What does it mean to coerce someone if not to exercise ultimate decision-making authority? Inherently, coercion is monopolizing — incompatible with dissent. By retaliating, the victim of aggression too is attempting to impose his or her own monopoly, with respect to his or her attacker, on the provision of coercion. Simply put, someone using force — whether justly or unjustly — is not seeking to coexist, but to destroy. Victims are seeking to destroy the coercion taking place against them. Of course, coercion can be used justly or unjustly (based on the context in which it was used). So just as the only proper function of coercion would be to defend individual rights, it would follow that the defense of individual rights is the only proper function of ultimate decision-making authority.

Ethical Implications for the State

To my understanding, the principle of rights is applicable in a social context (i.e., interacting with others), which would seem to support the idea that individuals would have the right to the retaliatory use of coercion (ultimate decision-making authority) throughout society, not just wherever they have ownership rights. As I noted, force is inherently a monopolizing act. Within any given territory, large or small, only one legal system can prevail at a given time. After all, what is at stake is rule-making. If individuals have the right to the defense of their rights, they are acting within the bounds of morality by seeing to it that a legal system that genuinely defends rights prevails. If individuals organized an institution, the legal system, to exercise ultimate decision-making authority in defense of their rights within a given territory, in fact they would be forming a state, an institutional that cannot be challenged with impunity and which enforces rules of conduct within a given territory. So long as they were genuinely acting to defend individual rights, those individuals would be acting justly, as far as I can tell, in forming a state.

If it is any relief, the upshot of this rationale for the legitimacy of the state would be that its only justification would be to defend individual rights. I do not think this is necessarily at odds with market anarchism, as far as I understand, if the idea is that constituent functions of government should be open to the private sector to perform.

Just as people have the right to self-defense, they can decide that it might not be in their interest to act fully on that right. So while people have the right to form a proper state, at least as far as I can tell, there is no moral imperative that they must. In a scenario where the likelihood of conflict is diminished, implementing a government might be prohibitive for practical reasons, such as its possibility of being corrupted or even that its administrative costs would be too great. It goes without saying that just because a state exists, that does not necessarily mean it is proper or should be supported.

Ad hominem attacks aside, YouTuber hawanja’s video on free-market anarchists seems to make the point that people “naturally organize themselves into hierarchies” that require violence to be maintained, so anarchism runs counter to the human condition. It is left unstated why violence is needed or ethically justified to maintain these hierarchies if they were so natural. He further claims that a state is the historically necessary “institution that enforces order through violence.”

The first of hawanja’s misunderstandings has to do with his definition of “state.” A key distinction I and Barack Obama would make is that a state claims a territorial monopoly on its enforcement of order through violence. The insinuation of hawanja’s definition, which ignores the territorial monopoly claim, is that any enforced order necessarily signifies the presence of a state. Throughout the entire video, viewers are presented with this false dichotomy: statism or chaos. Anarchists do not oppose order. The etymological origin of “anarchy” means no ruler (not no rules), similarly how “monarchy” means one ruler. Regardless, statists generally insist on conflating “anarchy” to mean a conflict for rulership that takes place in a failed state. Anarchism recognizes that rulers are not justified in their actions and are counter-productive to a peaceful, productive existence.

Another unfounded assertion is that “this natural hierarchical structure to human beings” is justified in using force to maintain its power. After all, just as a good majority of people naturally like ice cream, I hardly think that would justify “natural hierarchical structures” enforcing the consumption of ice cream.

The Enemy of My Enemy

Another tried and true fallback in defense of the state is the canard that a state is necessary to protect us from corporations, which hawanja rightly pointed out are creatures of plutocratic state protections and subsidies. They are granted limited liability by governments and are under a legal obligation to pursue the interests of shareholders, not employees or the environment or the public. However, should the blame rest with corporations or also with their architects (governments) that created them and shield them from accountability?

He cites laws prohibiting discrimination and child labor and food safety and consumer protections as examples of good government. Of course, governments have historically been used to promote all sorts of racial discrimination, child labor, and made food and consumer protections harder to come by and more expensive. hawanja unintentionally, I presume, confirmed this point when he showed a picture of Rosa Parks, the civil rights heroine arrested for disobeying a segregationist city ordinance that ordered she give up her seat to a white passenger, when he mentioned government laws prohibiting discrimination.

