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'''''Practical Anarchy''''' is a book by [[Stefan Molyneux]] written in 2008. It was preceded by ''[[Everyday Anarchy]]'' in the same year.
{{Book Displaytitle}}
'''''Practical Anarchy''''' is a book by [[Stefan Molyneux]] written in 2008. It was preceded by ''[[Everyday Anarchy]]'', and followed by ''[[Achieving Freedom]]''. In the first part of the book Molyneux establishes several principles and a methodology for the rest of the book. In the second part of the book the reasoning is discussed, with a large section devoted to frequently asked questions about anarchism, as well as arguments against the state and arguments for alternatives to government. In the third part of the book Molyneux provides examples of various alternatives that could be possible in a stateless society, such as roads, health care, and money. The last part draws conclusions and argues for a future free from Government.


== Part One: Methodology ==
== Contents ==
*[[Practical Anarchy/1|Part One: Methodology]]
*[[Practical Anarchy/2|Part Two: Reasoning]]
*[[Practical Anarchy/3|Part Three: Examples]]
*[[Practical Anarchy/4|Part Four: Conclusions]]


=== Introduction ===
== Links ==
 
The inevitable – and highly intelligent – questions that arose in response to my last book “Everyday Anarchy” mostly centred on the question of how a stateless society could self-organise in practical terms.
 
Naturally, these sorts of questions are a fascinating and endless kind of intellectual delight. Much as Alice mused as she fell down the hole at the beginning of Lewis Carroll’s famous book, we intellectuals are tempted to design the future down to the last detail. We try to respond to every conceivable objection with yet another essay on how roads can be delivered in the absence of a government, or how international treaties can work in the absence of law courts, or how children can be protected in the absence of the police, or how national defence can be secured in the absence of a State army, and how the poor can receive an education in the absence of public schools, and how and why doctors will help the impoverished sick without being forced to, and so on.
 
I have always argued that these answers – though intellectually stimulating and enjoyably debatable – will never convince those who wish to avoid the morality and practicality of non-violent solutions to the problems of social organisation.
 
For instance, in my last book, as well as a recent video, I provided a proof for anarchy, which relied on the reality of non-contractual special-interest group relationships with up-and-coming politicians. A large number of people wrote to me in response, saying either that such special interest relationships did not exist – surely a laughable proposition, given the thirty thousand plus lobbyists registered in Washington DC alone – or that if I wanted anarchy, and democracy was a great proof of the practical functionality of anarchy, then surely I should be happy with democracy!
 
There seems to be no end to the foolish statements that can be uttered by those afraid of the truth. The truth, as Socrates gave his life to show, remains highly threatening to entrenched interests, and has a very personal and volatile effect on our immediate relationships.
 
In reality, it is not so much a stateless society that we fear, but rather a family-less and friendless society where we rock gently, hugging our useless truths to our chests; solitary, ostracised, alone, rejected, scorned, derided. The truth is a desert island, we fear, and so as evolutionarily social animals, we join our corrupt circles in mocking and attacking the truth, and resent those who tell the truth, for revealing the corruption that formerly was only visible unconsciously – which is to say, largely invisible.
 
It is important to understand up front that this book will contain truths that will likely be highly threatening to you – and certainly to those around you. The world, viewed philosophically, remains a series of slave camps, where citizens – tax livestock – labour under the chains of illusion in the service of their masters. As I talked about in my book, “Real-Time Relationships,” the predations of the rulers survive on the horizontal attacks of the slaves. Because we savage each other, we remain ruled by savages.
 
Thus, you may find that as you read this book, you experience a rising frustration and irritation with its contents – and possibly with me as well, if experience is any guide.
 
I certainly do sympathise with these emotions, and truly understand their cause, but I would strongly urge you to refrain from sending me angry e-mails – for your sake, not mine. It is, as you know, highly unjust to attack a truth teller for the discomfort he causes.
 
It is not my fault that you have been lied to your whole life.
 
Furthermore, the lies exist whether or not you hear the truth – from me, or from anyone else.
 
=== Limitations ===
It is impossible for any single person – or group of people – to ever design or predict all the details of any society. In order for you to get the most out of this book, I will make a few suggestions which may be helpful.
 
