A Terminal State

It is the worst day of your young life. Your doctor has just told you that you have terminal cancer. You have a few months to live, maybe six. Your skin crawls, your mouth is bone-dry. Lists of everything you have to do scroll by endlessly in your mind’s eye… Finances, my will, a long line of goodbye’s…

“My God,” you stammer, trying to swallow. “Are you sure? Can I get a second opinion?”

“Of course,” nods your doctor sympathetically, gesturing at the brown folder on his desk. “The tests are pretty conclusive, but… Take them across the hall, there’s an oncologist over there. Have a chat with him, see what he thinks.”

You walk out of the office, almost feeling as if you’re floating. Miraculously, you get an immediate appointment with the new doctor. You sit down, and before you can open your mouth, he says: “What are you doing here? You look as healthy as a horse!”

“Well I was sent over here by my doctor. He says I’m sick, really sick…” Yeah, verily, unto the grave¸ you think involuntarily.

“What nonsense!” cries the doctor heartily, snapping his fingers. “Nothing wrong with you at all!”

“But…” Wordlessly, you hand your file over. The doctor glances at it.

“Well sure, there are some problems, naturally. That’s be expected. But you’re sound. Fundamentally sound!” He jabs his finger onto his desk for emphasis.

“But it’s spread to my…”

“Yes, yes,” he says impatiently, glancing at your file from the corner of his eye. “I can see that there are some problems. But you’re going to live to be 90!”

“How?”

The doctor pauses very briefly, then waves his hand dismissively. “Oh, you’ll pull through. Something will come up…”

Against hope, you ask: “Do you know of a cure?”

The doctor cocks his head and narrows his eyes, obviously confused. “A cure?” he asks slowly. “For what?”

Question: What is your opinion of this oncologist? Would you put your treatment in his hands? Or would you think he was an incompetent lunatic – or worse – and back out of his office slowly?

With all due respect, this is how many anarchists feel when dealing with statists.

You see, the state might look healthy, but there’s this little matter of the national debt. It’s not just a US phenomenon, but let’s look at it from an American perspective.

We’ve all heard the scare statistics. $8 trillion dollars of debt. $110,000 per US adult.
$47 trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities… And picture all the people who are never going to help pay that debt – stay-at-home parents, students, retirees, criminals, soldiers, public employees, mimes and countless others who live hand-to-mouth.

Fiscally, the state is completely terminal. There is no way in God’s green acre that the national debt is ever going to be paid off – we’re going in completely the wrong direction for that! And all debts that escalate end up in bankruptcy.

So when a statist says to me that we need the government, or the government should do ‘X’ or ‘Y’, it could be arguable I guess, but it seems rather… irrelevant. It’s like getting a call from a man who’s jumped naked out of plane telling you he needs a parachute. Sure you do. But you haven’t got one, and it’s far too late to reverse that now, isn’t it?

The facts are clear, the math is clear, the lack of political will is clear, the self-interest of our rulers is clear – the government is dead. Dead, dead, dead. Sure, might look OK from the outside, but it’s already starting to smell.

So when people tell me they want a small government, I just ask them: OK, what programs will you cut to pay off the national debt?

The interest on the national debt alone is over $380 billion a year. Can we cut every single dollar from public education? That’s about $60 billion – barely makes a dent in the interest payments. What else? Defense? Over $400 billion – OK, now we’re getting somewhere, but we’re still not dealing with the principal…

You can go on and on – and, as the statist whittles down the functions of government in order to pay off the national debt, you know what happens?

You start to get a society that looks pretty anarchistic!

One of two things can occur. Either the statist won’t support spending cuts, in which case he’s just like the second doctor in the earlier analogy, blindly declaring the health of something that is dying. Or, he does find the money to pay off the national debt – in which case he not only ends up about 3 microns away from anarchism, but he also implicitly admits that the state has been ripping people off horrendously for the past hundred years or so!

If the government can effectively function with, say, 5% of its current budget, then it has stolen trillions upon trillions of dollars from the past few generations. And the state cannot survive on, say 50% of its current budget, because that won’t be enough to pay off the debt.

So the state is either unnecessary, or a vile thief. Or both.

In every medical drama known to mankind, some Type-A surgeon always ends up trying to resuscitate a patient who has clearly shuffled off to join the choir invisible. Some gentle and rational soul always has to touch his shoulder and say: “He’s dead, Jim. He’s dead…” Someone else calls out the time of death.

As anarchists, this is our role. You can argue as frantically as you like about the role of the state, but we will continue to patiently put our hands on your shoulder and say: “Let it go. Stop electrocuting a corpse. Come with us, so we can choose the dance songs for the funeral, and work together to create what comes next.”

Market Anarchism: Are You Guys Crazy, or Just Nuts?

After twenty years as a ‘small government’ libertarian, I have spent the last 18 months or so strenuously – and unsuccessfully – resisting the implacable logic of ‘market anarchy’. I started out thinking it was a rather odd theory, but I have come to appreciate some of its finer points, and thought it might be interesting to share some of them with you. If these approaches are correct, then they may help you. If they are incorrect, perhaps you can rescue me from the error of my ways!

‘Market anarchism’ is a broad term referring to the theory that voluntary free market relationships can – and should – replace all existing coercive state relationships. It is derived from taking the principle of the non-initiation of force to its ultimate conclusion, and accepting that if using violence is wrong for one person, then it is wrong for every person. If stealing is wrong for me as a private citizen, then it is also wrong for everyone – including those in the ‘government’.

Much like the theory of relativity, the consistent application of this simple principle can produce rather startling conclusions. If the initiation of force is wrong, then governments as a whole are immoral institutions. Since the only moral agent is the individual (governments don’t ‘act’), then no individual can claim opposing moral rules based on a membership in a certain ‘club’ such as the government. Logically, a man can’t be subject to one moral rule while sitting at home (thou shalt not kill), and then be subject to a completely opposite moral rule when he puts on a uniform. The same is true for property rights. If all men have property rights, then no man can morally take the property of another man.

Of course, most people feel very uncomfortable with the idea that society can exist without a government. It might be worth understanding the ‘market anarchist’ responses to typical objections, just for the sake of clarification.

For instance, market anarchists are always asked how a stateless society could deal with violent criminals. We have some excellent answers, of course, but the most relevant is this: The vast majority of evils in this world are not committed by private criminals, but by governments.

Or, to put it another way: The greatest danger to human life is not private vice, but public ‘virtue’.

In the 20^th century alone, credible estimates for the numbers of citizens directly murdered by governments stands at 262 million people.

Picture this: if the average height of each victim was 5’, laid out end-to-end, the corpses would circle the globe 10 times. This number is 6 times the number killed in all wars in the 20^th century. To this figure we can also add others, such as the number killed by wars - 38.5 million, as well the 60 million killed by malaria as a direct result of worldwide governmental bans on DDT. There are many other ways in which people get killed by government policies, such as:

- general poverty due to central planning

- increased infant morality

- decreased life expectancy

- illnesses resulting from poor public sanitation

- malnutrition

- lack of access to medical supplies/services

- …and countless more!

We could add other crimes as well, such as the endless kidnapping and imprisonment involved in police states and the ‘war on drugs’? The US prison population rose from 488,000 in 1985 to 1.3 million in 2001 to 2.2 million today – half of which are non-violent criminals! One in five US inmates is sexually assaulted? What about the abuse that occurs in state-run orphanages or homes for the elderly? What about the conditions on the native reservations throughout North America? What about the mental and physical abuse that occurs in state schools? What about the family violence that occurs in regimes that do not recognize the rights of women or children? What about the constant infanticide and abortions in China? What about the endless, endless theft of taxation?

Do you see what I mean about prioritizing risks to human life and security?

State crimes are also qualitatively different from private crimes. There are many steps that a citizen can take to reduce the likelihood of being victimized by private criminals. From security systems to doormen to moving to a better neighborhood, citizens can directly reduce their risks. For instance, about two-thirds of murder victims knew their murderers – so just hang with the right crowd, and your risk drops significantly. 75% of recent murders in New York were directly related to the drug trade, so stay away from dealing and you’re that much safer!

Contrast that to government crimes. What can you do to protect yourself against taxation? Nothing. Everywhere you go, you are taxed. Want to take up arms against the Gestapo? Good luck. Want to escape senseless regulations? Pray for a libertarian afterlife.

Of course, the opposing argument is that criminal violence is like an inverted bell-curve – lots of state power = lots of violence, and also no state power = lots of violence. However, statistics rarely bear that out. For instance, In 1900, when the government was many times smaller, the U.S. homicide rate was estimated at 1 per 100,000. In 2003, FBI statistics put the rate at 5.7 per 100,000.

In general, within each country, the smaller the government, the lower the violent crime rate – and so who can definitively say that ‘no government’ will naturally produce more crime? It would be like saying: my health improves when my cancer shrinks, but will surely worsen if it disappears completely!

