Responses to my Government Explained video

The response to my latest video has been overwhelming. Thank you to everyone who liked, commented, shared it, etc! 32k views in just 4 days!

This post is a collection of some of the responses I have seen online.


A video response:

LIES : This video will make you rethink what you think you know to be true.

"I think it's probably the best video I've ever seen, as far as putting the government in a nutshell and really making you think about things."


Some places it is being shared and discussed:

http://freetheanimal.com/2012/03/what-if-you-had-to-explain-21st-century-humanity-to-a-smart-alien.html

http://www.wickedfire.com/shooting-shit/152751-government-explained.html

http://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/15923264

http://www.facebook.com/Capitalists/posts/264799206933552

http://humanformat.tumblr.com/post/19044126945/government-explained-an-inquisitive-alien-visits

http://nexus.2012info.ca/forum/showthread.php?9862-Government-Explained

http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2012/03/government_expl.html

http://mises.org/Community/forums/p/28421/460264.aspx

http://concen.org/forum/showthread.php?tid=44989&pid=239322

http://misbehavedwoman.wordpress.com/2012/03/09/government-explained/

http://thesechangingtimezradio.ning.com/video/government-explained

http://www.reddit.com/r/occupywallstreet/comments/qosbv/government_explained_you_must_watch_this_video/

http://www.reddit.com/r/Anarcho_Capitalism/comments/qmq0g/government_explained/

http://www.reddit.com/r/Anarcho_Capitalism/comments/qpu46/explaining_government_to_an_alien/

http://www.politicalbuddies.com/f139/government-explained-4159/

http://iparte.com/videos/2185/9616/government-explained

http://digg.com/news/politics/government_explained_to_an_alien_race

http://philosophers-stone.co.uk/wordpress/2012/03/government-explained/

http://whatreallyhappened.org/content/government-explained


Some selected Youtube comments:

"A great video to share and gently wake up family and friends. Awareness through humor."

"Do you find it strange that murder is a huge crime that is against the law, but by war it its justified. I find that strange, hypocritical and contradicting. And quite stupid. You can't kill unless they say so."

"you did my dreams come true in this!!! INFINITE THANX!"

"Absolutely Brilliant!"

"I have two words to sum up my reaction to this video: standing ovation."

"This video is excellent. I've often wondered what an alien, or someone from the future would think if they came to present day earth. Great premise."

"Best video I have ever seen."

"XD I laughed at the ending "...yeah that's pretty much government", I shouldn't though, it's sad :p"

"what can you not like about this video.?"

"Now, if only the masses would watch this video like they blindly watched that stupid Kony video, we could all actually live free."

"excellent ... the 'alien thought experiment' the first step in achieveing an open mind ;)"

"This video really opened up my mind and hopefully others about how often we don't even think about such things... Mindlessly being controlled... By who? By what? Why?..."

"1 dislike? How's that possible! He must have sneezed and hit the wrong button :}"

"wow. that is all i can say~ wow. :o( ok~ one more thing~ RON PAUL 2012!"

"Rothbard, Molinari, Spooner, and many others are smiling right now."

"Priceless. This video exposes the brainwashed, dumbed down lunacy of the public and its absurd thinking when it comes to government. The arguments used by the 'human' are terrifyingly familiar. You see them every day in the articles and comments of the newspapers. I put 'human' in single quotes because no true human being believes what the character on the right is saying. Graham Wright, you are a talented true human!"

"Great video! The socratic method ftw."

"Fantastic work Graham! I was at that conference in 2011 and found Larken's presentation to be an very well done example of dialectic to explain the fiction that is government."

"THIS IS THE BEST VIDEO EVER ! ! !! ;)"


Selected comments from elsewhere on the web:

"Great video! It really connects to the reality nowdays. Love the alien!"

"The Alien is obviously an Anarcho-Capitalist... I bet he reads Mises too."

"Astounding! Great work!"

"Your video was amazing! So many great topics were discussed, and I see room for tons more development.  Once again, this video is fantastic! Superb!"

"That was awesome. Definitely a good perspective on the whole situation.  And when the aliens do land, I hope some of them talk in a British accent."

"That is a brilliant video. Well worth the entire watch. It's nice to see things from a different perspective like that."

"That was a very entertaining watch.  Thanks for sharing!"

"sendin this vid to everyone i know, nice post!"

"funny on a douglas adams level "

"This video is brilliant in its simplicity."

"LOLz + cry"

"Great vid. And 100% bang on."

"I thought this was f***ing genius."

"I've watched and laughed about 3 times... the alien is appealing to an enlightened sense of ethics and morality, and finds it perplexing that the practicalities don't really follow from stated premises... The alien is a practical guy. But, he's dealing with primitives, and zeros in on contradictions that go wholly unanswered or resolved. "

"This video is really a dead-on accurate (and humorously presented) explanation of the current conditioning we live with and live under. "

"what a fantastic video... it is funny, though at the same time serious, great animations too...and i think the alien is great...and thinks about what he says...shame the man didnt... twittered, facebooked & liked woo yeah"

Government Explained

My new video, which has got 32k views after just 4 days!

An inquisitive alien visits the planet to check on our progress as a species, and gets into a conversation with the first person he meets. The alien discovers that we live under the rule of a thing called "government", and wants to understand more about what "government" is, what it does, and why it exists.





See some responses to this video here.

Of Private, Common, and Public Property (by Hans-Hermann Hoppe)

My reading of Hans-Hermann Hoppe's Of Private, Common, and Public Property



Hans-Hermann Hoppe explains the purpose and function of private property, clarifies the distinction between private, common and public property, and explains the rationale and principle of total privatization, exploring how public property can and ought to be privatized.

Law without Government, Part Three: The Bargaining Mechanism

The third part of my video series exploring a world with law but without a compulsory monopoly provider of it.

This part looks at a conflict between protection agencies about principles, namely a disagreement about whether the death penalty is a suitable punishment for murderers. It explains how, in a system of competing providers of security and law, consumer preferences for justice are reflected in the policies, decisions and agreements of the protection agencies.

This part is heavily inspired by David Friedman's The Machinery of Freedom, chapter 29 "Police, Courts, and Laws - on the Market".

But Wouldn't Warlords Take Over? (by Robert P. Murphy)

My reading of Bob's article: http://mises.org/daily/1855

Further response to WelcometotheUnknown: punishment theories

Here is WelcometotheUnknown's response to my blog post. My response follows.

Thank you for your detailed reply. Before I reply, first note that I used the word “retribution” in my posts accidentally multiple times. I meant to use the word “restitution” instead. Interestingly, they have similar meanings, so my mistake led you to bring up a good point.