I think it is all well and good that government-enforced slavery and Jim Crow apartheid, the more overt government measures used to uphold discrimination, have been removed. However, that does not do so much to help those past victims of discrimination. All the ways that governments prohibit wealth creation has meant that past victims of government-enforced discrimination continue to suffer at the hands of government-enforced poverty. As Charles Johnson summed up in his “How Government Creates Poverty as We Know It” essay, “The poorer you are, the more you need access to informal and flexible alternatives, and the more you need opportunities to apply some creative hustling. When the state shuts that out, it shuts poor people into ghettoized poverty.”

Governments are not responsible for ending child labor. As a thought experiment, just consider what would happen if child labor was prohibited by law in Nepal. It would have the same effect as enacting California-style building codes in Haiti: absolutely none, because there is no wealth to implement those laws. The credit for the advancement of human civilization rests with the grandest form of human cooperation, the wealth-creating division of labor.

Coincidentally, I would think the issue of discrimination would create another dilemma for supporters of the state. Historically, racism, sexism and slavery would have been considered “natural hierarchical structure[s] to human beings,” just as the state is said to be. Yet, left-liberals, as I suppose hawanja is, do not propose that the enforcement of racism, sexism or slavery was just. Based on what principle though? And how would that principle not equally apply to racism, sexism and slavery?

hawanja also appears to be under the impression that governments were responsible for the abolition (or near abolition) of child labor, neglecting the fact that child labor is still legal in the United States under some circumstances. More to the point, mass child labor was an example of a problem exacerbated by the heavy hand of government. Had it not been for mercantilist and protectionist Robber Baron economic policies of the 19th century, wealth creation for the average family would have been realized much more broadly and quickly so that parents could afford to send their children to school sooner. Many social problems, including institutional discrimination, that governments are credited with fixing were largely already successfully being addressed through direct action before legislative interventions took place.

Consider consumer protections against price fixing. Historic examples of consumer protection during the Progressive Era were done at the behest of business interests. As noted liberal historical Gabriel Kolko wrote of the implementation of the Federal Trade Commission, in “The Triumph of Conservatism”:

The provisions of the new laws attacking unfair competitors and price discrimination meant that the government would now make it possible for many trade associations to stabilize, for the first time, prices within their industries, and to make effective oligopoly a new phase of the economy.

He called it a triumph of conservatism because federal intervention into the economy was able to secure the existing economic structure, what Kolko called “political capitalism” and what we know today as “crony capitalism” and “corporatism.” In Kolko’s conclusion, he said:

The varieties of rhetoric associated with progressivism were as diverse as its followers, and one form of this rhetoric involved attacks on businessmen—attacks that were often framed in a fashion that has been misunderstood by historians as being radical. But at no point did any major political tendency dealing with the problem of big business in modern society ever try to go beyond the level of high generalization and translate theory into concrete economic programs that would conflict in a fundamental way with business supremacy over the control of wealth. It was not a coincidence that the results of progressivism were precisely what many major business interests desired.

Kolko’s book is something, documenting how nearly every aspect of the Progressive Era legislation — from food inspections, environmental conservation and banking reforms, for example — were used as covers to cement the existing cartelized trusts already in power.

The book does a great job of documenting the problem with hierarchical institutions, that the people who already have the most access to the government are going to have the most influence in shaping what solutions are offered, how they are interpreted and how they would be implemented. Regulators — like all self-interested creatures — are sure to implement solutions that preserve their power and prospects for future employment, since their interests closely align with those of the regulated. If regulators or politicians are corruptible with bribes, the powerful can leverage their influence to a greater degree than they could in a freer market. For just a fraction of the cost, favorable regulations worth millions of dollars can be bought with campaign contributions. On a free market, it would be more costly to bribe someone who did not have the luxury of using taxes, as government regulators can, to pay for the enforcement of regulatory or legislative cronyism.

