[ThereBeDragons]

The difference between warlords and private security firms is that the latter only use their force defensively, typically on behalf of their customers. Warlords use force aggressively, typically for their own gain.

Why is that difference not obvious?

One can turn into the other literally overnight. Nothing is stopping private security firms from using force aggressively (besides other private security firms, which amounts to warlords keeping other warlords in check,) and nothing is stopping warlords from simply abandoning the use of aggressive force.

The warlord may be acting "criminally" but it doesn't matter since there is no state to recognize that criminality (or if one exists, it is powerless to enforce its judgments). A private organization may seek to end the behavior judged as criminal through force, which essentially amounts to getting your own warlord to beat up up that warlord. At the end of the day there's no practical difference besides that one of the groups engaged in conflict is "right" and one of them is "wrong," but which actor is right and which is wrong doesn't determine who finally ends up "providing security" in the area.

[Ombrageux]

The thing is, what's stopping people from hiring enough private security to protect themselves against these "warlords" (who under libertarian law are no different from normal property-thieving criminals)? Problem solved.

[Rei Murasame]

Eventually this just becomes 'having a government', doesn't it? Especially if one security company ends up gaining a monopoly on security over the entire landmass in question.

And we all know a story about that, don't we?

[Ombrageux]

I don't get it. Is that some kind of reference to Tokugawa Japan or something?

[Rei Murasame]

Yes. Well done. Basically that it how it ends up, eventually they all just collaborate together and stamp out the factions that disagree, and a country is unified.

[J Oswald]

Also, I should add, the Xeer system in Somalia is also praised by libertarians.

Any libertarian who praises Xeer clearly doesn't understand the complex social tribal bonds that underpin the system.

The Xeer system basically doesn't give a fuck about anyone who is not a property-owning male.

This isn't true, but I can't expound on why that is until I'm back home and have my copies of I.M. Lewis's books at hand to quote at length.

[Rei Murasame]

Fair enough. I'll wait on you, since this is the first time I'm hearing about this. Libertarians have been taking everyone for a ride, then?

[mikema63]

I've never heard of it and no one but you has mentioned this.

Usually the answer to why private security forces wouldn't become governments and stamp each other out tends to boil down to building the appropriate social structure so they don't or can't. Sadly this lacks strategy and is something I've got on my list of trying to suggest better ways to make it work.

[J Oswald]

All right, I'm back home, and I have my copy of Lewis's Blood and Bone: The Call of Kinship in Somali Society (the 1994 edition, if you feel intrigued enough to find a copy from the library) in front of me. The Lewis I refer to is Ioan M. Lewis, a (living) Welsh anthropologist who essentially founded the field of Somali studies - his first publication on Somalia (his PhD thesis) was written when Somalia was still a British colony.

The foundation of Somali society is the notion of agnatic kinship - all Somali social structures above the level of the Western nuclear family (a concept that is foreign to Somali family structure) are based around patrilineal descent from one or more of what Lewis terms 'apical ancestors' (Lewis, 19-20). Although Westerners like to speak of Somalis as being grouped into 'clans' (which is true - all members of a given Somali clan, except in the rare instances when individuals are adopted into a clan, can trace patrilineal descent from a single apical ancestor), the 'basic jural and political unit of Northern Somali society [My note: and, more or less to the same extent, of Southern Somali society]' is what is known as the 'dia-paying group.' (Lewis, 20) A dia-paying group is defined by Lewis as 'a lineage or coalition of a few small lineages tracing descent to a common ancestor from between four and eight generations' (Ibid.).

As Lewis describes it, a dia-paying group is 'essentially a corporate agnatic group whose members are united in joint responsibility towards outsiders' (Ibid) - for example, every member of a dia-paying group is 'pledged to collective vengeance' against somebody who attacks even a single member of the group. This cuts both ways - if a member of a dia-paying group commits a crime, his entire group is responsible to pay compensation to the wronged dia-paying group (not just to the individual wronged by crime - the payment goes to the entire dia-paying group).

I chose this example because it provides the perfect example of why any libertarian who praises Xeer is a complete fool. No individual enters a Xeer council (known in Somali as a shir) as solely an individual unless it's a case between direct family members (such as two brothers) - they are an extension of their dia-paying group, or, for crimes committed within a dia-paying group, an extension of their sub-lineage. The idea of collective responsibility pervades these cases at all levels - a concept, as you and I know, anathema to libertarians.