First to clear up a few things: I certainly do not consider myself a pacifist. I think there is a difference between uses of force in defense and retaliatory uses of force. Perhaps the Non-Aggression Principle does not forbid either kind of force, but there is still a difference. For example, if you tried stealing from me I would consider it just to use force to prevent you from stealing from me. If you managed to steal something from me, I would also feel justified using force against you to get it back (“restitution”). Would I consider it just to demand you give me back something extra in return for my troubles or for punishment of some kind against you for the act of theft? Perhaps, but I think we soon run into trouble saying that such uses of retaliatory force for retribution are justified.

I think there may be a gray area between your description of what I call anarchy and what you call anarchy. The gray area is centered on what instances we say people can legitimately use physical force and how far they go with that use of force. The gray area may simply be a spectrum from “restitution” to “retribution.” These terms may be ambiguous in and of themselves seeing as it is very difficult if not impossible to come up with a clear objective definition of what counts as “restitution” and what counts as “retribution.” For example, if an item of subjective value is stolen (e.g. a painting, rather than an amount of money as in the DD vs. Bill example), then what counts as restitution? Surely what one person may say counts as restitution another will say is retribution due to the fact that the value of the property stolen is completely subjective, rather than something like a quantity of money.

If someone were to steal a painting from me and then destroy it, I wouldn’t be able to get it back, no matter how much coercion I used. Could I thus demand some amount of money from the thief and legitimately use force against the thief to get the money from him in the name of restitution? Even if I’m someone who believes that obtaining only restitution rather than retribution is just, there is still a problem in defining what counts as restitution. What if I value the painting at a billion dollars? If I draw a stick figure on a piece of paper (my painting) and then Bill Gates takes out a match and burns it, am I really justified in using physical force against Gates to take a billion dollars from him? Perhaps the Non-Aggression Principle doesn’t forbid my actions because my actions are indeed retaliatory force rather in reaction to an act of aggressive force, but I think you and I would agree that there is something unjust about this. But, what is unjust about it? Can we define it?

And what about crimes other than theft? If someone commits rape or murder, what counts as “restitution” and what counts as “retribution”? I can’t think of an objective definition for either term. Thus, I think that unless I’m prepared to say that no amount of retaliatory force is justified (beyond re-obtaining something that was stolen), even in the case of murder, then I must accept the subjective spectrum of retaliatory force in subjectively defined degrees as legitimate.

The only time that I would confidently say retaliatory force is justified is when it is used to re-obtain something that was stolen. As soon as retaliatory force is used to get something extra (retribution) or even something “equivalent” but in a different form (restitution in the form of money, for example, for a stolen/destroyed piece of property without a market value (i.e. something that is not replaceable), e.g. a one-of-a-kind painting) then we run into the problem of calling it just to coercively seize a billion dollars from Bill Gates for destroying my stick figure painting.

So am I prepared to say that such retaliatory force to demand restitution and retribution from murderers, rapists, and thieves (thieves who have destroyed what they have stolen or done something else to what they have stolen so that the stolen property can no longer be returned, even using force to return it) is unjust and unnecessary? I certainly would consider some acts of retaliatory force unjust, but others seem very reasonable, such as demanding that a murderer pay the victim’s family/next of kin at least some small fee as “restitution” for his crime. Due to the subjective nature of them and our inability, at least as far as I now see, to objectively define the degrees of retaliatory force, I think that if I want to accept the use of retaliatory force to obtain a small fee of “restitution” for the murder victim’s family as legitimate, then I have to agree with you and accept the whole spectrum of retaliatory forces in all degrees as legitimate. While I may personally disagree with some uses of retaliatory force, such as using retaliatory force to obtain a billion dollars from Gates for the stick figure drawing he burned, the difference is subjective as far as I see.

“It may help if you can clarify what degree of retaliatory coercion you see as justifiable.”

It’s just to use retaliatory force to retrieve something that was stolen.

It may or may not be just, in my own subjective opinion, to use retaliatory force to obtain “restitution” or “retribution” for property that is stolen that is not returnable or replaceable or to use retaliatory force or obtain “restitution” or “retribution” for acts of rape, murder, etc.

It may be just to use retaliatory force to lock up a murderer, in the name of defensive force. I haven’t thought about this very much, but I think a case can be made to say that locking up someone who has committed a murder in the name of defending others from other possible acts of murder may be justified. I’m not very confident about saying this is just, however, because I think it could also be argued that this idea could be extended to locking up other violent criminals for the same reason. What if someone starts a fist fight? Can he be locked up for life as well for the same reason? If force can be used to lock up the murderer in the name of defending people from other possible future attacks, then can’t the same be said of the person who started the fist fight? The differences don’t seem too clear to me.

Out of curiosity, what degree of retaliatory coercion do you think is justifiable? I don’t think the terms “restitution” and “retribution” define the degrees well enough. They have some subjective meaning, but objectively I think they fail to define what acts of retaliatory forces are justified and which are not.

Lastly, while I called your description of a free society a system of “competing governments” in my post on YouTube, my realization in this post that the degree of retaliatory force that is justified does not seem to be objectively definable and the fact that I think it would be very reasonable to use retaliatory force against a murder to make him pay at least a small sum of money to the victim’s next of kin in the name of “restitution” has made me change my mind: I now consider what you described in the video as a system of law without government, law in a stateless/free/anarchic society.

Furthermore, I have realized that the distinction between what you describe and government is not the lack of monopoly, but rather, the lack of compulsory monopoly. Even if Dawn Defense were to obtain a monopoly in a geographic region and be the sole provider of such law services in a geographic region, it still would not qualify as a government/state, for the very reason that people would choose to fund it voluntarily. If people in the region where Dawn Defense had gained a monopoly choose to stop funding it Dawn Defense would allow this. If Dawn Defense did not allow it, then the funding would be renamed from “voluntary” to “compulsory taxation” and at this point Dawn Defense would be a government/state.

If everyone in the world subscribed to Dawn Defense’s services and nobody else in the world offered any law services, Dawn Defense would have a monopoly on law services, but still would not be a government. Thus, I believe the defining distinction between private law organizations and governments is not the presence of competing firms vs. a monopoly, but rather voluntary funding vs. compulsory taxation. Having said this, I have no doubt that when we transition from compulsory taxation to a free society of voluntarily funded law organizations, competition will thrive. So while law services in a free society may be marked by competition, all I mean to say is that the competition is not the defining aspect of what makes the society free.

Glad I helped you understand it better.  You bring up a lot of good points here.

The nature of the beast is that, whenever political philosophies are applied in the real world, there are always going to be “continuum issues” or “boundary issues”. Libertarianism is no exception to this. From the armchair, we can explain principles, and we can construct hypotheticals to try to demonstrate how to apply these principles, but we cannot escape continuum issues.

