Lew has a great article today, Regime Libertarians. The timing is appropriate because it helps crystallize some of my own thoughts on this–right at a time when I was discussing with another libertarian his critique of “contrarian” libertarians; I was pointing out that contrarians are not the problem; the problem is mainstream libertarians who go along with the state.
Lew’s column makes a nice distinction in pointing out:
These social and career pressures often account for why libertarians sell out. But it is not the whole reason. There are also intellectual confusions having to do with one’s view toward government itself. Some believe that while freedom is a good thing, it has a precondition in good government and state institutions that bring about the core conditions of liberty. This is a view that freedom cannot care for itself and that society and civilization cannot arise on their own. Freedom needs government police, judges, legislatures, and presidents, they believe, to establish the conditions that make freedom possible in the first place.
So that we are clear, we are not speaking here of merely the belief in limited government, or what is sometimes called “minarchism.” There is a difference between believing in the need for government to preserve and protect freedom, and the view that government is the first condition of society, responsible for giving birth to freedom. In one view, some government is unavoidable; in the other view, power is the benefactor of freedom, the force to which all liberty owes its conception. There is a difference between seeing government as a necessary evil, and viewing liberty as the offspring of power.
Lew calls these libertarians “Regime Libertarians,” in contrast with Laissez-Faire Libertarians:
A good name for this school of thought is Regime Libertarianism. The modifier identifies the means they choose to bring about their view of what constitutes freedom. It identifies the target audience of their urgings and pleadings. It identifies the institution that they believe to be the first condition in the advance of civilization. It spells out precisely where their ultimate loyalties lie. Thus do all plans for freedom come down to redirecting the attentions of power but not uprooting it altogether.
The column is a typically excellent one by Lew. I have noticed myself this tendency of some libertarians not only to thing government is a necessary evil or unavoidable, or to be tolerated to solve a few intractable problems; but to believe it is a good thing. These libertarians view the state as mainstream people view the highway department. The government has to build a road “infrastructure,” as a precondition of an industrial society, it is commonly held. Likewise, the Regime Libertarians seem unable to conceive that the liberty runs on its own; they see the state as providing a necessary legal and political infrastructure without which civilization is impossible.
Now I do not mean to imply, nor does Lew I believe, that all minarchists (non-anarchists) hold this view. Many minarchists only tolerate the state, seeing it as an unfortunately necessary, but very dangerous, institution, needed for a bare minimum of functions like defense and courts. But minarchists need not see this agency as good or as the benefactor of mankind; it is not something we need to be grateful to for bestowing liberty upon us, or for giving us the “preconditions” for production and civilization. Rather, even minarchists can and do have a healthy distrust of the state and although they believe it serves a function, they don’t view it as the source of civilization. They recognize it is parastical on society, inherently dangerous if not corrupt, and therefore needs to be watched closely.
By contrast, the attitude of many Regime Libertarians is, as Lew explains, that the state is a good thing that lays down the infrastructure of civilization. I believe many Objectivists tend to hold this view, schizophrenically condeming the unlibertarian “excesses” of our current government while still holding a rosy view of its origins and possibilities; if we just tweak the Constitution, or get the right people in power, things can be all hunky dory again. Etc.
I have long thought that what is missing from some libertarians is that they do not hate the state. And lo and behold, it turns out Rothbard has an article, Do You Hate The State? Great. Check it out too.
All this helps to explain the hysterical reaction I got from my critique of libertarian critics of the Kelo case. They want the Supreme Court to exercise its benevolent powers–even though they were not granted–to reach in and set the states straight. It just does not occur to them that this might be very dangerous; they don’t hate the central state.
The Regime Libertarians feel compelled to not criticize the basic validity of even today’s monstrous state, because they don’t want to be marginalized; they want to have influence over perhaps incremental movements in the direction of liberty. This may be a bit understandable, but not only do they fear to admit that the emperor has no clothes–they also attack fellow libertarians who have the courage and clarity to say outloud that the Empreror has no clothes. The first thing people do, when they sell out in any sense, is begin to hate those who have not. They become, in effect, agents of the state, doing the state’s dirty work for it–demonizing its real enemies.
