Why Abolishing Government Would Not Bring Chaos

Why Abolishing Government Would Not Bring Chaos
by Brad Edmonds



I wrote recently that government should be abolished. Among the responses to
the article were objections of the sort shared by most who encounter for the
first time the prospect of living without forcible government. The most
common objections are fundamentally similar to each other: Violence would
rule the day; corporations would run over us little people; foreign
governments would invade; big neighborhoods would pillage small
neighborhoods; etc. The books I linked in the previous article answer these
objections, but since most of us (myself included) might not buy a book
online - and then be sure to read it - every single time we surf the net, I'
ll address those objections briefly here, and provide links to online
articles wherever possible.

The pervasiveness of these objections makes it worth addressing them, as
does the fact that it seems counterintuitive to assert that abolishing
government would bring more peace, security, and abundance - just as it
seems counterintuitive that the way to reduce gun violence is to allow
everybody to own guns.

Police

Without government, you still must deal with local criminals. Most people
believe you need government police departments to do this, else the nation
would become a violent jungle.

Mary Ruwart, in her book, documents examples of private police departments
in the US. These agencies charge subscription fees and provide patrol
services. In each case, the private police cost substantially less than the
government police yet produce significant decreases in crime by, among other
things, patrolling more often and actually checking the doors and windows of
homes when there is no one there. In other words, the private policemen work
all day instead of driving around intimidating innocent drivers or sitting
in donut shops and speed traps. In some cases Ruwart recounts, local
governments have forcibly shut down the private police and replaced them
with government police. Crime and cost both increased dramatically
thereafter.

There are private security forces providing neighborhood and town security
around the nation, and they are effective and affordable. Why would someone
start up a private police force? For the same reasons you'd open a dentist's
or marriage-counseling office: To provide a valued service while making a
profit. Abolishing government police would produce entrepreneurs who would
compete with each other to do the best job for the lowest cost while making
a profit. We already have these entrepreneurs wherever government allows
them, and they have arisen because government police are ineffective while
residents are willing to pay for good service, just as we pay for cable
television even though we get the major networks over the air. Most
importantly, a private police force that destroyed property and harmed
innocent people would go out of business in a hurry, with the responsible
individuals sued and jailed. In other words, the agency would be
contractually bound to perform. The market provides - enforces - incentives
for businesses to do what's good for customers (a.k.a. society), and this
applies to every good or service - roads, medicine, plumbing, underwear.
Such pressure cannot be applied to government police.

Military

What about foreign governments observing a prosperous anarcho-capitalist
society, and deciding to invade? Don't we need a military, funded by tax
dollars, to defend us from aggressors? Hans-Hermann Hoppe has discussed this
question at length: Already, large insurance companies have the financial
resources, the incentive, and the general business skills to provide for
regional defense. As customers, we would have the option to pay a little
more in homeowner's insurance, and be able to make a claim in the case of
lost property or personal harm resulting from foreign invasion. It is good
for private insurers to provide "military," or regional, defense: Insurers
can be sued and/or driven out of business by customers if the insurers do a
bad job by either failing to keep their promises, or by hurting innocent
people in an attempt to keep their promises.

It gets better: Extensive historical experience shows that private
militaries have incentive to kill as few of the enemy, and destroy as little
of their property, as possible, while there is still incentive to defeat the
enemy. This is covered in detail in the new book edited by Hoppe, The Myth
of National Defense, which discusses the problems with government defense,
of course, but doesn't stop there; there are numerous historical examples of
the superiority of private defense. Further, insurers would never have
incentive to initiate war - the insurers would have to pay for it out of
reserves, or raise customer's prices (while customers can change insurers);
and insurers would have to pay restitution and penalties to each victim of
"collateral damage." Notably, though insurance companies already are capable
of developing a powerful regional defensive deterrent, history has shown
that they would have less need to worry about foreign invasion if more of us
are armed, and we would be in the absence of government gun control laws.
(Insurers probably would offer lower premiums to gun owners to encourage
widespread gun ownership.)