For example, what exactly constitutes homesteading of a plot of land? A court can be fully libertarian, but it still must ask, did what Joe did to the plot of land qualify as homesteading? Perhaps he fenced off the land, and put a sign up. Is that enough? Or does he need to do some other physical thing to the land to make it his, and if so, what?

Of course, the answer is that we cannot answer this. It has to be determined by custom; by whatever works. The courts will draw a line somewhere and say ‘to homestead a field, the following requirements must be filled…’ We can only be vague about what these requirements might be.

Similarly, we need the courts to draw a line to distinguish coercion from voluntary exchange, because there is a continuum; there are ambiguous cases, which we cannot resolve from the armchair. There is no ‘libertarian place’ to draw the line. Libertarianism only outlines the principle itself; we need the courts to apply it, and in a free market setting, those courts will be guided by the customs of the society, and the opinions of the consumers.

All the questions you bring up in your post are matters of application, not of principle. Clearly all matters of application are subjective. This is regardless of whether the principles themselves are considered subjective or objective.

My point is that it is no vice to recognize continuum issues, or to admit that something is subjective. This is unavoidable. I don’t know how much compensation you will get from Bill Gates for stealing your precious stick-man painting. The only honest answer is that old libertarian cliché “let the market decide”. I can speculate that you probably won’t get a billion dollars from him, because any court that made such a preposterous decision would quickly lose customers.


With my descriptive hat on, I can predict that courts would enforce some kind of punishment or some kind of compensation that must be paid by aggressors. A “market for punishments” would develop. For example, in many evolved legal systems, it was customary for aggressors to have to pay the victim X times the price of what was stolen. X may be 2 or 3 or 5. I have not read of any system where X was 1. In other words, aggressors are usually made to pay to their victim more than what they stole. It really doesn’t matter how this was justified. Likewise, in a setting of competing private courts, it won’t matter how they try to ‘justify’ their policies. The merits of “punishment theories” don’t really matter when they are being actively tested out on the market.


Now I’ll put on my normative hat. What do libertarians have to say about the limits of retaliatory coercion?

There are retributionists and there are restitutionists. Both positions are nuanced. The difference between them is clear in theory, but not in practice. Given any court decision, it is futile to try to assign some portion of it as “restitution” and some other portion as “retribution”.

For example, take a punishment of 3X. Perhaps we call 1X the “restitution” part. But restitutionists do not stop here. They would rightly say that the victim is not “fully restored” just by giving back her property - the victim has also been “scared” and “inconvenienced”. They say that the aggressor has to pay more than 1X to account for this. They might say 2X covers these two things. So we cannot say that a punishment of 3X comprises 1X restitution plus 2X retribution. It may be all restitution.

The restitutionists are focussed solely on the victim. Their goal is to “make the victim whole again,” or to make it as far as possible as if they crime never happened.

The retributionists abandon the idea of “restoring the victim”. Their goal is to “make the aggressor suffer like he made the victim suffer”.

Both of these approaches are obviously beset by continuum issues, but we must not let such issues cloud the principles being discussed. In principle, does it make more sense for a court to focus on making the aggressor suffer, or on restoring the victim? In other words, should punishments be thought of primarily as retributive, or restitutive?

Traditionally, restitution has been the libertarian position, and people like Walter Block take this view. Stephan Kinsella convinced me that retribution should be the primary consideration, using his “estoppel” argument. There are just too many problems with restitutionism, even in principle.

Having said that, I believe that in a competitive market, while the courts may consider retribution primary when making their decisions, victims will probably “make deals” with their aggressors such that most people will think of the system as primarily restitutive. This adds another layer of complexity.

Personally however, I am inclined to think that there really isn’t a ‘correct’ libertarian theory of punishment. It’s a whole different subject. Libertarianism forbids aggression, but it doesn’t imply – without bringing in extra principles – anything about the limits of retaliatory coercion. It is a matter of taste whether a libertarian believes restitution or retribution ought to be primary in determining punishments.


Your last two paragraphs are spot on. The one thing I would point out is that some people (notably Rothbard) used the term monopoly to mean a compulsory monopoly. A firm that happened to gain 100% market share in a free market is not a ‘non-compulsory monopoly’: it is not a monopoly at all, but just a highly successful firm. This explains why I did not use the term ‘compulsory’ as a qualifier for ‘monopoly’ in my post, and also why the dichotomy that defines anarchy/government is free market vs. monopoly, and this is equivalent to voluntary vs. compulsory. Compulsory is implied by the term monopoly, to Rothbard and me.

Response to comment on my video "Conflict Resolution in a Free Society"

This is a response to a youtube comment left on my video "Law Without Government Part 2: Conflict Resolution in a Free Society" by WelcometotheUnknown.

WelcometotheUnknown says:

[At 4:20 in the video you say] "...threatening to use force against him if necessary." This is a tyrannical government then. It differs from our current governments in that there are multiple governments competing for the voluntary funding of individuals on a market. While this would be a lot better than our current system, it still does not qualify as anarchism as Dawn Defense will use force to make Bill pay whatever amount DD deems is fair. Under true anarchy, the enforcement of this will be by ostracism not coercion.

It seems to me that what you are advocating in this video is not a truly free society (anarchy). What you are advocating is competing governments in a single geographic area. You say that rather than being forced to pay taxes to the US government and their courts, police, and law systems, I can choose which law organizations I wish to subscribe to. This does not qualify as anarchism because you still give these law organizations political power.

The ability to "legitimately" use physical coercion to make Bill pay the $10,000 is called political power, something that is non-existent in a free society. If Bill agrees to follow by the ruling of his protection agency or dispute resolution organization and agrees to have the agency enforce their rulings against him should he not follow them, then if his agency says he owes the person $10,000 and he refuses to pay, then the coercion is justified.

But, if he does not agree to have the organization's ruling on the crime imposed against him forcefully to make him pay X in retribution, then that is illegitimate in terms of the non-aggression principle that defines a free society. Thus, if Bill doesn't agree to follow the rulings of any protection agency like DD, etc, then we cannot justly use force against him to make him pay retribution. Using physical force against Bill is only justified in self-defense.

So you might ask, how then is society to deal with thieves such as Bill? Easy, if someone in society doesn't agree to follow the rulings of some third party dispute resolution organization, then ostracize that person, because you know that if a dispute should arise (such as whether or not he committed a crime or how much he has to pay up if he did) then there will be no easy peaceful way of dealing with it.

By "ostracize" I basically mean to cut all economic (and/or social) ties with him. People are very dependent on each other. If there is someone who does not wish to submit himself to some third party arbitrator who can make dispute resolution easier, then that person is too difficult to live with. Don't buy anything from him, don't sell him anything, etc, unless he agrees to accept the rulings of some organization like DD when he fails to resolve disputes himself.

