Reason, Passion and Salvation

Stefan Molyneux
Host, Freedomain Radio
www.freedomainradio.com

For the audio version of this article, please click here.

When I was younger, and optimistic to the point of being naïve, I had an economics professor – let's call him Dr. Destructo – who repeatedly made the following argument:

"War is good for the economy, because it reduces unemployment, and raises the demand for goods, capital and services. Government demands for gear, men and munitions stimulates production. Men are sent overseas, which creates job vacancies at home. More employment means more income, which in turn creates demand for additional production."

I clearly remember asking him if the elimination of unemployment and so on was a desirable end, and I remember him staring at me as if I were slightly stupid, and saying: "Of course, because it adds to the net wealth of society! And this demand keeps increasing, because in war, goods get continually damaged and destroyed!"

One student, who was much better read than I was, brought up Hazlitt's arguments about the fallacy of the broken window, which is that a broken window will provide work to the glazier, but only at the expense of everyone else, and to the detriment of the economy as a whole.

Dr. Destructo went into a long and convoluted argument as to why this was not the case. No one could follow it, but no one asked any questions, because in those days we were mightily pressed to sell our common sense for good grades.

As I said, in those days I was optimistic to the point of being naïve, and had faith that our teachers truly believed what they preached. After the class, I was walking through the parking lot when I saw a nice Porsche with the vanity plate "Destructo". Humming to myself, I thought about what the good professor had said, pulled out my keys, and scratched his car up and down both sides.

Just as I was finishing, I heard an enraged scream. Dr. Destructo came sprinting up, demanding to know just what the hell I was doing.

I blinked. "Well, I'm increasing employment, of course! Why?"

"You little punk!" he snarled at me. "You're going to pay for this!"

"What? But – why would that be necessary?"

"Why? Because you've just scratched up my car!"

"No – this can be paid for by the increase in the net wealth of society – remember, you said that reducing unemployment was a good thing, and that destroying stuff adds to the wealth of society – which is desirable. So I'm a little confused…"

"Well, damn it, I'm not going to pay for this. We're going to march straight to the Dean's office and call your parents, you little vandal!"

There followed quite an altercation between Dr. Destructo, my parents and myself – which in hindsight could be termed my real education. My parents were not as sympathetic to my perspective as I'd hoped they might be. When I explained my reasoning, my dad retorted: "Everyone knows that professors talk a lot of trash!" I asked him why I should go to university then, but he accused me of changing the subject.

I did end up having to pay for the repairs, and received a fairly poor mark in Professor Destructo's class. I did, however, learn a very valuable lesson, which is that there can be a cavernous gap between what people preach and what they practice.

Why did this professor teach that the destruction of goods was beneficial, but then rail against me when I destroyed his goods? Why did he intellectually believe that war was good for the economy as a whole, but then emotionally he recognized the truth? Why did he scornfully dismiss the fallacy of the broken window, but instinctually grasp that fallacy when he saw me keying his Porsche?

Even more importantly, when he reacted emotionally in an economically sound manner, why did that not cause him to doubt any of his intellectual ideas?

I wanted to know how widespread this rank hypocrisy was. The next semester, I had a sociology professor who preached that the strong must be taxed in order to support the weak – that the able must be forced to serve the less able. I found all this rather hard to swallow, because it bothered me on so many levels, but did my best to understand it. Sadly, my best was not good enough, and I was getting a steady stream of D's in her class. After pondering her instructions for many days, I finally realized – in a burst of illumination – exactly what she had been talking about. I asked her to point out her best student, so I could get some help improving my marks. She pointed out a girl named Sue.

Right after class, I caught up with Sue in the parking lot, and said that I would beat her up if she didn't do my homework for me.

What a mess! Tears, protestations, marches to the Dean's office, threatened suspension and charges of bullying all ensued. I did my best to stand my ground, but it did no good. I told them that I was merely forcing the more able to help out the less able – as I put it, a form of "Marks-ism" – just as I had been taught! I couldn't for the life of me understand why everyone was so angry. "You're like a politician who tells me that it's good to pay my taxes, but when I actually pay my taxes, you throw me in jail!"

This happened many, many times throughout my academic career. I had a history professor who told me that history is completely subjective – then gave me bad marks for getting historical dates "wrong" on my final exam. I told him that if history is completely subjective, then those dates cannot be "wrong," because they are "right" for me. "In fact," I said, "I decided not to study because you told us that history was completely subjective, so studying made no sense. When you asked for dates on the exam, I thought it was a sort of test – and that if I put down 'objective' dates, I would fail!"

Again, this escalated to the Dean's office, where little understanding – and less sympathy – awaited me.

My psychology professor kept telling us that morality was subjective, that there were no absolute standards of right or wrong, and that imposing our own values on others was bad. That was a great relief to me, since it is far easier to buy a term paper than it is to write one. After I handed in my paper, however, my professor dragged me to the Dean's office and accused me of plagiarism. "But," I protested, "you told me that ethics was subjective, and that it is wrong to impose my beliefs on other people. I don't believe in plagiarism, but you do – what gives you the right, by your own theory, to impose your beliefs on me?"

The Dean and the professor both looked at me with a mix of scorn and pity. I can imagine the same look coming from the manager of a corrupt casino, who sees a man keep coming back and losing his money, not realizing that the game is rigged.

Every time I tried to put into practice what my professors taught me, I was violently punished. It took me a long time to figure out what was going on – I did not have the cynicism back then to ascribe it merely to a corrupt form of fraud – but eventually I think I came up with something useful.

The most fundamental barrier to the spread of libertarian ideas is this terrifying gap between theory and practice. "Theory" describes a vague, almost Platonic realm, while "practice" describes merely pragmatic actions in the present.

For instance, I am often asked how a stateless society could conceivably work, and if there are any examples of such a society existing at any time. In response, I ask: "Do you use violence to achieve your goals? How many times a year do you use the state court system? Did your wife marry you voluntarily, or did you kidnap her and lock her in your basement? Did you get your current job by going for an interview and winning the position voluntarily, or did you kidnap your employer's children and hold them hostage?"

I have never met anyone who regularly uses violence to achieve his ends (I'm not saying that such people don't exist, but they tend not to move in debating circles). I have also never met anyone who regularly uses the state court system – though I have met many people who hate the courts for their injustice and inefficiency.

This is very strange, when you think about it. People who don't use violence to get what they want say that not using violence to get what you want is impossible. People who would never pick up a gun and force their neighbours to pay for their children's education enthusiastically support the public school system. People who would never shoot a foreigner just because some gray-haired guy told them to are rabid supporters of military imperialism.

I have written a book called "On Truth: The Tyranny of Illusion" detailing just how this cavernous disconnect between theory and practice arises – but I will sum up one or two additional points here.

The most important lesson my experiences in university taught me is that no one has a clue about ethics. What people really do is repeat the nonsense that they have been told in order to get the things that they want. Professors spout the most irrational nonsense about subjectivity and relativism and argue that destruction equals wealth because if they do, they get to be professors. Court toadies praise the king not because the king is praiseworthy, but because if they do, they get to be court toadies. Rappers have a "posse" due to their wealth, not their virtue.

However, it is fundamentally humiliating to lie about virtue for a living. Misleading the young about morality is a particularly sickening way to earn one's daily bread.

When people do bad things – and what can be worse than teaching the young that evil is virtue? – they have only two choices. They can either stop doing bad things, or they can redefine those bad things as good things.

There are no prizes for guessing which is the more prevalent solution.

The immoral pragmatism involved in making a living by corrupting the young is so ghastly that it can only be sustained by completely separating theory from practice. When you want to keep doing bad things, you must separate your self-justifying theories from your empirical actions, otherwise your guilt and self-hatred will arise and compel you to change your behaviour. You must numb your conscience by repeating over and over that morality has nothing to do with practicality – but only because the practicality that you have chosen is completely immoral.

Of course, when you come across someone who joins theory and practice together – as I did when keying my professor's car – this threatens the split that you have set up between theory and practice, between ethics and action. The rage that you feel is really hostility towards your own corruption, not for my action. You want to punish me because my actions make you feel bad. Since I make you feel bad, punishing me becomes a twisted form of self-defense. Since you are not living up to any kind of decent values, when your real values are put into practice, you realize how corrupt you are, which causes you to lash out.

Recognizing and understanding this psychological mechanism is, I submit, essential to libertarians. The greatest barrier we face is not the state, or taxation, or imperialism, but rather moral hypocrisy. People are well paid to do bad things – it is always emotionally volatile to confront people on their corruption, but it is a habit that we must cultivate within ourselves. We know that we are right, that our arguments against violence and statism are both valid and moral – but the arguments themselves will never change the world.

It is our passionate commitment to those arguments, and the strength we must find in ourselves to confront people on their hypocrisies – and to live our values ourselves – that will save the world.

Reason is the engine, but passion is the fuel. The truth must be defined logically; the world must be saved passionately.

