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The Anarchist Alternative

Spooner castigated legislation, the making of decreed law. Mutual protection associations should be voluntary. People should be able to opt out, start new ones, or even risk having no organized protection. Most anarchists agree with John Locke and the classical liberals that the social organization of justice is generally more just and more efficient than informal personal justice. Where anarchists part ways with statist liberals is denying government solipotence in the field. Anarchists deny that only a monopoly - the state - is capable of providing this vital social function. A free market is the only way consistent with liberty, just like any other service. The first thinker to assert that the monopoly on production of security, like all other monopolies, leads to poor quality and high prices, was anarcho-capitalist economist Gustave de Molinari.

If there is one well-established truth in political economy, it is this:

That in all cases, for all commodities that serve to provide for the tangible or intangible needs of the consumer, it is in the consumer's best interest that labor and trade remain free, because the freedom of labor and of trade have as their necessary and permanent result the maximum reduction of price.

And this:

That the interests of the consumer of any commodity whatsoever should always prevail over the interests of the producer.

Now in pursuing these principles, one arrives at this rigorous conclusion:

That the production of security should, in the interests of the consumers of this intangible commodity, remain subject to the law of free competition.

Whence it follows:

That no government should have the right to prevent another government from going into competition with it, or to require consumers of security to come exclusively to it for this commodity.

- Gustave de Molinari, The Production of Security (1849)
While Molinari takes a more-or-less value-free economic approach, others took a Lockean natural rights approach. Herbert Spencer wrote about The Right to Ignore the State. Michael Bakunin stressed the right to opt out of any association. Lysander Spooner starts with Locke's argument for organized defense of rights, and draws the logical conclusions based on consent that Locke evaded.
Although it is the right of anybody and everybody - of any one man, or set of men, no less than another - to repel injustice, and compel justice, for themselves, and for all who may be wronged, yet to avoid the errors that are liable to result from haste and passion, and that everybody, who desires it, may rest secure in the assurance of protection, without a resort to force, it is evidently desirable that men should associate, so far as they freely and voluntarily can do so, for the maintenance of justice among themselves, and for mutual protection against other wrong-doers. It is also in the highest degree desirable that they should agree upon some plan or system of judicial proceedings, which, in the trial of causes, should secure caution, deliberation, thorough investigation, and, as far as possible, freedom from every influence but the simple desire to do justice.

Yet such associations can be rightful and desirable only in so far as they are purely voluntary. No man can rightfully be coerced into joining one, or supporting one, against his will. His own interest, his own judgement, and his own conscience alone must determine whether he will join this association, or that; or whether he will join any. If he chooses to depend, for the protection of his own rights, solely upon himself, and upon such voluntary assistance as other persons may freely offer to him when the necessity for it arises, he has a perfect right to do so. ...

Certainly no man can rightfully be required to join, or support, an association whose protection he does not desire. Nor can any man be reasonably or rightfully expected to join, or support, any association whose plans, or method of proceeding, he does not approve... To join or support one that, in his opinion, would itself do injustice, would be criminal. He must, therefore, be left at the same liberty to join, or not to join, an association for this purpose, as for any other, according as his own interest, discretion, or conscience shall dictate. - Spooner, Natural Law

Modern anarchists generally envision private defense agencies (PDAs) providing security services on an insurance basis. Besides the advantages of competition over monopoly, there are other reasons why free market defense services would likely be superior to government services.

One of the most persistent delusions among statists is the assumption that there needs to be a monopoly in police and arbitration services. Most people do not realize that territorially based monopoly law is relatively new in the grand historical scheme of things. Before the rise of the nation-state, prior to 1500, Europe generally had a polycentric legal system. Legal jurisdiction was not soley based on location like most places today, but based on kinship and ethnic association, type of conflict (e.g. religious or commercial or family), and various other factors. Even conquerors like Alexander and the Roman Caesars often left indigenous legal systems in place. Jesus was convicted by a Jewish court, not a Roman court.

