WHY is anarcho-libertarianism wrong?

[Plushie]

I dislike doing this and I know it annoys everybody else so I'm going to humbly apologize beforehand: Sorry for bumping a topic from page 3. However, after reading the topic I feel it's necessary to share my view on the matter.

I went ahead and split the topic from here. Slightly different discussion and thread necro. ~S

I want to open with a youtube video of Bob Hope, one of the greatest actors of a great age. It will help me demonstrate the point I'm trying to make.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWpU8sX10_4

Watch it, it's great ;D

Anyway, the funny part of that video is what's going on in this topic. In debate there's a particular tool, a sort of argument that, unfortunately, works quite often. People are convinced by it, so people use it, most often in very emotional, touchy issues like politics. The method behind it is to basically talk disparagingly about a particular person and that person's position. Use the right buzz words to make it seem completely alien to people's normal sensibilities. Make it sound insane, make it sound evil, make it sound uninformed, anything to really dig at people's feelings about it. This particular rhetorical device is a variant on a few common logical fallacies, like the argument from incredulity or the argument against the man, but it's a broad enough category that it all fits under no on invalid argument.

In the specific example I provided, that video, it's making a funny jab at Democrats by calling them zombie-like, "Un-feeling, un-thinking, moving around not knowing what they do". However, from a dialectical point of view, it accomplishes nothing in determining whether or not the Democratic party platform is wise or unwise for the future of the country. All it does is construct a sentence which places a certain label into such a context that it provokes an emotional response of humor. If I actually wanted to demonstrate the foolishness of a certain position the Democrats have taken on some issue, I would have to start digging into the specifics of that issue and the possible outcome of that policy position.

Now, what I'm seeing in this topic is a lot of that. People are talking down about libertarians and about libertarian positions, but they're not actually saying anything specific about those positions. The problem here is that it's the specific points that matter! If I'm arguing against a creationist I don't disprove him by saying, "Look at this creationist! He's so foolish and ignorant, isn't he?", and then move on, I discuss various bits of factual and theoretical knowledge, such as the age of the Earth or the epistemological applicability of carbon dating.

I can talk disparagingly about an opponent in a debate all day long, but at the end of the day the debate will not have moved one step forward and we will still be right where we began: Two opinions and a whole lot of sweat and tears over them. It's part of the reason I hate the obsession with labels in politics, it makes this sort of argumentation that much easier.

[Surlethe]

One month, but a contribution that will hopefully stir discussion ... hmm. I'm going to split, but this isn't a run-of-the-mill necro, so you don't get a spanking.

More on the topic, what you're asking is a slightly different question than the OP in the other thread. The other thread is asking, "Is anarcho-libertarianism very similar in its sociopolitical function as a political ideology to communism?" While this encourages talking-down, the question doesn't specifically require reasons why anarcho-libertarianism is bad. What you're asking, on the other hand, is essentially: why is anarcho-libertarianism broken as a political ideology? While the board has been over this elsewhere, it's still worth asking (and I'll move this to the library if it's an informative thread), but it's still not quite on the topic in the previous thread. Which is why I split, since I think this is a discussion that's worth being open.

[Teleros]

From what I've read on David Friedman's work on anarcho-libertarianism, it's chief problem is that it assumes that human beings are far more rational than they actually are. Consider:

1. If you don't take out medical insurance and you can, then it is entirely your fault, because you have made a choice not to. The idea that "it won't happen to me" is irrelevant, because you're a rational person and will not think like that.

2. Law & order will be maintained by private companies as well, with individuals being able to choose a particular legal code / court to belong to. The possibility of being wrongly accused & found guilty of a crime will tend to cause people not to go in for extreme punishments. In addition, such police / judicial companies will tend towards negotiation with one another rather than violence and the like, because in the long run such tactics tend not to work and in the short run can be expensive.

3. National defence may need to be run by some sort of government, but only because it's damn expensive and there's the whole free rider issue to consider. But even then it'd be an immoral necessity, because taxation = coercion = immoral.


There are also problems such as what to do with the poor / homeless / disabled / insane and so on:

1. If for some reason you're left penniless you're in trouble, because everything under anarcho-libertarianism is given a monetary value. Unlike in real life, where taxes ensure that even if this scenario happens, you can still appeal to the government.