 

Stefan Molyneux [send him mail] is the host of Freedomain Radio, one of the most popular Libertarian podcasts on the internet. He is also the author of On Truth: The Tyranny of Illusion.

Freedomain Radio - The Free Will Series

My new three-part series on free will versus determinism...

The Supercharged Stock Market: An Object Lesson in the Perils of Coercion

A central reason for the instability of the stock market is the hundreds of billions of dollars being forced into it by endless government programs.

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The Freedomain Radio Introduction to Philosophy Series

Freedomain Radio - The Stateless Society: An Examination of Alternatives

We need not a new president, but no president. This short video explains how society will flourish without governments. Imagine! :)

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Libertarians and Taxation: To Pay or Not to Pay?

As libertarians, the question of participation in a statist society can be a great challenge. How can we claim to be resolutely anti-state, anti-war and anti-violence while at the same time driving on public roads, consuming public services, and paying the very taxes that make the coercive power of the state possible?

If we are anti-state, is it moral hypocrisy to send our children to state schools? If we are against the redistribution of wealth in society, is it two-faced to accept government loans or grants in order to attend university? If we are against the monopolistic power of unions, does it violate our integrity to pursue and accept tenured professorships?

If we create a spectrum in order to frame this question, it would start with two extremes at either end. At one end is the proposition that it is impossible to morally participate to any degree in a society ruled by a government. We may call this the “Walden” position, in so far as it generally requires fleeing to the woods, building our own shelter and subsisting on nuts, berries and bitterness. However, by taking this position, we are certainly not surrendering any resources to the state.

At the other extremity is a total disconnect between values and actions – the “Rambo” position. At this end, it is considered morally virtuous for a libertarian to join the army and take up arms against the “foes” of the state – in other words, to morally oppose statist violence while being paid to lavishly enact it.

Coercion and Moral Responsibility

Few ethicists would argue that coercion has no effect on moral responsibility. If you force me at gunpoint to jump off a cliff, my resulting death could scarcely be termed a “suicide.” If the threat of violence had no effect on moral responsibility, there could be no such crimes as rape, theft and murder, because there would be no difference between voluntarism and coercion. If we do not accept that violence changes the moral nature of an interaction, then “theft” becomes indistinguishable from “donation,” just as “rape” becomes a redundant synonym for “lovemaking.”

Using this distinction, we can reasonably say that a man who is drafted into an Army has a different moral status than a man who volunteers.

However, the judgements involved in these moral situations can be highly complex. The man who is drafted into an Army does have the option of taking the “Walden” exit (AKA the “Canadian” option), and simply disappearing from society rather than be forced to fight and kill for the state.

On the other hand, a man who voluntarily joins an Army may have been told from infancy onwards that the life of a soldier is heroic, noble, brave etc. It is hard to imagine that the basic reality of military service – the willingness to use violence on the whim of politicians – would ever have been clearly explained to him. He genuinely believes that he is serving his fellow citizens, not joining a costumed gang of guns-for-hire. Even the source of his pay check is probably unclear to him – he imagines that he is protecting his fellow citizens, without grasping that they must pay for his upkeep through their taxes, or be shot.

The question of ethics in the absence of knowledge is highly complex. We would scarcely call a medieval doctor a poor physician if he failed to prescribe antibiotics, since they had not been invented yet. “Morality” is a form of technology, like navigation – it is harder to blame a man without a compass for getting lost, since he lacks an essential tool for staying on the right path. Similarly, it is hard to call a man “evil” when, for his entire life, vices have been portrayed as virtues. If I teach my children that chocolate is good for them, and that vegetables and exercise are bad, they cannot be held solely responsible for their resulting ill health.

Children – particularly those in public schools – are told over and over about the nobility, courage and heroism of the military. Movies, books and popular culture generally reinforce this propaganda, as do the endless streams of yellow ribbons adorning cars. Does the average child have the capacity to clamber out of this bottomless well of statist propaganda? It is unjust to expect him to reinvent the entire science of ethics from the ground up – opposing endless cultural norms – and thus it would be unjust to assign him sole responsibility for signing up.

On the other hand, there can be no ethical progress if no one is ever held accountable for errors. To take the example of antibiotics again, when there is no such thing as antibiotics, a doctor cannot be condemned for failing to prescribe them. When a doctor first hears of antibiotics, he should not start handing them out like candy, until more information became available about their long-term efficacies and risks. However, at some point along the “adoption curve,” a doctor does become negligent if he fails to prescribe antibiotics.

In essence, libertarians are cutting-edge ethicists striving to redefine the concept of morality. We are researchers at the radical edge of moral understanding, and our central goal must be to bring our new knowledge to bear against the historical and irrational prejudices of existing moral illusions.

We are like doctors in the midst of a terrible plague, who have discovered that the plague is transmitted through drinking water. However, the common medical wisdom is that the plague is prevented or cured by drinking more and more water – the very action that exacerbates the spread of the disease.

Most people, of course, listen to the vast majority of the doctors and drink like fishes in the hopes of preventing or curing their disease. In the same way, libertarians know that state violence and fraud creates great evil, corrupts society and destabilizes the economy – but the solution put forward by most experts is to use more violence and fraud to combat these evils.

As doctors in a plague who know the true cure, what are our real options?

We can vanish from society, of course, taking our wisdom with us and living out our lives in a Thoreauian wilderness. This solution will doubtless reduce our frustration – and create a fruitless kind of integrity –but it will also leave millions of people in great suffering since, if all the truth-tellers vanish, liars alone inherit the earth.

On the other hand, we could speak out against drinking impure water, but still drink copious amounts of it ourselves. This level of hypocrisy would scarcely serve our cause, since it would be highly evident that we were acting in total opposition to our prescription.

The most fruitful action, it would seem, must lie somewhere in between the “Walden” and “Rambo” positions. Fleeing society abandons the world to liars, cheats and murderers. Fully immersing ourselves in a system we know is evil undermines our credibility to the point where virtue becomes indistinguishable from hypocrisy.

If the water is impure, but we must drink it to live in society, then the most sensible course – if we wish to help our fellow men – must be to drink as little of it as possible, and convince people of the value of that course by making our case – and displaying our health – at every opportunity.

To bring the metaphor back to earth, we cannot live in society without paying taxes, consuming government services, and contributing financially to actions we know are evil. You cannot even read this article without using data protocols first developed by governments, and funded through coercion.

Since anyone reading this article must by definition have accepted some level of interaction with coercion, the question thus becomes not “should we pay our taxes?” but rather “to what degree should we participate in statism?”

Participation and Sanction

First of all, we must understand that participation is not sanction. Dragging an atheist to church does not make him religious. Locking a man in your basement does not make him a houseguest. Paying protection money to the Mafia does not make you a cheerleader for organized crime.

Secondly, ideas are judged by logic and evidence, not by the perfect consistency of those who hold them. The fact that Hitler did not believe in leprechauns does not make the existence of leprechauns any more likely. A fat man may be a perfectly valid source of effective diet tips. All too often, libertarians are attacked as hypocrites for any form of participation in a statist society. Yes, we use the roads. Yes, we use the Internet. Yes – some of us even use libraries, teach in public schools and take out student loans. That has zero bearing on the validity of the nonaggression principle as a moral standard. A kleptomaniac is perfectly capable of advancing a flawless theory of property rights, just as a lung doctor can smoke.

Furthermore, if hypocrisy is to be the standard by which moral arguments are judged, who is more hypocritical – the libertarian who is forced to participate in statism, or the statist who advocates the use of government violence to resolve disputes, but debates without pulling out a gun?

Reasonable Limits

This is not to say, however, that all forms of statist participation are equally valid. The fact that no water can ever be perfectly pure does not mean that we should throw up our hands and drink nothing but seawater.

Twenty years ago, I considered taking student loans and grants to go to university. The way I framed the problem was thus: if a man steals my bicycle, then leaves it standing somewhere, I am perfectly entitled to “take” it back. If my employer unjustly withholds my salary, I am perfectly entitled to take a quantity of goods from him equivalent to the salary he owes me.

Imagine that a local Mafia Don extorts money from you for years. One day, he falls asleep on a bench, with a large bag of cash by his side. If you happen along and find him in this position, is it theft if you grab “his” money? What if, over the years, you really have no idea exactly how much money has been extorted from you? What if you know that the amount of money in the bag is far less than what has been stolen from you? Certainly you would be perfectly justified in grabbing everything – especially since you know you will be paying extortion money for the rest of your life.

This is analogous to the situation that we find ourselves in with governments. I have paid an extraordinary amount of taxation over the course of my life – particularly since I have been an entrepreneur, and co-founded a company which paid millions of dollars to the state. The amount of money I received for university tuition through government subsidies was equivalent to the amount I later paid in personal taxes over a few months. (Being kept in the mental gulags of state schools for fourteen years was an even more egregious form of robbery!)

