeed, is the problem.
And the absence of anyone being allowed to choose for everyone will produce a condition in which what I described will naturally emerge as the most common ethos.
I mean, right? In a condition of voluntary order, what instructions are you gonna give to your kid? I bet they'd look a lot like what I described.
"Coercion. Coercive force. Begs the questions, what qualifies as coercion, coercive? What is force?"
—Just a really quick answer, to start
Coercive force is force initiated to achieve some particular purpose: to dominate, control, terrorize, tyrannize, acquire resources, etc.
Protective force is force deployed in response to, and to defend against, coercive force.
Obviously we understand what coercive force looks like in most cases. The question only become difficult on the margins: pollution, noise, harassment, etc. A little cigar smoke wafting into your neighbor's yard is not an attack. Poisoning your neighbor's well by dumping toxic waste in your own back yard is obviously actionable in some way or other.
Adjudicating these marginal questions is what a common-law process is for.
I learned about the concept of Double Discipline when I read a book cited in a Council on Foreign Relations article from March, 2020. Which asserted that China's authoritarian model was necessary for pandemic response in the west.
China under Mao advanced what is called "Disease Politics." Social political science riding on the back of natural medical science. Disease Politics is a tried and true tactic of "fundamentally transforming" a nation into a collectivist authoritarian one. This is what the pandemic attack was intended to launch globally. Not only to influence an American election. But to transform the western liberal democracies into something more like the Chinese governing model. Largely successfully thus far.
Rural Health Care Delivery
Modern China from the Perspective of Disease Politics
"Diseases are everyday, ordinary occurrences intimately related to people’s daily lives. However, as the metaphor of the “Sick Man of East Asia” emerged against the backdrop of a weak modern China, health care and the curing of diseases were turned into grand state politics with far-reaching implications. This book, starting with the argument for diseases being metaphors, describes and interprets such incidents in China’s history as the Abolishment of Traditional Chinese Medicine, the Patriotic Hygiene Campaign and the Cooperative Medical Services. In an effort to reveal the internal logic of disease politics in the transformation of the state-people relationship, the book analyzes key aspects including the politicization and inclusion of diseases in state governance, the double disciplining of hygiene, legitimacy construction of the state, the remaking of the nationals, and the expansion of the “publicness” of the state. The book argues that disease politics in modern China has developed following the path from nationals to the people, and then to citizens, or from crisis politics and mobilization politics to life politics. In addition, a marked change has occurred in China’s state building: increasingly standard, rationalized and institutionalized means have been employed while the non-standard means, such as large-scale mobilization and ideological coercion, had been historically used in China."
With chapter and section titles like:
5.3 Discipline Imposed by Hygiene
9.4 “To Combine Health Campaigns with Mass Movements”
11 The Patriotic Hygiene Campaign and the Construction of Clean New People
17.3 From “the Benevolent Medicine” to the “Formula for Money-Making”
19 A Public Country and Its Expansion
20 The Logic of Disease Politics
23 A Nation-State? A Democratic State?
This book was in the March, 2020 Council on Foreign Relations publication, Foreign Affairs:
Past Pandemics Exposed China’s Weaknesses The Current One Highlights Its Strengths
"Foreign Affairs is considered one of the United States' most influential foreign policy magazines.
Influence
Foreign Affairs is considered an important forum for debate among academics and policy makers. In 1996, Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott noted: "Virtually everyone I know in the foreign policy-national security area of the Government is attentive to Foreign Affairs."
According to the Journal Citation Reports, the journal has a 2014 impact factor of 2.009, ranking it 6th out of 85 journals in the category "International Relations""
My Stack on this last year highlights many chapter and section titles in the book. Which really needs to be read in its entirety to fully understand its implications:
Wow, I did not know that from Tolkien! The Shire was set apart, that certainly was true and only the dire need brought Frodo and Sam and Merry and Pippin out to participate in the destruction of the Ring. Even as a larger person, I would be drawn to the Shire for a homeland! A simple love of agriculture, music, art, food, gardens, what a lovely way to live! WEW
Yes, that is how Tolkien saw it. They valued the little things. They were apart from the big machinations of the world. And they did not need to be governed. That is why (spoiler alert) at the end of LotR, the corruption of the Shire by Saruman involves adding "sheriffs" and the like—adding a government.
Tolkien was an anarchist (self-proclaimed) by the end of his life:
Thanks for this information, Christopher, I did not know this. After enduring two world wars, I can imagine Tolkien would want to step back. I do think, once Saruman was dispatched, that the Shire returned mostly to the bucolic simplicity. When Sam was firmly discussing with Robin Smallburrow, about the overacting Shirrifs, things then became the small Shire army who helped to get the bullies out, with Merry and Pippin leading the charge. So much wisdom in the LOTR trilogy. I will check out the links you provided. WEW
True. The what's next is how to increase our own "voluntary consent" so we can give ourselves to what's emerging and true and resonant with our highest impulses. To give ourselves to what is completely acceptable!
Your perspective on coercive force and democracy is new to me. Maybe it is prudent for me to begin with questions. Someone cast humans from a hunter / gatherer existence into an agrarian existence. We are about 8 billion now. What might a valid systemic alternative to democracy be? To attempt precision, I deplore what I would term patrician democracy. Would a balance of people / state / capital power work?
I know nothing about your underlying philosophy, hence my questions. My intuition tells me the difference in intelligence between individuals needs proper(!) education and some sort of force monopoly. The right to leave is important as you allude to. Which probably means current states are way too large. But then what do you do with geopolitics?