{ 23 comments }
Very, very good point. Government ought to be like a preservative for food – we ought to want the least amount possible. You don’t always need a preservative, and it isn’t something you want to eat for its own sake as it is not food and usually is bitter. It is to keep food from spoiling.
No, I don’t want the salad, just give me a box of sulfites.
We ought not to confuse something we tolerate for the sake of preservation with something that is good in and of itself.
How can the state which robs and steals from you also preserve you at the same time?
How can the state which robs and steals from you also preserve you at the same time?
A fine distinction between minarchists who see government as a necessary evil, and those who see government as necessary and not evil.
If no one else robs or steals from me (or otherwise violates my life or liberty), then the state probably wouldn’t exist while that held true, therefore the state would not need nor take my resources.
At the point where the theives (or invaders) realize they can more easily take what I produce than I can put forth effort to preserve it – they can specialize in the use of force while I specialize at something productive – I can and should band together with the rest of society to create a counter-force whose exclusive purpose would be to preserve the peace.
I fail to understand people who would be happy spending if necessary more than half of what they produced simply to protect by hiring guards and building vaults – simply because that 50+% wasn’t paid to “the state”. Or to let the thieves or robbers take what you have.
In the early 1800s the taxation was in the low single digits and most people didn’t even feel it. Under George III it was also quite small though excessive.
It might also be possible for voluntary organizations (like what created GNU/Linux) to serve the function.
You know it is bad when the LP follows the RP following the DP all who will which will fall into the ditch. And take a lot of people with them.
If you ignore the evangelical tone, I think the Constitutional Party is the only small government party left.
2-4-6-8 let the state disintegrate…
The new lines are forming, and they seem to be between anti-state (with some debate if some proportionately infinitesimal fraction is necessary) and pro-state poles. Those who want to slay the dragon and those who claim they can attempt to tame it.
When I read the LP’s idea of how to achieve an early withdrawl, I thought they should pay a big penalty. The thing is horrific.
It is one thing to suggest that charities or other private aid agencies might go in to help the hurting (Mother Theresa’s order tends not to get shot at), and suggesting a big-government aid program. Yes, we caused their distress but I don’t think rape victims would desire help with their pregnancy from their attackers.
The current government is just as unnatural as the last, so if the Kurds want a Kurdistan and there would be a further split we cannot prevent it.
And when the LP’s good intentions failed as badly as the WP’s (W=D+R), what would they propose? Go back in? Send even more aid? Take sides in a civil war?
Tz: I understand your comment “I fail to understand people who would be happy spending if necessary more than half of what they produced simply to protect by hiring guards and building vaults – simply because that 50+% wasn’t paid to “the state”. Or to let the thieves or robbers take what you have.”
Without expecting to convince you of the correctness of these people’s position, let me at least enumerate their (my) arguments:
1. Defense, like all other goods would be provided better and more cheaply by the market than by the state.
2. The state is already comprised of thieves and robbers, so we don’t feel anarchy risks anything we don’t already put up with.
3. The state operates, (steals, lies and murders), with a veneer of legitimacy such that even honest and misguided victims will actually stand up and defend it. Those you call criminals at least don’t have that privilege. Their lives are more difficult and more risky, as it should be, because we all recognize them for what they are.
4. We as individuals like to be the ones who decide how our money is spent. To me that seems like not much to ask. Others might say we’re just nutty utopians.
Michael A. Clem writes: “A fine distinction between minarchists who see government as a necessary evil, and those who see government as necessary and not evil.”
If the state is evil it cannot be necessary, since any evil that is necessary justifies all evil. For the same reason, if the state is necessary, it cannot be evil.