2. Presumably the insane and / or dangerous are locked up by all nearby people clubbing together to buy a mental hospital or prison. Or perhaps killing them: the nearby people's law codes may allow for the killing of the insane or something.


In short, it advocates an unrestricted free market on the assumption that people are rational and smart enough to make the right decisions. Perhaps if they were (and we could magic away things like mental illness or major disabilities as well) it might work. Otherwise? Not a chance.

[The Spartan]

From what I've read on David Friedman's work on anarcho-libertarianism, it's chief problem is that it assumes that human beings are far more rational than they actually are.

It also assumes that they will have enough information to make the correct decision using that rationality and the ability to act upon that decision in a timely manner.

[Zixinus]

My conclusion: there is nothing to stop warlordism.

In a state where there is no overseeing government to protect you or to stop you from doing harm, anythings free.

There is nothing stopping a rich, powerful warlord to take a homeless woman from the streets and keep her as his slave (of one kind or another). Why wouldn't he? The woman has no money, therefore, has no rights or ability to sue the other man. The woman has no one to protect her from the man, in fact, the man has clear power over her. In fact, in the man's eyes, he's doing a favour to the woman, like most slaver-horders think they do. The man has "private security" (commonly known as "mercenaries" in English), so the woman can't escape the man and whatever he does to her.

In a society that has a government, this wouldn't be allowed. Say, if a cooperate CEO was found lording a women he muscled off the street, he would be imprisoned (or at least arrested).

Also, in a county that has a government, there is someone to prevent two rival corporations from doing things like spying and sabotage. In an anarcho-liberal society, there is nothing stopping a corporation from not only sabotage and espionage, but also assault and even down-right war.

[PeZook]

In a way, gangs and their racketeering efforts are a good example of libertarian security organizations at odds with each other: they provide a "service" which theoretically is about protection from rival gangs, but in reality it's a high-demand service called "not fucking you up".

Now, rationally gangs should desire peace (violence doesn't really work and is expensive as hell) and try to help the businesses under their protection prosper. This would increase their revenue in a stable way, make the owners less inclined to report to the authorities, lower expenses, reduce casualties, make life easier in general.

Gangs usually have little concern for the law, setting their own (sometimes very elaborate) rules. Some, like the mafia in several points in history, even had the law in their pockets. None shied away from violence, unless the authorities responded by coming down on them like a ton of bricks, making violent means not worth the effort.

I could, of course, just trot out Somalia, but it's quite cliche. Inner-city gangs are also a good example of armed organizations operating in an environment with loose rules without regard for overbearing authority (except for such times when it can use force against them).

[Lord of the Abyss]

Double post

[Lord of the Abyss]

It's extremely unstable. If you somehow impose an anarcho-libertarian society, it'll turn into something else rapidly. Plutocracy, oligarchy, warlordism; like any other variant of large scale anarchy it won't last.

Pull the government out of most or all of society, and it won't be long at all before the power vacuum is filled. For example, remove all economic regulation and you won't get a free market; you'll find huge monopolies and alliances of companies collaborating to fix prices and wages to their benefit. High prices; low wages. Replace the police with private industry and you'll just have "justice" for sale to the highest bidder, or what amounts to a new feudalism as they do what their employers tell them, and screw the public. Do the same to the military and like Zixinus says, you'll get warlordism.

One of the flaws in anarcho-libertarianism is the assumption that either the government is the only source of power & coercion, or that somehow only coercion by the government counts. The idea that either wealthy, powerful people and non-governments groups won't use the lack of government restrictions to cheat people or exploit them, or that it just doesn't count when they do because they aren't the government.

[Serafina]

There is no real anarchism.

Anarchism only exists as a intermediate state between various governments.

Why? Well, if there is anarchism, someone (be it a person or a organisation) will install some kind of powerbase, iducing some kind of law- leading to some kind of goverment. If thats a powerfull warrior familiy, a crimelord, an organisation or an elected goverment does not matter - but it WILL happen, propably within one single generation.

It CAN work in small societies, but only because they have some kind of unwritten code of conduct and the possibilty to outlaw criminals.

The propblem with supporting anarchism is that its a bet: You take away the current type of goverment and will get something else.
Problem is, you do not know what you will get - and there are a lot of worse goverment types than we currently have.