First of all, if you approach this book with the idea that you’re going to find every possible gap in an argument, or nook and cranny where uncertainty may reside, then this book will be a complete waste of time, and will raise your blood pressure for absolutely no purpose whatsoever.
 
When Adam Smith formulated the arguments for the free market in the late eighteenth century, it was not considered a requirement that he predict the stock price of IBM in 1961. He began working with a number of observable and empirical principles, and proved them with rational arguments and well-known examples.
 
The validity of the “invisible hand” was not dependent upon Adam Smith predicting and describing in detail the invention of, say, the Internet. The methods that free men and women invent and use to solve social problems cannot reasonably be predicted in advance, and finding every conceivable fault with any and all such possible predictions is arguing against a mere theoretical possibility, which is both futile and ridiculous.
 
That having been said, it is still worth reviewing some possible solutions to social organisation that do not involve the monopolistic violence of the State. When Enlightenment thinkers attacked and undermined the exploitive illusions of religion, they were not able to provide a valid and scientific system of ethics to replace the mad moral commandments of historical superstition. It certainly is valuable to disprove existing “truths,” but if we do not come up with at least plausible alternatives, these falsehoods inevitably tend to morph and re-emerge in a different form. Thus did the death of religion give rise to totalitarianism – just another worship of an abstract and irrational moral absolute; the “State” rather than a “God.” The unjust aristocratic privileges of the minority that the Founding Fathers so railed against simply morphed into the unjust privileges of the majority in the form of “mob rule” democracy – which then morphed back into the unjust aristocratic privileges of the minority in the form of a political ruling class.
 
People and societies all need rules to live by, and if existing rules get knocked down, they simply rise again in another form if rational replacements are not provided. Exposing a lie simply breeds different lies, unless the truth is also advanced.
 
I have set myself a number of goals in the writing of this book that I wanted to mention up front, so you could understand the approach that I am taking – the strengths and weaknesses of what I am up to, as it were.
 
First, I promise to refrain from exhausting your patience by trying to come up with every conceivable solution to every conceivable problem. Not only would this end up being grindingly boring, but it would also indicate a strange kind of intellectual insecurity, and an unwillingness to give you the respect of accepting that you can very easily think for yourself about the solutions to the problems discussed in this book. My aim is to give you a framework for thinking about these issues, rather than have you sit passively as I explicate the widest variety of solutions to all conceivable problems.
In other words, my purpose in this book is to teach you to be a mathematician, not show you how good a mathematician I am.
 
Teaching you how to solve problems is far more respectful than giving you solutions. I have always said that everyone is a genius, and everyone is a philosopher. You do not need me to spell out how a stateless society can work in every detail, but rather to give you a framework which you can use to work out your own answers, and satisfy yourself how well a truly free society will work.
 
When Francis Bacon was putting forward the scientific method in the sixteenth century, it was not necessary for him to solve every conceivable scientific problem in order to prove the value of his methodology. It certainly was useful for him to show how his methodology had solved a number of vexing problems, and that it pointed the way to answers in a number of other areas, but of course if Bacon had been able to solve every conceivable scientific problem that could ever possibly arise, there would be precious little need for his scientific method at all, since we would just consult his writings whenever we had a scientific problem that we could not solve.
 
In the same way, as a philosopher I am interested in teaching people how to think in a new way, rather than giving them explicit answers to every conceivable problem. My approach to rational and scientific ethics – Universally Preferable Behaviour (UPB) – is to provide people a framework for evaluating moral propositions, rather than to give them an utterly finalised system of ethics. If such a system of ethics ever could be developed – which seems highly unlikely, given the inevitably changing conditions of life, society, and technology – then no one would ever have to think about ethics ever again, and philosophy would fall into the abyss reserved for dead religions and defunct ideologies, interesting only as yet another example of a temporary historical illusion, like the worship of Zeus, Mussolini, or Paris Hilton.
 
The scientific method certainly did – and does – provide an objective methodology for gaining valid knowledge and understanding of the physical world, just as UPB provides an objective methodology for separating truth from falsehood when it comes to evaluating moral propositions, and the free market provides an objective methodology for determining value in the provision of goods and services, through the mechanism of price.
 