Furthermore, although the decision made by the Xeer court is meant to be acceptable to all parties (which certain libertarians like to praise as an example of libertarian legal governance) there are implicit burdens of force, similar in power, if not in form, to the same burden of force found in the West, pressuring the parties to come to terms. Properly describing the most important of these requires a more in-depth analysis of Xeer than can be written in the space of this post. Long story short - Xeer is not just the name of the legal system, it is the name of the entire customary code by which a Somali lives and dies. This is because it is inseparable from the concept of kinship. As such, the parties in a case, and their lineage groups, are effectively forced by custom to come to terms. Sure, somebody could thumb their nose at the ruling and refuse to pay. However, that would mean war with the opposing party's lineage, and, if the individual is not supported by their kinsmen, effective abandonment and social ostracism.

For the too long, didn't read crowd: Xeer is not some magical fairyland system of law where two parties enter as equals and reach a mutually acceptable agreement with the help of arbiters - it is a system of life with a legal code that enforces its rulings through the threat of war, magnified by a hugely complex system of collective responsibility like nothing the West has ever seen.


As for the second point about how Xeer does not 'give a fuck about anybody who is not a property-owning male' - this is untrue. Obviously, as a tribal customary code of life in a society based on patrilineal ties, Xeer favours men over women. However, with men, it is rather egalitarian. Any adult man who shows up to a Xeer council has the right to speak, and has a vote on issues brought up at that council (this is particularly important when it comes to issues of war or electing a Sultan). It does not matter how rich or poor that man is. Individuals are implicitly ranked using numerous criteria, of which wealth is one criterion. Other criteria include age, perceived wisdom (usually measured by the scope of that man's education), knowledge of the Koran, and the social status of one's family members and, at higher levels, one's lineage group.


There you have it - the longest post I've ever written on PoFo.

[Rei Murasame]

Great post. That settles the question, then.

With regards to which libertarians had tried to praise this before, just off the top of my head I recall that it may have been SecretSquirrel and Kman, a very long time ago. But I could be wrong.

[Eran]

One can turn into the other literally overnight. Nothing is stopping private security firms from using force aggressively (besides other private security firms, which amounts to warlords keeping other warlords in check,) and nothing is stopping warlords from simply abandoning the use of aggressive force.

The same can be said about the difference between a democratically-elected President and a Dictator. One can turn into the other literally overnight. But still we like making a distinction, and some societies avoid that transition for centuries.

The warlord may be acting "criminally" but it doesn't matter since there is no state to recognize that criminality

The same holds for any government, above which there is no state. What stops the US President to collude with the USSC (or to eliminate it)? The only answer is the weight of public opinion (including the sensibilities of the very soldiers that make up his military force).

We see that all the time - democratically elected presidents in the third world easily turn dictators, even while US president peacefully give up their office, or obey USSC decisions they dislike. The difference, consequently, isn't institutional. It isn't the Constitution or a Court or any tangible structure.

Eventually this just becomes 'having a government', doesn't it? Especially if one security company ends up gaining a monopoly on security over the entire landmass in question.

It becomes having "governance" in the sense of rule-of-law, i.e. well-defined and effectively-enforced laws. If you want to call that "government", go ahead. For me, the essential difference is (1) monopoly vs. competition in law-enforcement services, and (2) strict "constitutional" limits on what those law-enforcement (or law-setting) agencies are allowed to do.

A society is properly anarcho-libertarian if (1) there is free entry to law-enforcement (or property right enforcement) services, and (2) society broadly accepts the Non Aggression Principle as the basis for the legitimate use of force.

Sadly this lacks strategy and is something I've got on my list of trying to suggest better ways to make it work.

What "strategy" stops Presidents of some countries from using their control over armed forces to become dictators, while those of other countries do so without a problem?

As Lewis describes it, a dia-paying group is 'essentially a corporate agnatic group whose members are united in joint responsibility towards outsiders' (Ibid) - for example, every member of a dia-paying group is 'pledged to collective vengeance' against somebody who attacks even a single member of the group.

There is a certain analogy (though obviously not perfect) between dia-paying group membership and the concept of criminal insurance companies in some visions of how an ancap society might function.

The idea is that most members of society purchase an insurance policy from a "criminal insurance" company, with the double benefit of (1) being compensated by their insurance company if they become crime victims, and (2) having the insurance company liable for the damage associated with their own criminality.