Making More Trouble

Next, the video documents social problems that libertarians typically attribute to government. In the past, I might have been guilty of short-changing why those problems are a consequence of government intervention, so I will take the time below to make the points clear.

1. Food prices — Yes, governments subsidize cattle and meat production at the expense of healthier, more natural forms of food, and place restrictions on the importation of those products. It is not a market phenomenon that it costs more to purchase a salad than a hamburger. All the resources devoted to feeding cows and other animals and creating bio-fuels like corn-based ethanol could have been used to produce food for organic diets. In addition, the federal government has sealed off arable land that could be used to farm, and city ordinances often place restrictions on mixed-use property, some of which could be used for home or community gardens on abandoned property.
2. Low wages — The ways in which labor organizing is discriminated against is too long to list. Just to list some examples, I would point to the ’35 Wagner Act, which was championed by business interests and conservative unions to clip the more wildcat unions like the anarchist International Workers of the World. Typical demands, like collective bargaining and calling for limited strikes, that unions are legally permitted to make today are pretty meek by comparison. Before the era of having to get government recognition, when most of the historic gains of the labor movement were actually realized, unions could call for general strikes and indirect boycotts, opened union hiring halls, signed closed-door contracts or demanded worker management of the firm. Other government interventions are through occupational licensing laws, use-restricted zoning regulations, legal tender laws, capitalization requirements and capital-favored taxation policies that mean more people have to work for wage labor in the first place.
3. College expenses — It is not a coincidence that college tuition expenses increase at the same time that governments actively encourage people to go into debt by providing low-interest loans and restricting the establishment of new higher education options. The government and the corporate credentialism fetish is also partly to blame. One major expense of college is the cost of textbooks, which are artificially marked up do to the enforcement of artificial intellectual property claims.
4. Environmental conservation — It is also no secret that common law environmental tort protections were removed from courts in the 1900s, which is how pollution problems were handled until environmental legislation that legalized greater environmental damage took power out of the hands of property owners. That is not to mention that the largest polluter in the entire world is the United States federal government.
5. Drug safety — Yes, illicit drugs are more dangerous because of government. They cannot be made under true laboratory conditions; there is no possibility of any legal redress for fraud; and every year millions of people acting consensually are terrorized by government agents and hundreds if not thousands are killed by those government agents. The crime and escalated costs associated with drugs are a consequence of prohibition.
6. Terrorism — See “Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire” by Chalmers Johnson.

At the beginning of the video, hawanja criticized the favoritism that governments grant corporations, only later to praise the cronyism of farm subsidies for multimillion dollar farm conglomerates. He said that government protection has led to stable food prices in the United States, which is not so true of late. However, the relative stability has only come because Americans already pay much higher prices for foods like sugar than do residents of developing nations. In terms of dollars, the average American family transfers an additional $146 to large agribusinesses every year because of these policies, which do not include the approximate $300 per family given directly to mostly multimillionaires through the federal budget. The costs of milk, butter and meat products would be deflated if trade restrictions on international markets were abolished, helping to reduce poverty overseas.

Looking at the unintended consequences of those subsidies, the abundance of corn, some of which is used to sweeten sodas, has been linked to increased obesity in Americans. There is also the problem that developing nations wanting to compete in farm production are constantly being underpriced by subsidized farmers, leading developing nations to become dependent on subsidized farmers for food. That is something developed nations hold over developing nations as part of “Open Door Imperialism,” but it is not a fact I would cheer. Without government protectionism, land use could become more environmentally friendly, as well. A Reason magazine article said:

The distortions and perverse incentives of U.S. agricultural policies have encouraged practices that damage the environment. Trade barriers and subsidies stimulate production on marginal land, leading to overuse of pesticides, fertilizers, and other effluents. A central if unstated purpose of American farm policy is to promote production of commodities that would not be economical under competitive, free market conditions. This often means emphasizing crops better grown elsewhere, requiring more chemical assistance.