Thanks for this thoughtful response, which is worthy of a detailed reply.

First, let’s not get bogged down in terminology. We’re using several words differently. You are saying any security firm (like Dawn Defense) that uses force is by definition a government, and any such force is “political power”. I use a different definition of government. I would say that government is by definition a monopolist, so Dawn Defense is not a government. I use the term government interchangeably with State; all governments are compulsory; all governments tax. So “multiple governments competing for the voluntary funding of individuals on a market [in the same geographic area]” is a misuse of the term government, by my definition. If they’re competing for customers, they’re not governments.

Anarchy, since it means anti-government to us both, means different things to us because we have a different definition of government. To me, the situation in my video – multiple firms competing in the same territorial area competing for voluntary funding - is the definition of anarchy. The only requirement for anarchy is no monopolist. To you, it is not anarchy because there is still force being used against aggressors. I would call this situation pacificism, which is a kind of anarchy.

Now to our substantive disagreement about the kind of society we advocate. My position is that a pacific society (what you call anarchy) is desirable, in fact ideal. However, I also consider it somewhat utopian. Yes, ostracism would be a very powerful check on criminals, but the question is: would it be enough to maintain order? We can speculate about this, but we’ll only know by finding out, through a competitive law system.

My opinion is that voluntary actions like ostracism would not be sufficient, at least at first, for maintaining order. Ostracism just isn’t a big enough deterrent against some criminals; force would be needed against them. I may be wrong. I hope I am wrong. It may be that a competitive law system will become less and less coercive over time, until coercion is not used at all, and law becomes voluntary.

My video is an attempt to describe competitive law, and I used competitive-coercive law as I think that it is more realistic, and takes things one-step-at-a-time. The competitive part is what makes this society anarchy, by my definition. You are advocating a society of competitive-voluntary law. The voluntary part, to you, is necessary for it to be called anarchy. This is a mere terminological difference; our essential point of disagreement is that we speculate differently about whether coercion will be used in a competitive law system. We both agree it would be ideal; I say it is also unrealistic.

The current situation, of course, is monopolistic-coercive law, and both of us oppose the monopolistic part. That’s the most important thing; whether law is to be coercive or voluntary is just speculation about how things might turn out in a competitive environment.



You bring up the non-aggression principle.

So we must now step out of the descriptive realm (where we think about how a competitive law system might work in practice) and into the normative realm (where we think about what kinds of actions are justified according to libertarian principles)…



I insist that, if Dawn Defense did use force against Bill to take their $10,000, they would NOT be violating the NAP. The NAP forbids aggression, which is the initiation of coercion. What Dawn Defense did was retaliatory coercion; coercion in response to aggression. This is defensive action, not aggressive action, and thus not a violation of the NAP. Dawn Defense is acting on behalf of Alice, who was aggressed against, and she is entitled to retaliate, at least to attain restitution.

Within libertarian circles it is up for debate how much retaliatory coercion is justified. That is, at what point retaliatory coercion becomes a new aggressive action, and thus forbidden. Stephan Kinsella, for example, would say that retribution is primary; the “equal suffering” principle. The Rothbardian position is that retaliation is acceptable only to attain restitution; the “restore the victim” principle.

You say that using physical force is justified only in “self-defense”. The question is: what do you include within this term? Surely Alice has a right to use force take back her stolen handbag, if nothing else? And surely she also has the right to pay someone to use force on her behalf?

If by “self-defense” you mean she is not allowed to pay someone to use force on her behalf, then that is an odd rejection of the division of labor. What’s wrong with Alice’s wrestler boyfriend going round Bill’s house to grab the stolen handbag?

If by “self-defense” you do not include any right of Alice is to use retaliatory coercion even to attain restitution, then you are at odds with most libertarians, who are at least restitutionists (Rothbard, Block, Long), if not retributionists (Kinsella) as well.

In fact, the term “self-defense” is often used very loosely by libertarians. It is used interchangeably with “defense”. When someone like Rothbard says “only force used in self-defense is justified” he might as well say “only force used in defense is justified”. He does not mean to imply any of the two interpretations above by the use of “self-defense” rather than merely “defense”.

It may help if you can clarify what degree of retaliatory coercion you see as justifiable.

In my video, I left it ambiguous whether Dawn Defense were demanding $10,000 as retribution, or restitution only, or how they came up with the amount. It could be, for example, that Alice had $10,000 cash in the handbag Bill stole, so Dawn Defense are demanding pure restitution only. If Bill does not admit his guilt and voluntarily give the money back (perhaps ostracism is no worry to him), do you maintain that Dawn Defense are still violating the NAP if they threaten Bill with force to get him to pay the money back? If so, you are using an uncommonly broad definition of “aggression”, which extends the NAP to forbid far more than it usually does. It extends so far that criminals are justified in keeping the proceeds of their crimes, since it is unjustified for the victim to take back his property using force.

Law without Government, Part Two: Conflict Resolution in a Free Society

This is part 2 of my video series exploring a society where law is provided not by government, but by competing voluntary institutions.

In this part, Alice is mugged, and her protection agency identifies Bill as the mugger. But Bill protests his innocence. Things start to get interesting when Bill's protection agency stands by him.

How will the two protection agencies resolve this conflict?

Believing in Government Makes No Sense (by Larken Rose)

This is a video of Larken Rose's presentation at the Free Your Mind Conference in Philadelphia, PA on April 10, 2011. Larken clearly explains the illusion of human "authority" in a unique and dramatic way.

Anarcho-Capitalist Resources (by Wesker)

