Anon78,

I am skeptical of professionalized policing and uniformed “security” forces, even in the context of competitive free market agencies under anarchy. I think that while they may offer useful services to some private property owners, they also pose substantial dangers, which, even if the benefits outweigh the dangers in a given case, need to be countered, and probably not only by competing but basically similar firms, but also by assertive individual actors and by countervailing grassroots groups (on the model of CopWatch, but without laboring under the heavy burdens that State privilege for police currently forces them to labor under). I also think that in most cases the benefits are probably not worth the accompanying costs, and informal and decentralized solutions to security problems are usually going to be better than formal professional goon squads.

However, you asked a comparative question about competing private defense associations as vs. the current situation, so my answer mainly focused on comparing the two. I do think the former would be substantially better than the latter, for the reasons I explain, although I also think that a third solution will often be better than either.

As for your two objections, (1) it may very well be the case that individual people will prefer to back down when confronted by roving marauder gangs, and will ransom their safety rather than paying in the money and personal risk that it would take to defend themselves. It’s an interesting question why, historically, the technology and tactics of extortion and repression have tended to outrun the technology and tactics of evasion and resistance, and whether this would still be true under anarchy in a modern industrialized society (I’m not convinced that it would), and if it would be, whether anything can be done to reverse that trend (I suspect that it can).

I’m not especially convinced by your appeal to popular reluctance to use violence in self-defense or lack of training in it, because (1) presumably in anarchy, if people rely on themselves and their neighbors rather than professionalized security forces for their self-defense, more people will see it as in their interest to acquire some minimal training; (2) it doesn’t need everyone or even most people being willing to forcibly defend themselves, but rather just enough that it’s no longer profitable for the marauders to write off marauding in that neighborhood as too risky to be profitable; and (3) perhaps most importantly, there are lots of ways for people. individually or cooperatively, to effectively respond to violence other than by meeting it with defensive violence. There’s obstruction and fortification, stealth, evasion, and a whole host of tactics for passive resistance. All of which are increasingly accessible to the knowledge and resources of educated people in modern industrial societies.

But whatever the case may be, if anarchy does mean that many people will have to ransom their safety from marauder gangs every so often, which take the money and then leave, it’s hard to see how that’s worse than the present situation, in which a permanent marauder gang occupies their territory and micromanages the most intimate aspects of their everyday lives.

As for (2), I don’t really think it’s the case that feuds and civil wars between competing armed factions, such as those now common in central Africa or those that were common a few decades ago in southern Africa, are really a basic part of how trained fighters will always behave. Surely in those specific cases it has much more to do with the ideological and material allure of a particular prize (state power, or, failing that, local warlordism, with heavy, pervasive, and constant intervention by neighboring states, former colonial powers, world superpowers, and the bureaucratic “foreign aid” kleptocracy) which the victor in the civil war will ultimately be able to claim. But if it’s the prize that’s driving the fighting, then a political condition of anarchy, and a widespread cultural and institutional shift towards anarchistic principles and the industrial mode, which would tend to undermine or eradicate completely, makes it correspondingly less of a worry.

Jason,

Thanks for the link and the reply.

I recognize that there are minarchists more radical or principled than Dale Franks, who would have refused to collaborate in a drug conviction. I have other problems with their position (after all, I’m not a minarchist), but not the problem that I have with Dale Franks. I didn’t mean to imply that every minarchist would have done what he did.

However, I do think that it’s fair for me to suggest that being a minarchist makes one systematically more likely to indulge in that kind of legalistic error than one might otherwise be. Being an anarchist has built-in intellectual safeguards against it, whereas being a minarchist doesn’t. (That’s not intended as an argument for anarchism over minarchism per se; rather it’s why I think that this case and others like it go to support my prior argument that people who have already been convinced of anarchism for other reasons should be cautious about how closely they work with smaller-government campaigns or institutions.)

As far as drug trial juries go, I would happily lie about my political views in order to get on the jury, and then, if I got on it, do everything in my power to obstruct or prevent a conviction. I think that the prosecutor in a drug case has no more moral entitlement to get the truth from me than the Gestapo would if they stopped by to ask whether I’m hiding any Jews in my attic. And while the pay scale for sitting as a juror would be shitty compared to what I could be making for my time in other pursuits, I’d be happy to give up the profits in order to help an innocent person go free.