In the former case, the insurance company takes over the claim, and then tries to recover from the criminal (or, more likely, his or her insurance company). In the latter case, a pre-agreed legal procedure may allow the insurance company to recover the damage from the criminal.

The structure, in line with modern practices, isn't kin-based, and one can freely transfer from one insurance company to another, but the effect of common liability is similar.

With regards to which libertarians had tried to praise this before, just off the top of my head I recall that it may have been SecretSquirrel and Kman, a very long time ago. But I could be wrong.

I think the system can, at best, be treated as "proof of concept" for the idea that law enforcement can take place in a multi-polar arrangement. This is akin to using the Common Law as an example of legal evolution without legislation. In neither case would libertarians "sign-off" on every detail of the system.

[mikema63]

The problem I see is the part between now and the end result, it often seems to me to be a lot like the cartoon with two scientists and an equation on a board.

Step two is a miracle occurs.

[Eran]

I'd be happy to speculate on a smooth transition between the two.

Imagine, as a first step, that Ron Paul is President, and the Libertarian Party has a working majority in Congress. The program of the Cato Institute is implemented.

So far we don't have an anarchy, but rather a libertarian state (not even a minarchy).

Next, consider ongoing shedding of various government functions, including education and welfare, roads and other forms of infrastructure. At the end of this stage, we have a minarchy, with government functions limited to enforcement of law-and-order.

Next, police forces are privatised (though still answerable to government courts), criminal offences are privatised (i.e. converted to torts), and government courts are replaced by arbitrators. Government still remains as an arbitrator of last resort.

At the end of this stage, we have a mini-minarchy, with government controlling the armed forces and a thin network of courts of appeal.

In the last stage, the armed forces are privatised, selling defence services to large aggregators of defence needs (e.g. large insurance companies and major corporations), as are the last few courts.



An alternative route is through progressive secession. First, more and more power is transferred to the state and local levels. Eventually, the Federal government either loses its power altogether, or accepts secession of more and more states. States similarly accept secession of counties as the principle of the unlimited right to secede is strongly established. Finally, individual land-owners demand and obtain the right to secede even from the counties in which they reside, purchasing protection services from private companies.

[Joe Liberty]

This thread is truly amazing. It's like we are watching libertarianism struggle with its own contradictions, and it's losing against itself. You might have to change ideology after this, Kman.

What we're seeing is strawmen and a lot of non-libertarians telling libertarians what libertarianism is. Which means it's crap.

A shining example: "I understand that Libertarians consider slavery to be a minor defect..."

Good grief.

[Soixante-Retard]

I had an aneurysm over that sentence, Joe.

[Rei Murasame]

Well, seeing as Eran has clarified some things, I can't press the issue of 'contradictions' as much as I originally wanted to. However:

It becomes having "governance" in the sense of rule-of-law, i.e. well-defined and effectively-enforced laws. If you want to call that "government", go ahead. For me, the essential difference is (1) monopoly vs. competition in law-enforcement services, and (2) strict "constitutional" limits on what those law-enforcement (or law-setting) agencies are allowed to do.

Well, of course I do want to call that government, I can't imagine what else you would call it. The question I would bring up is why anyone would set out to make it easy to compete with them.

A society is properly anarcho-libertarian if (1) there is free entry to law-enforcement (or property right enforcement) services, and (2) society broadly accepts the Non Aggression Principle as the basis for the legitimate use of force.

Okay. But I can't even imagine how such a society would come about. Why would defence companies behave that way?

[The Immortal Goon]

A shining example: "I understand that Libertarians consider slavery to be a minor defect..."

Whether you think this is absurd or not, a lot of influential Libertarians gloss over slavery completely, while glorifying the society dependent upon it as a shining example of libertarianism.

the American Revolution itself was not only ideological but also the result of devotion to the creed and the institutions of libertarianism. The American revolutionaries were steeped in the creed of libertarianism, an ideology which led them to resist with their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor the invasions of their rights and liberties committed by the imperial British government. Historians have long debated the precise causes of the American Revolution: Were they constitutional, economic, political, or ideological? We now realize that, being libertarians, the revolutionaries saw no conflict between moral and political rights on the one hand and economic freedom on the other. On the contrary, they perceived civil and moral liberty, political independence, and the freedom to trade and produce as all part of one unblemished system, what Adam Smith was to call, in the same year that the Declaration of Independence was written, the "obvious and simple system of natural liberty."