I am delighted that you are asking questions. Let's start with some basics:
Market anarchists are basically saying this:
Instead of a single entity forcibly imposing an involuntary monopoly to be the sole provider of security and justice in a given territory and over a given people (government), security and justice can be provided by agencies operating in a free and competitive market.
Just like markets are better at providing shoes and cars and swedish massage and ice cream, and just as we would never trust government to provide such things, market anarchists contend that agencies would do a better job of providing security and justice as well.
And they would provide them without the initiation of coercive force, since you would choose to be a customer of an agency (rather than being forced to pay taxes and be a "citizen" of a government, even though you never agreed to either).
So order (protective force) still very much exists in a market-anarchic condition; it is simply deployed differently, and by different entities than a single monopoly government.
Once you we start learning more about this, we find that there are answers to all the questions that spring up. I certainly did! But those are the basics, and that is a good place to start.
Hmmm... This is truly interesting and gets me thinking. Sounds a bit like Ayn Rand. I believe I am coming from another angle. To me the ‘all private‘ argument can be disproven: ozone layer, tobacco, food, pharma, star wars project, geo–engineering, tragedy of the commons, charter schools, defence industry, mafia, and so on. Private interests have profit motive and money inherently corrupts. As does power of course, but the separation of powers in democracy can work when not hijacked behind the scenes by money interests.
Maybe some other questions. How do you solve for all these issues in a purely market based state? How do you handle strife and war?
If I may recommend books for a contrary perspective:
Merchants of Doubt
Hothouse Earth
Hot Money
Risk
All four books are written by decorated and hard thinking people.
Well that's quite a list. 🔥 Too much to handle all at once. Some highlights.
Government IS a mafia. That is exactly what it is. "Pay us for protection or we'll break your legs." "Pay us for protection or we'll throw you in jail." I did not agree to either, and neither did anyone else.
Pharma has no power to FORCE us to take anything unless government forces us on their behalf. Which is exactly what government just did with covid. And they made us pay for it! And our money, taken by force, made 200 new pharma billionaires! None of that was possible without government force.
The tragedy of the commons is NOW. Private property gets rid of the tragedy of the commons.
"Private interests have profit motive and money inherently corrupts."
"separation of powers in democracy can work when not hijacked behind the scenes by money interests."
—When was that exactly? When Alexander Hamilton was conspiring with his big money buddies to undermine the Articles of Confederation and force the Constitution down our throats, making promises in the Federalist Papers that he had no intention of keeping? And then working things to the advantage of big industry and central banking?
Government is ALWAYS hijacked by big money interests. In its absence, the money is still there, but the irresistible power vector of government no longer has its gun pointed at our heads.
I appreciate your strength and spirit! But honestly, the all-private argument cannot be "disproven" until you've read at least two out of the three books listed at the end of this article: https://christophercook.substack.com/p/no-way-i-can-convince-you-anarchism (I recommend Friedman and Hoppe first.)
Regarding strife and war—here are a few (and I have another big one in the works).
Thank you. I apologize for my style now, but I feel disrespected. Our views are contradictory and instead of humility I get a lecture.
Your theory is elaborate and well argued. I say it won’t work in the interest of human citizens as imagined.
Whenever I hear things like ’vectors‘, I am out. Organizing a society and a planet is about humans and needs to start with the human. Then upwards to the abstract and then back down for verification, sort of prototyping.
If you care to read up on how certain European families muscled their way into the monetary system, you will see it was not always like that. Maintaining the rule of money is very hard too. FDR for example only accepted the Fed so he could work out of a severe depression.
The US hijack is even younger – Nixon + Kissinger who gave us the petrodollar and pretty much all wars since.
To give some high level measures I believe will work:
. Generalist government cells to reign in problems created by specialists
. Reverse transparency. Citizens get transparency into state and state gives back most transparency into citizens.
. Banks are excluded from international negotiations
. Education of heart and mind for contentment under capitalism
What strikes me is that your ideas prevent busibodiness, the reaction of “grrr, don’t like that, there ought to be a law” nonstop interference with people’s lives that goes on in all levels of government. We need a new ethics, and not seeking to force your values on another person needs to be a part of it. I also think of the film “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence,” that the Tom Donophan character thinks as you do. He thinks that anyone who cannot defend himself or endure the rough conditions of the Frontier has no business being there. If you wear a gun, better know how to use it and accept the risks. He has little use for the trimmings of civilization—except one. He doesn’t like Valence but he understands him, could defeat him but sees Valence as another natural part of the Frontier, like a rattlesnake. The Lawyer Rube comes to the Territory and upsets everything. Tom lets himself get tricked into coercive force for the sake of the one piece of civilization he wants, but he loses his chance.
"What strikes me is that your ideas prevent busibodiness, the reaction of “grrr, don’t like that, there ought to be a law” nonstop interference with people’s lives that goes on in all levels of government. We need a new ethics, and not seeking to force your values on another person needs to be a part of it."
—This is huge. I have begun writing about this subject, but it requires much more illumination. I believe there is something in humans' ultra-social nature that becomes far too easily pathologized: this need to control others because, after all, "we have to find ways to live together." It's completely sick and destructive.
I am still formulating thoughts on the subject, but here are two early forays:
I am old enough to have had the opportunity to see that movie in a TV rerun, but I never did back in the day for some reason.
But yes, there is a measure of cowardice involved in statism. "I am afraid of the world; therefore you must be subjected to force." "I don't want to take responsibility for protecting myself; therefore, you must be subjected to force."
Now as it happens, market anarchists are not suggesting that there be no security and justice save that which each individual can provide himself. Rather, we are saying that security and justice can be provided to customers by market agencies rather than forced upon subjects, the way the government does. So people could still get security and justice without having to carry a six-shooter themselves.