The conclusion of the video makes a laundry list of mandates that hawanja thinks the free market could not provide, like affordable housing and health care, public transportation, environmental and consumer protections, expanded broadband internet coverage, protection for the homeless, protection of endangered species, food and medical safety and national security. He said that the free market cannot do these things; “we do these things because we need them to survive.” His unstated argument is that these are public goods that markets cannot provide for.

I have argued in the past that with a little creativity, public goods can be provided, assuming there is public support for those goods, which would also have to be the case in a democratic government. To quote Kevin Carson, “As always, it’s not a question of what we’ll do when the state stops solving the problem. It’s a question of how to stop the state from creating the problem.”

The problem becomes that regardless of the possibility of providing those public goods on an open market, those goods become harder to achieve with a government in place, which creates an entirely new set of obstacles for achieving those original public goods governments were purportedly created to solve in the first place. Public goods, like security and safety, are not impossible for governments to provide, just costlier and more difficult than they would be on a free market. The first new public good created by the presence of a democratic government would be an informed electorate. It is not in the average person’s economic interest to know much about the issues at hand or the candidates running for office. That is because a single individual’s vote has almost no significance in the outcome of an election, and even if a single vote could turn an election, a voter has no method of holding a politician to his or her campaign pledges. It gets worse. A single politician in Washington, D.C., is one of 535 votes in the legislature. The idea that a citizen’s vote would make any noticeable difference to the his or her life is almost inconceivable.

The second public good that must be provided for in order to solve the original public goods problems is the creation of just laws. When thinking about it, there are thousands and thousands of pages of legislation and regulation under discussion. It would be next to impossible and meaningless to read every line of every bill introduced or regulation proposed in order to find out if some special benefit is being given to this or that special interest lobbyists. Even if we could decipher what the legislation or proposed regulation meant and its impact in the future, which would be difficult enough, contacting a congressman or regulator is going to have a negligible impact on influencing policy. Even if we could change the policy, it most likely only means a savings of a few dollars or cents per voter. Special interests who stand to gain millions or billions are always going to have the time and money to devote to gaining special favors.

Since human beings are not perfect or all-knowing, market failure is possible, but as David Friedman notes, “In the political system, market failure is the norm. If you think of the political system as a marketplace, we cannot expect individual rationality to produce group-rational results.” So the idea that government would work if we could only get the right people in charge is a failed strategy in practice and beyond naïve in theory.

When a government does try to address public goods that allegedly cannot be provided by the market, policies are going to serve the powerful and wealthy. Seeing how I would actually like to see those public goods provided to people, I cannot support a government, because a government makes those products less attainable for the people who most desperately need them.

Now, I understand that there are many strains of socialists. Some are state socialists, some libertarian (or voluntary) socialists and even some socialists are pro-market (as much as right-wingers might not like to acknowledge it).

A common misconception I run across from anti-market socialists is that they oppose the profit motive and markets, instead favoring non-market economies like gifting. I happen to think that gifting would have its place, but it would not be the primary form of economic activity.

Market anarchists view profit making as a natural phenomenon taking place among living beings, so it is more of a descriptive observation than it is a prescriptive notion about how living beings ought to behave. As a nexus of all of our consensual economic decisions, markets serve to remove human dissatisfaction.

To understand this, profits that free-market supporters speak of do not necessarily take the form of money, either. When bartering, people will trade for goods or services which they more highly value. With even the simplest interaction, it is natural that pleasure is more desirable than pain. Of course, people are going to have different time preferences for valuing particular pains and pleasures. Nevertheless, the psychic values of these pleasures and pains are not reducible to quantifiable interpersonal comparisons. They originate and remain in the mind of the person who holds them. That is, these values are not fixed to the objects themselves but instead represented in people’s own judgements.

So it is possible for a set of people who hold different judgements to exchange objects they each value and still mutually benefit from that exchange, rendering a greater output of wealth for all. In a free market (which is not in place today), consumers would determine who has best combined less-valued resources into higher-valued products and thus profited.

The work before us market anarchists is obvious.

At present, there are all sorts of government interventions, from “lemon market reforms” to socialized information diseconomies of scale and artificial barriers to entry, that limit the number of firms competing in the market. The problem is not so much much markets as it is statism.