Knowing in advance that I would be stolen from for the rest of my life, was it wrong of me to take some portion of that money for myself in advance? It hardly seems so. In a statist society, taxed money exists in a state of nature, like fish in the sea. It can never be returned to its rightful owners, since those can never be reasonably determined – and of course the national debt blurs it beyond any capacity for unravelling. Morally, what happens to money after it is stolen is far less important than the fact that it should never be stolen in the first place.

The Middle Ground

However, the fact that the Mafia steals your money does not make it OK for you to become a hit man. Since stealing money is wrong, but stealing it back is not, becoming directly involved in the initiation of force is still immoral. Joining the police force or signing up for the military turns you from victim to enforcer, which is quite a different moral category. It is one thing to steal a husk of bread from a concentration camp guard – it is quite another to voluntarily become a guard yourself.

Thus, although participation in a statist society has great value, and keeps the most rational people in the crucial debate about society’s future, joining the ranks of the oppressors is morally indefensible. Like most ethical continuums, there is a small personal aspect to the “right” action, but the moral perils of the extremes are clear.

Stay in society, keep fighting for the truth, but never sell your soul.

Why Does Anybody Get Federal Farm Aid?

An article Wilt Alston and I wrote showing the terrible effects of government 'aid' to farmers...

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The Supercharged Stock Market: An Object Lesson in the Perils Of Coercion

Imagine that a farmer comes to you for advice.

"My chickens keep dying," he complains, "and I have no idea why!"

"What do they die of?" you ask.

"Oh, the usual – diseases spread like wildfire, and they often get crushed to death – or just asphyxiate."

"Asphyxiate?" you reply, rather startled. "How so?"

"Well," says the farmer, "they never seem to be able to get enough air. I think that their lungs must be very weak."

"Where do you keep them?" you ask.

"Oh, in a shed of course. About 10' x 10'."

"And how many chickens are in the shed?"

"12,000."

Your jaw drops. "12,000! How on earth do you get 12,000 chickens in a shed?"

"Oh, at this point, I just jam them down the chimney, but it's really full. Nowadays, I have to use a broom stick."

“What? Who on earth told you to put 12,000 chickens in a little shed?”

The farmer blinks. “Oh, the guy who sells me the chickens, why?”

At this point, it would be fair to say that the mystery was solved. Complex theories about the lung capacity of chickens and the mystery of disease transmission would be quite unnecessary.

This analogy is very useful in helping understand one central reason why modern stock markets tend towards instability.

We all know how the government messes up the stock market through printing money, inflation, hyper-regulation, controlling interest rates, defense spending, deficit financing and so on – but there is another factor at work that is less obvious.

The Causes

As we all know, the stock market is designed to allow companies to raise money by selling shares to individuals. Individuals should ideally only invest in companies that they understand – investing in unknown companies or markets is more appropriately termed "speculation" rather than investment, and is generally indistinguishable from gambling.

Of course, there's nothing wrong with gambling, as long as you risk your own money, and at your own discretion. However, particularly since the Second World War, governments around the world have been increasingly forcing us at gunpoint to put our money into the stock market, much to the delight of money managers, corporate executives, stockbrokers – and politicians.

There are many examples of how we end up being forced to speculate. 401(k) plans only exempt current income from taxation if it ends up being invested – putting the money into your bank account or under your mattress will not save it from the tax man. The amount of money that 401(k) plans have herded into the stock market is truly staggering – rising from $105 billion in 1995 to over $14 trillion in 2005.

Of course, some of that money would have been invested even without 401(k) coercion, but how much? 10%? 20%? Half? Whatever the number, it is far less than what is currently being forced into the stock market through government regulation.

Let's look at some other sources. Hundreds of billions of dollars are currently being invested by unions – particularly in the public sector. The US teachers' union, for example, along with other non-profit groups, has an estimated $607 billion invested through 403(b) accounts. The very existence of these unions would be questionable in a free-market – there is almost no chance that they would end up as investment vehicles for their members' money. At present, however, trillions of dollars of forced union dues in state-protected monopolies are flooding into the stock market.

Let's not forget the surpluses of various government programs as well, such as unemployment insurance and some pension plans. This surplus, which is stripped from you at gunpoint, is also often invested in equities. Various government agencies also directly invest in companies – in Canada, the state agency HRDC recently had to write off over $5 billion in bad investments, out of an annual budget of over $70 billion.

The Effects

Around the world, governments are forcibly injecting trillions of dollars into stock markets. What are the effects of this "supercharging"?

First and foremost, it creates enormous instability in the stock market itself. Too much money ends up chasing too few stocks, creating a subtle shift in the concept of "value."

Ideally, "value" represents an actual and potential demand for goods and services. In a supercharged stock market, however, "value" tends to devolve into "whatever I can sell the stock for," which is a subtle but essential shift in perception. When the assessment of price becomes more based on the demand for a company's stock, rather the market demand for a company's products, a subtle and corrosive corruption enters into the equation.

When too much money sloshes around the stock market, chasing incremental and short-term changes in stock prices, the focus of chief executives begins to change. Rather than building corporate value for the long-term, they end up chasing stock prices in the short term. Since excess money jumps from stock to stock at a moment's notice, the temptation to misrepresent earnings and sales projections – as well as pursue short-term "pump and dump" strategies – becomes far greater. Executives who tell the truth about shortcomings often get punished; those who cover them up are all too often rewarded.

Skilful manipulation of a supercharged stock market thus creates rewards measured in the billions. Since enormous "value" can be rapidly created through the manipulation of perception, executives can become rich in months or years, rather than decades. The long-term value of "good character" thus goes down, while the short-term value of flashy marketing goes up. Executive salaries continue to rise, as the "value" they can provide increases. In 1970, US CEOs were paid28 times more than the average worker. By 2005, this had jumped to 465 times more.

Ambitious executives do not take very long to figure out that they are punished when they tell the truth, and rewarded when they prevaricate. Since "speculation" has largely displaced investment in the stock market, and the constant supply of additional capital is guaranteed through government coercion, an amoral feeding frenzy has taken over.

Naturally, the problems which arise from coercion are inevitably ascribed to voluntarism. State manipulation of the stock market is ignored; the resulting instability is invariably blamed on the free market – thus paving the way for additional (and ridiculous) regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley. Executives can now be sent to jail for a single mistake by a single accountant – but no government executive loses his job over the slaughter in Iraq!

One reason that politicians like this setup so much is that it gives them enormous power over the financial sector, which has become largely dependent on the money that the government "sends" their way. If the government were to abolish 401(k) plans, for instance, and simply refrain from taxing the associated income, the financial services industry – one of many that depends on this violence – would largely collapse. Were we free to make our own investment decisions, the landscape of what is now currently called "stock market" would change almost beyond recognition.

Of course, this is highly unlikely to occur. Governments almost never reform themselves from within; they only change under the threat of fiscal collapse.

In other words, a whole lot more chickens will have to die before the farmer changes his ways.

On Truth: The Tyranny of Illusion - new book

Below, please find the first few pages on my new book: On Truth: The Tyranny of Illusion, available at lulu.

From a short-term, merely practical standpoint, you really do not want to read this book. This book will mess up your life, as you know it. This book will change every single one of your relationships – most importantly, your relationship with yourself. This book will change your life even if you never implement a single one of the proposals it contains. This book will change you even if you disagree with every single idea it puts forward. Even if you put it down right now, this book will have changed your life, because now you know that you are afraid of change.

This book is radioactive and painful – it is only incidentally the kind of radiation and pain that will cure you.

Relationships

There are really only three kinds of relationships in the world. The first kind is the one we all dream of – joyous, mutually beneficial, deep, meaningful, fun, a real pleasure to have and to hold.

This kind of relationship is extraordinarily rare. If this kind of relationship were an animal, it would not even be on the endangered list. It would be by many considered extinct.

The second kind of relationship is mutually beneficial, but not joyous, deep, or meaningful. This is the kind of relationship you have with your grocer, your banker, and perhaps your boss. It is voluntary, defined by an implicit or explicit contract, and can usually be broken or allowed to lapse without guilt, regret or remorse.

This kind of relationship is not uncommon, but also not very important. We do not lose our lives, our happiness or our very souls in the pits of these kinds of relationships. They are, as the saying goes, “dry calculations of mutual utility.” We are not obligated to go to the deathbeds of our bankers; our grocers do not force us to attend church when we do not believe; we rarely get into fights with our bosses about whether or not we should baptize our children.

No, it is the third kind of relationship that we are most concerned with in our lives. It is the third kind of relationship that so often tortures us. It is the third kind of relationship that undermines our joy, integrity and independence.

The first kind of relationship does not involve obligation, but pleasure. There is no need for guilt or manipulation, bullying or control, demands, tears or passive-aggression. We do not need obligation to draw us to that which gives us pleasure, any more than a child needs to be cajoled into eating his candy.

The second kind of relationship does involve obligation, but it is voluntarily chosen, for mutual advantage. We pay our mortgage; the bank gives us a house. The relationship is contractual, and thus does not need guilt or manipulation.

It is the third kind of relationship that this book will focus on.

It is the third kind of relationship that is eating us alive.

