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Politics : Libertarian Discussion Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tom Clarke who wrote (7679)	3/13/2009 12:12:20 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13062

Good article. I agree with some of what he says, but I'm still more of a libertarian (and even a conservative) rather than an anarchist. He said a lot, and I'm not going to spend the time examining and responding to every idea, but I will respond to what I see as the key point. For most people, anarchy is a disturbing word, suggesting chaos, violence, antinomianism — things they hope the state can control or prevent. The term state, despite its bloody history, doesn’t disturb them. Yet it’s the state that is truly chaotic, because it means the rule of the strong and cunning. They imagine that anarchy would naturally terminate in the rule of thugs. But mere thugs can’t assert a plausible right to rule. Anarchy is for most people a disturbing word, because most anarchies or near anarchies have had disturbing results. The worst governments are probably even worse than anarchy, but the best are not (at least not than anarchies that have been actually observed in the real world). States have been tolerable and horrible, so "state" doesn't disturb people as much because they can see the tolerable states. Flawed yes. Abusive at times (or to a smaller extent probably all the time) yes, but not the blood soaked horrors of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot etc. He says that mere thugs can't assert a plausible right to rule, but that's false. If allowed to they will rule in small ways, and convince many that this is ok. Eventually a group of them will probably become the state, but probably only after massive violence to determine who will rule. The problem with anarchy is not just that it tends to be violent (as Sobran points out the state is often violent as well), or that when done tolerably well it can provide basic security a framework for dealing with disputes that would otherwise be settled with raw violence, and some basic public goods (points that Sobran doesn't seem to consider much), but also that its unstable. Even if you had a tolerable anarchy, it wouldn't remain an anarchy. At some point some group of thugs becomes powerful enough to defeat or intimidate the others and they become the state. But Sobran does nail the problem with the state. That the state itself decides the proper limits to its power, so its power will grow. Democracy and constitutions can provide some check on this, but they aren't sufficiently effective, at least not over very long time periods. The thing is there is no perfect way to set up society for the long run in the real world. Totalitarianism is horrible. Anarchy doesn't work. Constitutional democracy is disappointing, to supporters of freedom and limited government.