Well that’s not exactly what I believe but it’s catchy and I like it. Government is necessary, this is beyond doubt when one thinks carefully about it. I make a distinction between government and ‘the state’. Government becomes the state when it initiates force against peaceful people acting in accord with their own property rights. I’m getting ahead of myself.
What I’m advocating for these days as I learn and grow is what is known as Anarcho-Capitalism, private property anarchism, there are other terms used but I like these two. Maybe the image is changing but I think when most people hear anarchy they get a mental image of riots in the streets and the Sex Pistols singing that punk anthem, “…I am an Anarchist… don’t know what I want, but I know how to get it…”. Well, that’s not exactly it. Others remember the “anarchists” from the turn of the 20th century on black and white films, bombing this one and killing that one as they tried to disrupt government and society as a whole. Closer, but not really it either. Disrupt government, yes. Killing and bombing, no. So what is it?
What I’m talking about is no state. No federal government, no state government and probably nothing binding on the county or local community level either. Freedom! Ultimate freedom in every way. Freedom to succeed or fail, thrive or starve, earn or beg, produce or accept charity from volunteers. I know, it’s scary, isn’t it. Well stop your rushing mind and just think about it. Do we really need someone else (the state at any level) telling us how we should live? I know you don’t, but do I? Most of us think we could get along with others just fine but we have a much lower view of some of the others among us. They… they are the ones who need governed. Just drop that for a bit and see if they couldn’t be governed even better in a different way. Say through free market forces for instance.
That’s right, money! The market is a big part of the equation, but it’s a subset of the only two basic principals of AC (anarcho-capitalism). The black in the flag represents no state, the yellow and the dollar sign represent a free market, and the peace symbol represents non-aggression. So lets look at these two principals.
Number one: The Non Aggression Principal. First the misconceptions about it. It is not pacifism. It is not saying that no one may ever be forced for any reason what so ever. It is better stated as, the non-initiation of aggression principal. One or a group may not initiate force against another person or group of people. If force is initiated against you, you have the option to defend against that force in defense of yourself or another innocent person being aggressed against. Pretty simple, right. Setting acts of justice aside, who out there thinks it’s right when someone tries to force them to do something they do not want to do? Who (as an individual or group) thinks they should force others to do what they don’t want to do? EVERYTHING else stems from this first principal.
The second and last basic principal stems directly, deductively from the Non aggression Principal. It’s the Self Ownership Principal. Pretty simple right. Who doesn’t think they do, or at least should own themselves? If you don’t there is an AC cure for that problem too. But if you’re like most of us it seems pretty basic that we do or should own ourselves. I’ll not get into details but, if you own yourself then there is a logical extension of SO (self ownership) from owning yourself to owning the produce of your labor to personal property and the rights that go with it. That covers who I am. Wait, how did we get here from Non-Aggression (NA)? If you can’t aggress against another then you are not taking an owners action toward them. If you can’t, for the same reason, no one else can. So no one can own you. Thus if you are owned, you must be only rightly self owned.
And there you have it. All human interactions are governed according to these two principals and rational deductions from them. That’s why ‘no government’ isn’t a good explanation of AC. It’s private and voluntary government based on these two basic principals. Sure there’s a lot more to it in practice but it all comes back to testing everything against these two.
The simplest explanation of these principals is demonstrated in this almost perfect short video. Think about it and come back for more. I think I’ll post some more this weekend.