The Third Kind

The third kind of relationship has three main components. The first is that it is not chosen; the second is that it involves obligations, and the third is that it is considered moral.

The first and most important aspect of these kinds of relationships is that they are not entered into voluntarily. You are born into them. You do not choose your parents. You do not choose your siblings. You do not choose your extended family. You do not choose your country. You do not choose your culture. You do not choose your government. You do not choose your religion. You do not choose your school. You do not choose your teachers.

Sadly, when you are a child, the list is nearly endless.

You are born into this world without choice, into a familial, social, educational, political and geographical environment that is merely accidental. And for the rest of your life, everyone will try to convince you that you are responsible for this accident.

Your parents decided to have a child – you were in no way involved in the choice, since you did not as yet exist when the decision was made. Even if you were conceived by accident, or adopted, your parents decided to keep you.

Thus your parents’ relationship with you when you were a child was essentially contractual, in the same way that when you buy a dog, you’re obligated to feed it. Naturally, it is preferable – and certainly possible – for your relationship with your parents to be loving, mutually enjoyable, respectful and great fun all around.

But as I said before, this kind of relationship is, sadly, all too rare.

Entire generations of children have grown up with the idea that the act of being born creates an obligation.

This is entirely false, and one of the most destructive myths of mankind.

First, I will tell you what is true. Then I will tell you why it is true. Then I will tell you how to change.

What Is True

It is true that your parents chose to have you. It is true that by making that choice, your parents assumed a voluntary obligation towards you. That obligation consisted of two main parts: the first was physical, the second was moral.

The physical part of that obligation was clothing, food, medical attention, shelter and so on – the base physical requirements. I am not going to spend much time on that in this book, since the vast majority of parents succeed in providing food and shelter for their children – and those who fail in this regard are so obviously deficient that a philosophical book is scarcely required to illuminate their shortcomings.

The moral obligations that your parents assumed by having you were twofold. The first part is more or less understood in society, and consists of all the standard virtues such as educating you, keeping you safe, refraining from physical or emotional abuse and so on.

The second part of your parents’ moral obligation towards you is much more subtle and corrosive. This is the realm of integrity, and it is a great challenge for societies throughout the world.

Integrity

The greatest failings of parents are in the realms of integrity. Integrity can be defined as consistency between reality, ideas and behaviour. Consistency with reality is not telling a child that daddy is “sick” when he is in fact drunk. Consistency with behaviour is not slapping a child for hitting another child. The value of this kind of integrity is also well understood by many, even if imperfectly practiced, and we will not deal with it much here either.

It is consistency with ideas that causes the most problems for families – and the most long-term suffering for children throughout their lives.

When you were a child, you were told over and over that certain actions were either good or bad. Telling the truth was good; stealing was bad. Hitting your brother was bad; helping your grandmother was good. Being on time was good; failing to complete chores was bad.

Implicit in all these instructions – moral instructions – was the premise that your parents knew what was right and what was wrong; what was good, and what was bad.

Do you think that was really true? Do you think that your parents knew what was right and wrong when you were a child?

When we tell a child that something is wrong – not just incorrect, but morally wrong – there are really only two possibilities. The first is that we actually know what is right and wrong in general, and we are applying our universal knowledge of right and wrong to a specific action committed by the child.

This is how it is always portrayed to the child. It is almost always the most dangerous lie in the world.

The second possibility is that we are telling our child that his actions are “wrong” for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with morality whatsoever.

For instance, we might tell a child that stealing is wrong because:

1. We are embarrassed at our child’s actions.
2. We are afraid of being judged a poor parent.
3. We are afraid that our child’s theft will be discovered.
4. We are simply repeating what was told to us.
5. We enjoy humiliating our child.
6. Correcting our child on “ethics” makes us feel morally superior.
7. We want our child to avoid behaviour that we were punished for as children.

... and so on

Assuming they are not terrified, most children, on first receiving moral instructions, will generally respond by asking “why?” Why is stealing wrong? Why is lying wrong? Why is bullying wrong? Why is hitting wrong?

These are all perfectly valid questions, akin to asking why the sky is blue. The problem arises in the fact that parents have no rational answers, but endlessly pretend that they do.

When a child asks us why something is wrong, we are put in a terrible bind. If we say that we do not know why lying is universally wrong, we believe we will lose our moral authority in the eyes of our children. If we say that we do know why lying is wrong, then we retain our moral authority, but only by lying to our children.

Since the fall of religion, we have lost our way in terms of ethics. As an atheist, I do not mourn the loss of the illusions of gods and devils, but I am alarmed at the fact that we have not yet admitted that the fall of religion has not provided us an objective and rational moral compass. By failing to admit to the fact that we do not know what we are doing ethically, we are perpetrating a grave moral error on our children.

Basically, we are lying to them about being good.

We tell them that certain things they do are right or wrong – yet we do not tell them that we do not know why those things are right or wrong. If our child asks us why lying is wrong, we can say that it causes people pain – but so does dentistry – or we can say “you don’t like it when someone lies to you” – which would be an incentive to not get caught, not to refrain from lying – and so on. Every answer we come up with leads to more questions and inconsistencies. What do we do then?

Why, then, we must bully them.

This does not mean hitting them or yelling at them – though sadly all too often this is the case – because as parents we have a near-infinity of passive-aggressive tactics such as sighing, acting exasperated, changing the subject, offering them a cookie, taking them for a walk, claiming to be “too busy,” distracting or rejecting them in a million and one ways.

These kinds of innocent questions about morality represent a kind of horror for parents. As parents, we must retain our moral authority over our children – but as citizens of modernity, we have no rational basis for that moral authority. Thus we are forced to lie to our children about being good, and about our knowledge of goodness, which transforms virtue from a rational discipline into a fearful fairy tale.

In the past, when religious mythology was dominant, when children asked “Where does the world come from?” parents could reply that God made it. Despite the superstitious ignorance of those who even now make the same claim, most modern parents provide the scientific and rational explanation of where the world came from, or at least send their children to the Web, an encyclopaedia, or the library.

There was a time, though, when the question of where the world came from was very difficult to answer. When religious explanations were becoming less and less credible, but scientific explanations had not become completely established, parents had to say – if they wanted to speak with integrity – “I don’t know where the world came from.”

By openly expressing their lack of certainty, parents not only acted with honesty and integrity, but also stimulated their children to pursue a truth that was admittedly absent from their world.

Alas, we suffer similar difficulties today, but about a far more important topic. The religious basis for ethics has fallen away from us, and we lack any credible or accepted theory to replace it. For a time, patriotism and allegiance to culture had some power to convince children that their elders knew something objective about ethics, but as government and military corruption have become increasingly evident, allegiance to a country, a state or a military ethos has become an increasingly fragile basis for ethical absolutes. Even our cherished theories about the virtues of democracy have come under increasing pressure, as gargantuan governments continue to separate themselves from the wishes of their citizens and act in a virtual “state of nature.”

Religious explanations of virtue have failed not just because we no longer believe in God, but also because it is now completely self-evident that when most people refer to “truth,” they are really referring to culture.

Culture

Think about a father in a Muslim country. When his child asks him: “Daddy, what is goodness?” he will generally answer: “To obey Allah, and obey His Prophet.” Why is that his answer? Is it because he has had direct experience with the Prophet, wrote the holy books himself, and has a deep understanding of morality direct from the original creator? If he had grown up alone on a desert island, would his answer be the same?

Of course not. He is merely repeating what was told to him as a child.

However, there is much more to it than that.

This Muslim father knows that his child is going to have to survive – and hopefully flourish – in a Muslim society. If he tells his child that he does not know what is right and wrong, not only will he lose his moral authority in the eyes of his child, but he will also be setting his child up for endless conflicts with everyone else in his society.

In other words, if everyone else lies to their children, what are the costs – social, romantic, economic and so on – of telling your children the truth?

My neighbour has four lovely children – the other day, his son came and showed me a drawing he’d made, a decent representation of Jesus Christ sitting on a rock and praying to the heavens. In all innocence, he asked me what I thought of the picture. Naturally, I knew that his father had told him that Jesus Christ was a real and living man-god who came back from the dead, floated up to heaven, and will free him of sin if he telepathically communicates his love to this ghost. This is no more or less horrifying than any other cult of guilt and control.

But – what could I say to this child? Could I say that this was a very good drawing of a fictional character? Could I tell him that it was an excellent representation of a fairy tale? Could I see the pain and surprise in his eyes? Could I imagine the conversation that he would later have with his father, asking why the nice man next door told him that Jesus Christ was a fictional character? Could I imagine the coldness that would then descend upon the cordial relations between our two houses? Could I imagine his father telling all of his children to stay away from the nice man next door, who wants to take God away from them? Could I stomach the chilled looks that I would receive every time I saw his family for the next few decades..?


On Truth: The Tyranny of Illusion
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Stateless Dictatorships: How a Free Society Prevents the Re-emergence of a Government

By far the most common objection to the idea of a stateless society is the belief that one or more private Dispute Resolution Organizations (DROs) would overpower all the others and create a new government. This belief is erroneous at every conceivable level, but has a kind of rugged persistence that is almost admirable.

