Who Were the Sea Peoples?

"[A] possible approach is to define an 'ideal' apart from historical considerations and seek its implementation regardless of the situation at hand. In [this] case, what should exist is thought to be obvious from the ideal itself. The 'idealist' does not welcome reminders of the actual experience of mankind, full as it is of evidence of the limitations of human beings, or of the restrictions imposed by existing circumstances... To adapt the ideal to a historical situation is to subvert it. It is historical circumstances that should be adapted to the ideal. To have some sort of respect for historically evolved patters of life is misguided, the idealist contends." -- Claes Ryn, A Common Human Ground , p. 88 For instance, one could take an abstraction like "equality" and decide that it means all people should have equal access to all goods. Then one could decide it is obvious from this ideal that private property must be abolished. As a result, ignor...

but because they are empowered to solve collective action problems.

My friend Sheldon Richman contends that , "As Long as Government Exists, Our Freedom Is Insecure." But, of course, for every society that ever existed without a government, either that society disappeared, it gave rise to a government, or it was conquered by a society with a government. So if Sheldon's title is correct, logically we ought to also note that "When Government Does Not Exist, Our Freedom Is Insecure." Or, more simply, freedom is insecure . Which, I think, is correct.

"Thus, the world of Bourgeois Society -- a world, on the whole, of cash nexus and mere protection by the State -- has a structure or tendency of its own which brings it back by necessary steps to connection with the State proper or explicit and determinate social unity. It is, we must observe, posterior to the State in time. It is only within the State proper, and resting on it solid power, that such a world as that of Bourgeois Society could arise or be conceivable. Its priority to the State is, like that of the family, the priority of comparative narrowness or simplicity, of dealing with fewer factors, and of representing human nature in a more special, though necessary, aspect. And for this very reason it could not exist by itself." -- Bernard Bosanquet, The Philosophical Theory of the State , p. 276

There is a very tedious commentator who I want to discourage, so I haven't posted his most recent comment. But he claims something that I have seen claimed a number of times, so it may be worth addressing. What he said was (I paraphrase), "Callahan, you are missing the crucial distinction: under anarchy, no one will ever be subject to an authority not of his own choosing." Now, it is true that in ancapistan, no one will have to acknowledge an authority not of their own choosing. But that is true in the current state system as well: anarchists, for instance, do not acknowledge the authority of any current state. "Ah," the anarchist may respond, "but we are forced to submit to the state's decisions even though we do not acknowledge its authority. That is what would never happen under anarchy." Nonsense! Perhaps it would happen less often, but it would happen very regularly. I will offer just a few examples, but I could literally generate these all...

In anarchist literature, one often finds the contention that the State produces nothing, and is entirely parasitic on the rest of society. This claim is false. Of course, it is true for some things that modern states do, such as the provision of welfare. But it is false applied to the state as a whole, because there is one service that is highly productive, and that only the state can provide: the service of being the final arbiter for all disputes between its members. This service must, logically, come from a monopoly provider: if there are multiple providers of arbitration at the same level, then none of them are final. (And that is why, if a network of ancap defense agencies can provide this service, they will, in fact, compose a state. And if they can't provide it, then we will have "anarchy" in the bad sense of social chaos.) Once one focuses on this service, one can easily understand why German barbarians would fight to get inside the Roman Empire: both productivity...

I just read the above claim in a paper. It is false, not based on "my ideology" as opposed to "your ideology," but demonstrably false on a scientific basis. (By science here I mean "rational enquiry into some realm of reality.") To understand why this is so, let us consider someone who says "the essence of private property is the open use of coercion." "Whoa," you may think, "how can anyone claim this? Private property is about my legitimate authority to control what is mine!'' But what about someone who disagrees with me about my legitimate authority over some property? For instance, I presently own ten acres in the Poconos. But suppose some Lenape Indians show up and say, "This was our ancestors' land: we are going to establish a village here." And they then begin constructing a village on "my" land. Well, I now have two choices: I can abandon my property claim, or I can use coercion to forc...

It had been recommended to me for some time, but when I started watching, I saw Kevin Spacey talking to the camera, and turned it off immediately. I hate that crap. However, my son was watching it tonight, and so I began watching it again. It is not bad. Despite the talking to the camera. What I found really hilarious while watching, however, is libertarians who think, "Wow, this is such a libertarian show!" Because politicians behaving badly. People close to power become greedy for power. If anyone had ever thought it worthwhile to make a TV program about the behavior of the CEOs of ancap defense agencies, we would see them behaving just like Kevin Spacey in House of Cards. Cause that's what people are like when they are around power. Whether there is an entity called "The State" around or not.

Turn on the "protected ." Who could have imagined?

"From these considerations it is evident that the state belongs to the class of things that exist by nature, and that man is by nature a political animal. He who is without a state, by reason of his own nature and not of some accident, is either a poor sort of being, or a being higher than man: he is like the man of whom Homer wrote in denunciation: 'Clanless and lawless and heartless is he.'" -- Aristotle, Politics , Book I, Section ii Anarchists often like to point to the decline in character of various states over time as making a case against the state tout court . But Aristotle documents this sort of decline at great length: he would be unmoved. Claiming that because states, like all natural objects, are subject to decay and corruption, therefore we should eliminate them, is like saying that because our bodies decline with old age, they should be eliminated!