After five centuries of statist monopoly law, people have forgotten that the best and most judicious of their legal systems stem from voluntary systems of private law. British and American law is based on Anglo-Saxon common law - a system that saw judges competing in wisdom and fairness for customers, where law was "discovered" rather than legislated. Law Merchant was private law developed by early shippers independent of government oversight. It is the basis for international commercial law to this day.

Most tribal cultures had arbitration systems without decreed (legislated) law. There is often a culturocentric misunderstanding of tribal leaders. What are often termed "kings" or "chiefs" in history books are little more than militia leaders or on-demand judges. For example, the Celtic Irish "kings" were militia commandeers with a few religious duties - they had no power to make decrees, only to lead armed defense in the event of an attack. Deliberative associations which are little more than appeals courts are often painted as legislatures, such as the Allthing of classical Iceland. You wouldn't know from most history books that Iceland had competing legal associations that David Friedman noted "might almost have been invented by a mad economist to test the lengths to which market systems could supplant government in its most fundamental functions."

Neither do most people appreciate how property law springs up spontaneously. In the settlement of North America, tomahawk rights (marking the corners of land claims with tomahawk cuts on trees), cultivation rights, homesteading rights, grazing and mining and water rights, were all worked out before formal government arrived. Governments tended to try to dispossess the "squatters" so blatantly stealing "public" land. In places where indigenous property conventions won out over government decree, squatters were renamed "pioneers" and liberty prevailed to a greater extent. In places where the state regimes dominated land use and distribution, economic and political freedom was severely retarded. We see the result in much of Latin America today, with squatter cities and property rights unrecognized except for the well-connected.

How would laws be produced in an anarchist society? Let's let David Friedman tell us.

The answer is that systems of law would be produced for profit on the open market, just as books and bras are produced today. There could be competition among different brands of law, just as there is competition among different brands of cars.

In such a society there might be many courts and even many legal systems. Each pair of protection agencies agree in advance on which court they will use in case of conflict. Thus the laws under which a particular case is decided are determined implicitly by advance agreement between the protection agencies whose customers are involved. In principle, there could be a different court and a different set of laws for every pair of protection agencies. In practice, many agencies would probably find it convenient to patronize the same courts, and many courts might find it convenient to adopt identical, or nearly identical, systems of law in order to simplify matters for their customers.

David Friedman

Before labeling a society in which different people are under different laws chaotic and unjust, remember that in our society the law under which you are judged depends on the country, state, and even city in which you happen to be. Under the arrangements I am describing, it depends instead on your protective agency and the agency of the person you accuse of a crime or who accuses you of a crime.

In such a society law is produced on the market. A court supports itself by charging for the service of arbitrating disputes. Its success depends on its reputation for honesty, reliability, and promptness and on the desirability to potential customers of the particular set of laws it judges by. The immediate customers are protection agencies. But the protection agency is itself selling a product to its customers. Part of that product is the legal system, or systems, of the courts it patronizes and under which its customers will consequently be judged. Each protection agency will try to patronize those courts under whose legal system its customers would like to live. - David Friedman, Police, Courts, and Laws - On the Market, Ch. 29 Machinery of Freedom

The objections to private law can be puerile. One common claim is that there must be a supreme court, or legal processes would have no end. This is seen false simply by noting that processes can end in other ways. In a free society, there would likely be your court, my court, and if things are still not settled, an appeals court. Every pair of PDAs could use a different appeals court. Two out of three wins. Clearly there's no need for a maximum court ruling over all.

Another common objection is that private courts would fight it out violently rather than accept arbitration or deal with other PDAs. But PDAs have a greater incentive to negotiate and act peacefully than states. First of all, wars are expensive in money and personnel; PDAs cannot shift costs to hapless subjects like states can. Neither can they simply raise prices like states - their customers would go elsewhere, to more peaceful and reasonable competitors. If worse comes to worse, and armed conflicts occur, PDAs being non-territorial cannot use weapons of mass destruction as states do. Nor do they have the patriotic fervor or the People's Romance to rationalize killing "them" - the demonized people living in "enemy" territory. Thus any wars that do occur are likely to be small and localized, for clear pursposes, and with careful distinction between combatant and noncombatant.

Listen Egoist!