[Zixinus]

Another thing:

In an AL society, the likely tactic followed by everyone will be polling together, forming clans and whatnot. Clans can pool resources, thus allowing necessities to be given and for protection. These clans will obviously have their own rules and government within themselves.

How does one create such a thing in the first place? Where an AL supporter thinks will be the future: corporations.

That's right: corporations will not only be a place where you work but they will become your life.

The creation of factions is inevitable. With such forces forming, likely with an oligarchic or dictatorial leadership, will be constant conflict with other faction.

[Patrick Degan]

At best, anarcho-libertarianism bases it's tenets upon the patently naive assumption of perfect people in a perfect world all behaving perfectly. At worst, it's an ideology which justifies for itself the most blatant and ruthless form of self-interest at the expense of every other living human being. In practical terms, it's utterly unworkable as a sociopolitical system for those two reasons. The only result which can be expected is either chaos or dictatorship and mass suffering for those unable to scrabble their way to the top in such an environment in which the only law is that of the jungle.

[Coyote]

Libertarianism assumes that all humans are very rational, in that:

All humans are ethical and will do the right thing.
All humans are motivated by a strong sense of work ethics.
All humans are naturally curious and will seek out education and information given the chance.
All humans will provide information that is honest and unbiased.
All humans will, in the abscence of greater authority, band together for common good.
Common good = profit.
All humans will avoid getting distracted from the common good by unprofitable ideas such as concerns over race, color, religion, etc.


I don't see it happening!

[Rye]

Problems with anarcho capitalism off the top of my head:

Moral

• It promotes social darwinism. What I mean by this is not the state death camps of the nazis, but rather the destruction of those who can't pay for food or medicine because they can't pay. They're economically unfit to survive, thus they are unfit to survive, according to this system.
• It relies on the idea that freedom is the ultimate good/purpose for society. While this may initially appeal to us, it should quickly become apparent that too much freedom would be worse than the alternatives in very real terms. For instance, seat belt laws; the 'narcho-types say that it's evil for a state to force them upon its citizens, but the truth is that they save the lives of people who would otherwise be killed by their own idiocy. There's lots more examples that such "nanny state" stuff applies to.
• It considers apathetic sociopathy a legitimate moral framework. Within anarcho-capitalism, it is morally fine to sit back, laugh and masturbate while infants are run over by psychopathic nuns, for instance. It is worse, according to anarchocapitalistas to point a gun at someone to force them to phone the police.
• The concept of "negligence" is almost nonexistent, since the invisible hand is supposedly meant to deal with it by popularity and the consumers are supposed to be all-knowing. You could kill people with bad kebabs and the response to that wouldn't be any sort of top-down regulation of kebab shops to make them conform to decent hygiene standards, but to wait for people to talk about people dying after eating there.
• It reduces social mobility if it turns out that it makes fiscal sense to keep the working class poor. The poor then get into poverty cycles because education is more than they can afford, they work for a pittance to survive, their kids don't get out of it.
• Ownership rights are more important than utilitarian outcome.
• Workers' rights reduced to "what the company can get away with" and "what people will agree to when desperate".

Practical

• Division of natural resources; who gets stuff when the state is magically done away with?
• How would you deal with, for instance, white supremacists laying claim to all of the US' beaches and banning non-whites from using them?
• The irrationality of consumers doesn't mean that the invisible hand will produce the most socially beneficial outcomes.
• The unscrupulous activities of some consumers, companies and cartels could destroy the environment (Penn and Teller/Anne Coulter saying "rape the world, it's yours, people's jobs matter more than the environment" type arguments) without the intervention of an authority.
• It's a utopian ideal more than a well-tested principle. Lawless areas are shit and don't become wonderful utopias merely because there's an absence of authority, rather, others lay claim to authority because it personally profits them. This unfortunate problem means that a hierarchy of force for the people is all-important if contractual society is to have a chance at working.
• Government-scale interventions are sometimes required for the good of all consumers, for instance, invasion or epidemics.
• Monopolies of force in AC societies wouldn't have any reason to be democratic; enter neofeudalism or tyranny of the privately owned organisations. Organisations like the mafia have learned that using resources for predation as well as protection can be very lucrative indeed. You'd expect similar behaviour from companies that only have to answer to other companies or mass-consumer action. Given how many brands have gone out of money for sweatshops (very few) I sincerely doubt the latter will have much impact so long as the problems are elsewhere. The former would presumably result in either cartels that exploit people or warfare.