A side note: As the loon Ross Perot suggested by personally outperforming
the US Army in Iran, insurers wouldn't even have to maintain their own
defense forces. A market of private defense forces of varying sizes and
specialties would develop. And as is the case with private security agencies
today (as in 99.1% of the occasions a law-abiding individual draws a gun to
stop a crime), private defense forces would rarely need to fire a shot.

Corporations

As to the haves running roughshod over the have-nots, history is again our
guide. As Mary Ruwart discusses in detail, one famous example is Standard
Oil, believed by many today to have been a stronger monopoly than Microsoft.
Standard Oil became a near-monopoly by bringing down the price - from 58
cents to 8 cents (!) per gallon - at which it could sell kerosene to the
consumer. Very soon, oil companies around the world matched Standard's
efficiency. Rockefeller then resorted to underhanded tactics to sustain
monopoly power in the US (which he never really had; even at its peak,
Standard had competitors who were constantly reducing their own costs and
prices, though they were usually a step behind). The only efforts that had
any effect were his activism in getting enacted laws that would hamstring
the competition. By the way, Microsoft's share of the operating-system
market has been decreasing steadily to Apple, Linux, and others, and was
decreasing even before the big government antitrust attack.

As to public safety against greedy corporations, Ruwart reminds us that
before the FDA and its approval requirements, women's magazines routinely
ran articles detailing the side effects of drugs on the market. Many private
consumer-interest agencies exist today, even though government is supposedly
doing the job for us. You can subscribe to Consumer Reports yourself for
information on product safety and reliability. Entrepreneurs always arise to
take care of social needs, and they always do it faster, more effectively,
and at a lower cost than government. Entrepreneurs don't enjoy the sovereign
immunity government enjoys, so they are always required by their customers
to live up to their promises, and the only people ever charged for their
services are the ones who come to them freely, offering money.

Without government licensing, trade restrictions, centrally-imposed
regulations, and other barriers to entrepreneurs, there would be more
companies able to offer services, not fewer; and any innovator who
approached monopoly power would enjoy profits that attract intense
competition. Thus, any firm that approaches monopoly power and profits in a
free market produces the seeds of its own downsizing. No firm can approach
monopoly power unless everybody wants that firm's product at the price the
firm offers. And no powerful corporation will ever be free from the
continuous, nagging oversight of customers and consumer-interest agencies.

Justice

There would still be crime in the absence of forcible government, but it
would be far less frequent without gun laws, as John Lott has shown using
data from every county in the US for the last 100 years or so. Since there
are always some evil people, we would need a court system. Bruce Benson
(read a few of the papers at his web page, and scroll down on this link for
a start on his books) has written extensively on the topic of private
justice, showing examples of actual practice to demonstrate that not only
are such systems less expensive, more effective, and more available to us
than government justice, but that incentives to commit crimes decrease with
private courts and police. Additionally, recidivism and violence among
inmates decrease under private penal systems. Private penal systems produce
profits, produce restitution for victims, and can produce earnings,
sometimes substantial ones, for convicts - no taxation required. Such
systems are in use in the US right now. Benson also addresses the greater
fairness of private courts, again using historical examples. None of this
should be surprising: Anyone whose income depends on satisfying customers
has a strong incentive to do good by them; government employees lack this
incentive. Private courts must, over time, impress all their customers -
winners and losers - with their fairness.

And since everything about an anarcho-capitalist society is voluntary, a
convicted criminal would be able to choose from among various private
prisons (choosing the one with the best living conditions, or the one that
would produce the greatest income given his skills, thereby shortening his
incarceration), or simply ignore the court's verdict. What about a convicted
criminal who refuses to go to prison or make restitution to his victims? As
Benson shows, historically in societies that allow criminals to ignore their
convictions, such persons have been considered "outside the law." The victim
's insurer might then forcibly confiscate some or all of a convict's
property to pay court costs and make restitution to the victim.

