| An anarchist accepts the simple and basic reality that he who pays the piper always calls the tune – and that arguments against the virtue and efficacy of political power will never be disseminated in an educational system paid for by political power. |
| a government – and particularly the public treasury – is the ultimate publicly-owned good. If publicly-owned goods are always pillaged and exploited, then how is the creation of the largest and most violent publicly-owned good supposed to solve that problem? |
| Well, since voluntary and peaceful “monopolies” are so terribly evil, the solution that is always proposed is to create an involuntary, coercive, and violent monopoly in the form of a government. Thus voluntary and peaceful “monopolies” are a great evil – but the involuntary and violent monopoly of the state is the greatest good!? |
| Where does this opinion come from? Does it come from a steadfast dedication to reason and evidence, an adherence to well-documented facts? |
| Do those who hold this opinion have certain evidence that, prior to public education, the children of the poor were not being educated? Do they genuinely believe that the children of the poor are being well-educated now? Do they seriously believe that anarchists do not care about the education of the poor? Do they believe that they are the only people who care about the education of the poor? Of course not. This is a mere knee-jerk propagandistic reaction, like hearing a Soviet-era Red Guard boy mumbling about the necessity of the workers controlling the means of production. It is not based upon evidence, but upon prejudice. |
| if people are not intelligent and reasonable enough to negotiate solutions to these problems in a productive and sustainable manner, then surely they are also not intelligent or reasonable enough to vote for political leaders, or participate in any government whatsoever. |
| The statist looks at a problem and always sees a gun as the only solution – the force of the state, the brutality of law, violence and punishment. |
| The anarchist – the endless entrepreneur of social organization – always looks at a problem and sees an opportunity for peaceful, innovative, charitable or profitable problem-solving. |
| when faced with challenges of social organization such as collective self-defense, roads, pollution and so on, the anarchist is perfectly content to say, “I do not know how this problem will be solved.” As a corollary, however, the anarchist is also perfectly certain that the pseudo-answer of “the government will do it” is a total non-answer – in fact, it is an anti-answer, in that it provides the illusion of an answer where one does not in fact exist. To an anarchist, saying “the government will solve the problem,” has as much credibility as telling a biologist – usually with grating condescension – “God created life.” In both cases, the problem of infinite regression is blindly ignored – if that which exists must have been created by a God, the God which exists must have been created by another God, and so on. In the same way, if human beings are in general too irrational and selfish to work out the challenges of social organization in a productive and positive manner, then they are far too irrational and selfish to be given the monopolistic violence of state power, or vote for their leaders. |
| Asking an anarchist how every conceivable existing public function could be re-created in a stateless society is directly analogous to asking an economist what the economy will look like down to the last detail 50 years from now. What will be invented? How will interplanetary contracts be enforced? Exactly how will time travel affect the price of a rental car? What megahertz will computers be running at? What will operating systems be able to do? And so on and so on. This is all a kind of elaborate game designed to, fundamentally, stall and humiliate any economist who falls for it. A certain amount of theorizing is always fun, of course, but the truth is not determined by accurate long-term predictions of the unknowable. Asking Albert Einstein in 1910 where the atomic bomb will be dropped in the future is not a credible question – and the fact that he is unable to answer it in no way invalidates the theory of relativity. |
| Our core fantasy of “government” is that in some remote and sunlit chamber, with lacquered mahogany tables, deep leather chairs and sleepless men and women, there exists a group who are so wise, so benevolent, so omniscient and so incorruptible that we should turn over to them the education of our children, the preservation of our elderly, the salvation of the poor, the provision of vital services, the healing of the sick, the defense of the realm and of property, the administration of justice, the punishment of criminals, and the regulation of virtually every aspect of a massive, infinitely complex and ever-changing social and economic system. These living man-gods have such perfect knowledge and perfect wisdom that we should hand them weapons of mass destruction, and the endless power to tax, imprison and print money – and nothing but good, plenty |
| Our core fantasy of “government” is that in some remote and sunlit chamber, with lacquered mahogany tables, deep leather chairs and sleepless men and women, there exists a group who are so wise, so benevolent, so omniscient and so incorruptible that we should turn over to them the education of our children, the preservation of our elderly, the salvation of the poor, the provision of vital services, the healing of the sick, the defense of the realm and of property, the administration of justice, the punishment of criminals, and the regulation of virtually every aspect of a massive, infinitely complex and ever-changing social and economic system. |