If we are truly concerned with human suffering, we must rank threats rationally. We must deal with the most life-threatening problems first, and only then proceed to lesser dangers. What would we think of a ER doctor who treated a hangnail before dealing with a spurting artery? When citizens face far more danger from government officials than private criminals, is it rational to use our fear of criminals to shy away from exploring the possibility of a stateless society? Of course not! Refusing to consider market anarchism for fear of criminals is like refusing to treat a man dying of cancer because he might someday be hit by a bus.

“Sure,” you might say, “I understand that dictatorships kill lots of people, but we’re all against totalitarianism – just because ‘too much’ state is bad doesn’t automatically mean that ‘any’ state is equally bad!”

I fully understand and sympathize with the intellectual appeal of a ‘small state’, and would find it very compelling, except for historical and current realities, which show that governments never ever stay small. Like a cancer, they continually expand. The smallest state that ever came into being – the American Republic – lasted less than a century before dissolving into internal wars, state-run banking, foreign entanglements, ever-escalating taxation and crushing national debts. For example, the graph below shows US government spending and taxation as a percentage of GDP since 1929.

And, of course, the vast majority of spending increases are on social programs – or, more simply, voter bribing:



Naturally, this rise in government spending increasingly displaces private (voluntary) sectors, just as a cancer displaces healthy cells:


The shortfall in US spending ($47 trillion dollars as of 2004) will inevitably result in either totalitarianism or bankruptcy (or both!).

There are many reasons for the inevitable increases in state power and corruption, but the main point here is that even if we were able to magically reduce state power to purely Constitutional levels, it would take less than a generation or two for the self-destructive growth to start again.

The government, as an agency of violence, can never be controlled. Like slavery, it can neither be reformed nor ‘managed’, since its very premise – the initiation of the use of force – is immoral, irrational and, in the long run, utterly impractical.

In my view, the libertarian movement is floundering not because we advocate too much freedom, but rather because we do not advocate enough freedom. Our moral vision is constantly compromised and diluted by the violence we advocate for the sake of our ‘small state’ position. But either violence is right or it is wrong. If it is right, how can we quibble about the degree of violence used by the state?

If it is wrong, how can we approve of even a small state?

I look forward to your feedback!

Inviting Freedom: Releasing Everyone's ‘Inner Libertarian’

Has this ever happened to you? You’re discussing liberty with someone, and you say something like: “The government shouldn’t take care of the poor.”

The response you get is: “Oh yeah? Well then who would take care of the poor?”

Ah, you reply, there will be more charities and job opportunities and everyone cares about the poor since everyone asks the same question and besides the government is not helping the poor now anyway and so on and so on.

And as you speak, the recipient of your wisdom asks endless skeptical questions until you end up having to prove the value of everything from the gold standard to getting rid of the minimum wage…

I’ve offered a way around this before, in my article ‘Forget the Argument From Efficiency’, but I would like to offer another solution to the problem of defending liberty in the face of skepticism.

I believe that Dispute Resolution Organizations (DROs) could replace the core functions of governments, but the idea is usually countered with the accusation that DROs would just turn into mini-governments. In this case, I was asked: “But DROs would force me to carry an ID card, just like a government!”

I had all my pat answers ready, but I tried a different approach. I simply replied: “That’s an excellent question! Let’s try answering it this way. If you’re a DRO and you want me as a customer, and I tell you I hate ID cards, how could you solve my problem?”

There was a pause. Gears began turning. “Well, you might not have to carry an ID card per se I guess… We could use fingerprints if we had to. Or retina scans. Or voice imprints.”

“But what if I said that I hated all those things too? Or they were too expensive?”

“Well I don’t know,” my former opponent said. “I guess if you were buying something, your ID would be your credit card. Or bank card. Huh. Or I guess you’d have to register whatever you bought to get a guarantee, so…”

And I swear, he went on for five minutes, brow furrowed, teasing out all the possibilities of how DROs avoid forcing customers to carry ID cards.

And he only forgot one solution. And I couldn’t resist…

“But tell me this,” I said. “Why would DROs want to have you carry an ID card in the first place?”

“Because it would be more efficient for them I guess.”

“Sure, but how could they make it more efficient for you?”

“Huh?”

“I mean, they want you to carry the ID card, right, so how are they going to get you to do it?”

The brow furrowed again. It’s so hard for people to think ‘outside the state’…

“By… incenting me?”

“Perhaps. How might they do that?”

The furrows deepened. “Well, like coffee shops I guess, with those 6-for-5 cards I always lose. Or that Air Miles thing. Or gas stations. Or local computer stores, where if you pay cash they knock off a few points…”

And off he was again, for another few minutes. But then he stopped short. “But what if it’s not worth it for DROs to give me rebates for carrying an ID card?”

“Well what would that mean about the ID cards?”

“That… that they’re not that valuable I guess.”

And there it was! Instead of me being stuck in the position of defending liberty, we were exploring it together, and he was coming up with dozens of solutions.

And it was fun!

I left him without stating the obvious, although it wasn’t easy! The obvious fact was this: look at how much intellectual creativity energy is unleashed in the absence of State coercion!

So the next time you’re talking about liberty with a skeptic, if you’ve never tried it, try switching sides. You might be surprised how quickly you end up on the same team.

Life Without Government: It’s Not As Distant As You Think

I am always astounded when someone rejects even the possibility of a stateless society by demanding that I supply proof such a society has ever existed, or could ever work.

“But I can give you an example of a perfectly functioning non-violent society right this minute!” I reply.

“Oh yeah?” my interrogator will demand skeptically. “Where?”
“Well, it’s… you!”

A great flurry of confusion always follows this very simple statement. “What are you talking about?”

“Well, are you married?” I say.

“Yes, but…”

“Did you force your spouse to marry you?”

“What are you talking about?”

“When you proposed, did you hold a gun to her temple and threaten to pull the trigger if she didn’t marry you?”

“No, but…”

“Do you have a job?”

“Yes…”

“And when you went to that job interview, did you hold a knife to your interviewer’s throat until you got the job?”

“No…”

“Did you go to school?”

“Of course! But what…”

“And if you wanted an ‘A’, did you work hard, or did you kidnap your teacher’s daughter and hold her hostage until you got the grade you wanted?”

“No, but…”

“Do you shoplift when you go to stores? Do you leave restaurants without paying the bill? Do you ‘pump and run’ at gas stations? If you want to have a party, do you herd your guests up at gunpoint?”
The answer is always the same. Of course not! Over the past twenty years, over thousands of conversations, I have never once met anyone who regularly used violence. I’ve met a few people who’d been in bar fights, heard tales of a few bad marriages and seen some fairly nasty parents, but I have never once met a single person who regularly and systematically used violence to force obedience out of others.

So naturally, I am quite confused when people demand that I produce historical proof of functioning non-violent societies. It’s like a panting man asking me to produce proof of the existence of air.

You do not use violence in your life. You do not force people to do your bidding. You do not shoot or stab or poison people who disagree with you.

And I would guess that you don’t know anyone else who does.

Just think about that for a moment. Think of your close and extended family, everyone at work, all your managers, employees and customers. Think of the man who flies your plane, the woman who fixes your car, the teenager who delivers your newspaper. Think of the thousands and thousands of people you have met during the course of your life. How many of the people you have met as an adult have ever used violence against you?

I bet none.

Now that’s quite remarkable when you think about it. Just looking at your own life, you can see a community of hundreds or thousands of people composed entirely of pacifists. A community composed of people who resolve all their disputes without pulling out knives or guns.

People generally respond to this, of course, by arguing that people don’t use force because the State has courts and the police and so on, and without State protection we’d be in that mythical state of nature, stealing and killing each other at will.

That’s an interesting objection, but I have a hard time taking it very seriously, because all I have to ask in return is this:

“Have you ever actually tried to use the State justice system?”

Of course not. If they had, they wouldn’t speak so blithely about how the ‘thin blue line’ is all that separates us from cannibalism. And it’s not fear of the police that keeps you from dumping your garbage on the lawn next door, but rather a natural desire to live in peace with those around you.

And sure, there are people who use violence to get their way – but you can protect yourself against criminals. You can’t protect yourself against the State.

Does this approach prove that a stateless society will work flawlessly? Of course not. However, I hope it helps you see that in your life, a stateless, pacifistic society works beautifully! I don’t expect that this approach will convince you of the practicality of a stateless society as a whole, but in the society that you live in – surely the most important to you – it does highlight the simple fact that non-violence is the norm, and that voluntary cooperation is in fact how most people actually live.

In other words, if we actually look at our own lives, and set aside propaganda and fear, it becomes clear that stateless societies are not only possible in the future, but alive and well in the here and now. To see the future of freedom, we need only look in the mirror today.

