-Caveat Lector-
~~for educational purposes only~~
[Title 17 U.S.C. section 107]
Chaos Theory
by Bob Murphy
Throughout history, there have been countless arguments
advanced to support the State. None of them has been
valid. This essay will address a certain class of these
arguments, whose sleight-of-hand consists in a definitional
trick. My purpose here is not to make the positive case
for pure laissez-faire, but merely to show that each
pro-government argument is a non sequitur.
Anarchy is the absence of government, both in political
science and everyday usage (it is the first definition
given by Webster's, e.g.). Chaos, in the context of
social science, refers to lawlessness, or the absence
of a relative degree of regularity in human affairs.
(I say a "relative degree" because, obviously, virtually
all humans will always obey the 'rule' of, e.g., avoiding
someone with leprosy or not slaughtering every female in
sight. The 'laws' to which lawlessness is opposed are
generally meant to imply the sometimes irksome rules
necessary for a civil society.)
It should be immediately clear that anarchy and chaos
are distinct things; you can have anarchy without chaos
(e.g. groups of humans from the Stone Age if you
subscribe to evolutionary accounts) and you can have
chaos without anarchy (e.g. the French Revolution, if
you subscribe to historical accounts). Any argument
that conflates anarchy and chaos is thus invalid.
Before proceeding, I ask the reader to indulge me in
a brief digression. People often chide me for calling
myself an anarchist, rather than a libertarian. The
term anarchy conjures up images of atheist nuts who go
around throwing bombs. Wouldn't it be much more palatable
to make appeals for liberty, rather than for anarchy?
Sure it would; but I'm not running for class president.
(I tried that once. I had the funniest posters an
eighth-grader ever designed, and I posted them in the
bathroom, where everyone would be sure to see! The
other kids peed on them. I didn't win. Is that why
I'm so bitter?)
Also, the statists have had quite a time of stealing
labels. The good guys used to be the "liberals." No
longer. The good guys used to be the ones championing
ever more "rights" for the individual. No longer. The
very word liberty has been raped, and I have no doubt
that libertarian can be perverted to mean whatever
the ruling class wants it to mean.
Aside from the danger of devious usage, there is also
the legitimate distinction that must be made between
those who advocate a "night watchman" state which
merely enforces property rights and those who favor
complete abolition of government. Many people of the
former group refer to themselves as libertarians.
(They are inconsistent and confused, of course, but
that's okay. They'll come around.)
Thus, to avoid any possible confusion, I advocate
anarchy, pure and simple. (Also, it sounds tough to
say you are an anarchist. Well, it looks tough in
print. It won't help you in a fight or anything.)
I should also mention that anarchy is not a good of
itself; what I really desire is the truly free
society. It's just that, in my opinion, only anarchy
can achieve this. So, in terms of ethics or morality,
I would say the highest end is freedom. But in terms
of political science dealing with forms of
government I would say the goal is anarchy. (To
quote my friend's bumper sticker: "There's no government
like no government.") This is somewhat analogous to
the approach of Friedrich Hayek, who believed in
democracy as the best means to a (relatively) free
society. Although he was wrong in this conclusion,
he was not so naive as to worship democracy per se.
Lastly: Certain wise-alecks think they can refute
my ideal of "absolute freedom" with a flippant
syllogism. One of my smug conservative professors
at Hillsdale College (which had a plaque in the
library espousing the ideal of "Ordered Liberty,"
which struck me as akin to "Partial Pregnancy")
offered an argument along the following lines: You
can't have absolute or total freedom, because if
I'm free to kill you, then you can't be free to
live.
This is the sort of strawman logic you expect from
sophomore philosophy majors (also prevalent at
Hillsdale), which goes through only on a twisted
definition of freedom. Imagine the scene from Mad
Max, where Mel Gibson gets thrown into the cage to
fight that huge brute. (You know, when everyone
starts chanting, "Two men enter, one man leave!")
Now suppose the "referee" says to the combatants,
"All right guys, anything goes!"
My question: Would it be legitimate for Gibson,
as he's getting his head smashed in, to complain
to the ref: "Liar! You said anything goes! I
wanted to recite Hamlet!" Of course not. Yet this
is precisely the argument of my college professor.
So, when I say I desire a society of total freedom,
I mean a society where people respect the property
of others. I do not mean the physically impossible
situation where two people both eat the same piece
of pizza, or where people have the "freedom" to
jump over the Moon.
Finally, on to my main point. One of the most
frequent statist tricks is the following: (1) The
government assumes the responsibility of X. (2) The
government screws up horribly. (3) The government
cites the mess as proof of the necessity for
government action.