...For the revolution was not only the first successful modern attempt to throw off the yoke of Western imperialism – at that time, of the world's mightiest power. More important, for the first time in history, Americans hedged in their new governments with numerous limits and restrictions embodied in constitutions and particularly in bills of rights. Church and State were rigorously separated throughout the new states, and religious freedom enshrined. Remnants of feudalism were eliminated throughout the states by the abolition of the feudal privileges of entail and primogeniture. (In the former, a dead ancestor is able to entail landed estates in his family forever, preventing his heirs from selling any part of the land; in the latter, the government requires sole inheritance of property by the oldest son.)

The new federal government formed by the Articles of Confederation was not permitted to levy any taxes upon the public; and any fundamental extension of its powers required unanimous consent by every state government. Above all, the military and war-making power of the national government was hedged in by restraint and suspicion; for the eighteenth-century libertarians understood that war, standing armies, and militarism had long been the main method for aggrandizing State power.

...Thus, America, above all countries, was born in an explicitly libertarian revolution, a revolution against empire; against taxation, trade monopoly, and regulation; and against militarism and executive power. The revolution resulted in governments unprecedented in restrictions placed on their power. But while there was very little institutional resistance in America to the onrush of liberalism, there did appear, from the very beginning, powerful elite forces, especially among the large merchants and planters, who wished to retain the restrictive British "mercantilist" system of high taxes, controls, and monopoly privileges conferred by the government. These groups wished for a strong central and even imperial government; in short, they wanted the British system without Great Britain. These conservative and reactionary forces first appeared during the Revolution, and later formed the Federalist party and the Federalist administration in the 1790s.

During the nineteenth century, however, the libertarian impetus continued. The Jeffersonian and Jacksonian movements, the Democratic-Republican and then the Democratic parties, explicitly strived for the virtual elimination of government from American life. It was to be a government without a standing army or navy; a government without debt and with no direct federal or excise taxes and virtually no import tariffs – that is, with negligible levels of taxation and expenditure; a government that does not engage in public works or internal improvements; a government that does not control or regulate; a government that leaves money and banking free, hard, and uninflated; in short, in the words of H. L. Mencken's ideal, "a government that barely escapes being no government at all."

The Jeffersonian drive toward virtually no government foundered after Jefferson took office, first, with concessions to the Federalists (possibly the result of a deal for Federalist votes to break a tie in the electoral college), and then with the unconstitutional purchase of the Louisiana Territory. But most particularly it foundered with the imperialist drive toward war with Britain in Jefferson's second term, a drive which led to war and to a one-party system which established virtually the entire statist Federalist program: high military expenditures, a central bank, a protective tariff, direct federal taxes, public works. Horrified at the results, a retired Jefferson brooded at Monticello, and inspired young visiting politicians Martin Van Buren and Thomas Hart Benton to found a new party – the Democratic party – to take back America from the new Federalism, and to recapture the spirit of the old Jeffersonian program. When the two young leaders latched onto Andrew Jackson as their savior, the new Democratic party was born.

The Jacksonian libertarians had a plan: it was to be eight years of Andrew Jackson as president, to be followed by eight years of Van Buren, then eight years of Benton. After twenty-four years of a triumphant Jacksonian Democracy, the Menckenian virtually no-government ideal was to have been achieved. It was by no means an impossible dream, since it was clear that the Democratic party had quickly become the normal majority party in the country. The mass of the people were enlisted in the libertarian cause. Jackson had his eight years, which destroyed the central bank and retired the public debt, and Van Buren had four, which separated the federal government from the banking system. But the 1840 election was an anomaly, as Van Buren was defeated by an unprecedentedly demagogic campaign engineered by the first great modern campaign chairman, Thurlow Weed, who pioneered in all the campaign frills – catchy slogans, buttons, songs, parades, etc. – with which we are now familiar. Weed's tactics put in office the egregious and unknown Whig, General William Henry Harrison, but this was clearly a fluke; in 1844, the Democrats would be prepared to counter with the same campaign tactics, and they were clearly slated to recapture the presidency that year. Van Buren, of course, was supposed to resume the triumphal Jacksonian march. But then a fateful event occurred: the Democratic party was sundered on the critical issue of slavery, or rather the expansion of slavery into a new territory. Van Buren's easy renomination foundered on a split within the ranks of the Democracy over the admission to the Union of the republic of Texas as a slave state; Van Buren was opposed, Jackson in favor, and this split symbolized the wider sectional rift within the Democratic party. Slavery, the grave antilibertarian flaw in the libertarianism of the Democratic program, had arisen to wreck the party and its libertarianism completely.