Huemer has apparently penned this twaddle: What divides libertarians from everybody else is not a belief about rights or what rights people have, because the judgements libertarians make about the state are the same as the judgements almost everyone makes about private agents. So it's not that we believe in rights that other people don't believe in, or that other people believe in rights that we don't believe in. It's that other people think the state is exempt from the moral principles that apply to non-government agents. Well, how was self-congratulatory of you, Professor Huemer! Only you and you friends have a coherent position! But consider: * A parent is allowed to take his or her screaming and kicking child, forced them into a car, and strap them down in a car seat, and then drive away with them. "We are going on a family vacation, and I cannot leave my two-year-old behind to die at home in our absence." But if a perfect stranger does this to a...

Theinterventionistparadox, in the comment section of this post , assures me that "Murphy and Powell" can explain (away) the fact that stateless German barbarians were struggling to get into a state. Well, for sure it can be explained:

Here is something to wrap your head around: German barbarians beyond the edge of the Roman Empire, who were living in what were essentially stateless societies, used stealth, pleading, and even warfare in their efforts to try to move across the border and settle inside the Empire. Now, if the benefits of living under a state where that clear to illiterate barbarians in 200 A.D., why are there very smart people in 2014 who can't see them? Well, as I was once one of them, I can answer that: ideology. It takes a whole lot of training in an ideological mode of looking before you can render yourself unable to see what those ancient barbarians saw clearly.

Why I was an anarchist: Because I envisioned a beautiful, just society, in which the use of force was absolutely minimized. Why I am no longer an anarchist: Because I realized that, in The City of Man, there is no possible avenue open for realizing that beautiful fantasy. So, anarchists, it is no use telling me how lovely things are in your vision. That was my vision, too, and things looked just as lovely to me there as they do to you. And, in fact, those things still look just as lovely to me now as they did then. But now I see that I was looking at The City of God, which is, indeed, lovely, but that I was fantasizing that what I saw there could possibly be imposed upon The City of Man.

Let us walk through Bob Murphy's attempt to refute a post of mine from last week. Early on, Bob writes: "There are all sorts of historical and current examples of industries and merchants not protected by government, yet they aren’t riddled with violent thugs. For example, poor Chinese immigrants operating a dry cleaning service or restaurant in an inner city probably won’t get much help from the police if they are robbed." Yes , certainly no Chinese restaurant that is robbed could ever expect any help from the police . But the real notable thing about this claim is the level of research involved. Note the word "probably." Apparently the way to do anarchist "research" is to recline in an armchair making guesses as to what the facts are: just make sure those guesses support anarchist conclusions, and you are fine. Of course, it is true that poor immigrants do not get the level of police support they deserve, and that when they are...

At FEE one day, I heard Pete say something to the effect that, "If all states were like Switzerland, I would not consider anarchy as an option." I think that is a sound way to look at this. But we should consider the reverse, too: If no states were like Switzerland, I certainly would be an anarchist. Is certainly true in some states are really awful. And Pete's insight means that we shouldn't force the state on, for instance, the people of Somalia: the state they would get is likely to be a lot worse than the clan-based governance they enjoy at present. But the reverse is true as well: If you live in Switzerland, be thankful for what you've got. Governance doesn't get much better than that, and certainly stateless governance has shown no evidence that it can achieve such a happy civil condition. Do not give up an actual bird in the hand for a brighter colored, but purely theoretical, bird in the bush. (And no, I don't think Switzerland is heaven ...

We have them, and we can see exactly how they operate: they are called drug cartels, and the picture isn't very pretty. People buying and selling illegal drugs (or sex, or alcohol during Prohibition) are operating in an environment in which they cannot turn to a state to enforce contracts, property rights, and so on. Thus, they must enforce these things on their own. And how do they operate? Largely as lawless gangs. Look, there is nothing stopping them from following a book by Murray Rothbard in terms of how they behave. There is nothing stopping them from forming agreements with each other as to how to peacefully arbitrate disputes. (Well, except the fact they don't have a state to turn to to enforce those contracts, but that point isn't going to help anarchists very much!) But we can see how they actually behave instead. That is your competing defense agencies, folks. You've got it, live and in the real world, right in front of your eyes. You just have to ha...

The worst problem with anarcho-capitalism, or Marxism, and other such ideological solutions to the problem of human existence, is that they mistakenly assign the blame for evil in the world to an institution, rather than to the human heart. If only we got rid of "the state" or "the capitalists," everything would be fine. (If one were Christian, one might say they ignore that fact that we are fallen creatures: this same insight can easily be stated in another metaphysical framework if one prefers.) When I brought up the example of the British East India Company to illustrate how badly a "private security agency" could behave, my anarchist friends of course popped blood vessels in their foreheads, noting (quite correctly) that they were a trading monopoly. But familiarize yourself with the history of the relationship between the British Crown and the British East India Company: you will find that the British East India Company was frequently being held in...

because the state's police screwed up. But when policing was private, how did it do ? It turns out the English homicide rate in 1200 was roughly 20 times today's rate. (London had a record-low number of homicides in 2012, by the way.) All that decline came during a time of pretty continuous state growth. Correlation is not causation, and so on, sure, but does anyone really think this is just a coincidence, when we have such an excellent theory as to what happened? (The war of all against all, leviathan, etc.)

Civil War England of Hobbes time, the anarchist says, was not actually an example of anarchy. You see, he continues, the factions fighting were each trying to establish themselves as the state. Well yes, that is what occurs under anarchy. How in the world is that supposed to be a refutation of Hobbes?