Listen egoist, moral skeptic, and others who consider natural law to be "nonsense on stilts" or "spooks in the mind." You don't need spooks or morality to make sense of rights language. I want to convince you of this. I will not try to attempt to change your view of natural rights. My modest aim is to convince you that language using rights jargon can be translated into egoist and even amoral terms, and still make sense.

Instead of considering "rights" as an arbitrary postulate or brain-spook, I suggest that one can interpret the term in other ways.

Contractarianism

Maybe when people interact, there is an implicit contract made. Perhaps when people join together in society, they are in effect making promises like: There are many reasons why such "contracts" are reasonable. It's individually rational for most people; it's a Schelling point; it's the best strategy for Prisoners Dilemma games. We'll get into some of these rationales later. The point is: we can call these "rights."

Why does someone want to enter society instead of living as a hermit in the boondocks? To benefit from social interaction, in oh so many ways. It would certainly be reasonable to at very least profess to abide by such rules when in society, if you wish people to deal with you.

In a way, modern contractarianism presents a hypothetical person entering society with a choice of if only everyone rule-sets. Would you agree to moral/social/legal principle X if most/all other people did?

Here's how libertarian philosopher Jan Narveson explains it:

According to Contractarianism, the principles of morals are a sort of agreement, or "in a sense" an agreement. ...

Its idea is that the principles of morals are a kind of grand agreement. In theoretical principle, what makes it an "agreement" is that its rules are, at least implicitly, "iffy": each of us is to treat each of the others in certain ways provided that they do likewise. If they don't, the deal is off. And if it's off, the idea is, then we are both worse off than if it were on. Mutuality, reciprocity, is the byword. ...

The contractarian view enters the picture by proposing that the right set of principles to play this role is the set such that everyone, looking at those proposed principles from his or her point of view ex ante, can see that he or she will do better if everyone, including himself or herself complies with those principles than if there are none or some other set.

The kicker is "everyone including himself or herself." ... Now, at the point when it does overrule you, it looks as though morals is disadvantageous to you. On the other hand, though, when it overrules other people, it becomes quite advantageous to you. Morals is to the advantage of people other than the agent, typically; but of course, every single one of us is a person "other than the agent," all the time...

Let's take the example of one of the strongest and most fundamental of all moral rules - the rule against killing innocent people. ... Now and again, perhaps, it would be useful to you to kill somebody else. Suppose that morals says you cannot do this. On that occasion, it deprives you of a possible benefit. Meanwhile, however, suppose it was to somebody else's advantage to kill you. Morals deprives that person of the benefit of killing you; but of course, that means it provides you with the benefit of not being killed. It is not too much to say that it provides you with life. - Jan Narveson, The Contractarian Theory of Morals: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Rational Self-Interest

Two of the most eloquent supporters of rights based on egoism were Max Stirner and Ayn Rand. To Rand, the fundamental ethical distinction is whether the beneficiary of conduct is the actor, or someone or something other than the actor - egoism or altruism.
A "right" is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in a social context. There is only one fundamental right (all the others are its consequences or corollaries): a man's right to his own life. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action; the right to life means the right to engage in self-sustaining and self-generated action - which means: the freedom to take all the actions required by the nature of a rational being for the support, the furtherance, the fulfillment and the enjoyment of his own life. (Such is the meaning of the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.)

The concept of a "right" pertains only to action - specifically, to freedom of action. It means freedom from physical compulsion, coercion or interference by other men.

Thus, for every individual, a right is the moral sanction of a positive - of his freedom to act on his own judgment, for his own goals, by his own voluntary, uncoerced choice. As to his neighbors, his rights impose no obligations on them except of a negative kind: to abstain from violating his rights. - Ayn Rand, "Man's Rights"

Note that Rand assumes a universality principle - that all men have the same moral perogatives. This is basically the same as the the categorical imperative or the Golden Rule.

Max Stirner explicity rejected such a principle. But in one interpretation of his main essay, "The Individual and His Property" (also translated as "The Ego and His Own"), he claims that, as least among the enlightened rational egoists, there will be a "union of egoists" which will, in effect, treat each other as if they had rights, in the mutual understanding that everyone uses everyone.