The Civil War, in addition to its unprecedented bloodshed and devastation, was used by the triumphal and virtually one-party Republican regime to drive through its statist, formerly Whig, program: national governmental power, protective tariff, subsidies to big business, inflationary paper money, resumed control of the federal government over banking, large-scale internal improvements, high excise taxes, and, during the war, conscription and an income tax. Furthermore, the states came to lose their previous right of secession and other states' powers as opposed to federal governmental powers.

It completely sidesteps the whole, "The economy was based on forcing people in bondage to work for free," and goes right into tax rates on those profits as the most important thing. It gets a little closer to confronting slavery toward the end, but it's not really much of an issue of systematically raping and enslaving people for profit, as much as a state's rights issue. Does the federal government have the right to tell the state you can't own people? Not, do you have the right to own people.

I'm not saying all libertarians do this, but a lot of the loud and powerful completely see a slave-based economy as something that isn't really that much of an impediment to their view of freedom.

[Soixante-Retard]

TIG, would you care to post the rest of that article by Murray Rothbard for others to read, so that we can see Rothbard's utter disgust of slavery?

[SueDeNîmes]

What we're seeing is strawmen and a lot of non-libertarians telling libertarians what libertarianism is. Which means it's crap.

A shining example: "I understand that Libertarians consider slavery to be a minor defect..."

Good grief.

Oh really?

Ahem :

Alienability, or commodifiability, is the postulate that while people may start out as free self-owners of themselves, they have a right to sell themselves into slavery. That is, if they truly own themselves, they can sell themselves. If they cannot sell themselves into slavery, they are then to that extent less than fully free. If I own my shirt, I can sell it to you. If I cannot sell it to you, then and to that extent my ownership rights are attenuated. In effect, people are “just” commodities, as our friends on the other side of the aisle are wont to charge.

Why would anyone consent to sell himself into slavery?
Suppose my child were ill with a dread disease. The cure costs $1 million. Unfortunately, I do not have anything like that amount to my name. Fortunately, you have long desired to have me as a slave, to boss around and order about, to chastise and even kill me if I in any way displease you, or even on a whim. You value the prospect of my enslavement to you as worth far more than the $1 million it will cost you. I, for my part, value my child’s life more than my own freedom, or even my own life, should it come to that. Thus, as in the case of all voluntary contracts, we both benefit, at least in the ex ante sense, from this commercial interaction.

A voluntary slave contract has nothing to do with the sale of the “will.” Just as in the case of being unable to not think about a pink elephant when one is mentioned, it would be all but impossible for me to quell my desires for freedom, once enslaved. Slaves can still want to be free. Very much to the contrary, voluntary slavery pertains only to the law of physical invasion: if a policeman sees you whipping me, he might with alacrity rush to my defense. The operational definition of a slave contract is that upon being told that I have sold myself into slavery to you, the policemen will cease in his efforts to stop you from beating me. If anything, he will hold me down, as he would a horse you were attempting to harness, so as to aid in your right to treat your property (e.g., me) in any way you see fit.

It is my contention that voluntary slavery is not only consistent with the libertarian vision of the free society, it is part and parcel of it.

- Walter Block, Journal of Libertarian Studies Volume 17, no. 2 (Spring 2003), pp. 39–85, 2003, Ludwig von Mises Institute.

...oh dear.

[Soixante-Retard]

To my knowledge only Walter Block and Robert Nozick consider voluntary slavery compatible with a free society. However, what is voluntary slavery contrasted to slavery as we usually think of it.

Voluntary slavery (or self-sale) is the condition of slavery freely entered into.

Whereas slavery as it is usually thought is not predicated on freely entered contract but a "contract" (it isn't a contract) with force or threat thereof.

Therefore voluntary slavery and slavery may share a word but they are two very different concepts, a point Murray Rothbard recognized:

The concept of 'voluntary slavery' is indeed a contradictory one, for so long as a laborer remains totally subservient to his master's will voluntarily, he is not yet a slave since his submission is voluntary; whereas, if he later changed his mind and the master enforced his slavery by violence, the slavery would not then be voluntary.