THE LIBERTARIAN ENTERPRISE Number 579, July 18, 2010 "I eventually came to the conclusion that the police didn't actually know anything about the laws they were enforcing."
What Is to Be Done With the Statists?Part 2
Attribute to The Libertarian Enterprise
Following up on my original article on this subject, the question comes up: how would multiple communities of diverse types of governance, or no governance, interact? Can we imagine a stable scenario that is tolerable or even good? I believe a few "rules of thumb" would spontaneously appear, although they might eventually turn into laws as well. Here are some that occur to me. 1) Observe the local laws.
2) Free, unhindered passage.
As alternative to free passage through town, there is almost always a way to drive around some town that, for whatever reason, does not conform to this rule of thumb. 3) Don't bring disrepute to your town.
Well, he might be caught over there. He will be thrown in jail, and despite some grumbling, no one in Anarchyville will do much to save him, because he brought disrepute to his town. But imagine he doesn't get caught over there; what then? No doubt the Statist City cops have contacts in Anarchyville. All it takes is a phone call to one of them. A few folks will go over to Joe Blow's place and talk to him. They may decide to bundle him up in a nice package and deposit him outside city limits where Statist City cops can pick him up. Is that perfect, no-aggression anarchy? Hard to say. Ain't nothing in human life that is perfect. It's a reasonable compromise with reality. You don't bring disrepute to your town, if you want that town to get along with others. 4) Don't disparage or demagogue the neighboring town's political
structure too vigorously.
No doubt folks will notice that a lot of this stuff depends on the judicious application of violence, or the credible threat of it. Welcome to reality folks. As George Orwell put it, "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf." If you're not up to it personally, someone else probably is. That's the human condition. What is the State itself, if not violence? Yet many people are pretty darn comfortable with it. After a while, as people get used to interacting with each other without violence, this crude bit of present reality will fade. That would be nice, wouldn't it? Well, what about the Federal Government? It's been demonstrated over and over again that they are willing to put entire cities to the torch to make a point; remember Fallujah? Or the War of Northern Aggression? Or innumerable atrocities against Indians? That is true, but it's not perfectly true. Fallujah is not in America. Same with Indians, more or less (at least the same considerations apply, in terms of rationalizing mass murder). And the War of Northern Aggression, while it obviously did take place, is not the sort of thing the Feds would resort to lightly. Stuff gets really out of control in a revolution or civil war. It's clear for example, the Feds toned things down quite a bit after Ruby Ridge and Waco. They can't go too far and still appear legitimate to the herd; that appearance of legitimacy is their lifeblood. It would certainly improve the picture if secession occurred here and there, or at least de-facto increase in state autonomy. The Feds have piles of money (until the dollar tanks, anyway) and piles of money equate to lots of oppression. So yeah, the Feds are a problem; but not an insurmountable one. Once the food riots start in the big cities, they may have their hands full, and won't be able to do much about little enclaves of people who stop paying attention to them. Hell, the federal government may just collapse like the Soviets did.
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