But the anti-market conception of freedom is only recognizing the “yoke of external nature,” as anarcho-communist Mikhail Bakunin called it. Or like Wesley Bertrand on a recent “Complete Liberty” podcast said, “Life is the freedom to starve.” This yoke cannot be removed so long as we are alive. It is the everlasting condition underlying every action we make: to live or die, to improve our material condition or suffer. To say that a starving man is not free is to reverse cause and effect. Consumption only becomes possible after production. It is only through production that an individual can provide for his well-being. A starving man has fewer opportunities to take advantage of his freedom, but also at no other time is his freedom of more value. Without it, his mind would be paralyzed to think, ensuring his destruction.

The root conflict between my understanding of liberty and someone like Bakunin, for example, is I believe that indirect and direct physical force are the only means of violating someone’s rights. All libertarians committed to non-aggression would agree that if a starving man is prevented by physical force from engaging in productive action, then he is not free. Bakunin is correct that the right to liberty is only of significance in the realm of interpersonal relationships, but I contend that that the only way of impeding someone’s rights is by force. We can be victims of our neighbor’s irrationality or bigotry. But so long as that injustice is not manifested in the unauthorized use or abuse of another’s rightly controlled property or person, the damage is psychological and not physical. We remain free to use our minds and the products of our mind as we see fit. We remain free to use the property in question to inform others of the injustice we received.

For those of political power, freedom is an outright threat to the existence of their power. That is because its origin is vested in violence and sought through favoritism, so the static quantity of its influence must increasingly become cartelized into fewer and fewer hands. That system can distribute wealth, but it cannot create it. Their power extents only so far as they can project authority over others or convince others they too can benefit from that power. For those of economic power, they are insulated from the harsh realities of tyrannical governments and can position themselves to profit from partnering with the state. So it is natural for the two to protect each of their interests. One has a legal monopoly on coercion, but not the ability to create wealth of its own. The other has wealth, but not supposed the authority to initiate the use of physical force.

It is important not to forget that political and economic interests acquire power from fundamentally different sources. The former confiscates wealth and subjugates individuals as a matter of course, while the latter serves to disperse power through mutually beneficial exchange (to the degree it does not cling to political power). Economic power, when not acquired by physical force, is a product of the limitless creative process, consensual regulation, market competition, and organized labor.

Confusing the two as one in the same leads to the support for less liberty and less opportunity. An example of this is the famed anarchist Noam Chomsky, who actively supports the expansion of state control. While justly viewing the state as a tool of domination and privilege, he looks to the state for protection from the same interests he believes are manipulating it in their favor.

In an interview, he said:

I’m not in favour of people being in cages. On the other hand I think people ought to be in cages if there’s a sabre-toothed tiger wandering around outside and if they go out of the cage the sabre-toothed tiger will kill them. … And there is a cage, namely the state, which to some extent is under popular control. The cage is protecting people from predatory tyrannies so there is a temporary need to maintain the cage, and even to extend the cage.

Under a banner of protecting people from the infringement of political privilege, Chomsky has become a tool of entrenched political interests. It is also not lost on me that economic power disparities can be seized upon and manipulated in favor of one side of an exchange more than another. No political model can guarantee that people will act justly. But one can minimize the consequences of injustice and promote the occurrence of mutually positive interactions. To do this, a just society would need a widespread recognition for private property rights, but that is not sufficient to ensure that freedom would have much meaning. Here, I agree with Bakunin that individuals are only capable of achieving emancipation once they have recognized their same humanity in others. As Mary Ruwart said in “Healing Our World,” when we seek to control others, we find ourself the one controlled.

As a practical matter, a lasting libertarian society would more likely come about by a widespread cultural shift of accepting the choices of others, treating others equally as individuals, and becoming less obedient to oppressors. Most people do not become libertarians out of a duty to the non-aggression principle. They are attracted to the sense of justice and fairness inherent in equal liberty.