(For example, after every plane crash, people demand
the FAA gets more funding. After the 'accidental'
bombing of the Chinese Embassy, an ex-CIA agent
wrote an Op-Ed piece explaining that budget hikes
were necessary to update the maps. Imagine if
Firestone, after the recall fiasco, explained that
it needed to raise its prices in order to provide
safer tires. I'm sure Ralph Nader would give them a
thumbs-up.)
P.J. O'Rourke, in his funny book, Eat the Rich, has
a chapter called "Bad Capitalism," in which he says
that a certain country (Albania?) is the victim of
a giant Ponzi scheme i.e. you can't have too much
economic freedom. Although O'Rourke doesn't explain
how a Ponzi scheme can make the group as a whole
poorer (the original Ponzi, after all, got rich that's
why he started his scheme), his basic message is a good
one, so I'm not too bothered by his slight error.
The same cannot be said for Ian Fisher, who wrote
an August 10th article for the NY Times entitled,
"Somali Businesses Stunted by Too-Free Enterprise."
After detailing the thriving business competition in
Somalia, Fisher sadly relates:
What Somalia does not have is a government...[making]
it the world's purest laboratory for capitalism. No
one collects taxes. Business is booming. Libertarians
of the world, unite!
So it may come as a surprise that business people in
Mogadishu, the wrecked and lawless capital, are begging
for a government. They would love to be taxed and would
gladly let politicians meddle at least a bit in their
affairs.
If everyone is willing to pay for protection services,
what's stopping them? Further, it's a bit fishy to
describe a group of warlords who use violent thugs to
exact tribute as the absence of government, since a
government is, among other things, a group of warlords
who use violent thugs to exact tribute.
(I know, I know, the common argument against anarchy
is that it would entail the situation of warrior bands,
and that I seem to be using a definitional trick
myself but this article's already way too long. All
I shall mention further on the Somalia example is this:
Even if it were the case that the Somalia situation
can happen when we overthrow "government," this alone
would prove nothing. I can just as well point to Nazi
Germany, Stalinist Russia, Maoist China, and Pol Potian
Cambodia as examples of government gone bad. Take your
pick.)
But the best comes from a recent haughty piece by that
oh-so-clever Paulina Borsook, who first quotes from
her book, Cyberselfish:
Quiz: where would you want to do business in 2000?
In Russia where there's no regulation, no central
government, no rule of law; or in Northern California
where the roads are mostly well-paved and well-patrolled
and trucks and airplanes are safer than not...where
people mostly don't have to pay protection money,
and the majority of law-enforcement personnel are
not terribly corrupt or brutal?
This is classic. Now Russia is cited as an example
of pure capitalism? As a land of no central government??
Give me a break. Borsook destroys her own argument by
saying the law enforcement personnel are not terribly
corrupt or brutal. (We overlook what a silly defense
indeed it is to say, "The majority of people under my
proposed system will not be terribly corrupt or brutal.")
By this she is undoubtedly referring to the fact that
relatively more police officers in Russia are corrupt
and brutal. Well then, we're not dealing with anarchy,
are we, Ms. Borsook?
Oh yeah: People in California do pay protection
money: They call it T-A-X-E-S.)
Borsook then continues:
I will instead mention a recent nasty epidemic of
food-poisoning that just erupted at a Mexican
restaurant in San Mateo county....Turns out the
restaurant hadn't been inspected in more than a year
because surprise! it turns out budget cuts made
it impossible to hire enough health inspectors. But
hey, government is the Great Satan and we all believe
in self-regulation and who needs taxes?
Again, I feel silly even pointing this out, but this
sort of argument is made over and over. Do you see
what Borsook is trying to pull here? She is ridiculing
those who think the government does a bad job
regulating private industry. To demonstrate their
error, she cites an example of government doing a bad
job regulating private industry.
Like I said, you hear this sort of argument anytime
chaos erupts. So Bob, you're opposed to government
control, eh? Try telling that to the peasants in
Colombia! Ho ho, Bob, you're for anarchy, eh? Why don't
you move to the Gaza Strip?
The Colombian case is exactly the same as Borsook's
Mexican restaurant. The Colombian government taxes its
citizens in order to provide police and legal services,
and it fails miserably. We must never confuse government's
impotence with government's absence.
And whatever else you want to call it i.e. unwarranted
oppression or legitimate defense of settlers you
certainly cannot describe government soldiers shooting
children as anarchy.
Are certain regions in chaos? Sure. In anarchy? I wish.
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