Nonetheless, I still think that some of the fear of market anarchism is rooted in fear more generally, and in the lack of desire to take any responsibility for oneself.
Hopefully the volcano of government stupidity overflows and drowns the DC Swamp. Short of that happening, the road to freedom is paved with pitchforks. Living without a government master is extremely scary for most. They'd rather partake in things like fake pandemics featuring deadly mRNA injections.
That is not what market anarchists are talking about. It takes a little study, but market anarchism is not "chaos" or every man for himself. Security and justice still exist; they just come from a source other than a single government monopoly.
But before we get into that, does this mean that you are conceding the logic of the argument in the post?
What I am saying is that men are most definitely not angels. I retired as a Corrections officer, and even though I always tried to solve things without force, it wasn't always possible. Even Peter and Paul agreed that government derives its standing from God; therefore, how do we deal with evil in the world without authority?
As a corrections officer (unless you were a corrupt and wicked one, which I doubt), you were using protective force. Protective force is deployed in response to and to defend against coercive force. Protective force is justified.
Market anarchists are not saying that protective force would not exist in a market-anarchic/voluntaryist condition. Rather, we are saying that the primary source of the force would be different.
Instead of a single entity forcibly imposing an involuntary monopoly to be the sole provider of security and justice in a given territory and over a given people, security and justice would be provided by agencies operating in a free and competitive market. Just like markets are better at providing shoes and cars and swedish massage and ice cream—and we would never trust government to do those things well, market anarchists believe that agencies would do a better job of providing these things. And they would provide them without the initiation of coercive force (since you would choose to be a customer rather than being forced to pay taxes and be a "citizen," even though you never agreed to either).
So protective force still very much exists in a market-anarchic condition; it is simply deployed differently, and by different entities than a single monopoly government.
Once you study up on this, you find that there are answers to all the questions you might have swirling in your head. But those are the basics.
Having had this conversation already a million times, I can predict that your reaction to this will likely fall into one of several categories.
1. That cannot possibly work and you are an idiot, Christopher.
2. That cannot possibly work, but I will tell him politely.
3. I don't know much about this, and I am intrigued.
4. I'm sold already!
I don't get 4 much—and the people I do get it from are usually pretty close already. I get #1 occasionally—fortunately not too often. #2 and #3 are the most common.
I strongly recommend 3. Market anarchism sounds crazy at first, but the more you research it, the more sense it makes, and then one say, you just SEE it. And you are changed forever.
Vital! Succinct, and almost flawless (I can't see a flaw in the logic, but I'll challenge anyone else to find any). You have skillfully articulated arguments that emerged over four years ago and still exist only as incipient and undeveloped resolutions and deductions in my mind and soul. But I zealously concur, and I ardently feel this to be the undeniable, inviolable truth! Thank you!
Thank you! I hope you will be able to keep doing it for as long as it will take to reach and convince enough people. But I'm even more hopeful that you won't need to do it for much longer because critical mass for this is nearly achieved. I can dream ...
I like your optimism. I do believe we are heading for critical mass. Not sure how long it will take, but we are getting there. And we will get there even faster if people stay optimistic about it!
As long as I can keep growing my audience, and the number of paid subscribers, I should be able to keep doing this indefinitely. (Otherwise I will have to stop and get a "real" job 🤣)
Insofar as hope is a synonym for optimism. But to be honest, while optimism/pessimism is a workable dichotomy for characterising disposition, experience and the evidence counsels that expectations should to be kept low and realistic.
Similarly to you, I believe that, without interference and by the exclusion of oligarchs and statists, just governance (governANCE, not governMENT) is emergent with natural self-organisation. This is not simply theoretical - history documents working examples. For instance, evidence suggests a stateless polity existed for the Indus Valley civilisation centered on Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro in the Indus Valley, in the northern region of the Indian subcontinent between c. 7000 - c. 600 BCE. There is no evidence that the Indus civilisation dominated smaller neighboring societies.
More recent examples of just governance from history could be made of the time before Francisco Franco's 'victory' in the Spanish Civil War of 1936–1939 with the peasant anarchism in the countryside of Andalusia, urban anarcho-syndicalism in Catalonia, particularly its capital Barcelona, and what is sometimes called "pure" anarchism in other cities such as Zaragoza. Independently, Nestor Makhno's mass movement - known as the Makhnovshchina - by the Ukrainian peasantry in the country between 1918 and 1921 was another shining example. All these episodes of the unfettering of the human spirit and the natural propensity for self-organisation that springs up after contrived government collapses and disappears.
Heartbreakingly, in Spain and Ukraine, these episodes of functioning anarchy were brief in duration because of the international banker/financier-created and mobilised Bolsheviks and Communists who inflicted terror on them, killing and scattering their communities.
That is the extent of my optimism: I know that just governance is not only possible without government, it can only exist without government, and the absence of government has been shown to be viable and allows humans to truly thrive.
I hope your audience grows to comprise every ordinary man and woman (that is, anyone not belonging to the old and new money aristocracy/oligarchy that owns the governments and inflicts them upon the rest of us), and I hope you gain more paying subscribers. I apologise that I am not able to pay because I walked-out of paid work near the end of 2020 (COVID-19 was the utter last straw), and accordingly I have not earned income in four years in order to renounce paying income tax. I have reduced all my expenses to the absolute necessities (no phone, no car, no purchased entertainments, not even books, alas) in an effort to withdraw my participation in the economy. I am not wealthy, far from it. I have simply realised just how little is truly necessary, and how almost all aspects of modern life are not only completely extraneous, they are contrived and cast upon people in order to yoke them under dependence and to enslave them under the burden of servicing the expenses.