[Davey]

Fortunately, I follow anarcho-absurdism. That's where the legal proceedings are delivered as a pie in the face, the logical answer to morality is a runaway shopping cart filled with sillystring topped with a purple giraffe and the only law established is there are no laws.

I used to be anarcho-libertarian, but I realized the problem is that too much of it (especially 'we respect the right of the individual to print currency' by some libertarians, namely the Libertarian Party of Canada) is wishful thinking; it assumes people will automatically become independent and self-govern, allying with who they need to when there is nobody to do the governing for them, and somehow this 'individualized self governing' would not condense into mob rule or dissolve into outright chaos.

[Darth Wong]

It relies on the idea that freedom is the ultimate good/purpose for society. While this may initially appeal to us, it should quickly become apparent that too much freedom would be worse than the alternatives in very real terms.

Not only is it a bad idea, but it's also the opposite of society. Society limits individual freedom by its very nature. In order to form associations, rules must be adopted. Even groups as small as student councils, farm collectives, or even co-op housing have rules. The entire concept of society is to give up individual freedoms for collective benefit.

[Surlethe]

Aside from the broken assumptions about value and market distribution common to all libertarians, one of the things that anarcho-libertarians absolutely do not comprehend is that a free market structure is based on rules. It is based on fair exchange and voluntary (yes, I used that word) contractual agreements. What sort of social structure is going to naturally arise to enforce contracts and resolve unresolvable disputes? Your typical anarcho-libertarian is going to say that a court system, regulated by supply & demand, will arise. Our hypothetical free-market court system is going to arbitrate disputes and hand down rulings to resolve them.

There are several problems with this. First is that such a court system will have many competing courts, all of which are trying to maximize profits. Therefore, you'll want to take your business to a court that favors you; your rival will want to take business to a court that favors him. Another dispute that may not be resolvable. But more damning is this: when you and your rival go to one of these courts, you and your rival enter into a contract with the court that you will abide by its decision. This is a very good example of circular reasoning: If the problem is breach of contract, entering another contract will not solve it!

So who enforces the court decision? Absent a monopoly on force, the only recourse is to purchase armed forces on the thug market and beat your competitor into a pulp with it -- and he'll be trying to do the same with you. In fact, since you have no guarantee that your competitor will honor the contract (and he has no reason to abide by another contract the results of which will not favor him), you may as well skip the costly arbitration process and go straight to gang warfare. In fact, this is a good test of criticisms of anarcho-libertarianism: empirically, how many societies without well-established, relatively impartial government courts have free-market court systems? And how many simply have business disputes resolved the old-fashioned way, with buckets of cement and rivers? I think we all know the answer.

[Darth Wong]

The term "free market" is a libertarian misnomer anyway. Our system ideally attempts to ensure a fair market, not a free one.

[K. A. Pital]

This is a very good example of circular reasoning: If the problem is breach of contract, entering another contract will not solve it!

Not only that, but the courts are, unsurprisingly, seeking their own interest in this. See the example where judges sentenced juveniles for greater monetary reward from prisons. Prisons and courts are private and not overseen by anyone - that's bound to lead to a huge number of problems, the least of which would be "breach of contract" between court and the suing person. The worst being people arbitrarily thrown to jail by monkey courts at the pay of the rich folks.

[Dark Hellion]

I guess I should parrot my usual answer to this kind of question. Hobbes Leviathan. It isn't perfect by any means and his end conclusion has problems but the Hobbesian State of Nature is the libertarian ideal world in real form. Life is nasty, brutish, and ultimately short. The end.

Can we make this part of the required reading list for SD.net? There have to be half a dozen threads a month where one posters problem is a very poor or non-existent understanding of social contract theory. It is actually starting to bug me.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Aside from the broken assumptions about value and market distribution common to all libertarians, one of the things that anarcho-libertarians absolutely do not comprehend is that a free market structure is based on rules.

