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That all men are moral; That all men are immoral; That the majority of men are moral, and a minority immoral; That the majority of men are immoral, and a minority moral. |
1. That all men are moral; 1. That all men are immoral; 1. That the majority of men are moral, and a minority immoral; 1. That the majority of men are immoral, and a minority moral. |
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The evil majority would quickly outvote the minority or overpower them through a coup; Because there is no way to ensure that only good people would always run the State; and, There is absolutely no example of this having ever occurred in any of the dark annals of the brutal history of the State. |
1. The evil majority would quickly outvote the minority or overpower them through a coup; 1. Because there is no way to ensure that only good people would always run the State; and, 1. There is absolutely no example of this having ever occurred in any of the dark annals of the brutal history of the State. |
Fallacy:
"So you're going to go on record stating that in Voluntaryist Utopia, everything that is currently provided to the citizenry by the state would continue to be available to everyone in at least an equally hassle-free manner?"
The term "Libertopia" is similarly used to imply that libertarians expect that everything will be perfect (for some value of "perfect" defined by the complainant) in a free society.
Response:
(This is a long one, so if someone wants to put a pithier summary above this note, please do.)
Frequently voluntaryists are attacked with the baseless assertion that voluntaryism (anarcho-capitalism) is a "utopian" philosophy. By that what is generally meant is that it assumes and relies on all men being good, or at least (in context) respecting the non-aggression principle. Despite the reams of literature about crime and punishment in a free society, this fallacy is perpetuated. From Books/ForANewLiberty (Rothbard):
- While it is vital for the libertarian to hold his ultimate and “extreme” ideal aloft, this does not, contrary to Hayek, make him a “utopian.” The true utopian is one who advocates a system that is contrary to the natural law of human beings and of the real world. A utopian system is one that could not work even if everyone were persuaded to try to put it into practice. The utopian system could not work, i.e., could not sustain itself in operation. The utopian goal of the left: communism—the abolition of specialization and the adoption of uniformity—could not work even if everyone were willing to adopt it immediately. It could not work because it violates the very nature of man and the world, especially the uniqueness and individuality of every person, of his abilities and interests, and because it would mean a drastic decline in the production of wealth, so much so as to doom the great bulk of the human race to rapid starvation and extinction. In short, the term “utopian” in popular parlance confuses two kinds of obstacles in the path of a program radically different from the status quo. One is that it violates the nature of man and of the world and therefore could not work once it was put into effect. This is the utopianism of communism. The second is the difficulty in convincing enough people that the program should be adopted. The former is a bad theory because it violates the nature of man; the latter is simply a problem of human will, of convincing enough people of the rightness of the doctrine. “Utopian” in its common pejorative sense applies only to the former. In the deepest sense, then, the libertarian doctrine is not utopian but eminently realistic, because it is the only theory that is really consistent with the nature of man and the world. The libertarian does not deny the variety and diversity of man, he glories in it and seeks to give that diversity full expression in a world of complete freedom. And in doing so, he also brings about an enormous increase in productivity and in the living standards of everyone, an eminently “practical” result generally scorned by true utopians as evil “materialism.” The libertarian is also eminently realistic because he alone understands fully the nature of the State and its thrust for power. In contrast, it is the seemingly far more realistic conservative believer in “limited government” who is the truly impractical utopian. This conservative keeps repeating the litany that the central government should be severely limited by a constitution. Yet, at the same time that he rails against the corruption of the original Constitution and the widening of federal power since 1789, the conservative fails to draw the proper lesson from that degeneration. The idea of a strictly limited constitutional State was a noble experiment that failed, even under the most favorable and propitious circumstances. If it failed then, why should a similar experiment fare any better now? No, it is the conservative laissez-fairist, the man who puts all the guns and all the decision-making power into the hands of the central government and then says, “Limit yourself”; it is he who is truly the impractical utopian.