No need to apologize for the length of the comment. And I am grateful to have you here as any kind of subscriber. Thank you!
I suspect that most people making arguments against "anarchism" would use Makhnovshchina and Catalonia as examples that make their point: "See, it cannot work because it will be crushed by its neighbors."
I think Harappa (from what little I know about it) is a better example. But a lot of its nature is still shrouded in mystery.
"And I am grateful to have you here as any kind of subscriber. Thank you!"
My goodness, you've turned the tables on me. I'm truly, humbly grateful to you for your forbearance, and yet you have still managed to ennoble me for my generosity.
"See, it cannot work because it will be crushed by its neighbors."
The way I see it is that, just like our contemporary experience with conscientious (real) journalists and truth-tellers being censored or de-banked, and even outlawed, proscribed, and jailed (in the cases of Snowden, Manning, and Assange), for exercising their moral and professional duty of telling the truth, the brutal crushing of anarchism attempted in the 20th century attests to the credible and compelling demonstration of its viability and superiority, or it invalidated centralized government. The suppression confirms that the regimes the statists served were threatened. Just like it is today, the regime's fear then was well-founded.
On the other hand, I completely agree with the implication: what good is a demonstrably better system if it summons the violence of the state and is automatically wiped out?
I'll get on with reading the article you suggest as well as your many other articles. In the meantime I have glowing praise for you, and I greatly admire you for your prolificacy, fruitful dedication and commitment.
Impossible to argue with you.
So here we are! What's the next step…?
Well, for my house, I will never allow any member of authority of any kind in, and if they force their way in,will need to be carried out. Especially if they try to force their way in.
Whether or not that is the most practical approach, they certainly have no actual moral right to do what they are doing!
There are some deleted comments... It would be my thesis that societal organization at a level of complexity we have reached is not an immoral but an amoral issue.
Coercion. Coercive force. Begs the questions, what qualifies as coercion, coercive? What is force?
Are you familiar with the concept of "Double Discipline?" It's found in martial arts training. As well as in government "training." Internal Discipline and External Discipline. China practices it.
Internal Discipline is the combination of our human pre-programming of right and wrong, innate, and educational, cultural, familial, social programming. How we're raised, our environmental perceptions and stimuli. Propaganda and Censorship serves to form Internal Discipline. As does "reeducation."
External Discipline is the application of "pressure points." Intimidation, duress, detention, denial of goods and services, denial of the ability to earn a living and sustain oneself, fines, confiscation, imprisonment, violence, death.
Under Double Discipline governance the state attempts to influence the individual at every opportunity. Particularly at young ages when minds are more malleable. It's why nearly every mass movement concentrates its early efforts on children, particularly via education and entertainment portals into young minds. Hitler Youth. Mao's Children Revolution.
Once a government has exerted its influence on young minds, manufacturing a "proper thinking" population guided by Internal Discipline its need for penalties, force, violence, External Discipline goes down. This is considered ideal for authoritarian governing models. China has emptier prisons than the US for this reason, they have the minds of their population programmed to accept their submission, own it as their own desired value. Less sense of self, more sense of collective.
During a transitional phase from a free society to an authoritarian one is when External Discipline is at its peak. While young minds are shaped for future compliance and obedience the older population must be compelled to submit. A ruthlessness emerges for the most disobedient. Authorities don't care as much about changing minds of the older population, they will age out, die off as the younger "proper thinking" population is created. Authorities only want and demand the obedience of the adults. They don't have to be convinced, they may know with every fiber of their body that demands of them are wrong. They just must obey. The Cultural Revolution transition period in China was brutal. Struggle sessions, show trials, millions executed. Two out of three so far in the US and western nations. So far....
I think back to those who wore masks knowing it was wrong. Not their hill to die on. Maybe they were mesh, worn below the nose, had "F Biden" printed on them. Authorities didn't care about the message or improper wearing in most cases. The act of compliance was the goal. Submission. They didn't care if adults believed in masking, just that they did. The children, those are the minds they are after. It's why schools required masks long after the rest of society stopped. Shaping the Internal Discipline of the young.
A "perfected" Double Discipline society requires comparatively little force to govern. Which they consider kinder, more benevolent governance. We are in that transition phase. Where External Discipline is the feature facing disobedient-minded adults. And if we don't stand up and allow ourselves to be intimidated into obedience, believing that by simply knowing better about these authoritarians as we comply, satisfied with our "F Biden" masks thinking we're really showing The Man that we're on to them then we're missing the plot. The young, programmed with different Internal Discipline will not fight for their freedom. They will look at freedom fighters as selfish and dangerous, just as authorities declare today. Freedom will have lost, become Slavery.
We must pass on disobedience to the young by example. The concept of coercion, coercive force is being redefined, reimagined by today's authoritarians. Who truly believe their vision of our future is kinder, gentler.
What is coercion, coercive force? Sort of an important question. An anarchic model seems to be the only way to avoid it. Barring that development how is the shaping of Internal Discipline to be addressed? The role of parents? The role of entertainment? The role of education? Even Anarchists don't deny the role of parents shaping the Internal Discipline of their children. Where are the acceptable lines of influence to be drawn in a society of 8.5 billion people living together, interdependently? Or are anarchists only concerned with External Discipline coercive force?
As to the rest of this—fascinating stuff. I am pretty much right there with you.
(And I refused to wear f-Biden masks and the like for exactly those reasons. I literally said to more than one person, "See this—this is my face. You will not cover it up, nor will you get me to cover it up.")
The internal discipline is very much needed in an anarchic society. It's just that it looks nothing like the authoritarian version. Let's see what it might say instead. Something like…
Here is the rule:
Each person is a sovereign, rights-holding being whose consent must not be violated and who must not be subjected to the initiation of coercive force.