Space Aliens from Luxemburg: A Horror Story

Let us imagine that tomorrow morning, when you flip on CNN, you see Wolf Blitzer being jostled by surging crowds. Everyone is running, staring at the sky in fear. “Space aliens have landed in Luxemburg!” cries Wolf, wide-eyed and almost hysterical, “and they have a message for all mankind!”

There is a burst of static, and then you see a drooling, bulging-eyed monstrosity gripping prepared notes in its slimy sea-green tentacles.

“Citizens of Earth!” it gurgles, “we bring good news! We see that, all over the world, citizens live under the slavery of what you call ‘governments.’ Millions of you are unjustly imprisoned, billions are stolen from you through taxation, and government-owned WMDs threaten the very survival of the planet! This is a moral abomination, and we have come to put a stop to it!”

Well! you think, munching your toast, this might bring my property taxes down a bit!

The alien continues: “We are fully dedicated to freeing you from the monstrous moral evil of these governments, and we have decided to start with the United States of America!”

Although you are not a great fan of the US government, a strange sense of foreboding rises in your stomach. Sure enough, the slavering alien continues:

“Freedom does not come cheap, of course; sacrifices must be made. As we dislodge your existing government, there will be suffering – but no matter! Freedom is worth every tear, every sacrifice!”

Well that’s interesting, you think, stirring your cereal slowly. I don’t see how they’re going to be sacrificing anything, but let’s see what they mean…

“We will use a two-phased approach to set you free,” gurgles the alien, squinting into the camera with at least a dozen eyes. “First, we will impose economic sanctions, designed to force your leaders to relinquish their ill-gotten power. As part of this process, we will use ray shields to block international trade, ground your airplanes, and irradiate your food and medicine.” Two of the alien’s eyes dart down to check some figures. “Based on prior experience, we calculate that this phase will cause the deaths of no more than 5-6 million of your children. Also, about 13% of your newborns will die before reaching the age of 5. But we are willing to make that sacrifice, because we believe it’s worth it. For freedom!”

The space alien frowns and flips some pages. Your mouth hangs open.

“We shall keep these sanctions in place for thirteen or so years. If, after that time, your leaders have not given up their power, we will move on to stage 2. In stage 2, we will directly invade your country, in order to overthrow your existing government and replace it with a better government. This will also entail some suffering. We imagine that approximately 20-30 of your cities will be destroyed, just over a million of you will be killed, about 8 million will be wounded, and tens of millions of you will be rendered homeless. About 50% of you will lose your jobs. Most of your roads, bridges, electrical and water systems will be obliterated. Your food supply will be largely destroyed. But don’t worry – our goal it to replace your existing leaders with new leaders, and we believe that is worth all the blood, sweat, tears and deaths you will experience!”

With a clatter, your cereal bowl falls to the floor, spraying milk all over your legs. Your pregnant wife wanders into the room and asks what on earth is going on.

“Wake the kids!” you whisper hoarsely. “We’ve got to get out of here!”

But the space aliens from Luxemburg are as good as their word. There is no escape. Shimmering purple ray shields spring up around the borders, preventing anyone from entering or leaving the country. The aliens set up ‘no fly zones’ which is pretty much the entire US airspace. Several times a day, heat-rays slice down from buzzing spaceships, burning alive hundreds of citizens as they huddle in their homes screaming with terror.

Every now and then, the space aliens drop leaflets explaining their actions.

“Citizens of America,” they read, “we are not angry with you! We are only angry with your political leaders that subjugate you! Be patient as we work to remove your leaders! We cannot allow them to continue to wield their WMDs – we shall save you from their evil!”

However, you notice, the leaders don’t seem to be harmed at all by the alien sanctions. In fact, their wealth and power seem to grow. As the economy dies, however, your life – and the life of your neighbours – becomes an unrecognizable medieval hell. There is almost no medicine, clean running water, or electricity. Children and the old die like flies, and are buried in empty stadiums. Dysentery and cholera run rampant. People flee the cities to live in tent communities. After your wife gives birth, your baby dies within a few weeks.

As the sanctions wear on, frightening rumours begin to circulate – rumours so horrifying that they can scarcely be believed. One rumour says that the very political leaders that the space aliens claim to hate were in fact funded, sponsored and installed by the space aliens to begin with! Another says that the very same WMDs that the aliens claim to be horrified by were given to your leaders by the space aliens in the first place!

Finally, after thirteen long years – after millions of children have died and an entire generation has grown up knowing only despair, poverty, death, disease and hopelessness – the day finally arrives.

Invasion!

Endless fleets of spaceships flash across the skies over America, turning cities into flames. They claim to be aiming for the leaders, but instead over a million men, women and children get burned up in their own homes, screaming and burrowing for shelter.

The war is relatively short, since electromagnetic rays disable almost all the US defense systems. The space aliens take over the burning wreckage of Washington, and immediately impose rigid curfews. Because some Americans – perhaps those whose children or wives were murdered by the sanctions or the fleets of spaceships – have formed an underground rebellion against the occupation, alien troops start invading homes and dragging men and women into concentration camps without trial.

One night, your door is kicked in and your eldest son is dragged away. His screams are muffled by the black bag over his head, and you stand there helpless, sick with fear. The next morning, you drift around your tent city, asking questions. Most people turn away, terrified that you are an informer for the aliens. But a few tell you terrible stories about the concentration camps. Hushed voices tell tales of torture. And rape. And murder. And you slowly find out that more than a quarter of a million Americans have been dragged into these gulags without trial or access to lawyers. No one knows what becomes of them.

Every day, your wife lines up in front of one of these sprawling camps, hoping for a chance to find out about your son. She is told nothing. He could be alive or dead – there is no way to tell. You are desperate to find him, but are terrified that if your wife keeps asking, she will disappear too.

Then, one sweltering summer day, New York is encircled by spaceships. From blaring loudspeakers, all the women and children are told to flee the city. Any men who try to escape are beaten and turned back. The aliens turn off New York’s water and electricity. After about 2 million people flee New York, the space aliens burn it to the ground with their heat rays. Hospitals are targeted. The screams of the dying can be heard from across the river.

As the occupation grinds on, there seems to be no end in sight. The aliens, who said that their mission was to free Americans, are now building permanent military bases and have installed a puppet government that they control.

One evening, as you sit with the remnants of your family in front of your ragged tent, starving and terrified, you hear a tinny voice coming from a neighbour’s radio. One of the alien leaders is complaining that Americans seem “ungrateful” for their liberation. “I guess there are just some bad apples,” he sighs, “who hate us for our innate goodness.”

And as you close your eyes and try to sleep, you think of your son, missing for years, picturing him bruised and broken in some airless cell, and wonder if he is better off alive or dead.

Stateless Prisons

Containing Danger without Enslaving Citizens
By Stefan Molyneux, MA
Host, Freedomain Radio - www.freedomainradio.com

One of the great challenges of anarchistic philosophy is the challenge of prisons, or the physical restraint of violent criminals. I have dealt with this topic once before, but I am still receiving numerous requests for clarifications on how a stateless society might deal with violent criminals. So - let us examine the punitive mechanisms that might exist in the absence of a coercive state system.

Firstly, we can assume that in the absence of a state, private protection agencies (called here DROs, for Dispute Resolution Organizations) will necessarily band together to deny the advantages of a modern economic life to those individuals who egregiously harm their fellow citizens. Such necessities as bank accounts, credit, transportation, lodging, food and so on, can all be withheld from those who have been proven to have committed violent crimes. Also, in a stateless society, since there is no such thing as ‘public’ property, violent criminals would have a tough time getting anywhere, since roads, parks, forests and so on would all be owned privately. Anybody providing aid or comfort to a person convicted of a violent crime would face a withdrawal of services and protections from their own DRO, and so would avoid giving such help.

However, this solution alone has not been sufficient for some people, who still feel that sociopathic and violent criminals need to be physically restrained or imprisoned for society to be safe.

First of all, before tackling this issue, I would like to point out that if the problem of violent sociopaths is very extensive, then surely any moral justifications for the existence of a state become that much more untenable. If society literally swarms with evil people, then those evil people will surely overwhelm the state, the police, and the military, and prey upon legally disarmed citizens to their hearts content. If, however, there are very few evil people, then we surely do not need a state to protect us from such a tiny problem. In other words, if there are a lot of evil people, we cannot have a state - and if there are few evil people, then we do not need a state.

However, let us imagine what happens to a rapist in a stateless society. All general DRO contracts will include ‘rape protection’, since DROs will want to avoid incurring the medical, psychological and income costs of a rape for one of their own customers. Part of ‘rape protection’ will be the provision of significant financial restitution to a rape victim. (Women who can’t afford ‘rape protection’ will be subsidized by charities - or lawyers will represent them pro bono in return for a cut of the restitution.)