So which is it? Methinks that libertarianism has no greater intellectual task than to answer this question once and for all, for no less than the fate of the world is at stake.
I hasten to add that even though Mises himself considered the state a necessary evil, the important point for the state is not that it is evil (it couldn’t care less) but that it is necessary. For who can fight necessity and win? What fool would try?
David writes: “If the state is evil it cannot be necessary, since any evil that is necessary justifies all evil. For the same reason, if the state is necessary, it cannot be evil.
So which is it? Methinks that libertarianism has no greater intellectual task than to answer this question once and for all, for no less than the fate of the world is at stake.”
Libertarianism answers only to the question “What is a just use of force?” Libertarians use the axioms of non-aggression and private property to answer this. The issue of government comes as a conclusion to the answer to the question, and not before it. Government is an entity which by its nature is aggressive and thus violates property rights (taxes, monopoly of force, etc.).
I’ve just read Robert Murphy’s Chaos Theory. In his essays, he argues for a society based fully on market anarchism. It seems to me that his arguments are not based at all on natural rights (in fact he even hints at this in his footnotes). Rather, he opts for market anarchism since it would provide all the services that goverment provides in a more efficient way. By using contracts and insurance agencies, order would arise. The results of this path naturally results in non-aggression and property rights.
On the other hand, there are natural rights libertarians like Rothbard who arrive at market anarchy as the only way to completely follow the libertarian axioms. Rothbard hates the state, as Kinsella points out above, because its existence is an assault on nature. That it is inefficient can almost be secondary. Thus, the only way to have non-aggression and private property is to eliminate the state. Once gone, market anarchy arises.
The point is that here we have slightly two different, in my opinion, libertarian flavors. Murphy argues that the state is not necessary and that market anarchism is better. This reminds me of the same argument that Rothbard made of D. Friedman as being a utilitarian (I myself am not claiming Murphy is or is not). On the other hand, Rothbard has deep and utter contempt for the state as being incompatible with freedom. Murphy’s market anarchism results in the libertarian axioms (granted, codified in contracts), whereas Rothbard’s natural rights libertarianism results in market anarchy (perhaps without such an explicit reliance on contracts).
So to answer your question about being evil or necessary, even the most strict of libertarians might have a different answer depending on how they approach the issue. If one starts from efficiency, then the state is not necessary first and evil second (since it does all kinds of nasty little things). If one starts from natural rights, then the state is evil first and unnecessary second.
Finally, we have the pseudo libertarians, the ones that we can now call Regime Libertarians, who in my book are just closet statists and remind me of Umpa-Loompas.
1. This assumes defense does not have a public goods/externality problem. If you and I are on the border of a hostile country, and I don’t pay to protect my boundary, you must pay to not only protect your boundary with the hostile country, but where my land bounds yours, and any other boundary. Also land parcels farther in will be protected by a secure boundary but might not want to pay.
2. The market also has a lot of thieves and robbers – some using fronts, only a small portion of which are ever caught and prosecuted, and some aren’t currently illegal. These would simply become totally legitimate under a market justice system and would have some probability of running the force providers.
3. I don’t defend the state as such, nor anything it does beyond the immediate and direct suppression of fraud and violence. If you shoot someone while defending your life I won’t call you a criminal either.
4. Apropos of my statement – yes, you prefer to decide how your money is spent, even if that means to decide how to spend one half, you must spend the other half with private protection. I thought that is what I said.
Actually there is a severe flaw in my idea – that one can limit government and keep it from corruption (in a fallen world). My only defense is that the centralization tends to make it visible and easier to attack.
Active “private defense agencies” might have a dozen police that might have to be bribed, or paid what they say is a fine instead of being “arrested” instead of just one.
So my first defense is that if the fundamental problem is that power corrupts, it will do so in private hands at least as much as public hands, so the problem is to never trust the dragon and despise it even though it keeps the vermin under control. When people make friends with the dragon is when it starts getting too big.