Let us therefore not aspire to community, but to one-sidedness. Let us not seek the most comprehensive commune, "human society," but let us seek in others only means and organs which we may use as our property! As we do not see our equals in the tree, the beast, so the presupposition that others are our equals springs from a hypocrisy. No one is my equal, but I regard him, equally with all other beings, as my property. In opposition to this I am told that I should be a man among "fellow-men" (Judenfrage); I should "respect" the fellow-man in them. For me no one is a person to be respected, not even the fellow-man, but solely, like other beings, an object in which I take an interest or else do not, an interesting or uninteresting object, a usable or unusable person.

And, if I can use him, I doubtless come to an understanding and make myself at one with him, in order, by the agreement, to strengthen my power, and by combined force to accomplish more than individual force could effect. In this combination I see nothing whatever but a multiplication of my force, and I retain it only so long as it is my multiplied force. But thus it is a union. - Max Stirner, The Ego and His Own
On the other hand, many interpret Stirner as totally amoral, without any concept of rights. Though he excoriates the state in his essay, one gets the impression that a good Stirnerite egoist would have no qualms about using the state as his property if given the chance, and exploit others without mercy!

It is not Stirner himself, but certain anarchists he influenced, who present a coherent case for rights based on egoistic expediency. Benjamin Tucker started as a proponent of natural rights, but later in his career changed to a Stirnerite perspective.

From the beginning of Liberty, Tucker placed emphasis on the rights of the individual and individual sovereignty. This natural rights approach may have been influenced by Lysander Spooner who at the commencement of Liberty was still living and contributing articles to it. Reminiscent of Spooner's outlook, was the statement in an 1882 issue that "there is but one single kind of 'legal' freedom; and that is simply the 'natural' freedom of each individual to do whatever he will with himself and his property, for his body here, and his soul hereafter, so long as he does not trespass upon the equal freedom of any other person." ...

Although Tucker maintained that he had not changed his fundamental opinions since he had begun Liberty, it is obvious that by the late 1880s his defense of Anarchism had changed from one asserting a natural rights justification to one asserting the Stirnerite version of egoism. By early 1888, Tucker was no longer defending property as a right, but rather claimed it to be only a social convention. Having abandoned natural right as the basis of Anarchism, Tucker replaced it with the concept of equal liberty as the touchstone of his Anarchism. "It is true ... that Anarchism does not recognize the principle of human rights. But it recognizes human equality as a necessity of stable society." "... the only compulsion of individuals the propriety of which Anarchism recognizes is that which compels invasive individuals to refrain from overstepping the principle of equal liberty. Now, equal liberty itself being a social convention (for there are no natural rights), it is obvious that Anarchism recognizes the propriety of compelling individuals to regard 'one' social convention ..." - Carl Watner, Benjamin Tucker and His Periodical: Liberty
So Tucker preceeded Rand in combining egoism with a universality principle, transforming an amoral philosophy into a moral one.

Communications Ethic

Hans-Hermann Hoppe contends that, by trying to convince someone by argumentation, one implicitly assumes and acknowledges the self-ownership of that someone. In other words, one cannot deny self-ownership (and consequently some form of rights) without first assuming it.

The norm implied in argumentation is that everybody has the right of exclusive control over his own body as his instrument of action and cognition. Only if there is at least an implicit recognition of each individual's property right in his own body can argumentation take place. Only as long as this right is recognized is it possible for someone to agree to what has been said in an argument and hence can what has been said be validated, or is it possible to say "no" and to agree only on the fact that there is disagreement. Indeed, anyone who would try to justify any norm would already have to presuppose the property right in his body as a valid norm, simply in order to say, "This is what I claim to be true and objective." Any person who would try to dispute the property right in his own body would become caught up in a contradiction, as arguing in this way and claiming his argument to be true, would already implicitly accept precisely this norm as being valid.

