Samizdata

A gentleman from France wrote in with some questions about what would happen in a society run under libertarian principles. He had some practical questions and I thought an extract form these remarks might be interesting to some Samizdata Readers. The gentlemen who sent the e-mail did not want to be pointed at books which he would find hard to locate, and thus I answered much by pointing him at various Libertarian Alliance pamphlets on the matters in question, as they are short, to the point and available free on-line (in .pdf format, requires Adobe Acrobat or similar to read).

Q: If there is no government/state then who pays the police?

Not all of us at Samizdata advocate full blown anarcho-capitalist social models. We range from ‘minarchists’ (small state libertarians) who see the role of the state as being security and nothing else, to other hyphenated libertarians across the spectrum between neo-conservative to anarcho-capitalist. There have been some interesting things written on the subject, such as:

Private Police and the Free Rider Problem by Max O’Connor.

Q: Who takes care of pensions?

You do. In the USA and UK (and unlike Europe), private pensions are hugely important and are the reason why as society goes ‘grey’, the EU’s state pensions are, in the long run, completely unsustainable whilst those in the US and UK are still financially viable due to [rivate sector involvement.

Q: Who regulates industries?

In the current sense, no one does. That is the whole point of the laissez-faire capitalism that underpins libertarianism. Much as in the USA there is less state regulation but more civil liability litigation, in a libertarian model, people will sue if others impose costs on them to prevent things like building a chemical plant in a residential area. The state is not the only way to achieve sensible results. As that greatest of Frenchmen wrote: said:

Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all.
– Frederic Bastiat

Q: Who decides who the judges are going to be?

There are several interesting pamplets on that subject such as:

Restitution: Justice in a Stateless Society by Christian Michel

Privately Produced Law by Tom Bell

Polycentric Law Versus the Minimal State: The Case of Air Pollution by Adam Chacksfield

There are some people in the world who will go to great lengths not to be taken seriously. One of these people is a certain Mr.Paul Clark who has contributed this stupendous bit of reality-subversion on Lew Rockwell’s website.

According to Mr.Clark, Libertarians and True Conservatives everywhere could do a lot worse than look to European Union for inspiration. Well, yes, they could always look to North Korea, I suppose. He goes on to state that the USA should seek to emulate it.

“In fact, the EU offers, in many ways, an example for the United States to emulate. The EU still is what the US is supposed to be: a federation of more or less sovereign states, united for economic and military cooperation.

For those of us who advocate a small, truly constitutional government basically the same as the US had in 1800, the common response is that the world has changed, and that it is now impossible to have the kind of weak central government that existed two centuries ago, when the population and area were a fraction of what they are today. In response to that, one simply needs to look at the European Union”

Yes, he actually says that! And, to add injury to insanity:

“If I were leader of an island nation in the middle of the Atlantic, and were forced to choose between joining the EU or the US, there would be only one choice. If one were concerned with preventing a deluge of tax collectors, bureaucrats, and regulators; and if one wanted to maintain traditional culture and laws, then one would not join the US”

Do you think he means us?

The whole article is a tissue of egregious distortions and outright misrepresentations. For example, Mr.Clark claims that the EU does not tax its citizens when it is common knowledge to every European that plans to do are already well-advanced. He also claims that the EU has no army when the European Rapid Reaction Force (a rose by any other name…) is being built around our ears and with a brief to do just about anything its political masters order it to do both internally and externally.

As someone who has many friends in the USA so I am only too well aware of the exasperation they feel when dealing with their bloated and blundering Federal Government but to compare it unfavourably with the EU requires not just gall but a breath-taking turn of relativism.

It seems that Mr.Clark is yet another of that curious breed of American Libertarian that is so convinced of the irredeemable iniquity of their own government that any ANY alternative is better, be it the EU, Latin American Caudillos, the Moonies or Pol Pot for that matter. Perhaps Mr.Clark should be directed to this Blog for some clarity about the ‘laissez-faire’ credentials of the EU. He could start by trying to explain away the post below.

But maybe I am leaping to judgment. Maybe Mr.Clark has merely written a ripping satire. Maybe he is deliberatly trying to be provocative in order to make some other subtle point. But, if not, then I regret to say that it isn’t just the prisoners at Camp X-Ray who are hooded and goggled.