That's it. Don't hurt people or take their stuff.
That also means you are responsible to take care of yourself. You cannot force others to do it.
And you must live up to your responsibilities—contracts you may have signed, children you have sired, accidents you cause, etc. We will adjudicate all disputes fairly.
Oh, and one more thing— if you are clearly robbing someone and happen to get shot in your stupid robber face, oh well. You brought it on yourself.
A society that instilled THAT as its internal discipline would still need some external protective force to be deployed here and there, but it would not require anything like what the totalitarians want.
Which begs the question, who does the instilling of societal values? These authoritarians are doing it now, as described, their idea of societal values. Trans, climate, health, etc. How is the arbiter of societal values chosen?
No one is allowed to make a single choice for everyone. That, indeed, is the problem.
And the absence of anyone being allowed to choose for everyone will produce a condition in which what I described will naturally emerge as the most common ethos.
I mean, right? In a condition of voluntary order, what instructions are you gonna give to your kid? I bet they'd look a lot like what I described.
"Coercion. Coercive force. Begs the questions, what qualifies as coercion, coercive? What is force?"
—Just a really quick answer, to start
Coercive force is force initiated to achieve some particular purpose: to dominate, control, terrorize, tyrannize, acquire resources, etc.
Protective force is force deployed in response to, and to defend against, coercive force.
Obviously we understand what coercive force looks like in most cases. The question only become difficult on the margins: pollution, noise, harassment, etc. A little cigar smoke wafting into your neighbor's yard is not an attack. Poisoning your neighbor's well by dumping toxic waste in your own back yard is obviously actionable in some way or other.
Adjudicating these marginal questions is what a common-law process is for.
I learned about the concept of Double Discipline when I read a book cited in a Council on Foreign Relations article from March, 2020. Which asserted that China's authoritarian model was necessary for pandemic response in the west.
China under Mao advanced what is called "Disease Politics." Social political science riding on the back of natural medical science. Disease Politics is a tried and true tactic of "fundamentally transforming" a nation into a collectivist authoritarian one. This is what the pandemic attack was intended to launch globally. Not only to influence an American election. But to transform the western liberal democracies into something more like the Chinese governing model. Largely successfully thus far.
Rural Health Care Delivery
Modern China from the Perspective of Disease Politics
Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, 2013
https://library.lol/main/DB87C08A174B849E1EB0476138787AED
('GET' .pdf download)
From the book's official description:
"Diseases are everyday, ordinary occurrences intimately related to people’s daily lives. However, as the metaphor of the “Sick Man of East Asia” emerged against the backdrop of a weak modern China, health care and the curing of diseases were turned into grand state politics with far-reaching implications. This book, starting with the argument for diseases being metaphors, describes and interprets such incidents in China’s history as the Abolishment of Traditional Chinese Medicine, the Patriotic Hygiene Campaign and the Cooperative Medical Services. In an effort to reveal the internal logic of disease politics in the transformation of the state-people relationship, the book analyzes key aspects including the politicization and inclusion of diseases in state governance, the double disciplining of hygiene, legitimacy construction of the state, the remaking of the nationals, and the expansion of the “publicness” of the state. The book argues that disease politics in modern China has developed following the path from nationals to the people, and then to citizens, or from crisis politics and mobilization politics to life politics. In addition, a marked change has occurred in China’s state building: increasingly standard, rationalized and institutionalized means have been employed while the non-standard means, such as large-scale mobilization and ideological coercion, had been historically used in China."
With chapter and section titles like:
5.3 Discipline Imposed by Hygiene
9.4 “To Combine Health Campaigns with Mass Movements”
11 The Patriotic Hygiene Campaign and the Construction of Clean New People
17.3 From “the Benevolent Medicine” to the “Formula for Money-Making”
19 A Public Country and Its Expansion
20 The Logic of Disease Politics
23 A Nation-State? A Democratic State?
This book was in the March, 2020 Council on Foreign Relations publication, Foreign Affairs:
Past Pandemics Exposed China’s Weaknesses The Current One Highlights Its Strengths
Foreign Affairs, March 27, 2020
https://web.archive.org/web/20200328050913/https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2020-03-27/past-pandemics-exposed-chinas-weaknesses
Foreign Affairs is an American magazine of international relations and U.S. foreign policy published by the Council on Foreign Relations:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Affairs
"Foreign Affairs is considered one of the United States' most influential foreign policy magazines.
Influence
Foreign Affairs is considered an important forum for debate among academics and policy makers. In 1996, Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott noted: "Virtually everyone I know in the foreign policy-national security area of the Government is attentive to Foreign Affairs."
According to the Journal Citation Reports, the journal has a 2014 impact factor of 2.009, ranking it 6th out of 85 journals in the category "International Relations""
My Stack on this last year highlights many chapter and section titles in the book. Which really needs to be read in its entirety to fully understand its implications:
https://freedomfox.substack.com/p/the-devious-use-of-infectious-disease
Taking our cues from Maoist China.
And people wonder why I am opposed to all government.
Yep. They tell us as they're doing it. But most of us don't listen. Refuse to believe. Mein Kampf was like that. Same human experience with tyranny.
Sigh. Yep.
You would think this article is so obvious that it wouldn't need to be written. Unfortunately, it is very much needed. Bravo!
Yep, and thanks!
Mic Fucking Drop if ever there was one! TRUTH!
I was in a mic-drop kind of mood.
We can seldom argue with Christopher Cook...too smart for us hobbits...??
Hobbits are the smartest of all. They know what matters.
Thanks, Christopher, that is a big deal, coming from you! WEW
(Plus, according to Tolkien, the Shire was basically an anarcho-libertarian community!)