A free market would be a more abundant society and would radically expand the scope of economic opportunity. It would also be more efficient at helping the disabled and poor, who are often the most devastated victims of political favoritism. Without the expense of tax collection and tax compliance, together which gobble up two-thirds of welfare revenue received, those in need would experience dramatic increases in charity. It should go without saying that when I am talking about the free market, I am not apologizing for economic conditions as they exists now in America or elsewhere. I am working analytically to explain the economic consequences of an unhampered market process. To the extent that an unhampered market existed, one could expect these consequences to follow.

A practiced and still principled way of promoting a libertarian society is by addressing people’s legitimate concerns of what would happen to the less fortunate in a free society. Direct action, like mutual aid, social ostracism, and counter-economics, should be potent models to demonstrate the validity of equal liberty while also challenging the status quo. The downside of charity is that it tends to be a short-lived solution, so I do believe mutual aid would be a better way of promoting social harmony and overcoming the root cause of despair — if we are going to be free, not by vote, but as a matter of virtue.

The alienation of man from his labor, which Marx contended was the result of treating labor as a commodity of production, no longer played such an explicit role as it had in the above quotes from his then-unpublished “The German Ideology.” Instead, the theme of his work began to analyze class struggle as the moving force behind history, and he extended his continuum of thoughts on alienation with his critique of the division of labor. It was these early manuscripts that would become unified in the first volume of “Capital.” His thesis was that private property had an inborn tendency to become more and more centrally managed due to the antagonistic relationship between capital owners and propertyless laborers, who were left with no option but to sell the only commodity they had — labor power. Marx reasoned that like any commodity, the average price of labor would fall to the average cost of its production, which for the laborer meant the cost of a subsistence living in society.

It was an ingenious revelation, and one on its face that was perfectly plausible according to the prevailing theory of value at that time. The capitalist could appropriate labor for the cost of maintaining a subsistence living and then sell the products of that labor for the market value set by supply and demand, reaping the “surplus value” of labor without doing additional work. Marx was not content with just ensuring higher wages for labor; he believed wage labor itself was abominable.

Except, Marx acknowledged that contrary to his theory, by historical records, the “surplus value” of production was in direct proportion to the total capital invested, not just the labor power invested in production. He said, “It appears therefore that here the theory of value is irreconcilable with the actual movement of things, irreconcilable with the actual phenomena of production, and that, on this account, the attempt to understand the latter must be given up.”

A Libertarian Theory of Exploitation

Communists are right in viewing the state as exploitative, but not because it upholds property rights, but because the state exists only by systematically usurping those rights. What would prevail in a stateless society — one without government propaganda championing that “taxation is voluntary,” “voting is freedom,” and “government is security” — is a strengthened sense of property rights and individual autonomy.

Despite the obstacles of state coercion, we create society anew each day for the mutual benefit of all; what makes this social cooperation possible is the existence of a medium of exchange. I do not mean to say that the desire for monetary gain should be the focus of our social relationships either. My point is that you cannot have meaningful and enduring fraternity without private property, firsthand, and an independent means of economic calculation, secondly.

Without money, sunk is a division of labor, which more easily enables seemingly opposing economic interests to become complementary to one another for the benefit of the whole of society and themselves. Competition within a market framework has to do with excelling to the utmost and providing an understanding of who best serve at any particular position. Without such a division of labor, there would be no society, and mankind would exist in a literal Hobbesian war of all against all. Yet, our productive capacity allows us to transform less valuable resources into more valuable resources for consumption and savings (later consumption). This means that life does not require the sacrifice of others. This understanding allows us to plan for long-range goals to achieve prosperity. A secured sense of private property rights permits such long-range thinking.

Please note that this is not an apology for the current economic model. I am calling for a radical break with statism and collectivism. In fact, I agree with Marx’s major historical tenets describing the development of economic history, yet his explanation for class exploitation, the rise of class privilege, the cartelization of power within the state and business, and the imperialist conquest to stifle foreign competition all fall short because he falsely pinpoints “wage slavery” as the culprit for those evils.

This is partly forgivable since his economic model was based on the labor theory of value, which predated other classical economics as far back as Adam Smith. Marx failed to account for the time dimension in the relationship between the capitalist and laborer. In theory, Marx should witnessed that the laborer is receiving a present good (his wages) at a discounted rate of interest for the time until the capitalist is able to bring the product to market in the future. Wages are in effect an advanced payment on future revenues.