So my other defense is that even the minimal state I imagine I distrust and would watch carefully, and assume a priori that anyone accepting the office would be corrupted in short order and it would be up to them in such a position to prove themselves innocent.
I would prefer that to any private system that was “trusted” with force.
Also allow that “necessary evil” is a literary device more than a moral observation, though it is very close. The market isn’t a “positive good” in that same manner. I’ve heard it called a force of nature, and that is probably the best description. And it is powerful.
If I have an operable cancer, having to be cut open, have something cut out with all the collateral damage to my body to accomplish that, then the followup treatment might be painful, but dying of cancer might be more painful.
If you have a state, you might have to find the most honorable people (and those who least desire the job) to do such things. Maybe a secular priesthood complete with vow of poverty? OTOH the Vatican seems to be a working minarchy – the code of canon law hasn’t grown like the Federal Register. A complete set of the major books are smaller than most spending bills.
You might have to find the best of the good and have them risk corruption to fight evil. That might allow liberty to be left alone.
The American model of checks and balances almost worked – what they needed was a secret conspiracy 4th branch that would initiate fights between the other branches so the courts would strike down laws out of spite, the executive would impound spending, and the legislature would starve the other branches when the elitist and the populist branches weren’t fighting.
Instead they decided to act together, and somehow the PR made them into a “good” instead of an object of mistrust.
I don’t see how you get private agencies to have the most honorable people.
There is another flaw in my argument, however I think history is on my side. Afghanistan when the Soviets left was fairly uniform socially, but didn’t organize into an AC paradise. The Taliban were actually prefered to anarchy. I cannot prove there is no alternative to a “state” to fight crime (though it appears that many proposals of X which they don’t call a “state” has all the attributes of a state – a monopoly “private” agency doesn’t look much different).
You can look historically, so when you find a bunch of Quakers – among whom I would probably be safer than in even the most restrictive state – you find they didn’t need a state but they didn’t have any significant crime or complex disputes. Impose that system on Manhattan tomorrow and I think the result would be different.
Except that neither Rothbard nor any other anarchocapitalist has shown that anarchy will by necessity end up in freedom.
At best they say you must voluntarily pay for the privileges (yes, privileges and not rights) using private security agencies.
But the obvious question is will I be more free or less free after paying such an agency my premium? I will be less wealthy afterward and on a basic though not unimportant level, wealth represents freedom.
If I must buy my freedom, then the anarchic state is one of slavery by definition, though perhaps to a lesser extent than a full chattel system or indenture.
If I am not buying freedom or liberty (and consider that the things they are selling are things like “I can keep my own property” or “I won’t be hurt”), what am I buying? Why should I need a guarantee for liberty if it is merely that?
There is a very big difference between saying liberty is fundamental and follows from natural law, and saying it would be obtained more efficiently or at lower cost privately than from a state. The latter reduces it to a commodity.
Do the Anarchocapitalists here consider liberty a commodity, or do I just not understand?
Somehow having to purchase freedom in a market seems to be just as incompatible with freedom in the sense of natural law.
My position is the Natural Law also admits a duty to protect the very freedom it recognizes – life, liberty, and property in that order – of others, not just your own, but in the minimally intrusive manner. It might merely be a posse or militia, but that I would still call a “state”. I must not only recognize that I can’t take your property nor harm you, but I must do something when 3rd parties steal from you, or harm you. Rights are transcendent.
Maybe much of this could be accomplished by a market solution, but I’ve not seen it, only that some of the practices and processes can be duplicated, not the desired result. Private agencies would likely be more efficient at producing corrupt results, but is the problem the efficiency or the corruption? What are the proposals addressing?
As we struggle and discuss the aspects of whether any government is in fact necessary let me propose that the writer who recognized that this issue is THE ISSUE that will decide the fate of the civilized world is in my estimation correct.