Wow, I did not know that from Tolkien! The Shire was set apart, that certainly was true and only the dire need brought Frodo and Sam and Merry and Pippin out to participate in the destruction of the Ring. Even as a larger person, I would be drawn to the Shire for a homeland! A simple love of agriculture, music, art, food, gardens, what a lovely way to live! WEW
Yes, that is how Tolkien saw it. They valued the little things. They were apart from the big machinations of the world. And they did not need to be governed. That is why (spoiler alert) at the end of LotR, the corruption of the Shire by Saruman involves adding "sheriffs" and the like—adding a government.
Tolkien was an anarchist (self-proclaimed) by the end of his life:
https://christophercook.substack.com/p/tolkien-anarchist-anarchomonarchist
also
https://christophercook.substack.com/p/jrr-tolkien-authority-monarchy
and
https://christophercook.substack.com/p/tolkien-abandoned-places-post-apocalypse
Thanks for this information, Christopher, I did not know this. After enduring two world wars, I can imagine Tolkien would want to step back. I do think, once Saruman was dispatched, that the Shire returned mostly to the bucolic simplicity. When Sam was firmly discussing with Robin Smallburrow, about the overacting Shirrifs, things then became the small Shire army who helped to get the bullies out, with Merry and Pippin leading the charge. So much wisdom in the LOTR trilogy. I will check out the links you provided. WEW
❤️🔥❤️
True. The what's next is how to increase our own "voluntary consent" so we can give ourselves to what's emerging and true and resonant with our highest impulses. To give ourselves to what is completely acceptable!
That is the consciousness-shift element of all of this—which is essential!!
Your perspective on coercive force and democracy is new to me. Maybe it is prudent for me to begin with questions. Someone cast humans from a hunter / gatherer existence into an agrarian existence. We are about 8 billion now. What might a valid systemic alternative to democracy be? To attempt precision, I deplore what I would term patrician democracy. Would a balance of people / state / capital power work?
How much do you know about market anarchism (a.k.a. anarchocapitalism)?
I know nothing about your underlying philosophy, hence my questions. My intuition tells me the difference in intelligence between individuals needs proper(!) education and some sort of force monopoly. The right to leave is important as you allude to. Which probably means current states are way too large. But then what do you do with geopolitics?
I am delighted that you are asking questions. Let's start with some basics:
Market anarchists are basically saying this:
Instead of a single entity forcibly imposing an involuntary monopoly to be the sole provider of security and justice in a given territory and over a given people (government), security and justice can be provided by agencies operating in a free and competitive market.
Just like markets are better at providing shoes and cars and swedish massage and ice cream, and just as we would never trust government to provide such things, market anarchists contend that agencies would do a better job of providing security and justice as well.
And they would provide them without the initiation of coercive force, since you would choose to be a customer of an agency (rather than being forced to pay taxes and be a "citizen" of a government, even though you never agreed to either).
So order (protective force) still very much exists in a market-anarchic condition; it is simply deployed differently, and by different entities than a single monopoly government.
Once you we start learning more about this, we find that there are answers to all the questions that spring up. I certainly did! But those are the basics, and that is a good place to start.
Hmmm... This is truly interesting and gets me thinking. Sounds a bit like Ayn Rand. I believe I am coming from another angle. To me the ‘all private‘ argument can be disproven: ozone layer, tobacco, food, pharma, star wars project, geo–engineering, tragedy of the commons, charter schools, defence industry, mafia, and so on. Private interests have profit motive and money inherently corrupts. As does power of course, but the separation of powers in democracy can work when not hijacked behind the scenes by money interests.
Maybe some other questions. How do you solve for all these issues in a purely market based state? How do you handle strife and war?
If I may recommend books for a contrary perspective:
Merchants of Doubt
Hothouse Earth
Hot Money
Risk
All four books are written by decorated and hard thinking people.
Well that's quite a list. 🔥 Too much to handle all at once. Some highlights.
Government IS a mafia. That is exactly what it is. "Pay us for protection or we'll break your legs." "Pay us for protection or we'll throw you in jail." I did not agree to either, and neither did anyone else.
Pharma has no power to FORCE us to take anything unless government forces us on their behalf. Which is exactly what government just did with covid. And they made us pay for it! And our money, taken by force, made 200 new pharma billionaires! None of that was possible without government force.
The tragedy of the commons is NOW. Private property gets rid of the tragedy of the commons.
"Private interests have profit motive and money inherently corrupts."
—So does power. You aren't arguing from the reality of government; you are arguing from the brochure: https://christophercook.substack.com/p/new-logical-fallacy-argument-from-brochure
"separation of powers in democracy can work when not hijacked behind the scenes by money interests."
—When was that exactly? When Alexander Hamilton was conspiring with his big money buddies to undermine the Articles of Confederation and force the Constitution down our throats, making promises in the Federalist Papers that he had no intention of keeping? And then working things to the advantage of big industry and central banking?
Government is ALWAYS hijacked by big money interests. In its absence, the money is still there, but the irresistible power vector of government no longer has its gun pointed at our heads.
I appreciate your strength and spirit! But honestly, the all-private argument cannot be "disproven" until you've read at least two out of the three books listed at the end of this article: https://christophercook.substack.com/p/no-way-i-can-convince-you-anarchism (I recommend Friedman and Hoppe first.)
Regarding strife and war—here are a few (and I have another big one in the works).
https://christophercook.substack.com/p/people-allowed-own-nuclear-weapons
https://christophercook.substack.com/p/what-if-not-fought-french-indian-war
https://christophercook.substack.com/p/modern-nationalism-end-next-century
https://christophercook.substack.com/p/do-you-hate-ivan-russian-does-he-hate-you
https://christophercook.substack.com/p/without-government-wars-would-be-tiny
Thank you. I apologize for my style now, but I feel disrespected. Our views are contradictory and instead of humility I get a lecture.
