5) Anarchist Essays: Defending Economic Freedom

I am sure that something that has been bothering you this whole time is "what is your solution to all these problems?" my answer: Economics.

I am an Anarcho-Capitalist or Libertarian Anarchist and I relate best to the Austrian School of Economics of Von Mises and Rothbard as opposed to the Chicago School of Milton Friedman.I believe that there is nothing government does that economics cannot do better.  Surely at this point there are many questions that arise in your mind "who will help the poor" "who will provide protection" "won't just more governments arise in an anarchist society?".  In one essay I am not even going to try and attempt to advocate what a society of millions if not billions of people and all of their individual interests would look like.  However there are many people who have invested hours upon hours into answering some of the move basic questions people have.  The people I have read the most of are Murray Rothbard, David Friedman and my favorite Stefan Molyneux.  You can go to Stefan's site Freedomain Radio to have a quick resource to some of these questions. For a basic outline please read the article The Stateless Society by Stefan Molyneux.  However as for me I am simply going to go over some basic premises and information to hopefully give you some basic faith in capitalism.

Nature of Economics

Economics are an extension of human interests and needs, because a business cannot survive unless it is providing some kind of use to people.  Thus it is constantly adapting to human needs.  As opposed to government which is always trying to adapt people its needs by means of manipulation (patriotism, loyalty).  The free market asks for no loyalty except for what benefits you best.

Perhaps it can be said that the free market can profit from manipulation as well.  This is true, however businesses are much more likely to be punished for this then government and competition tends to reduce this.  But ultimately people are free to be manipulated if they choose to be.  Capitalism thrives of product with minimal manipulation, government thrives of manipulation, with as little product as possible.

Nature of Government

Once the government is introduced into the free-market it is no longer a representation of peoples interests, but some people gaining advantage over others with the force of government violence.  For example: If am an older carpenter and I don't want to compete with younger carpenters what would I need to do? Create a union, lobby the government to so everyone has to join your union, and then make it so that everyone that joins your union has to be an apprentice.

What was once an accurate description of peoples interest is now some people gaining interest over others with the force of violence.

When we have a state with a monopoly on violence, is considered moral, requires loyalty (patriotism) and has no competition you can expect nothing but corruption and abuse of power. We have given one group of people all the guns, and all the rights to use them that we don't have, and now we simply hope that they choose to protect us. To an extent, they will protect us but only because there are more of us then there are of them and they need to maintain a minimal amount of legitimacy as possible, as all tyranny does.

In the days of dictatorship people where threatened by violence directly, and the parasitical relationship between government and man was more then obvious.  Now however government is forced to take a different approach.  The threat of violence and death is the same, how ever government projects it to out side sources such as "global warming" "terrorism" "communism" "illegal Immigrants" "the greedy corporations" etc... These are all threats of government.  Threats of death and violence, but simply projected to other sources.  But it is really the government quietly saying "you see? this is why you need us".

Lies About Capitalism

Never in history has their been a correlation between less government power and a greater gap between the rich and the poor. In fact the opposite has always been true. There has yet to be a successful state program that have helped the bridge this gap.  It is only in the free society where the middle class have thrived.  Capitalism has been far more successful when it comes to helping the poor then any do-gooder socialist or communist government has even gotten remotely close to.

Yet no one cares. There is no evidence to support the claims of socialist and communists yet they still claim a moral high ground though their ideas have brought nothing but mass murder and subsidized poverty.

Why?  Because people believe socialism and communism are moral.  Even most champions of capitalism claim "oh I suppose socialism would be better but capitalism is what works".  We must let go of this concept.  Capitalism is the most moral. All others require subjective morality and no respect for individual human beings and their complex interests.

You can make your assertions that the rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer under a free society how ever any of those assertions are utterly unfounded.

Lies About The Industrial Revolution

It is true that if went back to the 19th century we would probably find its conditions to be fairly unsuitable.  And form this we assume that the 19th century during the industrial revolution was a very bad time.  However what we need to compare the 19th century to the 18th if we are to truly understand the effects of the industrial revolution.

The fact of the matter is that during the 19th century death rates fell, saving of workers increased, as well as the overall quality of life.  Most socialist will claim that this was because of state regulations how ever the evidence indicates that legislation came after the progress.

You cannot look at the immature state of the economy during the industrial revolution, frame it, and then call it capitalism.  Say what you will but it is not my belief that the only reason we are more prosperous now because the government started pointing more guns and regulating the free market. That has been tried many times before with very different results. It is was the growing economy that has brought us our prosperity.

Lies about Welfare

After the post war period poverty was dropping by about 1% a year, how ever as soon as "the war on poverty" was launched this came to an abrupt end. Ultimately government welfare is nothing more but subsidized poverty. You cannot expect poverty rates to go down when you pay people to be poor, especially when this is done by the government.

Exactly what motivation do the people that work for the welfare department of any government have to fix poverty?  If they do magically fix poverty by paying people to be poor then 100's of thousands of people will be with out a job.

Call me a conspiracy theorist but it seems to me that the real purpose of the welfare programs is for the government to manipulate its people. If they can pay people to be poor then they will always have the poor as a reason why the government must exist.  Using the age old argument "there are poor people, therefore the government must exist". Not to mention that there are now thousands of people working for the state who would lose their job if the poor no longer existed or was not a significant problem.  Ultimately creating a mess that will never go away until the state collapses.

Conclusion

I am very well aware that I probably have not answer every one of your questions in this article nor do I plan to.  Some people have devoted much more time to the subject then I and can explain it much better, perhaps someday I will be there but for now this is what you are going to get from me.  Once again I would suggest that you read the article by Stefan Molyneux called The Stateless Society.  I believe it is a basic and fairly quick read to give you some idea on how such a society would work. But really to truly understand it is quite impossible, I nor anyone else can speak for the complex and individual interests of millions of people.  How ever there are basic principles that we can work with and try to understand.  I simply hope that I have established some faith in capitalism, and human beings being able to manage them selves by means of voluntary contracts.