The value of the scientific method only truly becomes apparent when we abandon religious or superstitious revelation as a valid source of “truth.” We only refer to a compass when we become uncertain of our direction. We only begin to develop science when we start to doubt religion. We only begin to accept the validity of the free market when we doubt the ethics and practicality of coercive central planning. On a more personal level, we only begin to change our approach to relationships when we at last begin to suspect that we ourselves may be the source of our problems.
 
Much like a river, alternative tributaries only arise when the original flow is blocked. The development of new paradigms in thought is in general more provoked than plotted, and erupts from a rising exasperation with the falsehoods of existing “solutions.” This spike in emotion can sometimes arise with extraordinary rapidity, from a slow build to a sudden explosion – and it is my belief that this is where we are poised in the present when it comes to an examination of the use of violence in solving social problems.
 
As a vivid, living value, the nation-state as an object of worship and a source of practical and moral solutions is as dead as King Tutankhamen. No one truly believes any more that the State can solve the problems of poverty, of education, of war, of ill health, of security for the aged, and so on. Governments are now viewed with extraordinary suspicion and cynicism. It is true that many people still believe that the idea of government can somehow be rescued, but there is an extraordinary level of exasperation, frustration, and anxiety with our existing methods of solving social problems. When someone says that we need yet another government program to “solve” all the problems created or exacerbated by previous government programs, most people now view this approach as an eye-rolling non-answer.
 
Of course, we still hear a lot about government “solutions” in the media, academia, and the arts, but most people now understand – at least emotionally – that this bleating arises from special interest groups that are either threatened or protected by the State – the automatic reaction of “increase regulation!” When a problem arises, this demand no longer comes from the people, but rather from those parties that will benefit from increased regulation.
 
The rise of the Internet has also rocked the mainstream paradigm of “government as virtue.” In particular, the US-led invasion of Iraq has contributed to a final collapse in belief about the virtue of statist solutions to complex problems. It is easier to believe the lies of the past, since we were not there when they were told – it is harder to believe in the lies of the present, since we can see them unravelling before our very eyes.
 
Thus, our belief that the government can solve problems is collapsing on two fronts – first, we now understand that the government cannot solve problems – and second, and more importantly, we can see that the government is not giving up any of its control over the problems it so obviously cannot solve.
 
This last point is worth expanding upon, since it is so important, and so often overlooked.
 
If the government claims to take our money in order to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, but the government clearly does not solve the problem of poverty, but rather in fact tends to make it worse, what then do we begin to understand when the government continues to take our money?
 
If I take your money telling you that I will ship you an iPod, what realisation do you come to when I neither ship you the iPod nor return your money?
 
Surely you understand that I only promised you the iPod in order to steal your money.
 
In the same way, the government did not increase our taxes in order to solve the problem of poverty, but rather claimed that it wanted to solve the problem of poverty in order to increase our taxes. This is the only way to explain the basic fact that the problem of poverty has not been solved – and in fact is worse now – but the government continues to increase our taxes.
 
We are all beginning to understand – at least at an unconscious level – that the government lies to us about helping others in order to take our money.
 
=== The Answer? ===
If religion is not the answer, and the State is not the answer, then what is?
 
Well, when a particular “answer” has proven so universally disastrous, the first place to look is the opposite of that answer.
 
If “no property rights” (communism) is disastrous, then “property rights” (free markets) are most likely to be beneficial.
 
If faith is disastrous, then science is most likely to be beneficial.
 
If superstition is disastrous, than reason and evidence are most likely to be beneficial.
 
If violence is disastrous, then peace and negotiation are most likely to be beneficial.
 
If the State is disastrous, then anarchism is most likely to be beneficial.
 
It is this last statement that tends to be the most challenging for people.
 
Many of us can accept a world without gods and devils, without heaven and hell, without original sin and imaginary redemption – but we cannot accept, or even imagine, a world without governments.
Many of us can picture a world with a minimum government – with a State concerned only with law courts, police and the military – but we cannot picture a world without a government at all.
 