I go further and propose that the “day of big government is over” to quote Bill Clinton. Indeed I tell my Russian friends that they jumped thirty years ahead of us when they desolved the Soviet Union. We need to be thinking about what we want after the dissolution of our “Federal” government.
Let me offer a different angle on the issue. Let us look at the supposition that there is no such thing as “evil” for as Shakespeare told us many years ago “There is no good nor ill but thinking makes it so”. Taken a step further we can look at the philosophy that allows for us to re enter the “Garden of Eden” by avowing that the concept of duality no longer serves us and that we are willing to rethink our starting point and declare that all is indeed “GOOD”. That humans left to a free market type organization will work in cooperation with each other for the good of all (The example of Linux has already been sited) and that we can trust our innate goodness to make the concept of “government” as obsolete as the theory of a flat earth.
My question to you all is “Has humanity evolved to where we are willing trust each other to the degree that all “government” is no longer a useful concept?
I appreciate your response, Tz. I don’t think i have any new arguments or information to convince you that my arguments have huge merit. But yet, to me, they certainly do.
When you say “I don’t see how you get private agencies to have the most honorable people”, it means you and I fundamentally view private individuals in two different lights. The most honorable men i know work in the private sector. And the most despicable men known to mankind were and are and always will be politicians. And although such things convince me that my conclusions regarding anarchy are sound, i do not expect such things to similarly convince everyone else.
To tz and those debating him:
Remember that, short of a large number of high government officials simultuneously converting to free-market anarchism, none of this – minarchism or market anarchy – is ever going to happen without a more individualistic populace, one more conscious of property rights and one more ready to defend its freedom. In which case, any minarchic state – as well as any warlords or bribery-prone policemen – will be much more carefully watched by the people, which presumably would limit abuse of the system in either case.
Thank you Mr. Rockwell for the outstanding, and more importantly, much needed critique of the “Regime Libertarians”. I believe it would be instructive and inspiring to contrast the views of the Regime Libertarians with Murray Rothbard’s remarks from a 1992 speech (as qouted on page 293 of Justin Raimondo’s excellent biography of Rothbard “An Enemy of the State”:
“Heaven forfend! Who would want to repeal the twentieth century, the century of horror, the century of collectivism, the century of mass destruction and genocide, who would want to repeal that? Well, we propose to do just that!…We shall break the clock of social democracy. We shall break the clock of the Great Society. We shall break the clock of the welfare state. We shall break the clock of the New Deal. We shall break the clock of Woodrow Wilson’s “New Freedom” and perpetual war. We shall repeal the twentieth century.”
Yes, power corrupts, even in private hands. But in the competitive market, that corruption is limited, since no individual company or agency has a monopoly as a government does. Ultimately, though, legitimacy is decided by the general public, and agencies have to win the respect of the public. Even governments have to do so to some degree, although their power means that they don’t have to work as hard at it.
Rights protection is an economic good. If you pay a private agency for it, are you “buying” rights and freedom? I don’t know. But even with a government, rights protection is *still* an economic good. You’re still paying for rights protection, but you have less choice and control over that rights protection. People like Bruce Benson have done a good job of showing how you pay for it, even where higher taxes aren’t obtained. Thus, again I wonder how the government’s monopolization is an advantage.
An interesting thing that David Friedman says is that his economic analysis usually gives the same or similar results as a morally based argument. If that holds true, then the differences between pragmatic and principled approaches shouldn’t be too great. In any case, I don’t mind using both types of arguments, depending upon the situation and the audience.
Although intent can be part of good or evil, many good intentions have disasterous results.
Most here including me would consider the present government as a huge edifice from hell – the work of the devil – a great evil. But you will note the intent of all the laws and regulations and taxation is intended to accomplish a good. Everyone in government thinks they are doing good – but that thinking does not make it so. And almost any newspaper can show we haven’t gone beyond our concupisance (since I don’t believe we “evolve”).