| Democracy is based on the idea that the majority possesses sufficient wisdom to both know how society should be run, and to stay within the bounds of basic moral rules. The voters are considered to be generally able to judge the economic, foreign policy, educational, charitable, monetary, health care, military et al policies proposed by politicians. |
| I was told that the purpose of my education was to allow me to think for myself, but when I made decisions that those in authority disagreed with, I was scorned and humiliated, and my reasoning was never examined. I was told that I should not use violence to solve my problems, but when I climbed a wall that apparently I was not supposed to, I was taken to the Headmaster’s office, where he assaulted me with a cane. I was told that the British people were the wisest, most courageous and most virtuous group on the planet – and also that I was not to disobey those in authority. When I was taught mathematics and science, I was punished for thinking irrationally – and then, when I asked sensible questions about the existence of God, I was punished for attempting to think rationally. I was mocked as cowardly whenever I succumbed to peer pressure – and also mocked for my lack of interest in cheering our local sports team. When I proposed thoughts that those in authority disagreed with, they demanded that I provide evidence; when I asked that they provide evidence for their beliefs, I was punished for insubordination. |
| Without the money to fund a war – and pay the soldiers, whether they are drafted or not – war is impossible. The actual violence of the battlefield is a mere effect of the threatened violence at home. If citizens could not be forced to pay for the war – either in the present in the form of taxes, or in the future through deficit financing – then the carnage of the battlefield could never possibly occur. |
| We can only point guns at foreign enemies because we first point guns at domestic citizens. Without taxation, there can be no war. Without governments, there can be no taxation. Thus governments are the first cause of war. |
| If we accept the Aristotelian view that the purpose of life is happiness, and we accept the Socratic view that virtue brings happiness, then when we deny choice to people, we deny them the capacity for virtue, and thus for happiness. |
| Churchill once famously remarked: “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” Anarchists believe this to be true, but would add that no form of government is better than no government at all! |
| Democracy is considered to be superior to tyranny – and rightly so I believe – because to some degree it imitates the feedback mechanisms of the free market. |
| individuals are “allowed” to make major and essential life decisions without consulting the majority. The vast majority of our lives is explicitly anti-democratic, insofar as we vehemently reserve the right to make our own decisions – and our own mistakes – without subjecting them to the scrutiny and authority of others. |
| No democratic government has ever survived without taking a monopoly control over the currency. The reason for this is simple – politicians need to buy votes, but that illusion is hard to sustain if those you give money to have to pay that money back within a few years in the form of higher taxes. Taxpayers would get wise to this sort of game very quickly, and so politicians need to find other ways to fog and befuddle taxpayers. Deficit financing is one way – give money to people in the present, then stick the bill to their children at some undefined point in the future, when you’re no longer around – perfect! Another great way of pretending to give people money is to inflate their currency by printing more money. This way, you can give a man a hundred dollars today, and just reduce the purchasing power of his dollar by 5% next year by printing more. Not one person in a thousand will have any idea what’s really going on, and besides, you always have the business community to blame for “gouging” the consumer. Another “solution” is to promise public-sector unions large increases in salary, which only really take effect toward the end of your office, so that the next administration gets stuck with the real bill. Also, you can sign perpetual contracts giving them plenty of medical and retirement benefits, the majority of which will only kick in when they get older, long after you are gone. Alternatively, you can sell long-term bonds that give you the cash right now, while sticking future taxpayers in 10, 20 or 30 years with the bill for repaying your principle, and accumulated interest. |
| Academics face an enormous challenge – particularly in economics – which is the charge of rank hypocrisy. Economists are nearly universal in their support for free trade, yet of course most economists work in state-funded or state-supported institutions such as universities, the World Bank, the IMF and so on – and in academia in particular, take shelter behind enormously high barriers to entry in the form of institutionalized protectionism, and shield themselves from market forces through tenure. |
| If you do not follow your own advice, I cannot ipso facto use that to judge your advice as incorrect, but I certainly can judge that you believe your advice to be incorrect, and make a completely rational decision about its value thereby. |
| Society “survives” by accepting a fairly rigid set of unquestionable axioms. If people start poking around at the root of those axioms, they are first ignored, then attacked, then isolated. Individuals have almost no ability to overturn these core axioms within their own lifetimes – and thus it takes a somewhat “irrational” dedication to truth and reason to take this course. |
Tau11 - My Journey of Lifelong Learning 
Leave a comment