General/Introductions to Anarcho-Capitalism

Antimarket Ethics: A Praxeological Critique by Murray Rothbard (Rothbard destroys many common criticisms against the market, absolutely a must read, for minarchists too.)
The State is Not Great by Jacob Spinney (best video intro in existence. VERY GOOD.)
Anarcho-Capitalist FAQ by Hogeye Bill
The Obviousness of Anarchy by John Hasnas
Evil Monopolies Are Fairy Tales In Free Markets by Jacob Spinney (great video)
Fear of Monopoly by Brad Edmonds
Monopolies by D.T. Armentano (In an economy free of governmental regulation, wouldn't a firm or group of firms obtain a monopoly over some vital resource or product?)
The Myth of Natural Monopoly by Thomas J. DiLorenzo
Taxes are the price we pay to... by Mike P (taxation, self ownership, democracy)
What Is Anarchy? by Butler Shaffer
What Libertarianism Is by Stephan Kinsella
Disproving the State by Stefan Molyneux
The Non-Aggression Axiom of Libertarianism by Walter Block
The Death Wish of the Anarcho-Communists by Murray Rothbard
The Stateless Society: An Examination of Alternatives by Stefan Molyneux
Introduction to a Stateless Society Introduction list with multiple articles and authors
The Anatomy of the State by Murray Rothbard
Society Without a State by Murray Rothbard (Rothbard defines the State and Anarchy here)
Forget The Argument From Efficiency by Stefan Molyneux
War, Peace, and the State by Murray Rothbard (philosophy on nukes here)
Why We Couldn't Abolish Slavery Then and Can't Abolish Government Now by Robert Higgs
Anarchy and the 'Problem of the Commons' by Stefan Molyneux
Toward a Universal Libertarian Theory of Gun (Weapon) Control:a Spatial and Geographical Analysis by Walter Block (theory on nukes included)
Arguments Against Anarchy by Jarret B. Wollstein (warring defense agencies)
Libertarian Anarchism: Responses to Ten Objections by Roderick T. Long
Objectivism and The State: An Open Letter to Ayn Rand by Roy A. Childs, Jr.
Anarchism and Minarchism; No Rapproachment Possible: Reply to Tibor Machan by Walter Block
Anarchy by Pete Leeson (very good video.)
Introduction: The Six Questions, and FAQ by Stefan Molyneux, added 6/04/11
Are Libertarians "Anarchists"? by Murray Rothbard added 6/15/11
What Are You Calling 'Anarchy'? by Robert P. Murphy added 6/15/11
What It Means To Be an Anarcho-Capitalist by Stephan Kinsella added 6/16/11
Market Anarchism: Are You Guys Crazy, or Just Nuts? by Stefan Molyneux added 6/16/11
Anarchy, Government, and the State by Sentient Void added 6/28/11
Privatize the Highways — and All Roads for That Matter by by Zachary Slayback added 8/03/11

Anarchy,Law, and Security

Chaos Theory (Private Law and Defense) by Bob Murphy added 6/09/11
The Myth of the Rule of Law by John Hasnas
Law, Property Rights, and Air Pollution by Murray Rothbard
Customary Law with Private Means of Resolving Disputes and Dispensing Justice: A Description of a Modern System of Law and Order without State Coercion by Bruce L. Benson
Anarchism and the Public Goods Issue: Law, Courts, and the Police by David Osterfeld
Justice Entrepreneurship In a Free Market by George H. Smith
The Production of Security by Gustave de Molinari
Defense Services on the Free Market by Murray Rothbard
How Would An Anarchist Society Handle Child Abuse? by Walter Block
But Wouldn't Warlords Take Over? by Robert P. Murphy
Criminal Private Courts by Murray Rothbard (awesome video, 10 mins)
Justice Without the State by Bruce L. Benson (short 3 min intro to private order)
How a Free Society Prevents the Re-emergence of a Government by Stefan Molyneux
The Stateless Society and the Protection of Children by Stefan Molyneux
Pollution by Murray Rothbard
Outlaw Protectors by Murray Rothbard (text of Criminal Private Courts)
Collective Defense by Stefan Molyneux
Against Intellectual Property by Stephan Kinsella ( Audio Book ) added 6/15/11
Polycentric Governance by Bruce L. Benson added 6/15/11
Anarchy Unbound, Or: Why Self-Governance Works Better Than You Think by Pete Leeson added 6/15/11
The Possibility of Private Law by Robert P. Murphy added 6/15/11
Law and Appeals in a Free Society by Robert P. Murphy added 6/15/11
Warring Defense Agencies and Organized Crime by Morris and Linda Tannehill added 6/15/11
Private Defense Is No Laughing Matter By Robert P. Murphy added 6/15/11
Legislation and Law in a Free Society by Stephan Kinsella added 6/21/11
Legislation and the Discovery of Law in a Free Society by Stephan Kinsella added 6/21/11
State or Private Law Society? by Hans-Hermann Hoppe added 6/21/11 (video)
Answering the Warring Defense Agencies Objection by Murray Rothbard added 7/22/11
Legislation and Objective Law by Morris and Linda Tannehill added 8/02/11
The Market for Security by Robert Murphy (video) added 8/12/11

Social Contract Debate: http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...=1#post3445947 + http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...=1#post3447710 + http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...=1#post3449042 + http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...=1#post3452382 added 8/14/11

Historical Examples

Medieval Iceland and the Absence of Government by Thomas Whiston
The Mild, Mild West by John Tierney
An American Experiment in Anarcho-Capitalism: The Not So Wild, Wild West by Terry L. Anderson and P.J. Hill
Ireland's Success with the Free Market and Anarchism from For a New Liberty, I think.
Property Rights In Celtic Irish Law by Joseph R. Peden
Pennsylvania's Anarchist Experiment: 1681-1690 by Murray Rothbard added 6/16/11

Miscellaneous/Philosophy

Living in a State-Run World by Murray Rothbard
May a Libertarian Take Money From the Government? by Walter Block
Is there a Human Right to Medical Insurance by Walter Block
Hobbes, Minarchism, and Anarchy by Stephen Krogh (short audio, 12 mins)
Anarchy and Democracy by Stefan Molyneux (video)
Taking Care of the Poor in a Free Society by Stefan Molyneux (video)
Mises Panel Discussion Live FAQ with Roderick Long, Walter Block, Jacob Huebert, Yuri Maltsev and Doug French (video)
Wage Slavery by Stargazer5781 (video)
The Immaculate Conception of the State by Murray Rothbard (The most important attempt in this century to rebut anarchism and to justify the State fails totally and in each of its parts.-Rothbard)
Somalia by Pete Leeson (short video.)
The Unconstitutionality of Slavery by Lysander Spooner added 6/10/11
Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau added 6/10/11
Vices Are Not Crimes by Lysander Spooner added 6/15/11
Anarchy in Somalia by Bob P. Murphy added 6/30/11
Understanding Somalia and Anarchy (1:10:00 to 1:32:00) by Peter Leeson (The whole presentation is great, highly recommended.) added 6/30/11
The Tale of the Slave by Robert Nozick added 7/05/11
The Inner Contradictions of the State by Murray Rothbard (video) added 8/10/11

Various Informative Forum Discussions and Posts

How might child abuse be handled in a stateless society? http://mises.org/Community/forums/t/...px?PageIndex=1
Minarchists or Anarchists? http://mises.org/Community/forums/t/...px?PageIndex=1
Some problematic scenarios (for anarchy) http://mises.org/Community/forums/t/23271.aspx
Two reputable courts producing different decisions http://mises.org/Community/forums/t/...px?PageIndex=1
Short FAQ (funding,children,roads) http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...=1#post3188946
Dispute Resolution System in a Libertarian Society http://mises.org/Community/forums/t/21460.aspx
Somalia, Criminal Courts, Anarchic Ireland http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...=1#post3247815
Help me understand anarcho-capitalism... (basically a FAQ thread) http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...cho-capitalism...
Voluntary Law Society Questions Answered http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...=1#post3425413 and http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...=1#post3430302 and http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...=1#post3431569 added 8/06/11
Law Without Government http://mises.org/Community/forums/p/...19.aspx#427619 and http://mises.org/Community/forums/p/...46.aspx#427646 added 8/06/11

The Privatization of Roads and Highways (video)

The Privatization of Roads and Highways

Walter Block spends half an hour making the case for privatizing roads and highways, then answers questions about it. The subsequent debate and discussion goes off at tangents, with Block giving an excellent, pithy description of a private law society to an audience utterly unfamiliar with the idea.