Thus it can be stated that whenever a person claims that some statement can be justified, he at least implicitly assumes the following norm to be justified: "Nobody has the right to uninvitedly aggress against the body of any other person and thus delimit or restrict anyone's control over his own body." This rule is implied in the concept of justification as argumentative justification. Justifying means justifying without having to rely on coercion. In fact, if one formulates the opposite of this rule, i.e., "everybody has the right to uninvitedly aggress against other people" (a rule, by the way, that would pass the formal test of the universalization principle!), then it is easy to see that this rule is not, and never could be, defended in argumentation. To do so would in fact have to presuppose the validity of precisely its opposite, i.e., the aforementioned principle of nonaggression. - Hans-Hermann Hoppe, "A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism"

Game Theory: Schelling Points

A Schelling point, named after Thomas Schelling who originated the idea, is a "solution" or outcome of a game chosen because of its uniqueness. It depends greatly on the outlooks and values of the players, since it must seem unique to these participants. If you and a friend get separated in a large supermarket, often you can find each other by guessing where the other will try to find you. In the same way, we can often come up with solutions to games by noting some interesting solution that others will also see.
Consider now two players playing the game called bilateral monopoly. They have a dollar to divide between them, provided they can agree how to divide it. Superficially there is no resemblance between this game and that discussed above; the players are free to talk with each other as much as they want.

But while they can talk freely, there is a sense in which they cannot communicate at all. It is in my interest to persuade you that I will only be satisfied with a large fraction of the dollar; if I am really unwilling to accept anything less than ninety cents, you are better off agreeing to accept ten cents than holding out for more and getting nothing. Since it is in the interest of each of us to persuade the other of his resolve, all statements to that effect can be ignored; they would be made whether true or not. What each player has to do is to guess what the other's real demand is, what the fraction of the dollar is without which he will refuse to agree. That cannot be communicated, simply because it pays each player to lie about it. The situation is therefore similar to that in the previous game; the players must coordinate their demands (so that they add up to a dollar) without communication. It seems likely that they will do so by agreeing to split the dollar fifty-fifty. - David Friedman, A Positive Account of Property Rights

In the same way, the "law of equal freedom" might be derived. While unequal "distributions" of freedom might be proposed by some ("you must be my slave on Thursdays"), most would see a dangerous slippery slope in such arrangements, reasoning that if they give in on that much, what's to stop further similar demands in the future. Similarly, other rights are derived: I have a right to my property and you to yours, I can speak my mind and you speak yours, and so on. Furthermore, once these rights/solutions are established by convention and well-known, the Schelling point is further reinforced. Thus, rights can be seen as a Schelling point in a Hobbesian game.

Game Theory: Evolutionary Stable Strategies

Consider the hawk-dove game. In this game, hawks, in interacting with other birds, use a strategy of aggression. Hawks challenge the territory of birds they encounter; doves may make an initial showing of defiance, but back down from actual fighing and run away. In this case, the hawk wins the territory, food, mate, or whatever the reward is. However, if the hawk meets another bird using the hawk strategy, then a fight ensues. The result of that contest is unclear beforehand - perhaps the hawk will be killed or mortally wounded, perhaps it will win. Thus, the expectancy is considerably less than the reward gained after challenging a "dove," a bird that runs away. In our game, hawk versus hawk often entails a significant expected loss, even worse than the dove's loss of some particular territory. Let's assume that this is the case.

Suppose we have a lot of birds playing this game. An evolutionary stable strategy (ESS) for a game is a strategy such that, if any player deviates from the strategy, he is worse off (or at least no better off). Looking at our hawk-dove game using these "pure" strategies, let's examine two extreme scenerios.

Suppose everyone uses the hawk strategy. Then on every encounter, there is an expected loss, since every encounter results in a fight. Now suppose one player decides to switch to the dove strategy. He is suddenly better off - he has a slight loss in territory, but he avoids the greater loss of possibly getting maimed or killed. This proves that everybody a hawk is unstable; hawkishness is not an ESS.

Now suppose everybody uses the dove strategy. When challenged, all are perfect "Gandhis" and avoid violent confrontation. Now what happens if one dove becomes a hawk? He literally eats the others for lunch. Every encounter wins territory, food, or mates, and being the only hawk, there is no risk of negative outcomes. The single hawk tyrannizes the other birds. Thus, an all-dove world is unstable; dovishness is not an ESS.