If a woman gets raped, she then applies to her DRO for restitution. The DRO then finds her rapist - using the most advanced forensic techniques available - and sends an agent to knock on his door.

“Good morning, sir,” the agent will say. “You have been charged with rape, and I'm here to inform you of your options. We wish to make this process as painless and non-intrusive as possible for you, and so will schedule a trial at the time of your earliest convenience. If you do not attend this trial, or testify falsely, or attempt to flee, we shall apply significant sanctions against you, which are outlined in your existing DRO contract. Our agreement with your bank allows us to freeze your assets - except for basic living and legal expenses - the moment that you are charged with a violent crime. We also have agreements with airlines, road, bus and train companies to prevent you from leaving town until this matter is resolved.

“You can represent yourself in this trial, choose from one of our lawyers, or we will pay for any lawyer you prefer, at standard rates. Also, as per our existing contract, we are to be allowed access to your home for purposes of investigation. You are free to deny us this access, of course, but then we shall assume that you are guilty of the crime, and will apply all the sanctions allowed to us by contract.

“If you are found to be innocent of this crime, we will pay you the sum of twenty thousand dollars, to be funded by the woman who has charged you with rape. We will also offer free psychological counseling for you, in order to help you avoid such accusers in the future.”

The trial will commence, and will return a verdict in due course.

If the man is found guilty, he will receive another visit from his DRO representative.

“Good afternoon, sir,” the agent will say. “You have been found guilty of rape, and I'm here to inform you of your punishment. We have a reciprocal agreement with your bank, which has now closed down your accounts, and transferred the money to us. We will be deducting double the costs of our investigation and trial from your funds, and will also be transferring half a million dollars to the woman you have raped. We also have reciprocal agreements with the companies that provide water and electricity to your house, and those will now be cut off. Furthermore, no gas station will sell you gasoline, and no train station, airline or bus company will sell you a ticket. We have made arrangements with all of the local grocery stores to deny you service, either in person or online. If you set foot on the street outside your house, which is owned privately, you will be physically removed for trespassing.

“Of course, you have the right to appeal this sentence, and if you successfully appeal, we would transfer our costs to the woman who has accused you of rape, and pay you well for the inconvenience we have caused you. If, however, your appeal fails, all additional costs will be added to your debt.

“I can tell you openly that if you choose to stay in your house, you will be unable to survive very long. You will run out food and water very quickly. You can attempt to escape your own house, of course, leaving all of your possessions, and try to make it to some wilderness area. If you do successfully escape, be aware that you are now entered into a central registry, and no reputable DRO will ever represent you. Furthermore, all DROs which have reciprocal agreements with us - which is the vast majority of them - will withdraw services from their own customers if those customers provide you with any goods or services. You will never be able to open a bank account, use centralized currency, carry a credit card, own a car, buy gas, use a road, use any other form of transportation - and gaining food, water and lodging will be a constant nightmare for you. You will spend your entire life running, hiding and begging, and will never find peace, solace or comfort in any place.

“However, there is an option. If you come with me, we will take you to a place of work for a period of five years. During that time, you will be working for us in a capacity which will be determined by your skills. If you do not have any viable skills, we will train you. Your wages will go to us, and we will deduct the costs of your incarceration, as well as any of the costs I outlined above which are not covered by your existing funds. A small amount of your wages will be set aside to help get you started after your release.

“During your stay with us, we will help you, because we do not want to have to go through all of this again with you in the future. You will take courses on ethics. You will take courses on anger management. You will take psychological counseling. You will emerge from your incarceration a far better person. And when you do emerge, all of your full rights will be restored, and you will be able to fully participate once more in the economic and social life of society.

“You have a choice now, and I want you to understand the full ramifications of that choice. If you come with me now, this is the best offer that I can give you. If you decide to stay in your house, and later change your mind, the penalties will be far greater. If you escape, and later change your mind, the penalties will be far greater still. In our experience, 99.99% of people who either run or stay end up changing their minds, and end up that much worse off. The remaining 0.01? Oh, they commit suicide.

“The choice is now yours. Do the right thing. Do the wise thing. Come with me now.”


Can we really imagine that anyone would choose to stay in their own house and die of thirst, unable to even flush their toilet? Can we imagine that anyone would choose a life of perpetual running and hiding and begging? Even if the rapist had no interest in becoming a better person, surely the cost/benefit of the options outlined above would convince him!

There will always be a small number of truly evil or insane people within society. There are far, far better ways of dealing with them than our existing system of dehumanizing, brutal and destructive state gulags, which generally serve only to expand their criminal skills and contacts. Also, it is important to remember that the existing state prisons have barely any evil or insane people in them! The vast majority of those in jail are nonviolent offenders, enslaved and in chains because they used recreational drugs, or gambled, or went to a prostitute, or didn't pay all their taxes, or other such innocuous nonsense – or turned to crime because state ‘vice’ prohibitions made crime so profitable!

Our choice, then, is between a system which removes the tiny minority of evil people from society, rehabilitates them if possible, and makes them work productively to support their own confinement - or a state system which spends most of its time and energies enslaving innocent people, while letting the evil and insane roam free.

A Free Society and the Ethics Of Emergencies

By Stefan Molyneux, MA
Host, Freedomain Radio – www.freedomainradio.com

A free society is by its very nature based on negative rights – i.e., thou shalt not rather than thou shalt. One common opposition to these negative rights is the ‘saving strangers’ scenario often advanced by statists.

In this moral parable, an onlooker sees a man who is drowning, and has to decide whether to dive in and save him or not. If this onlooker calmly watches the man drown, this is generally considered to be a very bad thing, and creates a first instance of a ‘positive right’ which claims that the onlooker is morally obligated to do something to save the drowning man. Behold, sayeth the statist – here we have an example of a positive right!

From this ‘thin edge of the wedge’ are created a plethora of positive rights such as forced taxation, the welfare state, the right to a job and health care, and all of the other convoluted and destructive messes of modern state programs.

Thus it is probably worth spending a few minutes discussing how the ‘Saving Strangers Scenario’ (SSS) would play out in a truly free society – i.e., a society without a centralized and coercive government.

Objection #1: Priorities, priorities, priorities…
Surely, as taxation and regulation climb into the stratosphere, as the brutality of Western foreign policy reaches a new low, and as the national debt (and large parts of the Middle East) explode – surely, there are slightly more important ethical issues to discuss then how we should deal with a theoretical drowning man that we will almost certainly never encounter. I have never run into an SSS in my life – and don’t know anyone who ever has – thus I would like to suggest that we turn our attention to more immediate moral matters. Given the current state of affairs, focusing on this issue is like being trapped in a burning building and worrying about being hit by a meteor. Thus, if people ask us to spend an inordinate amount of time on this issue, we may, I think, politely decline.

Objection #2: General Human Kindness
Whenever I stop my car to ask for directions, I am generally optimistic that people are going to do their best to try and help me, based on the fact that most people are very kind. I often read news reports about strangers helping other strangers out of difficult situations – sometimes even in the face of excessive personal risk. I have never once read a news article describing an easily-preventable death which occurred among a crowd of able onlookers who did nothing to stop it. (I have occasionally read of people deciding against interrupting a mugging, but I find that hard to condemn, since risking injury or death for merely material possessions seems rather unwise!)

Thus, the SSS seems a rather artificial argument, based on the probabilities of occurrence and the kindness of the average person. Certainly as a justification for the existence of a centralized state it seems particularly flimsy!

Objection #3: Show Me The Money!
Obviously, for the SSS to be solvable at all, someone has to be willing to dive in and save the drowning man. Given that in this scenario, the cold and sociopathic onlooker is usually considered to be a real risk, it seems hard to understand exactly what the alternatives would be. If people in general do not care about the dangers that other people are experiencing, then it makes no sense to create a universal monopoly of force which is supposed to ‘take care’ of those in danger – precisely because those ‘cold and sociopathic’ people will run state programs as well!

If people do care, then the only other possible reason that they would not intervene is because they would not gain materially by doing so. In other words, people will act if, like policeman and firemen, they would be well paid to intervene in the SSS scenario.

If payment is the issue, a free society solves it very nicely! Obviously, a company which owns a beach would lose business if its customers kept drowning. Thus this company would doubtless hire lifeguards and string buoys and warn of riptides and restrict swimming during dangerous times and so on. Thus it would be very unlikely that anyone would be allowed to drown without at least some company representative trying to save them! (As far as monetary rewards go, the beach owner would simply pay a bonus to anyone who saved a customer, just as banks pay a bonus to any teller involved in a bank robbery.)

All right, but what about a man hiking in the wilderness who spies a woman drowning and there is no one else around to save her? And what if the only possible incentive he would respond to would be monetary rewards? And what if he (for some strange reason) did not think that the woman would ever pay him any money for saving her life? Would he just then let her drown? Is that why we have a government?