Here is the general objection:

In a society without a government, whatever agencies arise to help resolve disputes will inevitably turn into a replacement government. These agencies may initially start as competitors in a free market, but as time goes by, one will arise to dominate all the others militarily, and thus impose a new state upon the population. The instability and violence that this civil war will inflict upon the population is far worse than any existing democratic state structure. Thus a stateless society is far too risky an experiment, since we will just end up with a government again anyway!

This objection to an anarchic social structure is considered self-evident, and thus is never presented with proof. Naturally, since the discussion of a stateless society involves a future theoretical situation, empirical examples cannot apply.

However, like all propositions involving human motivation, the "replacement state" hypothesis can be subjected to logical examination.

Premises

The basis of the "replacement state" hypothesis is the premise that people prefer to maximize income with the lowest possible expenditure of energy. The motivation for a DRO to use force is that, by eliminating all competition and taking military control of a geographical region, a DRO can make as much money as possible, with the lowest possible expenditure of energy.

We can fully accept this premise, as long as it is applied consistently to all human beings in a stateless society. To make the "replacement state" case even stronger, we will also assume that no moral scruples could conceivably get in the way of any decision-making. By reducing the "drive to dominate" to a mere calculation of economic efficiency, we can eliminate any possible ethical brakes on the situation.

Starting Point

Let's start with a stateless society, wherein citizens can voluntarily choose to contract with a DRO for the sake of property protection and dispute resolution. Each citizen also has the right to break his contract with his DRO.

There are essentially three possible ways that a DRO could gain military control of an entire region:

1. By secretly amassing an army, and then suddenly unleashing it upon all competition.
   
2. By openly amassing an army, and then doing the same thing.
3. By posing as a voluntary "Defense DRO," amassing arms supposedly for the legitimate defense of citizens, and then turning those arms against the citizens and instituting itself as a new government.
   

There is one additional possibility, which is that a private citizen can try to assemble his own army.

Let's deal with each of these in turn.

The Secret Army

In this scenario, let's say that a DRO manager called "Bob" decides that he is tired of dealing with customers on a voluntary basis. He decides he is going to spend company money buying enormous amounts of armaments and training an Army. (For the moment, let's assume that Bob can make this decision all on his own, and does not need to submit it to any sort of Board, bank or investor review.)

Let us assume that Bob's DRO has annual revenues of $500 million a year, and profits of $50 million a year.

The most immediate challenge that Bob is going to face is: how on earth am I going to pay for all of this? Given that, in a free society, there is no way of knowing how many citizens are armed – or what kinds of weapons they have – it would be necessary to err on the side of caution and assemble a prodigious and overwhelming army to gain control of an entire region, otherwise the investment would be totally lost in a military defeat. Such armies are scarcely cheap! For the purposes of this argument, let's say that it is going to cost $500 million over five years for Bob to assemble his army – surely a lowball estimate! How is he going to get the money to pay for this?

Raising Rates

The most obvious way for Bob to raise the extra $500 million is to charge his customers more. The $500 million Bob needs represents more than 10 years of his DROs annual profits of $50 million a year (reinvesting the $50m for 5 years at 10% yields $805.26m). Thus, in order to pay for his army within five years, Bob is going to have to more than double his prices. Since we have already assumed that it is Bob's greed that makes him want to create a new government – and that this greed is common to all citizens within the society – we can also assume that his customers share his motivation. Thus, just as Bob wants to have an army so that he can maximize his income, his customers just as surely do not want Bob to have an army, for exactly the same reasons! The moment that Bob informs his customers that he will now be charging them more than double for exactly the same service, he will lose all his customers, and go out of business. No army for Bob!

Full Disclosure

Perhaps, though, Bob recognizes this danger, and plans to keep his customers by telling them that he is raising their rates in order to fund an army. "Help me fund an army by paying me double the price," he tells them, "and I will share in the plunder I'll get when I take over such-and-such a neighbourhood!" Even if we assume that Bob's customers believe him, and are willing to fund such a mad scheme, Bob's secret is now out, and society as a whole – including all the other DROs – become fully aware of Bob's nefarious intentions. Clearly, all the other DROs will immediately cease doing business with Bob's DRO. Since a central value of any DRO is its ability to interact with other DROs – just as a core value of a cell phone company is its ability to interact with other cell phone companies – Bob's DRO will thus be crippled. In other words, Bob will be more than doubling his rates for many years – while providing far inferior service – for a highly uncertain and dangerous "profit."

In addition, Bob's bank would immediately cease doing business with him, rendering him unable to pay his employees, his office rental, or his bills. Bob's electricity company will cease supplying electricity, he will find his taps strangely dry, his phones would be cut off, and many other misfortunes may arise as a result of his desire to become a new dictator. It is hard to imagine him lasting five days, let alone retaining all of his paying customers at double the rates for the five years required to build his army!

Even if all the above problems could somehow be overcome, it's also hard to imagine that Bob's customers would be happy to arm Bob in the hopes of sharing in his plunder. Unlike the government, which can tax at will, DROs must actually protect their customer's property in order to retain their business. Given that those who contract with DROs are those with the most interest in protecting their property, it makes little sense that they would fund Bob's DRO army, since they would have no actual control over that Army once it was created, and thus would have no way of enforcing any "plunder contract" created beforehand. In a free society, people would not try to "protect" their property by funding a powerful army that could then take it away from them at will. That sort of madness requires the existence of a government!

Alternative Funding

Perhaps Bob will try to fund his army in other ways. He may try and borrow the money, but of course his bank would only lend him the money if he comes up with a credible and measurable business plan. If Bob's business plan openly states his desire to create an army, his bank would cease supporting him in any way, shape or form, since the bank would only stand to lose if such an army were created. If Bob took the money from the bank by submitting a fraudulent business plan, the bank would be aware of this almost immediately, and would take the remainder of the money back – and impose stiff penalties on Bob to boot! Again, no army for Bob!

What if Bob tried to pay for his army by reducing the dividends that he was paying to shareholders? Naturally, the shareholders would resent this, and would either have him thrown out, or would simply sell their shares and invest their money elsewhere, thus crippling Bob's DRO. Perhaps Bob would try paying his employees less, which would only drive his employees into the arms of other DROs – also destroying his business.

It's safe to say that it is practically impossible for Bob to get the money to pay for his army – and even if he got such money, his business would never survive such a dangerous transgression of social or economic norms. There are other dangers, however, which are well worth examining.

Defense DROs

The most likely threat would seem to come from "Defense DROs," since those agencies would already have weapons and personnel that might be used against the general population. However, this would be very difficult for two main reasons. First, "Defense DROs" would require investment and banking relationships in order to grow and flourish. Given that investors and banks would not want to fund an army that could steal their property, they would be certain to insert myriad "failsafe" mechanisms into "Defense DRO" contracts. They would make sure that all arms purchases were tracked, that all monies were accounted for, and that no secret armies were being assembled.

"Defense DROs" would also be subject to the same kinds of funding problems as Bob's DRO. Let's say that Dave was the head of a "Defense DRO," and was also one day seized with the desire to assemble his own army and pillage society. First of all, citizens would be unlikely to contract with any "Defense DRO" that would not submit to regular audits of its weapons and accounts to ensure that no secret armies were being created. If Dave decides to bypass this contractual obligation, and start secretly funding his own army, how is he going to pay for it? The moment that he raises his rates without increasing his services, his customers will know exactly what he's up to, and withdraw their support. Bye-bye army. Dave's funding would also be subject to all the other problems raised above.

It can thus be seen that there is no viable way for any DRO to pay for an army without destroying its business in the process. Armies are only really possible when the government can force taxpayers to subsidize them.

Independently Wealthy?

Perhaps, instead of Bob or Dave, we have a privately wealthy individual named Bill, a multibillionaire who decides to raise an army and institute himself as a new dictator. Due to his immense wealth, he is not dependent on any customers, employees, or shareholders. Let's say that he can pay for an Army out of his own pocket, immediately.

Bill's challenge, of course, is that in a free society, he cannot go and pick up a complete army at his local Wal-Mart. Armies are fundamentally uneconomical, expensive overhead at best, and thus it seems likely that geographical defense in a free society would be limited to a couple of dozen nuclear weapons, to deter any potential invader. Thus even if he could get a hold of one, buying a nuke would not help Bill very much, since he would not be able to use it to overwhelm all of the other "Defense DROs."

What about more conventional weapons? Part of the service that "Defense DROs" would offer to subscribers would be a guarantee that they would do everything in their power to prevent the rise of an independent army – either of their own making, or of anyone else's. Thus arms manufacturers would have to provide rigorous accounts of everything they were making and selling, to be sure that they weren't selling arms to some secret army, probably in the foothills of Montana. If people were really worried about the possibility of someone creating a private army, they would only do business with "Defense DROs" that guaranteed that they bought their arms from open and legitimate arms dealers – subject to independent verification, of course.