The core absurdity is that they do not understand that capitalism is a late era formation in human history, and precipitated by the development of modern property law. Modern property law is not a natural law construct (though many ignorant thinkers in Locke's time thought so). In fact, today anthropology and biology shows us definitively that the property law criteria required for capitalist markets is a recent social innovation, and is very alien to most primitive human ways of life. Therefore it is both practically impossible to establish anarcho-capitalism without first coming up with markets using states and other centralized "coercive" political institutions, and then it is hypocritical for them to borrow the intellectual property (snicker) of coercive institutions which they are intrinsically opposed to in order to make their system work.

[TheKwas]

It has to be said that 'anarcho-libertarianism' is redundant and I don't think any political philosophy refers to itself in such a way. Indeed, putting the phrase into google has this very thread pop up as the 7th result.

Semantics aside, anarcho-capitalism is more than just fiction--fiction normally has a realistic narrative--it is a fantasy. If you pursue an economics degree for longer than a single year, you are flooded with examples of market failures. Indeed, I'll likely be pursuing a career in either ecological or enviromental economics, and the entire field of study would not exist if market failure didn't occur in regards to pollution. Something as fundamental as dealing with industrial byproducts isn't effectively dealt with by the free market, and yet people want to entrust everything to the free market?

[Darth Yoshi]

The core absurdity is that they do not understand that capitalism is a late era formation in human history, and precipitated by the development of modern property law. Modern property law is not a natural law construct (though many ignorant thinkers in Locke's time thought so). In fact, today anthropology and biology shows us definitively that the property law criteria required for capitalist markets is a recent social innovation, and is very alien to most primitive human ways of life. Therefore it is both practically impossible to establish anarcho-capitalism without first coming up with markets using states and other centralized "coercive" political institutions, and then it is hypocritical for them to borrow the intellectual property (snicker) of coercive institutions which they are intrinsically opposed to in order to make their system work.

Makes sense. The modern market is a result of industrialization, and no anarchistic society would ever have become prosperous enough to industrialize.

But anyway, as already pointed out, libertarianism makes the same fundamental assumptions about human decency that communism does, that people are inherently upstanding folk who will work together for the common good. Unfortunately, people aren't necessarily good and the system falls apart.

[K. A. Pital]

But anyway, as already pointed out, libertarianism makes the same fundamental assumptions about human decency that communism does, that people are inherently upstanding folk who will work together for the common good.

Libertarianism's proposal is a little different. It does't make any assumptions about decency, actually. It acknowledges people will act totally egoistically, but it will work out for the common good through the all-powerful market - i.e. it makes a broken logical leap that people individually acting like assholes towards each other would bring a prosperous, just and socially well-off society.

How the hell does this even happen I don't understand. Communist line of thinking is that humans need to be extremely collectivist and empathical for everyone around for communism to truly work, but libertarianism doesn't have any caveats that go against human nature. It's acknowledging human egoism, but it completely ignores the real results of total individualism and mass egoism.

[ray245]

But anyway, as already pointed out, libertarianism makes the same fundamental assumptions about human decency that communism does, that people are inherently upstanding folk who will work together for the common good.

Libertarianism's proposal is a little different. It does't make any assumptions about decency, actually. It acknowledges people will act totally egoistically, but it will work out for the common good through the all-powerful market - i.e. it makes a broken logical leap that people individually acting like assholes towards each other would bring a prosperous, just and socially well-off society.

How the hell does this even happen I don't understand. Communist line of thinking is that humans need to be extremely collectivist and empathical for everyone around for communism to truly work, but libertarianism doesn't have any caveats that go against human nature. It's acknowledging human egoism, but it completely ignores the real results of total individualism and mass egoism.

True, market forces doesn't exist to make things good or bad to begin with. Market forces is simply something that is used to describe how markets works, good and bad alike.

It's like saying, just because of the fact that the market forces managed to bring you wealth once, it does not mean it will always bring you benefits again and again. There are people who cannot understand that just because something work once, it will not work again. They assume that certain system will always work towards their benefits.

[Zixinus]

When Volleyball was here, I kind of got another vibe from him, I don't know whether this is correct in the first place:

The Free Market will fix things.

This assumes that the Free Market is an entity.

In reality, the Free Market is a self-built (as in, internally built) system and market forces are mere effects of this system.

The Free Market cannot fix anything, as it is not an entity, but a place, a system.

Am I getting this wrong?