In practice, today’s “capitalists” are able to create greater demand for their services through legal tender laws and restrictions on the availability of cooperative credit. Existing anti-labor laws, direct and indirect corporate subsidizes, monetary inflation by the central bank, and the general insecurity caused by government manipulation of the consumer and employment markets also put employees in less of a bargaining position to their bosses. In a genuine free market, one without government privilege and artificial barriers to entry, fewer large businesses would undoubtedly exist and we would be far wealthier. So employees who chose wage labor as an occupation would be in a greater position to demand better wages and benefits.

I think part of Marx’s confusion came about because of his conflicting views of the function of the state. On one hand, he viewed it as the tool of the ruling class, who he hoped might be the proletariats one day. In other writings of his and Engels’, he also saw it as always working against the interest of the society (and it does). All in all, the classical liberal theories including, but not limited to, Adolphe Blanqui offer clearer insights into the problematic entanglement of capitalism and the state and how the two together promote conflict for the purpose of exploitation.

The role of politics is to decide who controls the figurative pencil or another resource at any particular time and for what ends. The same could be said of government. Two individuals might have diametrically opposed reasons for supporting a government, but they both support the existence of government. For example, Thomas Jefferson stated that government should be established to secure our individual inalienable rights. In comparison, Benito Mussolini said, “Fascism conceives of the State as an absolute, in comparison with which all individuals or groups are relative, only to be conceived in their relation to the State.”

These two ideas cannot both be true at the same time. Nevertheless, there is an ideal form of government that could conceivably achieve both Jefferson’s and Mussolini’s ends, though not at the same time, of course.

What Is Meant by ‘Government’

As the argument goes, men are not angels, so government is necessary to resolve disputes that arise. But what is a government? John Locke put much thought into this and decided that a functioning government needed to satisfy three “inconveniences” that would arise when living in a society that lacked a government. Locke believed there needed to be a known, settled law by which all disputes are ruled against. Second, he believed there must be a sufficient threat of force behind those ruling so they are followed. Third, a government would need to function as an independent judge of disputes.

Why a Worldwide Dictatorship

The only way to remotely satisfy all three “inconveniences” is to establish a world government. Governments exist now in a state of anarchy with one another as there exists no supra-government that lives up to Locke’s standards to enforce international laws and agreements. Because of their ability to offset the costs of aggression with taxes, governments pose a far graver danger to peace and security than do regular criminals, so a world government is imperative if local or national governments exist. Citizens of other countries also exist in a state of anarchy with citizens of other countries, although this seems to be less of a problem than government-on-government coercion. The United Nations is the closest thing that resembles a world government, yet it does not have the power to coercively impose taxes on citizens of its member nations. Member nations voluntarily fund the UN, and it does not possess the enforcement power to make its resolutions binding.

Even if a world government capable of enforcing its rulings were established, members of the world government would still exist in a state of anarchy because no one external to the government enforces rules upon lawmakers. The one way to reduce conflicts within the government is to reduce the number of government officials. Conceivably, the least populated government would rest power in a single person to avoid incidences of anarchic relationships. Now, admittedly, even this would not entirely end the existence of anarchy since the dictator would also exist in a state of anarchy with everyone else on the planet. Yet, a worldwide dictatorship would be the most ideal government, should one exist, to eliminate anarchic relationships.

For Jeffersonians, world government would be a nightmarish thought at first blush. Many Jeffersonians also believe that government is inevitable, that some form of government will always exist. That is certainly a theory and all the more reason to support immediately establishing a world dictatorship of limited powers before a world government of expansive powers is possibly created by a Chinese-Indian coalition.

For the Mussolini crowd, a worldwide dictatorship would soon enough make “the State as an absolute” a reality.

Why Not a Worldwide Dictatorship

I am being facetious in advocating a worldwide dictatorship. But a world government is where support for any government inevitably leads its supporters. In fact, a worldwide dictatorship of limited powers would quickly dissolve into complete tyranny. (Hint: Hierarchical power structures are not responsive to demands for accountability.)