Thus when Bill came along trying to buy $500 million worth of weapons, and hire an army of tens of thousands of soldiers, one question would be: where on earth would they come from? Arms manufacturers would not be sitting on $500 million of inventory, due to the limited demand for such products. Thus the arms manufacturers would have to really crank up their production, which could not be hidden from the general population, or the Defense DROs that such extra production would directly threaten. In order to make all the extra armaments, manufacturers would have to borrow money to expand production. Where would they get this extra money from? Their bank would surely not fund such a dangerous endeavour, and would immediately notify any Defense DROs it had contracts with, and drop the rogue arms manufacturer as a customer. Defense DROs would also never to do business with such a dangerous arms manufacturer ever again, thus driving it out of business.

Secondly, even if Bill could somehow get his hands on the necessary weapons, where would these tens of thousands of new troops come from? The military would not be exactly the same kind of "in demand" career that it is today. In order to assemble an army of tens of thousands of men, he would have to advertise, recruit, pay them, train them, etc. This would be a pretty hard thing to hide. Since it would be completely obvious that he was assembling an army, what could people in society conceivably do to stop him?

First of all, if this were a conceivable risk, his bank would have a clause in its service agreement giving it the right to refuse to honor any payments clearly designed to fund a private army. Secondly, no DRO would do business with Bill – or his soldiers – the moment that it became apparent what he was up to. This would mean that none of Bill's soldiers would have any guarantees that they would get paid, grocery stores would not sell them food, electricity companies would cut them off, gas stations would not sell them gas, etc. When society as a whole wants to stop doing business with you, it becomes very hard to get by!

The Question of Profit

Let's say that DRO Bob can somehow get his army – the question is: can he make that army pay? The initial premise of the "replacement state" argument is that people prefer to maximize income with the lowest possible expenditure of energy.

Remember, it costs Bob $500 million over five years to assemble his army – let's say that it costs another $1 billion over the next five years to subdue a reasonably-sized region, due to the loss of life and equipment involved in combat. What kinds of financial returns can he expect?

If you know that Bob's Army is going to be at your house in two weeks, and there is no way to stop it, you would just pull a "scorched-earth Russian defense" and leave, right? You would take everything of value with you, and destroy everything that you could not bring. Thus what would Bob's Army end up getting control of? Not much.

However, let's imagine that Bob's Army could somehow seize assets that would be worth something. How much would they have to seize in order to make a profit?

Well, let's look at the alternatives. Bob has to invest $100 million each year over five years to assemble his army – what does that cost him overall?

We know that if Bob invested $100 million back into his DRO, he will likely get 10% ROI. In five years of compound interest, that translates to $832.61m.

Then, Bob has to invest another billion dollars over the next five years invading a series of neighbourhoods. How much does that really cost him? $1,665.22m, or $1 billion invested at 10% over five years. But that's not all – the $832.61m above would also have gained 10% per year over the remaining 5 years, resulting in a total of $1,340.93m.

Thus Bob's five years of preparation and five years of military rampaging have cost him over $3 billion. Given the enormous risks involved in such an endeavour, investors would likely demand at least a 10:1 pay off – similar to the software field. Thus Bob would have to steal well over $30 billion, given that he would likely want to keep some money for himself.

Where would this $30 billion come from? The burned-out houses? The abandoned cars? It's hard to imagine that anything Bob got his hands on would be worth very much at all.

The evidence of history tends to support this conclusion. Economically, imperialism is a disaster for everyone except those intimately connected to the coercive power of the state.

What if Bob wanted to spring an attack on citizens and start taxing them? Again, all the other DROs would stand to lose all their customers in the event of such a situation, and would take all necessary steps to prevent that from occurring. They would have to provide innovative “checks and balances” solutions to potential customers, to win them as clients.

However, even if all of the above problems can be somehow overcome, and the creation of a rogue army in a free society became both possible and profitable, the solution is simple. Any "Defense DRO" would simply buy the trust of its clients by promising to pay them a fine in excess of any potential military profits if that DRO was ever discovered to be assembling an army. DROs would simply put ten million dollars in trust, payable to any customer that could find evidence proving that a rogue army was being assembled. Problem solved.

When we look at a series of steps required to make the creation of a private "rogue" army economically profitable, we can see that it becomes so unlikely as to be functionally impossible. If we assume that the economic incentive of maximizing profit would drive anyone to consider such a course, we can easily see that the fears of inevitable private tyrannies are merely imaginary. The "replacement state" mythology is just another ghost story invented to keep us in cages whose bars are merely fictional.

Freedomain Radio FAQ Part 2

How can a society without a government pay for national defense?

Many people, when first hearing the concept of a stateless society, cannot imagine how collective defense could possibly be paid for the absence of taxation.

This is an important question to ask, but there is a way of answering it that also answers many other questions about collective action.

In any society, there are four possibilities that can occur in the realm of collective defense. The first is that no one wants to pay for collective defense. The second is that only a minority of people want to pay for collective defense; the third is that the majority of people want to pay for collective defense, and the fourth is that everyone wants to pay for collective defense.

Let's compare how these four possibilities play out in a state-based democracy:

1. No one wants to pay for collective defense. In this case, voters will universally reject any politician who proposes collective defense of any kind.
   
2. Only a minority of people want to pay for collective defense. In this case, no politician who proposes paying for collective defense will ever get into office, because he will never secure a majority of the votes.
   
3. The majority of people want to pay for collective defense. In this case, pro-defense politicians will be voted into office, and spend tax money on defense.
   
4. Everyone wants to pay for collective defense. This achieves the same outcome as number three.
   

Thus, all other things being equal, a democracy produces almost the same outcome as a stateless society – with the important exception of #2. If only a minority of people want to pay for defense, they cannot do so in a democracy, but can do so in a stateless society.

In a stateless society, if the majority of people are interested in paying for collective defense, it will be paid for. The addition of the government to the interaction is entirely superfluous – the equivalent of creating a Ministry devoted to communicating the pleasures of candy to children, or sex to teenagers.

However, the possibility exists that people are willing to pay for collective defense only if they know that everyone else is paying for it as well. This argument fails on multiple levels, both empirical and rational.

1. First of all, people tip waiters and give to charity, even though they know that some people never do.
   
2. Secondly, there is no reason why, in a stateless society, people should not have full knowledge of who has donated to collective defense. Agencies providing collective defense could easily issue a "donor card," which certain shops or employers might ask to see before doing business. Names of donors could also be put on a website, easily searchable, creating social pressures to donate.
   
3. Thirdly, when the money required for collective defense is stripped from taxpayers of the point of a gun, a basic moral tenet – and rational criteria – is violated. Citizens institute collective defense in order to protect their property—it makes no sense whatsoever to create an agency to protect property rights and then invest that agency with the power to violate property rights at will.
   
4. Fourthly, when collective defense is paid for by the initiation of the use of force, there is no rational ceiling to costs, and no incentive for efficiency – thus ensuring that costs escalate to the point where they become unsustainable, leaving the country vulnerable.
   

Finally, if military might is to be used exclusively for the defense of a geographical region, extensive standing armies are scarcely required. The invention of nuclear weapons has rendered invasion of a nuclear power impossible – as is shown by the historical fact that no nation possessing nuclear weapons has ever been invaded. In a nation of, say, 300 million citizens, how much would it cost each citizen per year to pay for the maintenance of a few dozen nuclear warheads? It seems hard to imagine such a program costing more than $300 million a year. Even if we assume that only half the citizens are earning an income, this national defense program would then run about two dollars per year per paying citizen. People lose more than that annually behind their couch cushions.

What about education?

The question of education follows the same pattern as the question of collective defense outlined above. However, there are certain additional pieces of information that can strengthen the case for a free market in education.

First of all, it is important understand that state education was not imposed because children were not being educated. Prior to the institution of government-run education, the literacy rate of the average American was over 90% - far better than it is now, after hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent "educating" children. Before the government forcefully took over the schools, there was almost no violence in schools, there were no school shootings, no violent gangs, no assaults on teachers – and it did not take more than two decades and hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce a reasonably-educated adult. Most of the intellectual giants of the 18^th and 19^th centuries – Founding Fathers included – did not even finish high school, let alone go to college.

Government education in America was instituted as a means of cultural control, due to a rising tribal fears about the growing number of non-Protestants in society – the "immigrant issue" of the time.

There are a number of core reasons that government education cripples children's minds; for the sake of brevity, we will deal with only one here.

It is reasonable to assume that the majority of parents want to give their children a good education – and this education must necessarily include the teaching of values, of the relationship between personal ethics and real-world choices. In any multicultural society, however, a common curriculum cannot include any specific values, for fear of offending various groups. Thus values must be stripped from education, turning its focus to rote memorization, bland technical skills (geometry, sports, wood shop), and neutral and propagandistic views of society and politics ("democracy is good!" "respect multiculturalism!" "recycle!"). This effectively kills the energetic curiosity of the young, turns school into a mind-numbing series of empty exercises, creates frustration among those needing stimulation, and engenders deep disrespect for educational system – and its teachers – who remain hypocritically indifferent to the welfare of the students. Combine this hostility and frustration with the easy money available through drug sales, and the possibility of surviving on welfare, and entire generations of youths become mentally crippled. The costs of this are beyond calculation, since the damage goes far beyond economics.