Now let's introduce a new strategy - the rattlesnake strategy. The rattlesnake does not attack, but it will certainly defend and strike back if attacked. Is this an ESS? Upon examination, we see that it is. Suppose all players use the rattlesnake strategy. Then, amazingly enough, no one attacks anyone. To an observer, it may look like a world of doves, as far as behavior goes.

What if one rattlesnake decides to change to a hawk strategy? Then he loses utility since he gets into a fight every single encounter. To a hawk, rattlesnakes act like other hawks. Clearly he's worse off than before. What if a rattlesnake switches to a dove strategy? Then, as far as behavior goes, he's no worse off, but neither is he any better off. To a dove, rattlesnakes act like other doves. Thus, we conclude that the rattlesnake strategy is an ESS.

In game theory, a form of rattlesnake strategy is called "tit-for-tat." If others know (from experience if not communication) that you will retaliate, they are less likely to attack; the costs are higher than attacking a dove. Since most people are not perfect Gandhis, there is generally a cost for aggression. Overall, in human society "all investment that takes the form of protecting rights must be, in the net, socially wasteful," as James Buchanan put it. "Gains are secured from the reductions in predation-defense effort."

Thus, the non-aggression principle, and the notion of rights, might be considered as a principle or strategy based on solid game theoretic and evolutionary grounds - it is an evolutionary stable strategy.

Necessary Conditions for Life-Improving Actions

Rights may be thought of as necessary conditions for self-ownership or social heuristics for a "society of egoists." Perhaps it is also an individually rational strategy, or an implicit contract, with or without a veil of ignorance. Suppose the following conditions are necessary for a society where people are free.

Faculties are used to affect material goods and to provide services to one's self or other people. All material products of labor, including any incorporated unowned parts, become property. The fruit of one's labor is natural property. A person is not self-owned unless he owns his products.

The will and faculties are unalienable. Products are alienable; they can be traded and gifted.

The conditions for society being beneficial to a person's life are given by Ayn Rand:

Can man derive any personal benefit from living in a human society? Yes - if it is a human society. The two great values to be gained from social existence are: knowledge and trade ... But these very benefits indicate, delimit and define what kind of men can be of value to one another and in what kind of society: only rational, productive, independent men in a rational, productive, free society. Parasites, moochers, looters, brutes and thugs can be of no value to a human being - nor can he gain any benefit from living in a society geared to their needs, demands and protection, a society that treats him as a sacrificial animal ... No society can be of value to man's life if the price is the surrender of his right to his life. - Ayn Rand, "The Objectivist Ethics"
Murray Rothbard gives essentially the same argument:
While the behavior of plants and at least the lower animals is determined by their biological nature or perhaps by their "instincts," the nature of man is such that each individual person must, in order to act, choose his own ends and employ his own means in order to attain them. Possessing no automatic instincts, each man must learn about himself and the world, use his mind to select values, learn about cause and effect, and act purposively to maintain himself and advance his life. Since men can think, feel, evaluate, and act only as individuals, it becomes vitally necessary for each man's survival and prosperity that he be free to learn, choose, develop his faculties, and act upon his knowledge and values. This is the necessary path of human nature; to interfere with and cripple this process by using violence goes profoundly against what is necessary by man's nature for his life and prosperity. - Murray Rothbard, For a New Liberty

Summary

Obviously some of these arguments overlap. Perhaps people, realizing that certain conditions are necessary for "the life of man qua man," implicitly agree to rights in a contractarian manner when they enter society. Perhaps these necessary conditions, or social practices evolved due to being ESSs, are Schelling points.

Another thing for moral skeptics and Stirnerian egoists to keep in mind is that only one of the explanations above need be true or sensible to deem "rights" as a reasonable concept. Even if you disagree with all but one, the one you agree with is sufficient to allow you to read and interpret rights language as making sense. Certainly you may continue to object to the adjective "natural" in "natural rights." But I hope to have convinced you that the "rights" part can make sense with non-mystic, rational, and/or empirical grounding.