Your theory is elaborate and well argued. I say it won’t work in the interest of human citizens as imagined.
Whenever I hear things like ’vectors‘, I am out. Organizing a society and a planet is about humans and needs to start with the human. Then upwards to the abstract and then back down for verification, sort of prototyping.
If you care to read up on how certain European families muscled their way into the monetary system, you will see it was not always like that. Maintaining the rule of money is very hard too. FDR for example only accepted the Fed so he could work out of a severe depression.
The US hijack is even younger – Nixon + Kissinger who gave us the petrodollar and pretty much all wars since.
To give some high level measures I believe will work:
. Generalist government cells to reign in problems created by specialists
. Reverse transparency. Citizens get transparency into state and state gives back most transparency into citizens.
. Banks are excluded from international negotiations
. Education of heart and mind for contentment under capitalism
. Long term political planning
. The art of saying no to powerful capitalists
Absolutely the truth! This made my heart jump & put a huge smile on my face! Awesome piece!
❤️😁💫⭐️⚡️🪐💪
Absolutely true! Watching statists’ brains overheat when confronted with this reality is priceless.
Yep. Though I am inevitably going to be covered in some of their brains, and then have to wipe the mess off.
Good question, and one i'm not sure how to answer.
There is much we do not know!
What strikes me is that your ideas prevent busibodiness, the reaction of “grrr, don’t like that, there ought to be a law” nonstop interference with people’s lives that goes on in all levels of government. We need a new ethics, and not seeking to force your values on another person needs to be a part of it. I also think of the film “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence,” that the Tom Donophan character thinks as you do. He thinks that anyone who cannot defend himself or endure the rough conditions of the Frontier has no business being there. If you wear a gun, better know how to use it and accept the risks. He has little use for the trimmings of civilization—except one. He doesn’t like Valence but he understands him, could defeat him but sees Valence as another natural part of the Frontier, like a rattlesnake. The Lawyer Rube comes to the Territory and upsets everything. Tom lets himself get tricked into coercive force for the sake of the one piece of civilization he wants, but he loses his chance.
"What strikes me is that your ideas prevent busibodiness, the reaction of “grrr, don’t like that, there ought to be a law” nonstop interference with people’s lives that goes on in all levels of government. We need a new ethics, and not seeking to force your values on another person needs to be a part of it."
—This is huge. I have begun writing about this subject, but it requires much more illumination. I believe there is something in humans' ultra-social nature that becomes far too easily pathologized: this need to control others because, after all, "we have to find ways to live together." It's completely sick and destructive.
I am still formulating thoughts on the subject, but here are two early forays:
https://christophercook.substack.com/p/tyranny-social-nature
https://christophercook.substack.com/p/burning-need-force-views-others
I am old enough to have had the opportunity to see that movie in a TV rerun, but I never did back in the day for some reason.
But yes, there is a measure of cowardice involved in statism. "I am afraid of the world; therefore you must be subjected to force." "I don't want to take responsibility for protecting myself; therefore, you must be subjected to force."
Now as it happens, market anarchists are not suggesting that there be no security and justice save that which each individual can provide himself. Rather, we are saying that security and justice can be provided to customers by market agencies rather than forced upon subjects, the way the government does. So people could still get security and justice without having to carry a six-shooter themselves.
Nonetheless, I still think that some of the fear of market anarchism is rooted in fear more generally, and in the lack of desire to take any responsibility for oneself.
This is an interesting train of thought (not saying that i know where it will take us)...
Where would you like it to take us? 🙂
Hopefully the volcano of government stupidity overflows and drowns the DC Swamp. Short of that happening, the road to freedom is paved with pitchforks. Living without a government master is extremely scary for most. They'd rather partake in things like fake pandemics featuring deadly mRNA injections.
Perhaps they can continue to live like that, and they will let us go our own way.
A guy can dream…
Is anarchy an answer, then? "Every man /woman for him/herself?"
That is not what market anarchists are talking about. It takes a little study, but market anarchism is not "chaos" or every man for himself. Security and justice still exist; they just come from a source other than a single government monopoly.
But before we get into that, does this mean that you are conceding the logic of the argument in the post?
What I am saying is that men are most definitely not angels. I retired as a Corrections officer, and even though I always tried to solve things without force, it wasn't always possible. Even Peter and Paul agreed that government derives its standing from God; therefore, how do we deal with evil in the world without authority?
As a corrections officer (unless you were a corrupt and wicked one, which I doubt), you were using protective force. Protective force is deployed in response to and to defend against coercive force. Protective force is justified.
Market anarchists are not saying that protective force would not exist in a market-anarchic/voluntaryist condition. Rather, we are saying that the primary source of the force would be different.
Instead of a single entity forcibly imposing an involuntary monopoly to be the sole provider of security and justice in a given territory and over a given people, security and justice would be provided by agencies operating in a free and competitive market. Just like markets are better at providing shoes and cars and swedish massage and ice cream—and we would never trust government to do those things well, market anarchists believe that agencies would do a better job of providing these things. And they would provide them without the initiation of coercive force (since you would choose to be a customer rather than being forced to pay taxes and be a "citizen," even though you never agreed to either).
So protective force still very much exists in a market-anarchic condition; it is simply deployed differently, and by different entities than a single monopoly government.
Once you study up on this, you find that there are answers to all the questions you might have swirling in your head. But those are the basics.