“[inhales] Fear. The city reeks with it….”

Anon78:

I take it private police of competing defense associations won’t “be mean” to people and mistreat them…? I would be curious to know if Radgeek agrees with you on this.

Lots of people are mean, and sometimes people who have a little bit power over other people will use it to act like petty tyrants. I think this is part of the human condition and I doubt that it will change in anarchy. However, there is a question as to what recourse you have when someone is mean or abusive or throws you in jail for nothing. When it’s a state police force, you have no recourse, because (1) government cops can never lose their “customers” and have little or no material interest in keeping them satisfied; (2) government cops enjoy special privileges and immunities that nobody else enjoys, in virtue of government laws that allow them to ticket, hurt, or arrest people simply for not “complying” with their arbitrary orders; and (3) the only people who have any power to address abuses by government cops are other government cops, meaning that as long as other cops in the same police department are willing to excuse or ignore an abuse, the victim has absolutely no recourse, and in the few cases where the other cops are pressured into taking some action against their colleagues, it almost never rises beyond administrative disciplinary proceedings. Meanwhile, any restitution that goes to the victims comes out of taxpayers’ pockets, not from the people who actually committed the crime or the administration that allowed it to occur.

In anarchy, all three conditions would be reversed. (1) Any security firms that wanted to make it in the market would have to compete with other security firms, as well as alternative set-ups like neighborhood watches and informal community defense, in order to stay in business. That makes for an external constraint on private cops’ actions with respect to their customers. (2) Without State-fabricated privileges, private cops wouldn’t be held to a special standard of conduct, and wouldn’t have special privileges to order people around or hurt those who disobey. (3) State cops and their employers would also be directly liable for any abuses they commit, and competing firms or associations would be free to intervene against them when they go off the handle, meaning that rogue cops can and would be arrested, tried, forced to pay restitution to their victims, and possibly jailed (if there’s reason to believe that they pose an ongoing threat). In anarchy, if there are persistent problems with abusive cops from one particular firm or association, then there’s a corresponding opportunity for an outside firm or grassroots association to take care of the problem by investigating and busting the bad cops. So, again, whereas statism allows the police to police themselves (fat chance), anarchy allows for other, competing groups to act as an external constraint on any one group of police. That makes for an external constraint on cops with respect to the people who the cops deal with, even if they are not customers of that security firm.

What I’ve repeatedly argued about government policing is that all these so-called “abuses” are the direct result of a system which requires no real accountability for thuggish cops and which offers no real recourse for their victims (cf. Law and Orders #5, Rapists on Patrol, Oops. Our Bad., etc.). To the extent that anarchy would create alternative venues for victims of thuggish cops to get protection before-the-fact or restitution after-the-fact, for cops to be held personally accountable for their actions, and for organizations that aid and abet abuse by their hired thugs to be forced to take responsibility for the consequences of their policies, you can expect that to that extent you will see far fewer abusive cops (security guards, whatever), and, of those who remain, you can expect that they’ll be able to get away with far less, and to get away with it far less reliably than they now can.

Joel,

Oy. I’m afraid you’ve hit on one of my linguistic pet peeves.

An argumentum ad hominem is the fallacy of evaluating an argument based on features of the person advancing it, rather than on its own merits.

If somebody were saying, “Ron Paul is a nasty racist. Therefore, his argument for the gold standard must be bogus,” then that would be an argumentum ad hominem.

On the other hand, if somebody says, “Ron Paul is a nasty racist. Therefore you shouldn’t vote for him for President,” then that’s not an argumentum ad hominem. The issue here isn’t an argument, but rather whether somebody personally ought to occupy a particular political position. Details about the history, personality, and character of a candidate for political office are certainly salient to whether or not you should vote for them, since presumably when you vote for someone you are (inter alia) relying on them to do at least some of what you want them to do while in office, and whether that trust is well-founded depends in part on what sort of person they are.

So while the allegations that have been made against Ron Paul are certainly personal attacks, they are not “ad hominem attacks.” Ad hominem arguments are never cogent. But personal attacks may be uncalled-for or called-for, as the case may be, depending on whether the allegations made in the course of the attack are well or ill-founded.