Insurers wouldn't do this lightly, as private appeals courts would be
available to the convict, and insurance companies forcibly confiscating
property (as when forcibly defending it) would be held responsible for any
errors. Watchdog consumer agencies, such as we already have, would publicize
insurers' mistakes. In the US today, many people who have property
confiscated by the government and are later found innocent wait years to
have their property returned, often damaged; and sometimes the government
charges the acquitted party for storage. An insurer, by contrast, would have
to make full restitution for an error, and would pay compensatory and
punitive penalties as well.

And whenever such a company might face customer pressure to use coercion,
you can be sure that that pressure would be matched by market pressure not
to use coercion. Insurers representing opposing parties would tend to work
between themselves first, out of court. In a free society, businesses simply
don't have incentives to resort to violence.

The assumption that people are basically good

Remaining are the "human nature" objections to freedom from forcible
government. A common protest is that a completely free market requires that
"people are basically good." This is not correct; to the contrary, what
makes a market work is that people are self-interested. In every field of
endeavor outside government, producers must attract and keep customers. They
can do this only by pleasing customers, inducing them to purchase from them
when the customers are free to purchase from someone else. Humans already
are self-interested, and want to be pleased. Hence, the market is a 24/7
watchdog with 280 million pairs of eyes and ears. Each one of those 280
million customers earns less money than he wants to, and therefore makes
purchases in a discriminating fashion. This applies to customers of private
police forces and insurance agencies who provide coverage against natural
disasters, foreign invasions, etc., just as it applies to customers who buy
shoes. Everybody watches everybody else by demanding good products and
services at reasonable prices - you already do this every day - and
everybody has greater and more affordable recourse against frauds and
unethical manufacturers when private justice is available.

Establishing all these private systems is easy: Entrepreneurs do all the
difficult and risky business-development work for you, while you just keep
on living, making decisions in your own best interest the way you always
have. That's how you already do the critical, governing work of deciding
which solutions, entrepreneurs, and firms survive and which ones fail.

Utopia

So, is anarcho-capitalism (that's really just another name for liberty)
utopian? Of course not; much of what is attractive about the absence of
forcible government is how the market handles the conflicts that any adult
knows are inevitable. Anarcho-capitalism is in this sense the same as any
other political system. Political systems are attempts to handle conflicts.
Under a truly free market, you have 280 million American minds working to
handle the conflicts, voting voluntarily with their dollars for the best
solutions for each of them under their own circumstances; under forcible
government, you have a tiny percentage of those minds trying to handle
things for everyone else, and forcing everyone else at gunpoint to accept
government's ideas of solutions.

Many regular readers of LewRockwell.com know more than I've written here
already; I'm hoping readers new to libertarian theory, and readers of other
websites who might pick up this article, will pursue the links above and
find that there is a mountain of proof, covering all of recorded history up
to the present day, that we can do anything government can do, and better.
People acting freely in their own interest continue to prove this, and they
do so not because of government benevolence, but in spite of it.

"Don" <one-if-by-land DeleteThis @concord.com> wrote in message
news:ZyUkc.543$Ga.318@fe25.usenetserver.com...
 > Why Abolishing Government Would Not Bring Chaos


All that's been done here is to replace a single government with dozens of
smaller overlapping and intertwining governments, depending on the
interests involved.

If you'll still have criminals that require private police, what entity
promulgated the laws that define criminal behavior? Upon what authority
will the private police will act, and who, exactly, constituted that
authority? What entity hired the private police?

No matter how much one may wish for a perfect world, the fact remains that
if two or more people live together in a group or locale, there will arise
collective needs and responsibilities that must be addressed. By addressing
these needs and responsibilities you have created government, no matter what
other name you choose to call it. Everything from that point onward is
simply arguing over style and technique.<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->