On the contrary, it is those that think, despite history, the nature of man, and all logic, that a government will remain limited, that are utopians:
- Thus, even in the United States, unique among governments in having a constitution, parts of which at least were meant to impose strict and solemn limits upon its actions, even here the Constitution has proved to be an instrument for ratifying the expansion of State power rather than the opposite. As Calhoun saw, any written limits that leave it to government to interpret its own powers are bound to be interpreted as sanctions for expanding and not binding those powers. In a profound sense, the idea of binding down power with the chains of a written constitution has proved to be a noble experiment that failed. The idea of a strictly limited government has proved to be utopian; some other, more radical means must be found to prevent the growth of the aggressive State. The libertarian system would meet this problem by scrapping the entire notion of creating a government—an institution with a coercive monopoly of force over a given territory—and then hoping to find ways to keep that government from expanding. The libertarian alternative is to abstain from such a monopoly government to begin with. If we look at the socialist program advanced sixty, or even thirty years ago, it will be evident that measures considered dangerously socialistic a generation or two ago are now considered an indispensable part of the “mainstream” of the American heritage. … In fact, one of the reasons that the conservative opposition to collectivism has been so weak is that conservatism, by its very nature, offers not a consistent political philosophy but only a “practical” defense of the existing status quo, enshrined as embodiments of the American “tradition.” Yet, as statism grows and accretes, it becomes, by definition, increasingly entrenched and therefore “traditional”; conservatism can then find no intellectual weapons to accomplish its overthrow (Ibid.) Slavery, protection, and monopoly find defenders, not only in those who profit by them, but in those who suffer by them. If you suggest a doubt as to the morality of these institutions, it is said directly—“You are a dangerous experimenter, a utopian, a theorist, a despiser of the laws; you would shake the basis upon which society rests.” (Bastiat, The Law)
So let us hear no more of this folderol of a voluntaryist belief in “perfect people” or utopianism, which we see is rather a bit of the pot calling the kettle black coming from any statist.
Interestingly, the original, i.e. Thomas More's Utopia was much more like socialism or communism and was almost entirely unfree. Of course, that does not mean the term could not be more widely applied if it fit; the problem is that it clearly does not.
Stefan Molyneux writes in Books/PracticalAnarchy:
- First and foremost, although I am an anarchist, I am not a utopian. There is no social system which will utterly eliminate evil. In a stateless society, there will still be rape, theft, murder and abuse. To be fair, just and reasonable, we must compare a stateless society not to some standard of otherworldly perfection, but rather to the world as it already is. The moral argument for a stateless society includes the reality that it will eliminate a large amount of institutionalized violence and abuse, not that it will result in a perfectly peaceful world, which of course is impossible. Anarchy can be viewed as a cure for cancer and heart disease, not a prescription for endlessly perfect health. It would be unreasonable to oppose a cure for cancer because such a cure did not eliminate all other possible diseases—in the same way, we cannot reasonably oppose a stateless society because some people are bad, and a free society will not make them good.
He continues discussing societal makeup and the implications of various combinations of good and evil and how none of them justifies a state:
- Two objections constantly tend to recur whenever the subject of dissolving the State arises. The first is that a free society is only possible if people are perfectly good or rational. In other words, citizens need a centralized State because there are evil people in the world. The first and most obvious problem with this position is that if evil people exist in society, they will also exist within the State—and be far more dangerous thereby. Citizens are able to protect themselves against evil individuals, but stand no chance against an aggressive State armed to the teeth with police and military might. Thus, the argument that we need the State because evil people exist is false. If evil people exist, the State must be dismantled, since evil people will be drawn to use its power for their own ends—and, unlike private thugs, evil people in government have the police and military to inflict their whims on a helpless and largely disarmed population. Logically, there are four possibilities as to the mixture of good and evil people in the world:
- That all men are moral;
- That all men are immoral;
- That the majority of men are moral, and a minority immoral;
- That the majority of men are immoral, and a minority moral.
- The evil majority would quickly outvote the minority or overpower them through a coup;
- Because there is no way to ensure that only good people would always run the State; and,
- There is absolutely no example of this having ever occurred in any of the dark annals of the brutal history of the State.
It is also very hard to understand the logic and intelligence of the argument that, in order to protect us from a group that might overpower us, we should support a group that has already overpowered us. It is similar to the statist argument about private monopolies—that citizens should create a State monopoly because they are afraid of a private monopoly. (DBR)
Source: davidrobins.net