Well, as I have mentioned in my previous articles, in the absence of the state, Dispute Resolution Organizations (DROs) will spring up to mediate altercations between people and to ensure their safety. Just about everybody in a free society would be represented by some form of DRO – including the woman drowning in some remote mountain stream with a cold-blooded man standing by who only will only save her if he is rewarded financially!

Now, if the woman does drown, then her DRO is out a lot of money – death benefits, loss of future customer revenue, and so on. Thus it seems likely that DROs will be more than happy to pay good money to anyone who saves one of their customers from death, injury, or even fraud!

In this way, even the extreme (and frankly ridiculous) situation outlined above will be neatly solved in a free society. Thus there is no practical reason why the SSS should ever be the basis of an argument for positive rights – and thus one more support for the moral justification for government can be gently removed!

The Predatory Escalation of ‘Immigration Policies’

Problems and Solutions

By Stefan Molyneux, MA

Host, Freedomain Radio – www.freedomainradio.com

The current controversy over immigration obscures – as most current controversies do – the depth and scale of the moral problem that is ‘immigration control’.

Even the word ‘immigration’ is specious, since what is merely being described is ‘moving’. Moving from New York to Houston requires no permission from the government – moving from Toronto to Buffalo does. The difference? Artificial boundaries of course – the territory marked out by one gang of predatory politicians versus another.

Can you imagine that, if you wanted to move from NY to Houston, you had to spend months or years on paperwork to wait for some official to give you the arbitrary thumbs-up or thumbs-down? Can you imagine having to spend thousands of dollars on ‘moving lawyers’ and having to completely re-prove your profession credentials and not being allowed to work for the first few months or years in Houston? Wouldn’t that be strange, maddening, ridiculous and wasteful beyond words?

And what gives one man the right to say to another man: thou shalt/shalt not live here? Is this a universal human right? Can I assert it as well? If not, why do politicians claim moral rights that directly oppose my rights? How can that be justified? How can a country composed almost entirely of immigrants dare to claim the moral right to close the gate to newcomers?

Of course, the primary culprit/excuse is the assortment of State programs which illegal immigrants can ‘take advantage’ of; such as welfare, Medicaid, public education and so on. In a free society, people have nothing to fear from immigrants, who must work or rely on private charity to survive, and who bring all the enormous needs inherent in those starting over in life: a house, education, furniture etc. The resultant increase in the demand for goods and services only helps stimulate the economy.

But, since government controls always leads to more government controls, we get immigration fascism nicely bundled with income redistribution programs.

Sadly, none of this is ever mentioned in contemporary debates, which always focus on the degree of immigration laws required, not whether they should exist or not at all. Current proposed legislation on Capitol Hill would instantly turn 12 million ‘undocumented Americans’ (quite a contradiction!) into felons. Also, priests, nuns, health care and social workers would be forbidden to help these poor souls. Being a ‘good Samaritan’ may just become illegal.

Why is all this occurring? In my opinion, for a number of reasons. Governments always need a crisis to expand their powers, and terrorists are proving uncooperative. So what’s next? Well, the ‘immigration crisis’ will enfold just like all other state ‘crises’, with all the same completely predictable results.

Step One: Crisis Creation

This has already been achieved. The Bush administration has kept this pot nicely bubbling on the back burner for years. Now is the time. ‘Seal the borders’ becomes the cry, and the Constitution shrivels just that little bit more, taking one of its final steps in its journey towards becoming an empty historical artifact.

Step Two: The ‘Mercy’ Compromise (aka preparation for escalation)

After sufficient protests, the government will ‘take a step back’ and offer some combination of warning and amnesty. The legislation will give 6-18 months advance warning, and those already here will be offered an amnesty of some sort.

Step Three: Inevitable Escalation

Naturally, as soon as talk of deferment and amnesty starts in earnest, there will be a massive stampede into the US. Just about anyone who has ever even contemplated immigration will be jolted into action, to get into the promised land before the steel door comes crashing down. Not only may they get the offered benefits, but if they get in before the gate comes down, they will face far less competition in the future from others like them. The existing ‘underground network’ of human movement will expand mightily to accommodate the new influx, which will be important later.

Step Four: Inevitable Backlash

As the stampede begins, the ‘immigration problem’ suddenly becomes an acute crisis. Endless footage of the stampede is run on TV. Frightening statistics are trotted out.

Ominous ‘doom music’ plays to shots of squalid immigrant living conditions. Many children and old people will be shown, with endless dire warnings about how their needs will ‘stretch the fabric of the social safety net to breaking point’. Angry and unemployed immigrant youth will be shown loafing around or doing nasty deeds. The police will start raiding immigrant enclaves. There will be some resistance. Cars will be burned. A cop will get injured by some cornered and desperate person. Patience runs out. Calls to action are made! Finally – presto! – fully worked-out legislation magically appears, just as in the Patriot Act – probably called the ‘Welcome Mat Act’ (WMA).

Step Five: Carding

The WMA legislation will require the creation of a massive new bureaucracy – and will set conditions under which the army can be stationed along the border, which will be quickly achieved. National ID cards will come into being – deferred for two or three years, just so no one gets too excited in the moment. All of this will be regretful but sadly necessary, in order to preserve the ‘strength of the Union’.

Step Six: ‘Progress’

As soon as these measures are implemented, there will be a magical ‘reduction’ in the prevalence (read: reporting) of illegal immigration. “You see?” the president will crow. “It’s working beautifully.” It will all be a lie of course. Making a genuinely-desired freedom illegal just drives it further underground, out of sight of the authorities.

Step Seven: Corruption

Ahh, the sweet smell of unmarked bills in small denominations! After the ‘official front gate’ comes down, the ‘side gate of corruption’ opens for business in earnest. Border cops will be bribed, politicians will take campaign donations from minority groups demanding preferential exceptions, the army will be led astray, and a whole complicated and convoluted set of rules (and how to break them) will be created, so that lawyers can take a break from suing corporations and start making money from those who want in.

Step Eight: The ‘Bypass’

The vast expansion of the ‘underground network’ of human movement created in Step 3 really comes into play here. A whole economic class will now exist for the sole purpose of getting people into the US by hook or by crook. (For historical examples of this, see the Mafia and Prohibition, or any modern gang and the ‘war on drugs’.) Honest potential immigrants will hesitate to get involved with such people – but sociopaths and criminals will already know them! The quality of those coming into the country takes just a bit of a nose-dive. Due to biased reporting and government statistics, the reputation of honest immigrants goes down with them.

Step Nine: The Forgeries

National ID cards will be forged as fast as printing presses can run them off. Those who are illegally in the country will just say ‘Oh, I forgot to have my card on me’, and promise to come by the cop shop the next day. Right. Thus the penalties for failing to produce an ID card on demand will escalate. This will hit native citizens hard and continually. The police will get financially addicted to fining citizens, and will pursue missing ID cards far more assiduously than any real criminals. The forged cards will be indistinguishable from the real cards (since corruption will escalate directly into the office of whoever is producing the cards, just as with Canadian passports), and so further identification steps will be required. Cops with retinal scan equipment anyone? This will all escalate into increased bribery and corruption opportunities. The lowered police attention towards violent crime will only escalate it – creating more justification for increased government powers and additional taxation.

Step Ten: The Expansion

At first, police ‘sweeps’ will be focused on particular ethnic groups. However, very quickly the ‘PC vulture’ will swoop down to feast on the rotting common sense of a dying society. Outcries against ‘unfair targeting’ will cause intense political pressure, which will result in senseless sweeps of Chinese and Scottish neighborhoods. Fines and corruption increase. The ‘cat and mouse’ game escalates to deadly levels. As the penalties for non-compliance increase, the desperation of those ‘caught in the net’ will increase. Policemen will start getting attacked, and will both escalate their use of ‘first force’ and also withdraw from dangerous neighborhoods, leaving entire sections of society with neither police ‘protection’ nor legal alternatives.

Sound grim? Well, remember this: it’s only inevitable if we think it is. Just as in opposing slavery, when the solution was not opposing each slave-owner, but the institution of slavery itself, we must oppose not this or that state program, but the very concept of the state itself. (For more information on ways to approach this, please visit my podcast site at www.freedomainradio.com.)

We must start to talk openly about viable alternatives to this ghastly coercive social monopoly called the state – for just as surely it can control immigration, it can exile our own freedom.

[INSERT NAME OF COUNTRY HERE]: LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT!

A commonly-heard response to criticisms of existing state policies – or, heaven forbid, the existence of the state itself! – is the demand that the person criticizing either drop his objection, or leave the country.

(A third option is sometimes given, which is the option of working to reform the existing state system, however, the likelihood of achieving that end is so remote that it is perhaps only a slightly more eloquent way of telling someone to just shut up!)