A Christian can accept a world where nine thousand, nine hundred ninety-nine gods are ridiculous and false illusions, but that their God – the God of the Old Testament – is a true, real, and living deity. A Christian remains an atheist with regards to almost every god, but becomes an utter theist with regards to their own deity. Getting rid of almost all gods is utterly sensible – getting rid of that one final God is utterly incomprehensible.
 
In the same way, Libertarians, Objectivists, and other minarchists feel that getting rid of ninety-nine percent of existing government functions is utterly moral – but getting rid of that last one percent is utterly immoral!
 
We do not accept these reservations in other areas of our lives, which is enough to make us suspicious of the true motives behind such statements. A woman who is beaten up only once a month lives almost all of her life violence-free, but we would not consider her beatings acceptable on that ground. It would be even more ridiculous to say that a woman should not be beaten every day, but that it would be utterly immoral to also suggest that she should not be beaten at all. If I claim that it is moral to reduce State violence, can I claim that it is utterly immoral to eliminate such violence completely? Can I dedicate my life to reducing the incidence of cancer, but then claim that eliminating cancer completely would be utterly immoral? Can I reasonably set up a charity to reduce poverty, but then claim in my mission statement that the elimination of poverty would be a dire evil?
 
Of course not – I would be viewed as an irrational lunatic at best for making such statements.
 
Those who claim that a reduction of violence is a moral ideal, but who then also claim that the elimination of violence would be a moral evil, must at least recognise, if they wish to retain any credibility, that they are proposing an entirely foolish contradiction.
 
By “violence” here, I do not mean that anarchism will completely eliminate human violence – the violence that I am talking about here is the morally “justified” and institutionalised initiation of force that is the foundation of State power.<ref>I am not going to go into a lengthy discussion here about the nature of the State, or the moral reasoning against the initiation of violence, since I have dealt with those topics at length in my podcasts, and in other books. Suffice to say that the State is by definition a group of individuals who claim the right to initiate the use of force against legally disarmed citizens in a specific geographical region.</ref>
 
Thus, I think it is reasonable for us to take the approach that if it were possible to run society without a government, this would be a massive net positive.
 
When we have governments, we inevitably get wars, politically motivated and unjust laws, the incarceration of non-violent “criminals,” the over-printing of money and the resulting inflation, the enslavement of future generations through immoral deficits, the mis-education of the young, rampant vote buying, endless tax increases, arms sales around the world, unjust subsidies to specific industries, economic and practical inefficiencies of every conceivable kind, the creation of permanent under-classes through welfare and illegal immigration, vast increases in the power and violence of organised crime through restrictions on drugs, prostitution, and gambling – the list of State crimes is virtually endless.
 
When we choose to justify governments, we inevitably choose to justify the crimes of those in power. Choosing government is also choosing war, genocide, enslavement, financial, moral and educational corruption, propaganda, the spread of violence, and so on.
 
You can never get one without the other. Imagining otherwise is like imagining that you can choose to justify the Mafia without also justifying the violence that it uses to maintain its power. We may as well imagine that we can support the troops without simultaneously supporting the murders they commit.
 
Given the number of bloody and genocidal crimes that orbit the power of the State, surely we can at least be open to the possibility that society can be organised far more effectively and morally without such an evil power at its centre. If it turns out that society can run without a State – even haltingly, even imperfectly – then surely we should accept such practical imperfections for the sake of avoiding such rampant and bottomless crimes against humanity. Surely, even if anarchy were proven to produce fewer and worse roads, we could accept some mildly inconvenient and bumpy rides for the sake of releasing billions of people from direct or indirect enslavement to their political masters.
 
To analogise this, imagine that someone in the nineteenth century proved that cotton would be ten percent rougher if slavery were abolished. Would it be moral or reasonable for people to say, “Well, it is certainly true that slavery is a great evil, but I still prefer it to slightly less comfortable cotton!”?
 
No, we would view such monstrous selfishness as staggeringly corrupt. The moral hypocrisy of claiming to be against slavery, but refusing to actually oppose slavery for fear of even the mildest practical inconvenience, would be an ethical evil that would be hard to comprehend.
 