Ron Paul is a Voluntaryist

Ron Paul is a Voluntaryist



Ron Paul has re-ignited the spark for liberty in the United States and around the world. He has generated unprecedented interest in libertarian philosophy and sound Austrian economics.

The modern libertarian movement, founded by Murray Rothbard, opposes the initiation of force by anyone. In this way, modern libertarians go further than the classical liberals, who accepted the initiation of force by the State, believing taxation to be necessary for security.

This position is known by various names including voluntaryism, self-government, anarcho-capitalism, market anarchism, and libertarian anarchism.

In this video, using Ron Paul's own words from his books and interviews, it is shown that Ron Paul's goal is voluntaryism. He adopts limited-government positions and appeals to the U.S. Constitution as part of a long-term strategy for achieving a completely free society, absent any State.

Law without Government, Part One: Principles

Law without Government, Part One: Principles

Part One of a series of films exploring a society where there is law and order, but no government.

This part introduces the definitions of law and government, illustrating the concepts using a simple desert-island scenario.

10 approaches in making a case for liberty or anarchy

Here is a list of 10 fairly distinct approaches that I have used in the past when making a case for liberty or anarchy.


1. The ‘Gun in the Room’ Approach

Governments require taxation; taxation is theft; theft is unethical. By advocating government, you are advocating something unethical. You are saying you have no problem with a criminal gang stealing my money from me using threats of violence.


2. The Free Market v Monopoly Approach

Calculation problem. Knowledge Problem. Incentives. With free markets comes quality, low price, efficiency, diversity and choice. Monopolies are necessarily aggressive, corrupt, inefficient, and ineffective in satisfying consumer demand. Arguments should be completely general… The monopoly on law should be emphasized: we have bad quality laws because law is currently produced by a monopolist.


3. The Secession Approach

National boundaries are arbitrary, imaginary lines drawn on political maps and set by the outcomes of historical wars. Any advocate of government must propose some ideal territorial size that a nation should be, as well as his ideal form, scope and policies of government. If a group of people within a nation want to declare independence, secede and create their own smaller nation, who should decide whether this is allowed to happen: the people seceding, or the government they are trying to secede from? The latter is clear slavery and justifies world government. And if the former, if a group of people have the right to secede, then by the same argument, individuals have the right to secede. Individual secessionism is anarchism.


4. The ‘Competing Governments’ Approach

How can we know what type of government is best? Trying them out could be a good way. Let a thousand nations bloom. Or tens of thousands. Let the many micro-national governments compete with each other, and see under which type of government the people become most prosperous? Why not even try having more than one government in one territory? ;-)


5. The Government-as-Slavery Approach

A slave is someone who has the fruits of his labor taken off him by his master. The master sets the rules, telling the slave what he can and can’t do, using threats or acts of violence. The slaves massively outnumber the masters, but the slaves have been brainwashed, confused and distracted, and have accepted their condition of slavery. They have given up on the idea on freedom; they don’t think they will be able to survive without the master around to take care of them. Let’s abolish slavery: become an anarchist.


6. The Voluntarism Approach

We can distinguish between two types of trade between individuals: free trade, and coerced trade. The former is when both individuals are making the trade voluntarily. The latter is when one individual is using threats or acts of violence to coerce the other individual into making the trade. Libertarians believe that initiating a coercive trade (aggression) is unjust. Statists, on the other hand, advocate the use of aggression; aggression is required for a state, a monolist of law in a given territory, to exist.


7. The Historical Approach

USA v USSR; East Germany v West Germany; North Korea v South Korea. Why did the Renaissance, Enlightenment and Scientific/Industrial Revolution take place in Europe? How did the US become the richest nation in the world? The historical lesson: freedom good, government bad.


8. The Paradigmatic Approach

The left-right paradigm is misleading; left and right are just forms of statism when what matters is the degree of statism; the more meaningful and useful paradigm is Liberty-Totalitarianism; all major political parties are towards the totalitarian end of it.


9. The ‘True Democracy’ Approach

Democracy can be described as ‘power to the people’. Yet anarchy is the only condition where all 'the people' have the power they need the most: the power to defend themselves. Statism is a system where the people have no power to stop a gang of thieves stealing their money and enslaving them through legislation and regulation. The state gives some privileged few people the power to rule over many others; a power that nobody should have. Democracy is a great fiction where everybody attempts to live at the expense of everyone else; everybody votes to try and get the state to use it's coercive power to benefit them.


10. The ‘Real Equality’ Approach

Only anarchy will create the only type of equality worth having: equality under the law. Anarchy is the only true classless society, where no individual is above the law. Only when there is free entry into the industry of producing law will we have acheived equality.


Post comments about which of these you have used and what seems to work best on different sorts of people.  I posted this list almost a year ago at the Mises forum and it generated a worthwhile discussion.

George Ought To Help (video)

A great animation illustrating with great simplicity the true nature of the State.

George Ought To Help

Capitalism in One Lesson (video)

Nielsio's latest original video is one of the clearest short explanations I have seen of what capitalism is and how State intervention hampers the wealth-generating free market process. It also provides a wealth of useful links to video lectures that explain the points being made in more depth.

Capitalism in One Lesson

How To Rescue A Child (without the State)

How might child abuse be handled in a stateless society?

The Scenario

Single-father Bob physically abuses his 3-year old daughter, Jane. (Jane’s mother died while giving birth to her, and there is no extended family.) A nursery nurse becomes suspicious that Bob may be mistreating Jane. She informs the charity Friends-of-Babies, which investigates cases of child abuse, and re-homes abused children. Friends-of-Babies investigate the allegations made by the nurse. They make an assessment, and conclude that Bob is indeed abusing Jane, and that she would be better off if she were removed from that situation, and re-homed with loving foster parents.

A Free Market in Law

Law is the resolution of disputes. What is being disputed here is the ownership right to raise Jane. Bob currently owns this right, and the Friends-of-Babies organization is challenging him for it; they are claiming it for themselves. Assuming Bob objects to the charity’s claim, there is a dispute and the case will go to court. The court will award the right to raise Jane to one disputant or the other.