The idea that the two main options for the political critic is to either accept the rule of the state he lives under, or quit the country, is an old and durable one. Obviously, it is not the most intellectual or sophisticated of arguments, but it has achieved surprising longevity, despite its blatant lack of logic.

Central to the ‘exile alternative’, of course, is the belief that the government somehow ‘owns’ the country, and all the resources within it, much as a landlord owns an apartment building and all the apartments within it. In order to live in a condominium building, you have to respect the condo board and its rules – and so, in order to live in the United States, say, you have to respect the government and its rules.

Now this is a rather startling bit of totalitarian thinking, which even Mussolini would have hesitated to put forward so baldly. (Although Stalin would probably have been quite comfortable with it!) The idea that the government ‘owns’ all property, and sort of ‘leases’ it out to private citizens on the condition of uncritical obedience is astoundingly fascistic. When my wife and I signed the mortgage to purchase our house, we did not notice that George Bush had cosigned, and had ownership rights that superseded our own.

Furthermore, it is hard to imagine how just living in a country creates any form of implicit contract with the government. Implicit contracts are by their very nature unjust –and how do we know this? Because private citizens are not allowed to create and enforce implicit contracts. I can't say to my neighbor that his decision to live in his house automatically requires him to mow my lawn. I can't buy a car, offer to share it with my neighbor and then force him to pay for half of it. Anything which is unjust for private individuals is also unjust for those in the government – since the government is merely composed of individuals, and thus must be subject to the same moral laws as everybody else. Any rights or abilities claimed by those in power which directly oppose the rights or abilities of everybody else are automatically unjust and immoral.

The general answer to these objections is that the government obeys the will of the majority, and so the majority decides which laws and policies the government pursues. Thus obeying the laws of the state is not obeying the laws of any particular politician, but rather the will of the majority. (This, of course, is the form of ‘unlimited majority rule’ that was so instructive to Socrates!)

This is a perfectly valid thesis to put forward, and merely requires proof of the following four propositions in sequence:

1. That the definition of ‘a majority’ can be constrained to mean only those within a particular geographical area called a country.
2. That obeying the will of the majority is a morally good action at all times, in all places, and under all circumstances.
3. That existing political structures accurately reflect the dynamic and constantly changing will of the majority.
4. That the will of the majority has not been interfered with through some outside means such as financial pressure or propaganda.

Let's have a look at these in a little more detail.

Required Proof #1: That the definition off ‘a majority’ can be constrained to mean only those within a particular geographical area called a country who were born there or who have certain government-issued cards, and are over a certain age and so on.

This is a particularly tricky question for the ‘love it or leave it’ crowd to answer. The concept ‘majority’ can mean just about anything, from a majority of redheaded people to a majority of people who think that Jim Morrison is still alive. In order to even start proving the moral validity of obeying the majority within the country, a rational case must be made that only a geographically-defined majority can be considered a moral entity – and no others! So the redheads and diehard Jim Morrison fans are sort of out of luck. If this proposition cannot be proven, then any majority is always more moral than any minority. This might create some problems in stores, for instance, if shoppers want to leave without paying and just happen outnumber the cashiers. Or if I can get the neighbour on my left to agree that we should both take over the house of my neighbour to my right and so on. Also, if the majority always trumps the minority, the existence of the state is always morally wrong, since citizens always outnumber politicians.

If this proposition can be proven – no easy task – then we can move onto the next step.

Required Proof #2: That obeying the will of the majority is a morally good action at all times and in all places, and under all circumstances.

If this proposition is true, then moral rules do not exist in any objective sense whatsoever. The will of the majority is constantly changing, both within a society and throughout history. For instance, in the past, slavery was considered moral; now it is considered immoral. At what point did these moral rules change? If we have a country of 100,000 people, does the nature of morality, humanity or reality change when person number 50,001 changes his mind? What about if he changes it back? Is objective reality and human nature swirling back and forth like a kaleidoscopic whirlpool as he ponders a particular moral question?

Now, if obeying the will of the majority is not a morally good action at all times and in all places and under all circumstances, then some other moral criteria must be more valid than the ‘will of the majority’ when it comes to judging the ethics of particular actions. Since there then must exist a moral rule which is more valid than the will of the majority, it must be to that moral rule that we defer, not to the will of the majority.

Required Proof #3: That existing political structures accurately reflect the dynamic and constantly changing will of the majority.

Now, even if someone manages to prove both of the above assertions – quite a challenge! – he still faces the challenge of proving that governments accurately and continually reflect the dynamic will of the majority. This kind of assertion is far more provable in the free market than in the realm of politics, since voting only occurs every couple of years, even in a democracy. And voters, of course, only get to choose candidates whose considerable campaign expenses have been paid for by special interests looking for post-election favors at the expense of the voters!

Also, just as central command-and-control economies have no methodology for allocating resources in the absence of free-market prices, it is hard to imagine how a government could ever accurately and consistently determine the will of the majority on an ongoing and dynamic basis. After more than two thousand years of political philosophy, the world still awaits any methodology by which this could ever be achieved. (I for one am not holding my breath for a breakthrough on this one!)

Required Proof #4: That the will of the majority has not been interfered with through some outside means such as financial pressure or propaganda.

Even if all of the above have been proven, the challenge of proving ‘free will’ still remains. For instance, if the majority of people are offered $1,000 each to vote for a particular political candidate, then saying that an election somehow reflects the ‘will of the majority’ could be considered somewhat specious. All that it reflects in this case is their desire to receive $1,000!

Now, we all perfectly aware that the vast majority of funding for political candidates comes from individuals, unions, charities, organizations and corporations that all expect to receive political favors in return for their contributions. The employees of large corporations that deal with the Department of Defense just might hesitate before voting for a pacifist candidate whose major platform was a reduction in defense spending! Does their vote somehow represent the will of the majority, or rather just the self-interest of the bribed?

Furthermore, we can generally recognize that a person who was raised in a totalitarian system and was bombarded with propaganda every waking hour might have a certain ideological ‘hangover’ from that level of indoctrination. Similarly, we can generally recognize that here in the West, children from the age of 5 to 18 are subjected to hours of direct state propaganda in public schools every single weekday – not even counting homework! (And, speaking as a writer who attended three universities and battled all the way through to a Master’s degree, the ideological horrors of modern universities are even worse!) This degree and depth of propaganda is rather astounding, and absolutely interferes with the ordinary citizens ability to accurately process and understand the causes and effects of state power.

Thus even if all of the above points are provable, as long as state education continues to indoctrinate children for a dozen or more years, majority opinion can in no way be said to reflect the unbiased opinion of that majority. That would be equivalent to saying that paying a kidnapper to free your child is the same as a voluntary transaction.

Thus, overall, until the above points are all proven in sequence – and the problem of relativistic morality raised by an absolute obedience to the will of the majority is also resolved – we can safely say that any and all ‘love it or leave it’ arguments are entirely false, and morally corrupt. (As a side note, it is both sad and funny that Americans use this argument, which if accepted in Colonial times, would have stopped the Founding Fathers in their tracks and forced them to obey the British government or leave the Colonies!)

Unfettered allegiance to political power in any form is at the root of the moral corruption so evident in the 20th century, when at least 170 million people were murdered by those obeying government edicts. If genocide is something to be opposed, then we must all equally oppose the moral corruption of the ‘love it or leave it’ argument.

Proving Libertarian Morality: Reclaiming the High Ground

One of the central challenges faced by libertarians is the need to prove that libertarian moral theory is universally correct, while statist and collectivistic moral theories are incorrect. Until moral rules can be subjected to the same rigour and logic as any other propositions, we will forever be stymied by subjectivism, political prejudices and the argument from effect.

Why is this approach so important? Why bother with the grueling task of building a logical framework for the examination of moral rules – and the even more grueling task of communicating that framework to others? Well, as I have argued in previous articles, the freedom movement has made remarkably little progress throughout history. Von Mises wrote seminal works disproving the economic efficiency of socialism and communism in the 1920s – now, eighty years later, Western societies are still sliding into the predicted morass of ever-expanding state power, ever-increasing public debts and declining economies. Although free market economic theories have made some progress in academia (and even the popular media!) they have done nothing to even slow down – let alone reverse – the constant expansion of state power.

In my view, the reason for this is simple: libertarians have never won the argument from morality. These days, none of our opponents argue that the government is more efficient than the free market, or that communism will set us free, or that private property is theft. All the old socialistic shibboleths have been laid to rest – and yet still people support government power, because they believe that government power is moral. Most people believe that the government takes care of the poor, old and sick, protects us from enemies both corporate and militaristic, educates the young, builds us roads, blah blah blah – we’ve all heard the same nonsense since the dawn of time. All we say in response is that the government is inefficient at doing these things, and that the free market would be better – none of which touches the central rationale of state power, which is that people believe that it is good.