I don’t think the present government will convert to anything like free market anarchism, however considering what his happening to the economic underpinnings and even what is going on with the military, it might collapse into some kind of anarchy, and we ought to be prepared if that arises. There will be Taliban-like leaders ready to take over in a vacuum.
In one sense, my argumentation here is to help try to determine the minimal minarchy. We might be using 64+ crayola colors to color maps today, but 4 suffice, though it was hard to prove the last 20%. Some would say monochrome works just as well.
I’m not sure I could name a more honorable man than Ron Paul, at least not within the business sphere. I might find some in the opensource movement, or in the church. If you are talking about a for-profit business protection agency, I would worry. If you are talking about a volunteer organization it might be different.
Also, would the people you know stay honorable when they are wielding force or would they have the ability to be arbitrators. I might want someone as holy as Mother Theresa to decide a case, but she wasn’t an expert in commercial transactions.
And I don’t think rights themselves are an economic good, nor ought their protection be one.
You can sit on your porch and invite your friends over to watch a burglar loot my house, and maybe suggest a little arson, and say that you in no way abridged my rights while sipping beer and watching the conflagration which used to be my house. But do you really believe in rights if you won’t enforce them for others.
I don’t say that life, liberty, and property need not be paid for, but I also don’t try to reduce it to mere economics. If I believe in rights on principle, I will act on principle, even to preserve the rights of someone I consider obnoxious. I suppose there is a rights-with-duties v.s. a rights-alone split.
To go back to the Libertarian Party – I dropped off when they didn’t even mention the nuremburg.org decision which had several evils they were then saying they were trying to combat – thought crime, internet censorship, excessive fines. Maybe because it was an anti-abortion site, but that is the test – are rights something you would defend in all cases and even if it cost you something.
Conversely, I’ve had to spend a great deal of effort to argue to defend the internet from censorship by those who dislike pornography or other things because I really believe in free speech. (Generally I point out that people often get offended at churches, and once you say the government can decide, Bob Jones not only loses deductibility, they lose the right to speak).
This is the difference – I will defend the right of people to say things I disagree with even to the point where I find it obnoxious or even evil (but not to the point where it is a nuisance or when it is an incitement – like shouting fire – and not really speech).
Will the protection agencies defend those who haven’t paid? Will they arbitrate and enforce judgments against one of their members even if that is the correct result? The businessmen you know may be honorable, but at this point they might have to be sacrificial. And as businesses, insurance companies are starting to require things like wearing your seatbelts, not smoking, etc. and they might easily become worse nannies when their profit sharing cheques are at stake.
Government bureaucrats can annoy me, but their income is rarely proportional to the restriction of my rights. Insurance or security is just the opposite – the more I do “safe” things, the less likely I am to have a claim so the more they can get me to give up my liberty, the more money they will have at the end of the quarter. They might pass the savings on to me or write a high-risk policy, or they might not bother writing one at all. The government is already a petty tyrant when it comes to driving, but if the auto insurance companies had their way I probably wouldn’t drive at all.
I don’t think the “evil” in “necessary evil” refers to the moral category evil. Those who call government a necessary evil aren’t saying it’s like mutilating a child. “Evil” can also hold the connotation of “annoyance” or “problem” without any sort of moral component. Those who say government is a necessary evil say that the state is necessary annoyance, like standing in line at the grocery store.