Yes, but how will poor children get an education if it is not paid for through taxes?

This reminds me of the old Soviet cartoon – two old women are standing in an endless line-up to buy bread. One says to the other: "What a terribly long line!" The other replies: "Yes, but just imagine – in the capitalist countries, the government doesn't even distribute the bread!"

Whenever I argue for a stateless society, I say: "The government should not provide 'X'." The response always comes back: "But how will 'X' then be provided?"

The answer is simple: "Since everybody is concerned that 'X' will not be provided, 'X' will naturally be provided by those who are concerned by its absence." In other words, since everyone is concerned that poor children might not get an education because it costs too much, those children will be provided an education as a direct result of everyone's concern.

Either you will help poor children get an education, through charity or volunteering, or you won't. If you will help poor children get an education, you don't have to worry about the issue. If you will do nothing to help poor children get an education, it is pure hypocrisy to raise it as an issue that you claim to be concerned about.

That having been said, there are a number of ways that a free society can provide education that is far superior to the mess being inflicted on children now.

First of all, poor children are not currently getting any sort of decent education. The perceived risks of a stateless society cannot be rationally compared to a perfect situation in the here-and-now. Those most concerned with the education of the poor should be the ones most clamoring for the abolishment of the existing system. The statistics for poor children are absolutely appalling – and this should raise the urgency or finding a solution. It's one thing to say "You should never cross a road against the lights, even if there is no traffic." It is quite another thing to say "You should never cross a road against the lights, even if you are being chased by a lion." Those who oppose a stateless society always ignore the existence of the lion, thus adding their intellectual inertia to the weight of the status quo.

Secondly, much like the question of collective defense, the cost of education will be far lower in a free society. The $10,000-$15,000 a year currently being spent per-pupil in public schools is ridiculously overinflated. As an example, it would be far cheaper to buy a poor child a computer and an Internet connection than bus him to an expensive school. (If socialization is desired, play-dates could be arranged at local parks.)

Similarly, year-round accelerated education could help the child graduate several years earlier – and with tangible job skills to boot! The resulting increase in earnings would more than pay for the education – and many companies would scramble to offer loans to such children, knowing that they would be paid off soon after graduation. Thus education would be more beneficial – and, since there would be no war on drugs or automatic "welfare" in a free society, fewer self-destructive options would be available.

As for higher education, it is either recreational or vocational. If it is recreational, then it is about as necessary as a hobby, and thus cannot be considered a necessity. If it is vocational, such as medicine, then additional earnings will more than pay for the costs of the education. Businesses need accountants – thus those businesses will be more than happy to fund the college expenses of talented youngsters in return for a work commitment after graduation.

Talented but poor children will be sought after by schools, both for the benevolence they can show by subsidizing them, and also because high-quality graduates raise the prestige of a school, enabling it to increase fees.

In a stateless society, a tiny minority of poor children may slip through the cracks – but that is far better than the current situation, where most poor children slip through the cracks. The fact that some non-smokers will get lung cancer does not mean that we should encourage people to smoke. A stateless society is not a utopia, it is merely a utopia compared to a government society!

Even if I agree with you, how on earth can we possibly bring a stateless society about?

There is absolutely no reason to believe that a stateless society is impossible to achieve. In fact, most of the hurdles have already been overcome. The efficiency of the free market is already well-established. The principle that violence is immoral is also generally-accepted. For many people, religion no longer has a monopoly on questions of ethics. Very few people believe that further expansions in the size and power of government will produce a substantially better society—in fact, very few people believe that the government is a moral agency at all. (People do still advocate for government programs – often couched in moral terms – but that is more because they know they can receive money from the state rather than as a result of the broad ethical approach.) Socialism is a moral ideal is dead; communism and fascism also; slavery has been rightly vilified and eliminated, and initiation of the use of force is in general considered immoral.

Thus many of the necessary agreements are in place to bring about a stateless society. How, then, can it happen?

The first virtue is always honesty; the second is always integrity. We must first tell the truth, and then we must live the truth.

The truth is that, in the most fundamental ways, we do not need the government's permission to be truly free.

The first thing that philosophers must do is lead by example. A key ingredient in the moral ideal of a stateless society is that there is no such thing as positive obligations. Being born in a country does create a moral obligation to pay taxes. Being poor does not create a moral obligation for others to give you money. Being successful does not make you a slave; failure does not give you the right to be a parasite. Having children does not create a moral obligation for others to give them an education. Getting old does not create a moral obligation for others to pay for your retirement.

And here is where we turn to the core of the Freedomain Radio philosophy: family.

Huh? What does family have to do with a stateless society?

The examples of religion and patriotism show that irrational ideals are easy to spread if the people who spread them are convincing. To free the world, it is not enough to know the truth – you must also convince others. Convincing others requires that you first convince yourself.

A doctor who fears to take the medicine that he prescribes can scarcely be considered convincing. A philosopher should not fear to live the values he espouses. If I believe that there is no such thing as positive obligations, then I must evaluate all my personal relationships using the same criteria.

We just examine our families first, since they are the least-chosen of all our relationships. We choose our wife, and our friends, but not our parents or siblings.

If no man has a right to my time and energy simply because he exists, then clearly my parents can make no such claim.

If my parents and siblings are wise, and moral, and good, then it is only just and reasonable – not to mention intensely pleasurable – to spend time with them. If, however, my parents are none of these things, then spending time with them is neither rational nor moral. I cannot legitimately advocate a stateless society while at the same time enabling and supporting unchosen positive obligations in my personal life.

This has both moral and practical dimensions. Our first – and most lasting – perception of authority is our parents. If our parents are unjust, abusive, negative, distant, unaffectionate, arbitrary, selfish and so on, then we cannot love them. Love is an involuntary response to virtue, and can only arise in the presence of vice as an empty and self-destructive label.

If we feel that we "owe" love to our parents for being born under their dominion, it is logically impossible to argue that we do not "owe" allegiance to our government for being born under its dominion. If our parents do not have to win our love through consistent virtue – as all love must be won – then neither must those in the government win our respect through consistent virtue. If we do not live the principle of voluntarism in our personal lives, it is nonsensical and pointless to advocate it in the realm of politics. If we owe allegiance to power with regards to our parents, we logically owe allegiance to power with regards to our governments as well. We cannot "love" power in the personal realm while despising it in the political realm.

We have no power over the government. We can defy it, at the cost of going to prison or being forced "off the grid." We do have power over our personal relationships – and it is in the application of moral theories to our personal lives that our greatest freedoms are to be found. I would rather pay 50% taxation and have a happy marriage than pay no taxes and have an unhappy marriage! The government can only take your money – unhappy relationships can drain your very soul.

If we consistently apply ethical principles to our personal lives, we gain enormous credibility when we advocate those principles to others in general.

But – the government is an agency of power – parents are not!

That is not true. Except in the most extreme dictatorships, parents have far more power over their children than governments have over their citizens. As an adult, you have many strategies to reduce the interference of government in your daily life – you can move, live off the grid, minimize your taxes, pay off the IRS and live free. As a child, because you could not leave your family, you were utterly dependent on the will and whim of your parents. As an adult, you will never again be as dependent on those in power as you were when you were a child.

Since parental power over children far outstrips state power over citizens, we must first free ourselves of bad parents before we can confront the state.

Philosophy is more about our personal relationships than abstract relationships like the state. The power of the state, in fact, is derived from the power of parents. A woman who demands freedom from state violence but then goes home to an abusive husband cannot be said to really understand the meaning of the word "freedom." Similarly, advocating some sort of abstract political freedom while suffering abusive, unpleasant, boring or negative relationships in your personal life displays similar ignorance.

If a plane depressurizes, you have to first place the oxygen mask on your own face before turning to help others. The same is true of philosophy.

The only way to free the world is to free yourself.

Freedomain Radio - Frequently Asked Questions Part 1

What is Freedomain Radio?

Freedomain Radio is a philosophical conversation based on empirical logic and the Socratic method, designed to help you bring the maximum freedom and happiness into your life.


Philosophy? Really? Isn't philosophy kind of, well – useless?

Post-modern philosophy, in general, yes. In terms of how you can make sense of your life, and make the kinds of decisions in the here and now that will make you happy in the future, absolutely not! Philosophy is the most extreme sport known to mankind. It is intense, grueling, exciting, challenging, ennobling and occasionally utterly terrifying. Here at Freedomain Radio, we do not focus on philosophy as an abstract science, but as an immediate, personal and tangible methodology. Philosophy will certainly help you understand politics and history, economics and epistemology, but most importantly, it will help you make rational decisions in your life – decisions that you know are correct.