Our enemies understand the power of the argument from morality far, far better than we do. They constantly harp on the virtue of state power, starting in kindergarten with environmentalism, ‘friendly cops’ and the need for ‘childproofing.’ The world is dangerous, children hear, and capitalists want to kill you with smog, but your friendly government is always eager to serve, help and protect. Children first experience state power as firm, kindly and friendly teachers – so how could they see and appreciate the violence that underpins the government?

How can we oppose this? How can we best work to undo the endless propaganda of pro-state school, media and prejudice?

By learning from history, that’s how. To win a battle, one must first ask: how were similar battles won in the past?

The closest historical analogy to our current situation occurred in the 15^th and 16^th centuries, during the rise of the scientific method. The early pioneers who advocated a rational and empirical approach to knowledge faced all the same prejudices that we face today – all the same irrationality, entrenched power of church and state, mystical and subjective ‘absolutes’ and early educational barriers. Those who advocated the primacy of rationality and empirical observation over mystical ‘insights’ and Biblical fundamentalism faced the determined opposition of those wielding both cross and sword. Many were tortured to death as heretics for their intellectual honesty – we face far less risk, and so should be far braver in advocating what is true over what is believed.

In order to attack the false morality of state power, we must start from the beginning, just as the first scientists did. Francis Bacon did not argue that the scientific method was more ‘efficient’ than prayer, Bible texts or starvation-induced ‘visions.’ He simply said that if we want to understand nature, we must observe nature and theorize logically – and that there is no other route to knowledge.

We must take the same approach with defining and communicating morality. We must begin using the power and legitimacy of the scientific method to prove the existence and universality of moral laws. We must start from the beginning, build logically and reject any irrational or non-empirical substitutes for the truth.

What does this look like in practice? All we have to do is establish the following axioms:

• Morality exists.
• Moral rules must be consistent for all mankind.
• The more consistent a moral theory is, the more valid it is.
• Libertarianism is the most consistent moral theory.
• Therefore, libertarianism is the most valid moral theory!

Sound like a tall order? But give me three thousand or so words, and we can at least take a swing at the first three.

To start from the very beginning… do moral rules – or consistently preferred human behaviour – exist at all?

There are only two possibilities when it comes to moral rules, just as there are in any logical science. Either moral rules exist, or they do not. (In physics, the question is: either physical rules exist, or they do not.)

If moral rules do exist, where do they exist? Certainly not in material reality, which does not contain or obey a single moral rule. Moral rules are different from the rules of physics, just as the scientific method is different from gravity. Matter innately obeys the rule of gravity or the second law of thermodynamics, but ‘thou shalt not kill’ is nowhere inscribed in the nature of things. Physical laws describe the behaviour of matter, but do not contain a single prescription. Science says that matter behaves in a certain manner – never that it should behave in a certain manner. A theory of gravity proves that if you push a man off a cliff, he will fall. It will not tell you whether you should push him or not.

Thus it cannot be said that moral rules exist in material reality, and neither are they automatically obeyed like the laws of physics – which does not mean that moral laws are false or irrelevant. The scientific method does not exist in reality either – and is also optional – but it is neither false nor irrelevant.

Subjecting moral theories to the scientific method will provide the same benefits that subjecting physical theories to the scientific method did. Before the rise of the scientific method, the behaviour of matter resulted from the subjective whim of gods and devils – just as morality is now. Volcanoes erupted because the mountain-god was angry; good harvests resulted from human sacrifice. No absolute physical laws which limited the will of the gods were believed to exist – and so science could never develop. Those who profited from defining physical reality as subjective – mostly priests and kings – fought the subjugation of physical theories to the scientific method, just as those who profit from defining moral reality as subjective – mostly politicians and soldiers – fight the subjugation of moral theories to the scientific method.

The rise of scientific truth resulted from the expansion of the scientific method, which was a methodology for separating accurate from inaccurate theories by subjecting them to two central tests: logical consistency and empirical observation – and by always subjugating logical consistency to empirical observation. If I propose a perfectly consistent and logical theory which says that a rock will float up when thrown off a cliff, any empirical test proves my theory incorrect, since observation always trumps theory.

A further aspect of the scientific method is the belief that, since matter is composed of combinations of atoms with common, stable and predictable properties, the behaviour of matter must also be common, stable and predictable. Thus experiments must be reproducible in different locations and time. I cannot say that my ‘rock floating’ theory is correct for just one particular rock, or on the day I first tested it, or at a single location. My theories must describe the behaviour of matter, which is universal, common, stable and predictable.

Finally, there is a generally-accepted rule – sometimes called Occam’s Razor – which states that, of any two explanations, the simpler is probably the more accurate. Prior to the Copernican revolution, when Earth was considered the center of the universe, the retrograde motion of Mars when Earth passed it in orbit around the sun caused enormous problems to the Ptolemaic system of astronomical calculations. ‘Circles within circles’ multiplied enormously, which were all cleared away by simply placing the sun at the center of the solar system.

Thus any valid scientific theory must be (a) universal, (b) logical, (c) empirically verifiable, (d) reproducible and (e) as simple as possible.

Now the methodology for judging and proving a moral theory is exactly the same as the methodology for judging and proving any other scientific theory.

The first question regarding moral theories is: what are they? Simply put, morals are a set of rules claiming to accurately and consistently identify preferred human behaviours, just as physics is a set of rules claiming to accurately and consistently identify the behaviour of matter.

The second question to be asked is: is there any such thing as ‘preferred behaviour’ at all? If there is, we can begin to explore what such behaviour might be. If not, then our examination must stop here – just as the examination of ‘ether’ ceased after Einstein proved that the speed of light was constant.

The proposition that there is no such thing as preferred behaviour contains an insurmountable number of logical and empirical problems. ‘Preferred behaviour’ must exist, for five main reasons. The first is logical: if I argue against the proposition that preferred behaviour exists, I have already shown my preference for truth over falsehood – as well as a preference for correcting those who speak falsely. Saying that there is no such as thing as preferred behaviour is like shouting in someone’s ear that sound does not exist – it is innately self-contradictory. In other words, if there is no preferred behaviour, then one should oppose anyone who claims that there is preferred behaviour. However, if one ‘should’ do something, then one has just created preferred behaviour. Thus preferred behaviour – or moral rules – must exist.

Syllogistically, this is:

1. The proposition is: preferred behaviour must exist.
2. Anyone who argues against the existence of preferred behaviour is demonstrating preferred behaviour.
3. Therefore no argument against the existence of preferred behaviour can be valid.

How else do we know that moral rules exist? Well, all matter is subject to physical rules – and everything that is organic is in addition subject to certain requirements, and so, if it is alive, has followed preferred behaviours. Everything that lives, for instance, needs fuel and oxygen in order to stay alive – even plants strain for sunlight. Any living mind, of course, is an organic part of the physical world, and so must be subject to both physical laws and has followed preferred behaviours – to argue otherwise would require proof that consciousness is not composed of matter, and is not organic – an impossibility, since it has mass, energy, and life. Arguing that consciousness is subjected to neither physical rules or preferential choices would be like arguing that human beings are not subject to gravity and can flourish without eating. Thus it is impossible that anyone can argue against preferred behaviour, since if he is alive to argue, he has followed preferred behaviours such as breathing, eating and drinking.

Or:

1. All living organisms require preferred behaviour to live.
2. Man is a living organism.
3. Therefore all living men are alive due to the existence and practice of preferred behaviour.
4. Therefore any argument against preferred behaviour requires the existence of preferred behaviour.
5. Therefore no argument against the existence of preferred behaviour can be valid.

Since the scientific method requires empirical corroboration, we must also look to reality to confirm our hypothesis – and here the existence of preferred behaviours is fully supported. Almost every human being believes in moral rules of some kind. There is much disagreement about what constitutes moral rules, but everyone is certain that moral rules are valid – just as scientific theories disagree, but all scientists accept the validity of the scientific method itself. Disproving something that everyone believes in is almost impossible. One can argue that the Earth is round and not flat – which is analogous to changing the definition of morality – but one cannot argue that the earth does not exist at all – which is like arguing that there is no such thing as preferred behaviour.

Or:

1. For a scientific theory to be valid, it must be supported through empirical observation.
2. If preferred behaviour exists, then mankind should believe in preferred behaviour.
3. Almost all men believe in preferred behaviour.
4. Therefore empirical evidence exists to support the existence of preferred behaviour – and the existence of such evidence opposes the proposition that preferred behaviour does not exist.

The fourth argument for the existence of preferred behaviour is also empirical. Since human beings have an almost-infinite number of choices to make in life, to say that there are no principles of preferred behaviour would be to say that all choices are equal. However, all choices are not equal, either logically or through empirical observation. To take one example, if food is available, almost all human beings eat every day. If not themselves subjected to violence, human beings are generally not violent. Almost all parents choose to feed and shelter their children. There are many examples of common choices among humankind, which indicate that preferential behaviour abounds and is part of human nature – and requires that any theory claiming otherwise must explain away this teeming evidence.