Warning: Some writers quoted may slip in the word "natural." I ask that you to simply ignore that word and it's implications, and evaluate accordingly. In other words, please don't reject everything a writer has to say simply because he used the dirty word. More often than not, these writers are making points that don't rely on mystic interpretations of rights.


Ayn Rand

Panarchy Unbound
This is the basis of my system: "Laissez-faire, laissez-passer!" ... Thus I demand, for each and every member of human society, freedom of association according to inclination and of activity according to aptitude. In other words, the absolute right to choose the political surroundings in which to live, and to ask for nothing else. - P. E. de Puydt, Panarchy

Panarchy is basically the idea of competing governments. In de Puydt's original conception, people would register for the government of their choice, with a nominal administration fee for switching. The critical difference between this and the statist quo is that one need not move or emigrate to switch governments. Governments would co-exist and compete in the same geographic area, and new governments could start up anytime, so long as they could attract enough members to be feasible.

Before going on, we should point out that government in this sense in not a state. The word "government" can have two distinct meanings. Normally, people use the term to mean "state" - an effective monopoly on the legitimate/legal use of force in a particular geographic area. This is definitely not what de Puydt means. Another meaning of the word "government" is: an organization intended to provide security. This is the meaning of "government" when used, for example, by John Locke in his Two Treatises on Government, by Thomas Jefferson in the US Declaration of Independence, and most explicitly by Albert Jay Nock in Our Enemy the State.

This double meaning of "government" is the source of many fallacious equivocations in political writings, not to mention one major cause of the popular misunderstanding of anarchism. Many people not familiar with anarchist thought assume that anarchists are against law, or police, or property. In their limited experience and narrowness of thought, they see these human goods as intrinsically connected with state. In fact, anarchists are not against law; we are against monopoly law. Anarchists are not against peace officers, but against monopoly police force. We are not against property in its general sense, but against monopoly decreed property schemes.

Unfortunately, this distinction is extremely hard to grasp for those indoctrinated and educated by statist systems and who have been immersed all their lives in the statist weltanschauung. Until a person realizes the difference between a state and an association for mutual security, they are unable to understand anarchism. Once a person has the epiphany and sees the difference, and starts to appreciate the fact that monopoly government is not the only way to provide security services, he is halfway to anarchism. At the very least, he understands the anarchist message and is likely to sympathize with it.

Now we can say how anarchy is related to panarchy. Anarchy is about a free society, a stateless society. Panarchy is about relations between stateless societies. Put another way, panarchy is the "foreign policy" of anarchy.

How can they be reconciled? - By not trying to reconcile them at all; by letting each party govern itself. Freedom should even extend to the right not to be free, and should include it. - P. E. de Puydt, Panarchy

Since anarchism opposes the initiation of force against others, it cannot force others to be free. Forcing others to be free is impossible - a clear contradiction. And as humanity includes diverse people, habits, opinions, and ideologies, it would be utopian not to expect some people to prefer various degrees and types of slavery over freedom. Furthermore, as we noted, much of current mankind has been trained like domestic beasts into servitude, and have not the imagination or ego to set themselves free. For the forseeable future, if not as long as man exists, there will likely be states. The best anarchists can hope for is that the existing states let us be and let us pass - laissez faire, laissez passez.

What is most admirable about this innovation is that it does away, for ever, with revolutions, mutinies, and street fighting, down to the last tensions in the political atmosphere: Are you dissatisfied with your government? - Change over to another! - Four words, always associated with horror and bloodshed, words which all courts, high and low, military and special, without exception, unanimously find guilty of inciting to rebellion - these four words become innocent, as if in the mouths of seminarists, and as harmless as the medicine so wrongly mistrusted by Mr. de Pourceaugnac.