As far as the allegations that have been made against Ron Paul’s history and character go, I think they’re a pretty mixed bag, but certainly the video doesn’t respond to any of them. Plenty of cornfed military veterans and doctors from Texas have been nasty racists, too. If it’s supposed to be showing that he’s not an ogre, then it seems to me that it’s just evading the issues that have been raised in favor of talking about something else, and then capping it off with a note of adulation that borders on the surreal.

I will say that I have played the video several times nevertheless because I like the old-timey music in the background.

Concerning (6), yes, as per (2), I decline to make use of any government goods or services whatsoever. If you imagine that your minimal government, rather than market providers, will be laying pipes and building roads and putting up wires, then I won’t use any of those, provided that in return the government will not force me to pay for pipes and roads and wires that I’m not using (cf. (5)), and also provided that, when I make arrangements with other people to arrange for my own water, electric, and transportation needs using our own private property, your minimal government will not barge onto my property or theirs in order to force us back into their “natural” monopoly.

Concerning (7), I don’t know precisely what you mean. If you’re asking whether I intend to pay for services rendered that I requested and agreed to pay for, then of course I will honor my agreements. If you’re asking whether I intend to pay for “services” that I never agreed with anyone to pay for, which I never asked anyone for, and which were “rendered” by the free choice of the “service” provider, for her own reasons, whether I wanted them or not, then of course I intend to do no such thing.

Now that that’s out of the way, again, just so we’re clear, am I correct in saying that your view, as a self-identified minarchist, is that in Minarchistan your limited government cops will have the right to shoot me in order to force me to pay taxes in support of a minimal government whose services I have explicitly declined to make use of?

And if so, given that you said that your limited government cops would only have the right to shoot someone who was engaged in those who commit aggression or engage in revolutionary violence, and given that in my hypothetical I am clearly not engaging in revolutionary violence, am I correct in inferring that your view is that they have the right to shoot me because I am aggressing against one or more identifiable victims by declining to pay in for “public goods” which I never agreed to support, which I never asked anyone to build, which I may not ever make use of, which I may not even want, but which I was never given any option to refuse or veto, and which other people decided to build for their own reasons and for their own benefit?

I ask in the interest of clarity, not for the purposes of debate. If these are indeed your views, then I’m not much interested in arguing over (say) the legitimacy of the Single Tax, or whatever other form of taxation you believe in. I doubt either of us would convince the other. But I would like to know whether or not I’ve accurately characterized your views about the prerogatives of a minimal State. If you do indeed plan to shoot me someday for not paying my taxes, then I figure it’s worthwhile for me to know that ahead of time.

Simon:

No. At least not at the federal level.

What has this got to do with the federal as against the state courts? Do you think that state judges have a right to overturn unjust state laws regardless of the provisions of constitutions of the U.S. or their own state–even though federal judges (on your view) do not? If so, what makes the difference between federal and state judges? If not, then why bring it up?

The trouble begins when (as Tully alluded to) you come to realize that different people have different ideas about what is and isn’t just.

I don’t see what the trouble is, and I don’t see the pertinence of the objections that Tully raised, unless you’ve misunderstood my question. I didn’t ask whether judges are required to uphold laws they believe to be unjust. I asked whether they are required to uphold laws that actually are unjust, which is a different question.

If there are requirements of justice which are binding, and discoverable, independently of the contents of any statutory or constitutional law, then clearly judges can’t have any duty to overturn a law in light of them. But if you intend to take that line of argument, then you’ll have your own problems to deal with. (Among other things, it entails the awkward conclusion that there are no independent standards for judging one legal system as better from the standpoint of justice than any other. This seems clearly wrong. Part of the reason to prefer modern American courts to the Star Chamber or the Spanish Inquisition or for that matter the American courts during the days of the Fugitive Slave Act, is presumably that the modern American courts do a better job of securing justice. But in order for you to say so, it must be the case that there are some independent requirements of justice against which all four systems can be held up and compared. In any case, if you don’t think so, that’s the substantive position you’ll need to try and defend, God help you.)

If, on the other hand, there are such requirements, then, whatever those requirements may in fact be, there must be at least some conceivable cases in which a case comes before a judge where (1) the statute which the judge is asked to uphold in fact violates one or more of the requirements of justice, and (2) the judge knows about the conflict between the statute and those requirements of justice. My question is about what the judge’s rights and obligations are in such a situation.