Free markets produce according to consumer demand. Free market firms strive for excellence in satisfying consumers, and firms that fail to use resources efficiently for this purpose do not survive the competition. This is as true for a free market in the law industry as it is for any other industry. The laws that are produced are those that consumers demand. If free market courts produce laws that are seen as unfair or unjust, they will lose customers. For a free market court, a reputation for honesty, fairness, wisdom and good judgment is essential for continued business.

Friends-of-Babies present their evidence to the court. The court becomes convinced that Bob is an abusive parent. Now they must make their decision. Child abuse, of the kind Bob committed, is widely considered by individuals in society as sufficient justification for intervention; this child needs rescuing. Therefore the court will likely decide in favor of Friends-of-Babies. They would not want to be known as an organization that lets child abuse continue. Following the court decision, Bob must give up Jane to the charity. If he resists, the charity can physically take Jane from him, and Bob has no grounds to complain. Thus Jane is rescued from her abusive father, and is soon found a loving new home.

Some Objections

Now a few objections to this scenario…

1. What if Friends-of-Babies doesn’t exist? 
Lots of people feel strongly about protecting children from abuse, and would be willing to donate to such an organization, so we may be confident that such charities will exist.

2. What if Bob doesn’t agree to go to court?
As with any dispute, the alternative to arbitration is a martial contest, which neither disputant wants. If Bob is innocent, he has incentive to go to court to defend himself against the spurious claim. If Bob is guilty, he still has an incentive to go to court, if only because the consequences of not going to court would be worse. With a court decision, the harm that Friends-of-Babies inflicts on Bob is strictly limited, but if Bob refuses to go to court (makes himself an outlaw), the actions taken against him could be much more severe.

3. How do you define ‘abuse’?
That is to be decided by the consumers of laws. There will always be different opinions about what actions justify intervening in the parent-child relationship. The variation will be reflected in the choice of laws offered to consumers, and could vary significantly between cultures. With no monopoly on law, there is no need to search for an ‘objective’ definition, and no need for universal agreement on the definition.

4. Isn’t this just kidnapping, and aggression against Bob?
See note…

5. Doesn’t this imply parental obligations, and “positive rights”?
See note…

Conclusion

I have outlined how child abuse might be handled in a stateless society, with free markets in law and child protection. For all the usual reasons that free markets are better than monopolies, we would expect the laws produced and the protection given to children to be superior with the free market system. Therefore, all other things being equal, children will be safer and child abuse will be far less common without the State.

Note

The last two objections involve libertarian legal theory. My answer is that this court decision may well be consistent with libertarianism. To understand how this could be the case, see Walter Block’s Libertarianism, positive obligations and property abandonment: children's rights, and Stephan Kinsella’s How We Come to Own Ourselves.

Ten Books That Influenced Me

These are the books that had the greatest impact on my worldview. All of them are from the last few years, which emcompass my intellectual journey from political apathy and economic naiveté, to being a radical libertarian anarchist and Austrian economist.

I list the books in the order that I (first) read them, with the year in which I first read them in brackets. This post is not to be taken as a blanket endorsement of these books. They are the ones that influenced me most, not those I consider the greatest works, nor those that I would recommend to others necessarily.

1. The Road To Serfdom, F.A. Hayek (2007) – This book introduced me to a new way of thinking about politics. It introduced me to basing political views on principles rather than on whims. I identified myself as an individualist, and became opposed to all forms of collectivism. I understood that governments, even if they start off extremely limited, will always tend to grow, especially if the public has a collectivist mindset.

2. The Revolution: A Manifesto, Ron Paul (2008) – Ron Paul cured my apathy about politics. I found him online in November 2007, and became a massive fan very quickly. He took principled positions, he obviously knew what he was talking about economically, and had held those stances his whole career without wavering or compromising. I began questioning my own views about the role of government. I stopped believing in the left-right paradigm, and started to understand a far better paradigm: libertarianism versus statism.

3. Economics in One Lesson, Henry Hazlitt (2008) – The title is so appealing that I made this the first book on economics I read. I found it through the Ludwig von Mises Institute, which Ron Paul had directed me towards. Immediately, the fallacies of mainstream economics, and the wealth-destroying nature of socialism and all kinds of interventionism, became apparent to me. Hazlitt’s lesson is so remarkably powerful, that I immediately felt confident enough to reveal my political preferences publicly and argue for free markets in practically every area of society. The economic arguments in favor of a state are untenable, and quite obviously so.

4. For A New Liberty, Murray Rothbard (2008) – It took me about 9 months to go from a Ron Paul-inspired limited constitutional government position, to a full libertarian anarchist position. More than any other author, Murray Rothbard deserves most of the credit for that. This book was so clear, and made the case so powerfully, that I instantly saw the superiority of the anarchist position. It was also the first time I had encountered an explanation of how security and law can be provided without a government.

5. Anarchy and the Law, Edward Stringham et al (2008) – This compilation of essays and book excerpts sealed my anarchism. I read alternative justifications for and visions of anarchy: from David Friedman, Linda and Morris Tannehill, Randy Barnett, Roderick Long, Roy Childs, Hans Hermann Hoppe, John Hasnas. These all helped shape my worldview and especially sharpened up my thinking about how security and law can be provided without a state.

6. The Enterprise of Law, Bruce Benson (2009) – This book gave me my first encounter of public-choice economics. Benson took a whole different approach to Rothbard and Friedman, with a great deal of historical, empirical research into customary law, as well as a detailed analysis of the state law-making process and how it compares to law produced by private courts.

7. Democracy: The God That Failed, Hans-Hermann Hoppe (2009) – Just when I thought my political views were fully-formed, Hoppe hit me with his idea that monarchy is superior to democracy (though anarchy is still best of all, of course). I had taken it as given that if we must have a state, let it at least be democratic, and I had always seen the recent historical transition from monarchies to democracies as a positive thing. This book changed my view completely, and gave me a whole lot more reasons to oppose modern states. If we must have a state, let it at least be a monarchy, I now say.

8. Boundaries of Order, Butler Shaffer (2010) – This book played a vital role in my forming my position, contra Rothbard, as a subjectivist ethicist. In particular, it provided me with the terminology that reveals the flaws in his natural rights justification for libertarianism. It allowed me to move past Rothbard and develop a sophisticated subjectivist justification for libertarianism, free from terminological baggage and smuggled norms.

9. The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins (2010) – I thought I understood evolution pretty well, until I read this book. I had not realised the importance of asking at what level evolution takes place. It is at the level of the gene, and this has enormous implications for how we view evolution. I was struck by the beauty and structure to be found in nature and evolution, as Dawkins masterfully described. I was fascinated by the idea that morality can be explained in evolutionary terms; this idea fit perfectly with my subjective ethics worldview.

