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Life Without Government
By
Mitchell Gray
Introduction
When we talk about a world without government people often object to it because they do not understand how everyday things would be taken care of without the State and its muscle there to enforce the “law.” How would disputes be handled? How would security be provided? What would keep someone from just stealing my stuff? Who is going to pay for the roads and bridges and sanitation systems? Who is going to ensure that public health is protected? These are the types of questions everyone ask at first. It is important to address these questions discussing the various free market solutions and alternatives. Once presented logically it is easy to see the superiority of a world free of the burdens of government over that of our current statist model.
Why Abolish the Government?
That really is a good question. Why should we abolish the government? What benefits would mankind gain if the State were done away with? Past centuries have proven that tribes, monarchial kingdom and empires are vastly inefficient and unsuitable for all men. They either stagnate innovation and economic expansion or inspire the most vile of men to take hold of the reigns of power to exploit and violate the masses. The 20th century has proven that nation-states are equally capable of all that is evil and rarely does any good come from them. In the 20th century alone over 170 million people were murdered by governments. The once limited government of the United States has ballooned into the largest most regulated government mankind has ever seen. The great advancements in liberty made during the Enlightenment which culminated in the American and French Revolutions have long since been forgotten or abandoned and we have over the last 200 years crept closer and closer to the socialist nightmare of George Orwell wrote about in his book 1984 or Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.
Government has done more harm than good to mankind. Besides murdering over 170 million people in the 20th century alone government has done a wonderful job of stealing the wealth of the people of the earth and regulate them to death. Crime, poverty, famines, pollution, sicknesses and the break down of morals can all be attributed to the very existence of government. We will explore more of the reasons why government ought to be abolished in detail later on. What you should remember is that government is coercion built by force for the purpose of slavery. No one can have true and lasting liberty so long as our very livelihoods are taxed and regulated by the State.
There are two core beliefs you must master to fully understand free market anarchism and its application to real world situations. The first the non-aggression principle and the second is private property.
Non-aggression Principle
The non-aggression principle (NAP) is the cornerstone of the liberty philosophy. The NAP states that no man or group of men has the right to aggress against another person or their property except in self-defense. In other words no one has the right coerce or use physical violence or a substitute for coercion or physical violence (such as theft or fraud or the threat of physical violence) against any person or against that persons property but all men have the right to defend themselves against aggression and violence. Understanding this key principle is paramount to our later discussions.
Any action that is directed against me without my consent is aggression unless I am the aggressor. That means that you do not have the right to take my car from me just because you want it. Nor do you have the right to stop me from polluting my body with chemicals. Neither have you the right to take my money without my consent which is what taxation is. Now it is much different if I am the aggressor. If I am attempting to take your property then you have the right to defend yourself.
An application of the NAP would be a man attacking and taking the watch of another man as he walked down the street. The person taking the other mans watch is seemingly the aggressor and would thus be violating the NAP. This has caveats though which will be discussed shortly.
We will discuss the NAP many more times but this brief definition of what it is will give you the necessary background to understand what we are going to discuss later.
Private Property
Free market anarchism’s second corner stone, I suppose you would say, is that of private property. While the NAP helps to lay out the morality of anarchism a proper understanding of private property establishes the legal philosophy of anarchism. Let’s discuss private property in a little more detail.
Private property is basically anything you own. It begins with yourself, your body, your life. It is from ownership of yourself that you derive ownership of everything else (as well as all of your rights). Whatever is external of your body becomes your property because you have made a legitimate claim thus it becomes an extension of you. An example of this would be John and the book he left at Bills house. Bill isn’t going to make a claim to that book because he recognizes that only John has a legitimate claim to it and by virtue of that claim it has become an extension of John. Thus when Bills wife ask “Whose book is that?” Bill will reply that it is Johns conveying to his wife that the book is not his but it is in fact Johns even though John is not present. In order for something to be claimed by you as property you must have acquired it through either homesteading or through title transfer.
Homesteading applies to raw materials in their natural state untouched by man. To homestead something you must be the first person to use it. When you are born you immediately homesteaded your body and your life since you were the first person to use them. It is in fact the only piece of property that cannot be legitimately transferred to someone else thus rendering slavery or involuntary servitude illegitimate. No man, then, can have a legitimate claim of ownership over other person (though this does have conditions which will be discussed later).
A transfer of title applies when someone who has a legitimate claim over something transfers title to someone else. There are only two ways that a title can legitimately be transferred either as a gift or through exchange. Property that was acquired illegitimately, such as by theft, can never be legitimately transferred to anyone else.
So to have a legitimate claim to something it must be acquired through homesteading or through exchange or as a gift. Once you acquire something no one has the right take that property from you or force you to do anything with that property that you do not want to do. Property then is anything that you have legitimately acquired either through homesteading or via exchange or as a gift. As owner of that property you alone have the absolute right to determine how that property ought to be used. An example is a house left to rot. Since that is your house you have the right to do with it as you please, including allowing it to rot and fall apart. We will discuss property and its applications later on. We will also discuss what constitutes abandoned property later as well. I just wanted to give you a brief overview so that you had a basic understanding before we moved on.
The Non-aggression Principle and Private Property Applied
I want to give you a quick application of the non-aggression principle and private property to better illustrate it.
Consider our earlier example of the man who stole the watch from another man walking down the street. This is a good example of why you cannot have just the NAP but also a proper understanding of private property to resolve disputes.
We will assume that Bill is walking down the street with a very nice gold watch on his arm when all of a sudden John runs up behind him, pushes him down and pulls the watch off of Bills wrist and runs away. To the casual observer we would assume that John has violated the NAP and aggressed against Bill by first pushing him to the ground then forcibly taking Bills gold watch. If that is all there was to the story then we would be correct and John would have become a criminal aggressor. However, what if the watch originally belonged to John? Assume that it was in fact Bill who stole the watch from John. John, angry at the theft of his nice gold watch, tracks down Bill and takes the opportunity to take the watch back from him. John is totally within his rights to act this way since it was Bill that had originally aggressed against John, violating the NAP and violating Johns property right in the watch. But what if Bill had purchased the watch from John but John decided he wanted it back? He approached Bill and asked if he could buy it back but Bill refused. John then decides to act by taking the watch anyway. Here we have a good example of a good being transferred legitimately then illegitimately taken away. John had transferred his title of the watch to Bill and thus giving up all rights to it and could no longer have any legitimate claim over it. To then take it away from the new owner of the watch by force is a violation of that persons newly acquired rights in the watch and a blatant violation of the NAP.
So as you can see it is important to understand the NAP and private property. It is with these two principles that the whole of society functions under free market anarchism. And you’d be surprised at how many problems can be solved just by appealing to the NAP and private property.
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