Having had this conversation already a million times, I can predict that your reaction to this will likely fall into one of several categories.
1. That cannot possibly work and you are an idiot, Christopher.
2. That cannot possibly work, but I will tell him politely.
3. I don't know much about this, and I am intrigued.
4. I'm sold already!
I don't get 4 much—and the people I do get it from are usually pretty close already. I get #1 occasionally—fortunately not too often. #2 and #3 are the most common.
I strongly recommend 3. Market anarchism sounds crazy at first, but the more you research it, the more sense it makes, and then one say, you just SEE it. And you are changed forever.
Vital! Succinct, and almost flawless (I can't see a flaw in the logic, but I'll challenge anyone else to find any). You have skillfully articulated arguments that emerged over four years ago and still exist only as incipient and undeveloped resolutions and deductions in my mind and soul. But I zealously concur, and I ardently feel this to be the undeniable, inviolable truth! Thank you!
Thank you. There are many people I too must thank for clearly articulating ideas that were inchoate in my mind. People do that for each other.
And I will endeavor to keep doing it for you, and for all I can reach. Cheers!
Thank you! I hope you will be able to keep doing it for as long as it will take to reach and convince enough people. But I'm even more hopeful that you won't need to do it for much longer because critical mass for this is nearly achieved. I can dream ...
Again, thank you.
I like your optimism. I do believe we are heading for critical mass. Not sure how long it will take, but we are getting there. And we will get there even faster if people stay optimistic about it!
As long as I can keep growing my audience, and the number of paid subscribers, I should be able to keep doing this indefinitely. (Otherwise I will have to stop and get a "real" job 🤣)
"I like your optimism."
Insofar as hope is a synonym for optimism. But to be honest, while optimism/pessimism is a workable dichotomy for characterising disposition, experience and the evidence counsels that expectations should to be kept low and realistic.
Similarly to you, I believe that, without interference and by the exclusion of oligarchs and statists, just governance (governANCE, not governMENT) is emergent with natural self-organisation. This is not simply theoretical - history documents working examples. For instance, evidence suggests a stateless polity existed for the Indus Valley civilisation centered on Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro in the Indus Valley, in the northern region of the Indian subcontinent between c. 7000 - c. 600 BCE. There is no evidence that the Indus civilisation dominated smaller neighboring societies.
More recent examples of just governance from history could be made of the time before Francisco Franco's 'victory' in the Spanish Civil War of 1936–1939 with the peasant anarchism in the countryside of Andalusia, urban anarcho-syndicalism in Catalonia, particularly its capital Barcelona, and what is sometimes called "pure" anarchism in other cities such as Zaragoza. Independently, Nestor Makhno's mass movement - known as the Makhnovshchina - by the Ukrainian peasantry in the country between 1918 and 1921 was another shining example. All these episodes of the unfettering of the human spirit and the natural propensity for self-organisation that springs up after contrived government collapses and disappears.
Heartbreakingly, in Spain and Ukraine, these episodes of functioning anarchy were brief in duration because of the international banker/financier-created and mobilised Bolsheviks and Communists who inflicted terror on them, killing and scattering their communities.
That is the extent of my optimism: I know that just governance is not only possible without government, it can only exist without government, and the absence of government has been shown to be viable and allows humans to truly thrive.
I hope your audience grows to comprise every ordinary man and woman (that is, anyone not belonging to the old and new money aristocracy/oligarchy that owns the governments and inflicts them upon the rest of us), and I hope you gain more paying subscribers. I apologise that I am not able to pay because I walked-out of paid work near the end of 2020 (COVID-19 was the utter last straw), and accordingly I have not earned income in four years in order to renounce paying income tax. I have reduced all my expenses to the absolute necessities (no phone, no car, no purchased entertainments, not even books, alas) in an effort to withdraw my participation in the economy. I am not wealthy, far from it. I have simply realised just how little is truly necessary, and how almost all aspects of modern life are not only completely extraneous, they are contrived and cast upon people in order to yoke them under dependence and to enslave them under the burden of servicing the expenses.
I'm sorry for the length of the comment.
No need to apologize for the length of the comment. And I am grateful to have you here as any kind of subscriber. Thank you!
I suspect that most people making arguments against "anarchism" would use Makhnovshchina and Catalonia as examples that make their point: "See, it cannot work because it will be crushed by its neighbors."
I think Harappa (from what little I know about it) is a better example. But a lot of its nature is still shrouded in mystery.
I like the examples of Brehon Ireland and the Hanseatic league even more: https://christophercook.substack.com/p/building-island-3-historical-examples-anarchism
"And I am grateful to have you here as any kind of subscriber. Thank you!"
My goodness, you've turned the tables on me. I'm truly, humbly grateful to you for your forbearance, and yet you have still managed to ennoble me for my generosity.
"See, it cannot work because it will be crushed by its neighbors."
The way I see it is that, just like our contemporary experience with conscientious (real) journalists and truth-tellers being censored or de-banked, and even outlawed, proscribed, and jailed (in the cases of Snowden, Manning, and Assange), for exercising their moral and professional duty of telling the truth, the brutal crushing of anarchism attempted in the 20th century attests to the credible and compelling demonstration of its viability and superiority, or it invalidated centralized government. The suppression confirms that the regimes the statists served were threatened. Just like it is today, the regime's fear then was well-founded.
On the other hand, I completely agree with the implication: what good is a demonstrably better system if it summons the violence of the state and is automatically wiped out?
I'll get on with reading the article you suggest as well as your many other articles. In the meantime I have glowing praise for you, and I greatly admire you for your prolificacy, fruitful dedication and commitment.
Yeah bro, Not woke. Awakened.
Never woke.
So True Christopher!