What you’re urging is for judges to be invested with the power (I put it prospectively because they certainly don’t have that power now) to eliminate the work of the legislature and substitute in their own judgment. That’s not only pernicious to a democratic system, it obliterates the rule of law, because if the law is whatever the judge in a given case thinks is a just result in that case, no one can know in advance what the law is and take reasonable steps to conform their behavior to it. It becomes a form of secret law, and secret laws are inherently tyrannical.

Well, no, what I asked is whether judges have any duty to uphold laws which are in fact violations of the substantive requirements of interpersonal justice. I’ve neither said nor asked anything about whether judges should be able to throw out laws based on any old belief they happen to have about justice, whether mistaken or not. I’m certainly willing to grant that judges should not throw out laws based on beliefs about justice which are in fact mistaken.

Given that we are talking only about cases in which the law in question actually is unjust, i.e., where enforcing it would involve committing an injustice against one or more identifiable victims, I cannot see any reason to accept your claim that overturning the law in question would involve tyranny, let alone being “inherently tyrannical.” On every definition of “tyranny” I’m aware of, it’s enforcing an unjust law that’s tyrannical, not obstructing its enforcement.

In sum, Judges have no “duty” to collaborate in the enforcement of laws that they personally regard as unjust (in such circumstances they can and ought to resign) …

Again, the question is not about what judges “personally regard as unjust,” but rather what is in fact unjust. So, taking that modification into account, and taking your (well-taken) suggestion that resignation is an alternative option into consideration, I reiterate my question to you, mutatis mutandis:

Is it your view that no judge has a duty to directly collaborate in inflicting an injustice (since she can resign rather than doing so), but that she is bound in conscience to step aside and allow someone else to inflict the injustice, even though she could have obstructed or prevented the injustice from being inflicted?

If so, why? So far the only answer you’ve given is the political expedience of compromise in majoritarian democracy. But if expedience is no excuse for personally collaborating in the sin of commission (which you seem to grant, when you suggest that the judge resign), then I cannot see why it’s a good excuse for the sin of omission, either.

Picture the scene: next February, having clawed itself out of a deep, deep hole, the Democratic party is finally in a position to start pushing its agenda through a Democratic Congress to be signed by a Democratic President. Because this is a hypothetical, we can assume that all this legislation is actually constitutional. But the courts strike down the whole lot, arguing that it’s unjust. Are you happy with such a result? I doubt it.

I almost certainly would be happy with that result, given what the Democratic Party’s agenda has generally been when it has been in power. Perhaps you’re making some unwarranted assumptions about my political views.

So, just so we’re clear, since the risk of shooting is involved, I’d like to know what will and will not get me shot in Minarchistan.

Let’s say that I live in the territory that your limited government lays claim to, but I don’t want anything to do with it. (Maybe I’m dissatisfied with the juridical and defense services that it offers. Or maybe I’m just an ornery cuss who doesn’t like governments.) So I henceforth (1) renounce any allegiance to your minimal government. (2) I decline to partake of any of its offered services. (3) I will arrange for my own self-defense, and (4) I’ll go to willing third parties, not to government courts, in order to adjudicate any disputes I may have over questions of right. And since I don’t intend to pay for things that I’m not using, (5) I’ll also refuse to pay any taxes whatsoever to support your minimal government from this point forward. In short, I’m not interested in being part of your minimal government’s constituency, and I quit.

If I do all of (1)-(5), do you think that any of them will justify sending the limited-government cops after me in order to make me stop doing them? If so, which, and why?

Well, you could always say what the maker of the ad closes by saying: “Here’s to the Greatest American Ever!”

Chairman Ron is the Red sun of our hearts!

Less Antman: “Question: would you have lied to the judge when asked the standard voir dire question about whether you would follow the law as instructed by the judge? I’ve wrestled with this question since the first time I got dismissed for an honest answer, and would like to know the opinion of others.”

Yes. I’d also lie to the Gestapo if they asked me whether there were any Jews in my attic.

If what’s at stake is someone going to federal prison for ten years on a drug rap, I’d say that the difference between the one case and the other is only one of degree. And a smaller difference of degree than many people believe.