- Josh
Josh,
I’m afraid this makes you a Regime Libertarian precisely as Lew defines the term and not the anti-statist that any libertarian worthy of the name must be. And if you think that by evil, true libertarians view it as no more than grocery line annoyance, you are sadly mistaken. No less than Mises himself — who was unequivocal in his (also sadly mistaken) belief that the state is both necessary and evil — minced no words about the latter:
“The state is the apparatus of compulsion and coercion. This holds not only for the ‘night-watchman’ state, but just as much for every other, and most of all for the socialist state. Everything that the state is capable of doing it does by compulsion and the application of force. … All state activity is human action, an evil inflicted by men on men. The goal — the preservation of society — justifies the action of the organs of the state, but the evils inflicted are not felt as any less evil by those who suffer under them. … The evil that a man inflicts on his fellow man injures both — not only the one to whom it is done, but also the one who does it. Nothing corrupts a man so much as being an arm of the law and making men suffer. The lot of the subject is anxiety, a spirit of servility and fawning adulation; but the pharisaical self-righteousness, conceit, and arrogance of the master are no better.” (http://mises.org/liberal/ch1sec13.asp)
Luther and Calvin and Hobbes, Oh My! Actually I have two observations based on religions which apply.
Orthodox or traditional Judiasm tends to be very conservative as far as what it considers “law” to be. I don’t know how much coupling there is between the content and the conservatism, but my point is that you have something that can keep a body of law nearly unchanged for centuries even among a diaspora and difficult situations.
The Roman Catholic church might also have conservative elements, but I’m not sure how to handle the changes from the Roman Emperors to Constantine and the East/West, Reformation, etc. but there might be something here too.
The second observation is the deviation of doctrine after the Reformation. There is no personal gain between many of the doctrinal changes like infant v.s. adult baptism, or which day the sabbath is on. Yet based on sola scriptura, with people honestly trying to interpret things, there are large variations. Even on morals, before 1930 contraception was almost universally condemned, but today it is almost universally accepted.
This is the kind of problem I see with private protection services – just as you can find a church to fit your doctrine, you could find a service to fit your ideas – whether libertarian or socialist.
Also, let me agree with Mises on the effects on those who do the coercion. But if there are ancap parents here, what do they do with their children when they misbehave? Do such parents become evil masters? A lot of criminals either act irrationally or act rationally with evil intent.
I don’t think calling anyone who thinks a zero-state might be worse than a minarchy that only acts to negate violations of rights is a “Regime Libertarian”. Some of the things pointed to by the article include a lot of the Chicago (city of Al Capone?) school manipulation, as well as a lot of continued interference with other soverign countries.
I’m all for a gold standard, against any foreign intervention or aid, against any interference with the market (I don’t consider a set of laws defining ownership, bailments, and such interference), and generally distrustful of the few things I would admit within the government’s sphere of competence.
I’m also willing to accept ancap, but I would like to see it actually results in more liberty and justice for all than the alternatives. By the definitions, we each would be more free on islands where there would be no one to violate rights, so would need no coercive agency, but would that be better?
My point about the Reformation is that it had a parallel rejection of authority (which had similar problems with corruption) but the result wasn’t necessarily better.
One way of describing rights is as something that other people don’t have to provide for you. If, for example, you have a right to health care, how can that not be a violation of the rights of health care providers or alternately, those who are forced to pay for the healthcare that people enjoy as “rights”? Likewise, unless you plan to provide your own protection (defense is a right), rights-protection itself cannot be a right, because other people have to provide it.
While I think it is one’s best interests to support and ensure that everybody’s rights are protected, I cannot agree that one has some kind of moral obligation to so ensure that. I also doubt that watching a neighbor’s house being robbed would be very entertaining, unless you happened to not be very fond of your neighbor.
I recall several articles on mises.org lately about whether government provides the precondition for a peaceful society or whether it prevents civil-war / warlords.
Most of these claims seem to rehash a point made by Max T. O’Connor with deep anarchy.
However, I believe this means we need to address the market forces which have encouraged governments to be created — likely from the same bounded-rationality problems which created the firm — as well as how, in a world where aggression/violence cannot be simply dismissed any more than private property can, the incentives for theft and murder by which governments define themselves can be made obsolete by consented free trade and human creativity.
Also, we need to begin to examine how we define coercion, in a world where pharmaceuticals, manipulative memes (lies/fraud), and other more surgical means of distorting human choice (itself an information processing and cognitive science pursuit) in an increasingly complex future.
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