10. How The Mind Works, Steven Pinker (2010) – This book is full of remarkable ideas, about how our minds evolved to deal with reality. It brings to life the story of how and why we developed language, self-awareness and morality. I have not yet fully absorbed all that this book has to offer, and will probably need to read it a few more times before I feel I have a good grasp on it. But I already feel that it has had a profound affect on my thinking.

Looking over my list, the thing that jumps out at me is that there is no Ludwig von Mises. He will have to be contented that his views influenced me through others: particularly Rothbard, Hoppe, Hazlitt and Paul. Human Action, Theory and History and Socialism come closest to being on this list. His shorter works, The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, Profit and Loss, and Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth all deserve a mention as well.

Murray Rothbard is probably my single greatest influence, and if I had the space, would have had more than one entry in this top ten. I learned economics from Man, Economy and State, and The Ethics of Liberty was highly influential as well. Rothbard’s crowning glory, however, has to be his epic A History of Economic Thought, which shows off his masterly scholarly skills, and wonderful writing style, to the maximum.

Some more short works that influenced me include The Politics of Disobedience (Etienne de la Boetie), The Production of Security (Gustave de Molinari), No Treason (Lysander Spooner), Against Intellectual Property (Stephan Kinsella) and The Depoliticization of Law (John Hasnas).

A Critique of Murray Rothbard's Idea of a "Basic Legal Code"

Here is a passage from The Ethics of Liberty:

[L]aw and the State are both conceptually and historically separable, and law would develop in an anarchistic market society without any form of State. Specifically, the concrete form of anarchist legal institutions—judges, arbitrators, procedural methods for resolving disputes, etc.—would indeed grow by a market invisible-hand process, while the basic Law Code (requiring that no one invade any one else’s person and property) would have to be agreed upon by all the judicial agencies, just as all the competing judges once agreed to apply and extend the basic principles of the customary or common law. But the latter, again, would imply no unified legal system or dominant protective agency. Any agencies that transgressed the basic libertarian code would be open outlaws and aggressors, and Nozick himself concedes that, lacking legitimacy, such outlaw agencies would probably not do very well in an anarchist society.

Here is the problem as I see it, with this idea of a "basic law code"...

Firstly: how detailed it this basic law code? Consider the two extremes:

• Broadly defined. "No one may invade anyone else's person and property". No more detail than that. ("Invade" and "property" are not given definitions... that is for the courts to interpret)
• Narrowly defined. The basic law code is identical to the libertarian law code, as developed by Rothbard, Kinsella, Block, etc... down to the details... like the basic law code is specific about IP, abortion, capital punishment, etc. (There is very little scope for interpretation of the basic legal code... the courts task is limited to applying the law code)

I've never been able to get a clear answer from Rothbardians about how detailed the basic law code is supposed to be. In the following analysis, I will show how the whole concept of the "basic law code" vanishes when you really think about it.

Rothbard says that the basic law code will be agreed upon by all reasonable courts. I take him to mean everybody except serial killers, rapists etc, i.e. 99% of the population. With such widespread agreement required, it seems hopelessly unrealistic to suppose that the basic law code is narrowly defined, down to the last detail. Even among libertarians, there is a disagreement over IP, abortion, punishments, etc. There is no way the entire population of reasonable people is going to agree on every little detail of libertarian theory.  The entire field of economic analysis of law - how laws get produced and what kinds of laws get produced - is skipped over by making this supposition.

To Rothbard, there were two types of court: reasonable courts, which have signed up to the basic law code, and outlaw courts, which have not. Rothbard does not provide any analysis - any mechanism - of how reasonable courts and outlaw courts will resolve disputes between them. This may not be much of an issue if we assume 99% of courts are reasonable, but see above.

So maybe the basic law code is broadly defined, leaving a lot of scope for interpretation, so that widespread agreement is possible. But then how will disputes about things which might fall into the area of interpretation - say IP disputes - get resolved? There needs to be a mechanism to explain this... how disputes between courts which have both agreed to the basic (broadly defined) law code will be resolved, when their interpretation of that law code differs. Rothbard has not provided us with a mechanism for this.

David Friedman, in chapter 29 of The Machinery of Freedom, has described a mechanism for how courts which provide different laws (perhaps very different laws) will resolve their disputes: the bargaining process.

One can imagine an idealized bargaining process, for this or any other dispute, as follows: Two agencies are negotiating whether to recognize a pro- or anti-capital-punishment court. The pro agency calculates that getting a pro-capital-punishment court will be worth $20,000 a year to its customers; that is the additional amount it can get for its services if they include a guarantee of capital punishment in case of disputes with the other agency. The anti-capital-punishment agency calculates a corresponding figure of $40,000. It offers the pro agency $30,000 a year in exchange for accepting an anti-capital-punishment court. The pro agency accepts. Now the anti-capital-punishment agency can raise its rates enough to bring in an extra $35,000. Its customers are happy, since the guarantee of no capital punishment is worth more than that. The agency is happy; it is getting an extra $5,000 a year profit. The pro agency cuts its rates by an amount that costs it $25,000 a year. This lets it keep its customers and even get more, since the savings is more than enough to make up to them for not getting the court of their choice. It, too, is making a $5,000 a year profit on the transaction. As in any good trade, everyone gains.

The same mechanism applies to all courts, so there is no need to call some courts "outlaw courts." Hence the idea of a basic law code dissolves. Each court is just producing laws, which may or may not be close to plumbline libertarian laws.

Statism is at odds with diversity

A common argument against the EU is that it is not possible or beneficial to have a centralized authority controlling such a diverse group of peoples and cultures.

The idea is that the same governmental policies will not work over the whole of Europe. Laws will have to be different in different areas, because in different areas people have different cultures and values. It is recognition that values are subjective; nothing is ‘inherently’ valuable; if something is valuable, it means it is valuable to someone.

But when you think about it, there is no such thing as ‘group values’. Saying Scottish people like haggis is not literally true of all Scots and of no one else. It is a broad generalization. Italian people don’t value pasta as a group, although many of them value it as individuals. No two individuals have exactly the same values or opinions; we are a wonderfully diverse species.

So the above argument against the EU in favor of nationalism works equally well as an argument against nationalism and in favour of localism and ultimately individualism/anarchism.

If the people of Scotland should not have the same laws as the people of Turkey, why should they have the same laws as the people of England? The counties of Scotland each have their distinct character, where people have different values, so why should all of Scotland be controlled centrally from Edinburgh (or anywhere else)?

This line of thinking leads directly to individualism/anarchism: why should any two individuals have to live under the same laws if they don’t want to? After all, they have different values.