Or:

1. Choices are almost infinite.
2. Most human beings make very similar choices.
3. Therefore not all choices can be equal.
4. Therefore preferred choices must exist.

The fifth argument for the existence of preferred behaviour is biological. Since all organic life requires preferential behaviour, we can assume that those organisms which make the most successful choices are the ones most often selected for survival. Since man is the most successful species, and man’s most distinctive organ is his mind, it must be man’s mind that has aided the most in making successful choices. The mind itself, then, has been selected as successful by its very ability to make successful choices. Since the human mind only exists as a result of choosing preferred behaviour, preferred behaviours must exist.

Or:

1. Organisms succeed by acting upon preferred behaviour.
2. Man is the most successful organism.
3. Therefore man must have acted most successfully on the basis of preferred behaviour.
4. Man’s mind is his most distinctive organ.
5. Therefore man’s mind must have acted most successfully on the basis of preferred behaviour.
6. Therefore preferred behaviour must exist.

Due to the above problems, any argument against the existence of preferred behaviour can be dismissed as incorrect.

Since we have proved the existence of preferred behaviour, the question of morality now shifts. Since preferred behaviour does exist, what theories can quantify, classify, explain and predict it?

First of all, we must remember that morality is optional. As we all know, every man is subject to gravity and requires food to live, but no man has to act morally. If I steal or kill, no thunderbolt from the sky strikes me down. Moral rules, like the scientific method or biological classifications, are merely ways of organizing the facts and principles of what exists.

The fact that compliance with moral rules is optional has confused many thinkers into believing that because morality is optional, it is subjective. Nothing could be further from the truth! Living organisms are part of material reality, and material reality is rational and objective. Applying moral theories is optional, but that does not mean that moral theories are subjective. The scientific method is optional, but it is not subjective. Applying biological classifications is optional, but biology is not subjective. Choices are optional; consequences are not. I can choose not to eat, but I cannot choose to live without eating. I can choose to behead someone, but I cannot choose whether or not they can live without a head. Morality is thus optional, but the effects of moral choices are measurable and objective. There is no subjectivity involved whatsoever.

Now, since morality exists, the next question is: to what degree or extent does morality exist? As mentioned above, the first test of any scientific theory is universality. Just as a theory of physics must apply to all matter, a moral theory which claims to describe the preferred actions of mankind must apply to all mankind. No moral theory can be valid if it argues that a certain action is right in Syria, but wrong in San Francisco. It cannot say that Person A must do X, but Person B must never do X. It cannot say that what was wrong yesterday is right today – or vice versa. If it does, it is false and must be refined or discarded.

To be valid, any moral theory must also pass the criteria of logical consistency. Since the behaviour of matter is logical, consistent and predictable, all theories involving matter – either organic or inorganic – must be also be logical, consistent and predictable. The theory of relativity cannot argue that the speed of light is both constant and not constant at the same time, or that it is 186,000 miles per second, five fathoms in depth and also green in colour!

However, since moral theories apply to mankind, and mankind is organic, the degree of consistency required for moral theories is less than that required for inorganic theories. All rocks, for instance, must fall down, but not all horses have to be born with only one head. Biology includes three forms of ‘randomness,’ which are environment, genetic mutation and free will. For example, poodles are generally friendly, but if beaten for years, will likely become aggressive. Horses are defined as having only one head, but occasionally, a two-headed mutant is born. Similarly, human beings generally prefer eating to starving – except anorexics. These exceptions do not bring down the entire science of biology. Thus, since moral theories describe mankind, they cannot be subjected to exactly the same requirements for consistency as theories describing inorganic matter.

The final test that any scientific moral theory must pass is the criteria of empirical observation. Thus for instance, a moral theory must explain the universal prevalence of moral beliefs among mankind, as well as the results of human moral ‘experiments’ such as fascism, communism, socialism or capitalism. It must also explain some basic facts about human society, such as the fact that state power always increases, or that propaganda tends to increase as state power increases. If it fails to explain the past, understand the present and predict the future, then it fails.

How does all this look in practice? Let’s look at how the requirement for universality affects moral theories.

If I say that gravity affects matter, it must affect all matter. If even one speck of matter proves resistant to gravity, my theory is in trouble. If I propose a moral theory which argues that people should not murder, it must be applicable to all people. If certain people (such as soldiers) are exempt from that rule, then I have to either prove that soldiers are not people, or accept that my moral theory is false. There is no other possibility. On the other hand, if I propose a moral theory which argues that all people should murder, then I have saved certain soldiers, but condemned to evil all those not currently murdering someone (including those being murdered!) – which is surely incorrect.

If, to save the virtue of soldiers, I alter my theory to argue that it is moral for people to murder if someone else tells them to (a political leader, say), then I must deal with the problem of universality. If Politician A can order a soldier to murder an Iraqi, then the Iraqi must also be able to order the soldier to murder Politician A, and the soldier can also order Politician A to murder the Iraqi. This problem cannot be solved, and so my theory is proven invalid.

I also cannot logically argue that is wrong for some people to murder, but right for other people to murder. Since all human beings share common physical properties and requirements, having one rule for one person and the opposite rule for another is impossible – it is like proposing a physics theory that says that some rocks fall down, while others fall up. Not only is it illogical, it contradicts the observable facts of reality, which is that human beings as a species share common characteristics, and so cannot be subjected to opposing rules. Biologists have no problems classifying certain organisms as human because they share common and easily-identifiable characteristics – it is only moralists who seem to have this difficulty.

Furthermore, if my moral theory ‘proves’ that the same man should not murder one day, but should murder the next day (say, when he steps out into the Iraqi desert), then my position is even more ludicrous. That would equivalent to arguing that one day a rock falls downward, and the next day it falls upward! To call this any kind of consistent theory is to make madness sanity.

Since scientific theories require logical consistency, a moral theory cannot be valid if it is both true and false at the same time. A moral theory which approves of stealing, for instance, faces an insurmountable logical problem. No moral theory should, if it is universally applied, directly eliminate behaviour it defines as moral while simultaneously creating behaviour it defines as immoral. If everyone should steal, then no one will steal – which means that the moral theory can never be practiced. And why will no one steal? Well, because a man will only steal if he can keep the property he is stealing. He’s not going to bother stealing your wallet if someone else is going to immediately steal that wallet from him. Any moral theory proposing that ‘stealing is good’ is also automatically invalid because it posits that property rights are both valid and invalid at the same time, and so fails the test of logical consistency. If I steal from you, I am saying that your property rights are invalid. However, I want to keep what I am stealing – and therefore I am saying that my property rights are valid. But property rights cannot be both valid and invalid at the same time! Similarly, any moral theory which advocates rape faces a similar contradiction. Rape can never be moral, since any principle which approves it automatically contradicts itself. If rape is justified on the principle that ‘taking pleasure is always good,’ then such a principle immediately fails the test of logical consistency, since the rapist may be ‘taking pleasure,’ but his victim certainly is not. (The same goes, of course, for murder and assault.)

Thus subjecting moral theories to the scientific method produces results which conform to rationality, empirical observations and plain common sense. Murder, theft, arson, rape and assault are all proven immoral. (Universal and positive moral rules can also be proven – i.e. the universal validity of property rights and non-violence – but we shall talk about that another time!)

To aid in swallowing this rather large conceptual pill, here is a table which helps equate theories of physics and biology with scientific theories of preferred (or moral) behaviour:

-	Physics	Biology	Morality
Subject	Matter	Organic Matter	Preferred behaviour for mankind
Instance	A rock	A horse	A man
Sample Rule	Gravity	The desire for survival	Goodness
Sample Theory	Entropy	Evolution	Property rights
Sample Classification	Matter/Energy	Reptile/Mammal	Good/Evil
Example	Matter cannot be created or destroyed, merely converted to energy and back.	If it is alive and warm-blooded, it is a mammal.	Stealing is wrong.
Hypothesis	Atoms share common structures and properties, and so behave in predictable and consistent manners.	Organic matter has rules – or requirements – that are common across classifications.	Human beings share common rules and requirements.
Proof	Logical consistency, empirical verification.	Logical consistency, empirical verification.	Logical consistency, empirical verification.
Negative Proof Example	If mass does not attract mass, theories relying on gravity are incorrect	If organisms do not naturally self-select for survival, the theory of evolution is incorrect.	If communism succeeds, theories based on the universal value of property rights are incorrect.

In conclusion, it is safe to say that (a) moral rules exist, and (b) moral theories must be subjected to the scientific method, just as theories of physics and biology. Furthermore, any moral theory based on non-universal or self-contradictory principles is demonstrably false.

If libertarianism is to succeed, we must examine all moral theories and commandments in this light – otherwise we relinquish moral truth to our enemies, which will only ensure our continued failure.