"Change over to another" means: Go to the Bureau for Political Membership, cap in hand, and ask politely for your name to be transferred to any list you please. The Commissioner will put on his glasses, open the register, enter your decision, and give you a receipt. You take your leave, and the revolution is accomplished without spilling any more than a drop of ink. - P. E. de Puydt, Panarchy

There is an excellent analogy in freedom of religion. At one time, churches had the same sort of monopoly that states now have. Religion was established by state. Bloody wars were fought over religion, dissenters were jailed, maimed or burned. Freedom of religious conscience was suppressed. No doubt in those dark times, the suggestion that different religions and cults could coexist in the same territory would have been greeted with derision by virtually everyone. And yet, out of the darkness, freedom of religion came about in some places. Today, people deal with their neighbors generally without knowing or even caring which denomination if any they profess. Episcopaleans no longer brand Baptists, or whip Quakers through town - they invite them to neighborhood barbecues and their children play together. Panarchy is the political equivalent of freedom of religion.

De Puydt basically said the same thing as Gustave de Molinari, but with political rather than economic emphasis. De Puydt does gloss over some important issues - he assumes there is some impartial court to handle inter-governmental disputes. David Friedman shores up this area with his analysis of interaction between PDAs.

There are three ways in which such conflicts might be dealt with. The most obvious and least likely is direct violence - a mini-war between my agency, attempting to arrest the burglar, and his agency attempting to defend him from arrest. A somewhat more plausible scenario is negotiation. Since warfare is expensive, agencies might include in the contracts they offer their customers a provision under which they are not obliged to defend customers against legitimate punishment for their actual crimes. When a conflict occurred, it would then be up to the two agencies to determine whether the accused customer of one would or would not be deemed guilty and turned over to the other.

A still more attractive and more likely solution is advance contracting between the agencies. Under this scenario, any two agencies that faced a significant probability of such clashes would agree on an arbitration agency to settle them - a private court. Implicit or explicit in their agreement would be the legal rules under which such disputes were to be settled.

Under these circumstances, both law enforcement and law are private goods produced on a private market. Law enforcement is produced by enforcement agencies and sold directly to their customers. Law is produced by arbitration agencies and sold to the enforcement agencies, who resell it to their customers as one characteristic of the bundle of services they provide. - David Friedman, Law as a Private Good

Thus, de Puydt's idea simply needs expansion into the courts - laissez faire is good for economics, politics, and justice.

One knee-jerk objection to competing courts is the fear that they would be likely to battle it out when disputes between clients occur. Friedman showed how it would be irrational to do so, since such violence would be expensive, and would likely lose customers to more reasonable competitors. We can actually see in practice the ample incentive to negotiate and make prior arrangements, ironically from existing states. After all, states are in an anarchistic relationship with each other, but they don't generally go to war when a citizen has a dispute with a foreigner. Instead, conventions such as jurisdiction and extradition have been extensively worked out.

There is one more area, heretofore overlooked, that such laissez faire is applicable - property systems. Among some anarchists it is too often assumed that different property systems are inherently incompatible - that sticky property and communal property are such opposites that they cannot possibly coexist. Not so! This is easy to see if you simply look around and notice that communal and sticky property coexist here and now, even in current statist society. Sidewalks, roads, public areas, and easements exist side by side with homes, shops, and private parking lots.

There is no logical reason whatsoever that property types could not be recorded on deeds (or at least commonly known by the neighbors) and acknowledged and upheld by courts. Land owned by a farm commune or machinery owned by a factory syndicate could no more be legally sold by an unauthorized individual than any similar sticky property. If the people living in a watershed have a geoist society and claim ownership of the aquifers and streams, then there's no reason that a fair unbiased court wouldn't uphold their claim against an unscrupulous person who tried to squat or sell their communal property or claim absentee ownership.

There may be issues concerning vaguely-defined or overly extensive collectives, however. If a resource is deemed "owned by everyone," i.e. the whole world, there could be problems in determining legitimate use and disposition. Furthermore, there is the issue of legitimate alienation from "everyone." Yet even here the legal issues are surmountable; in time and with proper precedent, no doubt conventions would be worked out. Perhaps some representative subset of "everyone" would be deemed proxy owners for such issues. In fact and in practice, this is exactly what happens - so-called "public resources" tend to be de-facto property of some group which claims to represent the public. And perhaps it is reasonable to expect that fuzzily defined or overly large collectives have extra costs in asserting property claims.




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