Anarchy 101

For a brief introduction to how society without government might function, take a look at the following three articles by one of the greatest libertarian thinkers of our age, Lew Rockwell. I have given brief excerpts from each (emphasis mine).

1. The War the Government Cannot Win

Ludwig von Mises said that the great accomplishment of economists was to draw attention to the extreme limits on the power of government. His point was not merely that government should be limited, but that it is limited by the very structure of reality. It cannot make all people rich by its own initiative. It cannot provide universal housing, literacy, and health. It cannot raise wages across the board. It cannot ban products. Those who seek to accomplish economic ends such as these are choosing the wrong means. That is because there is something more powerful than government: namely economic law.

2. Two Views of Social Order: Conflict or Cooperation (video)

There are two clear and present dangers to liberty in America. One is known as the left, and the other is known as the right. They are dangerous because they seek to use government to mold society into a form they seek, rather than the form that liberty achieves if society is left on its own.

I'm going to assume that the left and the right come to their views sincerely, that their passion for using government is driven by some fear that the absence of government would yield catastrophe. So the burden of my talk today will be to identify and explain the common thread that connects the worldview of the left and the right, and suggest that they are both wrong about the capacity of society, whether it is defined locally or internationally, to manage itself.

3. Interview with Lew Rockwell

LEW ROCKWELL: A libertarian is a person who believes in the absolute right of private property ownership.

JOHNSSON: Your slogan on LewRockwell.com is Anti-War, Anti-State, Pro-Market; how do you define anti-state?

ROCKWELL: To be anti-state is to hold the intellectual position that there is nothing that society needs that the state can do better than the market. If you hold that view, you are anti-state. So in some ways, to say anti-war, anti-state, and pro-market is to propose redundancies of the same idea. I would defend the anti-state idea in every aspect of human life. The market is better in schools, energy, food, housing, charity, trade, consumer protection, justice, security, and even international relations. I know of no exceptions. The major burden of all the editorial work that I do is to make this point again and again. Does it grow weary? Not in any way. The number one, central, ubiquitous problem of our time and all time is the state. Whenever a criminal band manages to bamboozle the public that it alone should be granted the legal right to aggress on others, there is a problem that needs to be uprooted. The struggle for freedom is precisely this and no other.

Detroit losing the last of its national chain supermarkets

According to Detroit News:

The last two Farmer Jack stores in the city prepare to close by Saturday. If no grocery stores buy the Farmer Jack locations from the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co., Detroit will be left without a single national chain supermarket, much less a Wal-Mart or Meijer superstore or a Costco-style warehouse store.

Plus, many of the small stores sell sub-par merchandise:

Many residents rely on convenience stores for bread, milk, eggs and snacks. Small stores that do offer meat and produce often sell food past its expiration date, shoppers said. The city has raided stores over the years to crack down on sales of expired food, but many say the problem still persists.

Pat Hollins, an activist with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, told of stopping in a small neighborhood grocer several weeks ago and immediately finding two expired packages of breakfast sausage.

ACORN has been picketing stores it contends have been selling expired meats and unhealthy foods.

Commentors at Reddit summed it up perfectly:

crypticgeek: That's ironic. People complaining about locally owned stores and begging large chain stores to come in.

prrometheus: I thought Wal-Mart ruins neighborhoods?

vastrightwing: Thank God Detroit has shed all of the evil BIG chain stores and is left with nice local mom and pop stores we all miss and love so much!

"For God's Sake, Please Stop the Aid!"

In Der Spiegel's interview with Kenyan economist James Shikwati, I saw viewpoints I would expect to see only at sites like Mises and LRC. I practically had to check the URL to make sure I was at the right site.

SHIKWATI: As absurd as it may sound: Development aid is one of the reasons for Africa's problems. If the West were to cancel these payments, normal Africans wouldn't even notice. Only the functionaries would be hard hit. Which is why they maintain that the world would stop turning without this development aid...

SPIEGEL: Even in a country like Kenya, people are starving to death each year. Someone has got to help them.

SHIKWATI: But it has to be the Kenyans themselves who help these people. When there's a drought in a region of Kenya, our corrupt politicians reflexively cry out for more help. This call then reaches the United Nations World Food Program -- which is a massive agency of apparatchiks who are in the absurd situation of, on the one hand, being dedicated to the fight against hunger while, on the other hand, being faced with unemployment were hunger actually eliminated.

SPIEGEL: If the World Food Program didn't do anything, the people would starve.

SHIKWATI: I don't think so. In such a case, the Kenyans, for a change, would be forced to initiate trade relations with Uganda or Tanzania, and buy their food there. This type of trade is vital for Africa. It would force us to improve our own infrastructure, while making national borders -- drawn by the Europeans by the way -- more permeable. It would also force us to establish laws favoring market economy.

(via Sidewinder77@Reddit)

Lew Rockwell on the growing irrelevance of the State

Two quotes stood out for me in this article:

• “The government keeps trying to pave the world but private enterprise keeps growing through the cracks.”
  
• “If it were up to me, I would push a button and reduce government to the size it was after the American Revolution under the Articles of Confederation, and then look forward to debating whether we should get rid of the rest.”

Karen Kwiatkowski on Restoring the Republic

http://www.lewrockwell.com/kwiatkowski/kwiatkowski184.html

The 49 States of America

The Onion has a great bit on the Vermont Secession Movement.

Don't Vote

Robert P. Murphey dispenses good advice in his latest article at LewRockwell.com. For me, the punch line was at the end:

Perhaps in twenty years when they’re explaining to their own kids about the days when you could cross state lines without showing the national ID card, they might vaguely remember that cranky old man who talked to their high school class, making some anal distinction between democracy versus a republic.