Thus, when people dismiss the possibility of anarchy out of hand by saying, “Oh, but how would roads be provided?” what they are really saying is that they support war, genocide, tax enslavement, and the incarceration and rape of the innocent, because they themselves cannot imagine how roads might be provided in the absence of violence. “People should be murdered, raped, and imprisoned because I am concerned that the roads I use might be slightly less convenient.” Can anyone look at the moral horror of this statement without feeling a bottomless and existential nausea?
Now, imagine that the reality of the situation is that roads will be provided far more efficiently and productively in a stateless society?
 
If that is the case, then the practical considerations turn out to be the complete opposite of the truth – that we are accepting murder, genocide, and rape for the sake of bad roads, rather than good roads!
 
This kind of net loss provides the moral and rational core of the arguments in favour of a stateless society. While it is certainly true that some people will end up losing out under anarchy, it is the evil and corrupt who will lose the most, just as priests lose out in an atheistic society, much to the relief of children everywhere. The true reality of an anarchic society is that the moral goals of every reasonable human being – the alleviation of poverty, the provision of “public services,” the education of the young, the protection of children, the old and the infirm, will actually be created and provided in a positive, productive, gentle, and moral manner.
 
The great lie of the statist society is that the helpless and dependent are protected, when in fact they are trapped and exploited.
 
The great lie of the statist society is that the ignorant are educated, when in fact they are made even more ignorant.
 
The great truth of the anarchic society is that the helpless are protected, the ignorant are educated, the sick are treated – and that roads are built, and are better.
 
To gain the beauty and virtue of anarchism, we sacrifice nothing but our illusions.
 
Surely, we should actually want to help people, rather than just pretend that we are doing so.
 
Surely, we should not sacrifice the peace of the world to our fears of imperfect roads.
 
=== The Argument from Apocalypse ===
 
=== A Merely Personal Confession ===
 
=== A Few Principles ===
 
==== Using the past to justify the future ====
 
==== You are not the only kind person on the planet ====
 
==== Statism and Isolation ====
 
==== Relative Risk ====
 
=== Collective Defence: An Example of Methodology ===
 
==== Why Invade? ====
 
==== Invading Anarchy ====
 
==== Deactivated Money ====
 
=== Statist National "Defence": A Critical Example ===
 
==== Which sector does more to protect you and your property - the public or the private? ====
 
== Part Two: Reasoning ==
 
=== Introduction: The Six Questions ===
 
=== Anarchism – Frequently Asked Questions ===
 
==== Isn’t Anarchism ‘Bad’? ====
 
==== But if there is no government, how can the inevitable conflicts in human society be resolved? ====
 
==== For somebody who is an anarchist, you sure do sound like a politician! Wasn’t that just a complete dodge of the question? ====
 
==== But what about the roads? ====
 
==== Okay – here’s a scenario for you: a guy builds a road that completely encircles a suburban neighborhood, and then charges $1 million for anyone to cross that road. Isn’t he holding everyone who lives in that neighborhood hostage? ====
 
==== All right, smarty-pants – what about this: the company that supplies water to a neighborhood suddenly decides to increase its rates Tenfold – people are going to be forced to pay the exorbitant price, right? ====
 
==== Okay – what if two DROs have different rules – isn’t that just going to result in endless civil war? ====
 
==== But – won’t the most successful DRO just arm itself, violently eliminate all the other DROs, and emerge as a new government? ====
 
==== Are There Any Examples Of Anarchic Societies Being Successful In The Past? ====
 
==== How can a society without a government pay for national defense? ====
 
==== What about education? ====
 
==== Yes, but how will poor children get an education if it is not paid for through taxes? ====
 