What approach does Freedomain Radio take?

Freedomain Radio takes a simple and common sense approach to philosophy. Clearly, reality exists independent of your mind. You exist independent of me. Truth in your mind is fidelity to reality. Logic and evidence are the only ways of separating truth from opinion, consistency from conformity, fantasy from fact.

What about morality?

Morality is one of the most challenging sciences in human thought. Morality is a concept within the human mind, and as such does not exist in external reality, in the same way that gravity or rocks do. This does not mean that morality is subjective, or imaginary, or arbitrary. Numbers do not exist in external reality either, but that does not mean that mathematics is a subjective discipline.

Any moral theory must pass a number of scientific and rational hurdles in order to be considered potentially valid. It must be universal, logical, consistent, reversible – and it must both explain history and have the capacity to predict the future. Anyone who proposes any form of "preferential behavior" for humanity as a whole must submit that theory to a rational and scientific examination. If you are not interested in proposing any form of preferential behavior, that's no particular problem – however, you are then excluded from any debate about ethics. For more on the Freedomain Radio approach to morality, click here.

But – aren't you an anarchist?

Yes, I am an anarchist. Unfortunately, the term has been degraded through mythology to mean "a world without rules" – usually garbed in post-apocalyptic outerwear and riding a well-armed motorbike. This is nonsense, of course. "Anarchy" is merely the logical application of the moral premise that the initiation of the use of force is wrong. If violence is a bad way to solve problems, then the government is by definition immoral, since "government" always means a group of individuals who claim the right to use violence against everyone else, in the form of taxation, regulations etc.

But if there is no government, how can the inevitable conflicts in human society be resolved?

The most important thing in philosophy is to consistently question the premises of propositions. For instance, embedded in the above question is the premise that conflicts within human society are currently being resolved by governments. This is also pure nonsense. Governments are agencies of force – governments do not persuade, governments do not reason, governments do not motivate, governments do not encourage, governments do not resolve disputes. Governments have no more power to create morality then rape has to create love. A gun is only useful in self-defense; it cannot be used to create virtue.

For somebody who is an anarchist, you sure do sound like a politician! Wasn't that just a complete dodge of the question?

Excellent catch! Here is as good a place as any to introduce you to the concept of Dispute Resolution Organizations (DROs). This concept cannot answer every conceivable question you might have about dispute resolutions within a stateless society, but rather is a framework for understanding the methodology of dispute resolution – just as the scientific method cannot answer every possible question about the natural world, but rather points towards a methodology that allows those questions to be answered in a rational manner.

DROs are companies that specialize in insuring contracts between individuals, and resolving any disputes that might arise. For instance, if I borrow $1,000 from you, I may have to pay $10 to a DRO to insure my loan. If I fail to pay you back your money, the DRO will pay you instead. Obviously, as my credit rating improves, the cost of insuring my contracts will decline.

The DRO theory can be as complex as any other free market theory – and a lot of intellectual effort has gone into resolving how particular transactions might occur, such as multimillion dollar international contracts. Credible DRO theories have also been proposed that solve problems ranging from abortion to child abuse to murder to pollution. For more on DRO theory and practice, click here.

But – what about the roads?

The most important thing to understand about anarchism is that it is a moral theory which logically cannot be over-concerned with consequences. For instance, the abolition of slavery was a moral imperative, because slavery as an institution is innately evil. The abolition of slavery was not conditional upon the provision of jobs for every freed slave. In a similar manner, anarchic theory does not have to explain how every conceivable social, legal or economic transaction would occur in the absence of a coercive government. What is important is to understand that the initiation of the use of force is a moral evil. With that in mind, we can approach the problem of roads more clearly.

First of all, roads are currently funded through the initiation of force. If you do not pay the taxes which support road construction, you will get a stern letter from the government, followed by a court date, followed by policemen coming to your house if you do not appear and submit to the court's judgment. If you use force to defend yourself against the policemen who are breaking into your home, you will very likely be shot down.

The roads, in other words, are built at the point of a gun. The use of violence is the central issue, not what might potentially happen in the absence of violence.

That having been said, roads will be built by housing developers, mall builders, those constructing schools and towns – just as they were before the government took them over in the 19^th century.

Okay – here's a scenario for you: a guy builds a road that completely encircles a suburban neighborhood, and then charges $1 million for anyone to cross that road. Isn't he holding everyone who lives in that neighborhood hostage?

This is fundamentally impossible. First of all, no one is going to buy a house in a neighborhood unless they are contractually guaranteed access to roads. Thus it will be impossible for anyone to completely encircle the neighborhood. Secondly, even if it were possible, it would be a highly risky investment. Can you imagine going to investors with a business plan that said: "I'm going to try to buy all the land that surrounds the neighborhood, and then charge hugely high rates for anyone to cross that land." No sane investor would give you the money for such a plan. The risk of failure would be too great, and no DRO would enforce any contract that was so destructive, unpopular and economically unfeasible. DROs, unlike governments, must be appealing to the general population. If a DRO got involved with the encircling and imprisonment of a neighborhood, it would become so unpopular that it would lose far more business than it could potentially gain.

All right smarty-pants – what about this: the company that supplies water to a neighborhood suddenly decides to increase its rates by ten times – people are going to be forced to pay the exorbitant price, right?

First of all, if you are so concerned about people paying increasingly exorbitant prices for services, then it scarcely seems logical to propose the government as the solution to that problem. Taxes have risen immensely over the past 30 years, while services have declined.

However, even if we accept the premise of the problem, it is easily solved in a stateless society. First of all, no one will buy a house in a neighborhood without a contractual obligation that requires the supply of water at reasonable rates. Secondly, if the water company starts charging exorbitant prices, another company will simply move in and supply water in another form – in barrels, bottles or whatever. Thus raising prices permanently costs the water company its customers. Investors will quickly realize that the water company is shooting itself in the foot, and will align themselves with shareholders, resulting in a hostile takeover of the price-gouging water company. Given that this result will be known in advance, no CEO would be allowed to pursue such a self-destructive course. The consumers are perfectly safe – it is only when a government exists that can be manipulated by corporations to prevent competition that the consumers are truly in danger.

Okay – what if two DROs have different rules – isn't that just going to result in endless civil war?

No. First of all, it is unlikely that DROs would have wildly different rules, because that would be economically inefficient. Cell phone companies use similar protocols, so that they can interoperate with each other. Railroad companies tend to use the same gauge, so that trains can travel as widely as possible. Internet service providers exchange data with other Internet service providers, passing e-mails back and forth. Like evolution, the free market is more about cooperation than pure competition. If a DRO wants to create a new rule, that rule will be fairly useless unless other DROs are willing to cooperate with it – just as a new e-mail program is fairly useless unless it uses existing protocols. This need for interoperability with other DROs will inevitably keep the number of new rules to the most economically efficient minimum.

New rules will also add to the costs for DRO subscribers—and if it costs them more money than it saves, the DRO will lose business.

But – won't the most successful DRO just arm itself, violently eliminate all the other DROs, and emerge as a new government?

First of all, if the potential emergence of a new government at some point in the future is of great concern, then surely the elimination of existing governments in the present is a worthy goal. If we have cancer, we go through chemotherapy to eliminate it in the present, even though we may get cancer again at some point in the future.

Secondly, unlike governments, DROs are not violent institutions. DROs will be primarily populated by white-collar workers: accountants, executives and so on. DROs are as likely to become paramilitary organizations as your average accounting firm is likely to become an elite squad of ninja death warriors. Given the current existence of governments that possess nuclear weapons, I for one am willing to take that risk.

Thirdly, if a DRO tries to turn itself into a government, the other DROs will certainly act to prevent it. DROs would simply refuse to cooperate with any DRO that refused to submit to "arms inspections." Furthermore, DRO customers would also not take very kindly to their DRO becoming an armed institution – and their rates would certainly skyrocket, because their DRO would have to provide its regular services, as well as pay for all those black helicopters and RPGs. Any DRO that was paying for goods or services that its customers did not want – i.e. an army – would very quickly go out of business, because it would not be competitive in terms of rates.

Are there any examples of anarchic societies being successful in the past?

There are, but that is not the essential question. Again, the essential aspect of anarchic theory is the moral rule banning the initiation of the use of force. Anarchists advocate a stateless society because governments are evil. When slavery was abolished for the first time in human history, there was no example of a successful slave–free society — if that had been a requirement, then slavery would never have been abolished.

That having been said, I can absolutely and confidently point towards a nonviolent society that you're intimately aware of – you. I am guessing that you do not use violence directly to achieve your aims. It seems likely to me that you did not hold your employer hostage until you got your job; I also doubt that you keep your "girlfriend" locked in the basement, or that you threaten to shoot your "friends" if they do not join you on the dance floor. In other words, you are the perfect example of a stateless society. All of your personal relationships are voluntary, and do not involve the use of force. You are an anarchic microcosm – to see how a stateless society might work, all you have to do is look in the mirror.