What we see is the more that power is disproportionately divided among people, the more violence tends to erupt and corruption festers. Government is so dangerous precisely because it can externalize the costs of its violence onto captive taxpayers. The more that power is dispersed and divided, the greater that rights are respected and peace prevails. The profit and loss mechanism and competition, not the impossibility of constant vigilance, provide a natural check on the size of business enterprises and the power they can aggregate to themselves.

In truth, the ideal form of government is none at all since its purpose, from a rights-respecting perspective, is impossible. That does not mean a lack of governance or rule-making in society. A society without the ability to bring order would quickly be no society at all. The absence of monopoly government does not mean everyone will be of a pure heart and display empathy for his fellow man. Precisely because we are not angels, rules and rules enforcement should not be centrally commanded and controlled.

There is good reason to believe that current government policies will not last. The direct and indirect costs of government controls have never been greater. Government debt, already at record levels, is only projected to grow at an even faster pace for the next decade. When central banks are left with no choice but to raise their lending rates to curb monetary inflation, the cost of carrying debt will balloon, putting debt-ridden governments at greater risk of insolvency. In fact, the parasitic political class now constitutes a majority of the population as early as three years ago. Accordingly, it certainly seems likely that the ship of state is going down hard.

As a result, some further fear a violent backlash will follow the collapse of the federal government, which will trigger dependent state and local governments to come crashing down too. It is all nightmarish stuff, which is why those who actually care for the poor and needy should support reducing the size of government now.

Ring Around the Rosey

This is not the first time a government is facing impending doom. All governments at one time or another will collapse or be overthrown. That is no surprise. Even a constitutionally limited government, if one existed, would still employ violence to solve complex social problems. Under political government, ruthlessness is rewarded and productiveness is preyed upon.

A Pocket Full of Posies

I will take my literary license here and say the ashes sung about are the posies, or dollars, becoming worthless. That is definitely the trend for the past 100 years. Prior to 1913, it had been that the value of the dollar gradually increased, save for times of war. But with the creation of the Federal Reserve, the progressive income tax, and later moving to a fully fiat dollar, the decline of the dollar has signaled the transfer of wealth from the productive to the political class, who receive substantial income and privileges from government power.

Governments dreads deflationary periods (meaning a reduction in the supply of money in the economy). The availability of credit becomes harder, so government tax receipts go down as people begin saving more. Incomes and prices fall, which puts even less money in the hands of government.

An inflationary policy, meanwhile, loots people’s savings and tames their judgement of government action in light of their own increasing financial anxiety. The government’s economic outlook does not look as bleak relative to taxpayers’ own conditions. More importantly though, people become compliant when they fear the backlash of openly opposing government actions.

We All Fall Down?

So I have painted a pretty grim picture. And there is really nothing that can be done about it. I mean that. But even if my predictions come to pass, do not fret. That the dollar is backed by nothing works to our advantage. If the the dollar was still on a commodity standard, there would be real assets behind those paper promises, which would give people something to cling to.

When the dollar becomes worthless, people will just stop working for the government. The existing government people with any real power will be too busy slipping away with their stolen loot. Everyone else will just walk away. There is nothing to fight over because the dollar is worthless. Government employees switching to the private sector will rapidly increase productivity in the economy. Resources will be better allocated. It will not be easy, but the invisible hand is an incredible thing. We can soften any crash by getting people more independent, which is a good thing anyway. The federal government will still exist. They might still pass a flury of laws, such as to confisgate gold as happened under Franklin Roosevelt.

It will be a time of confusion for people. I do not expect a great majority are ready to face fundamental questions such as the scope of control they seek over other peaceful people. The more fundamental question worth asking is whether a 600-year-old solution called the nation-state, which has never delivered on the promise of maintaining peace and security, is worth saving.

In my mind, the move toward complete liberty will take place another day. First, it requires a change in people’s respect for themselves, rejecting the cannibalistic view of man as a sacrificial animal for society and, instead, replacing self-effacement with a new outlook that sees each individual’s life an end in itself.