=== Disproving the State: Four Arguments Against Government ===
 
=== Anarchy, Violence, and the State ===
 
==== Does more government equal less violence? ====
 
==== Principle 1: Risk ====
 
==== Principle 2: Proximity ====
 
==== Principle 3: Externalization of Costs ====
 
==== Principle 4: Deferment ====
 
==== Principle 5: Propaganda ====
 
=== War, Profit, and the State ===
 
==== The Cost of Destruction ====
 
==== The Risks of Destruction ====
 
==== The Risks of Personal Retaliation ====
 
==== The Economics of War ====
 
==== The Costs of Military Destruction ====
 
==== The Risks of Annihilation ====
 
==== The Risks of Military Retaliation ====
 
==== Externalising Military Risk ====
 
==== Externalising Emotional Discomfort ====
 
==== In Other Words, The State Is War ====
 
=== A Successful Operation (a dead patient!) ===
 
==== Problem #1: Public Ownership ====
 
==== Problem #2: The State as a ‘Common’ ====
 
=== Dispute Resolution Organisations ===
 
==== Breaking Contract ====
 
==== Non-payment ====
 
=== The Stateless Society: An Examination of Alternatives ===
 
==== Dispute Resolution ====
 
==== Collective Services ====
 
==== Pollution ====
 
==== Interpersonal Crimes ====
 
=== The Stateless Society and Violent Crime ===
 
==== Crimes of Passion ====
 
=== These Cages Are Only for Beasts ===
 
=== Stateless Dictatorships: How a Free Society Prevents the Re-emergence of a Government ===
 
==== Premises ====
 
==== Starting Point ====
 
==== The Secret Army ====
 
==== Raising Rates ====
 
==== Full Disclosure ====
 
==== Alternative Funding ====
 
==== Defense DROs ====
 
==== Independently Wealthy? ====
 
==== The Question of Profit ====
 
=== Irrational Laws? ===
 
=== Tank Control ===
 
==== The Tank in the Garden ====
 
==== Gun Control ====
 
== Part Three: Examples ==
 
=== Roads ===
 
==== New Roads ====
 
==== The Statist Pony ====
 
==== Existing City Roads ====
 
==== A Predatory Road Monopoly? ====
 
===== My Way or the Highway? =====
 
==== Automobile Insurance ====
 
==== An example of private roads ====
 
=== Health Care ===
 
==== Anarchism and Medical Care ====
 
==== Existing Systems ====
 
==== “Two-Tiered” Health Care ====
 
==== The Anarchist “Solution”? ====
 
==== How It Doesn’t Work: An Analogy ====
 
==== How It Will Work ====
 
==== Healthcare Information ====
 
==== Health Care and the Poor ====
 
=== Stateless Prisons ===
 
==== The Rapist ====
 
=== Money ===
 
==== The Anarchist Credit Card ====
 
==== What Problem are we Trying to Solve? ====
 
==== Monetary Aspects of Stateless Money ====
 
===== Stability =====
 
===== Portability =====
 
===== Security =====
 
===== Bankruptcy? =====
 
===== Compared to What? =====
 
=== Saving Children: The Stateless Society and the Protection of the Helpless ===
 
==== Proactive Protection ====
 
==== A Parenting Fable ====
 
=== Preventing Tragedy – An Anarchic Analysis of Abortion ===
 
==== Subsidizing Abortion ====
 
==== Taxing Family Planning ====
 
==== The Men ====
 
==Part Four: Conclusions ==
 
=== The Value of Anarchism ===
 
==== The Future ====
 
==== Anarchy and Relationships ====
 
== External links ==
*[http://www.fdrurl.com/PAPDF Digital version]
*[http://www.fdrurl.com/PAPDF Digital version]
*[http://fdrurl.com/PA Audio version]
*[http://fdrurl.com/PA Audio version]
*[http://www.lulu.com/content/2935951 Print version]
*[http://www.lulu.com/content/2935951 Print version]


[[Category:Literature]]
[[Category:Writings of Stefan Molyneux]]

Latest revision as of 20:43, 12 October 2012

Practical Anarchy is a book by Stefan Molyneux written in 2008. It was preceded by Everyday Anarchy, and followed by Achieving Freedom. In the first part of the book Molyneux establishes several principles and a methodology for the rest of the book. In the second part of the book the reasoning is discussed, with a large section devoted to frequently asked questions about anarchism, as well as arguments against the state and arguments for alternatives to government. In the third part of the book Molyneux provides examples of various alternatives that could be possible in a stateless society, such as roads, health care, and money. The last part draws conclusions and argues for a future free from Government.

Contents

Links

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