A Conversation with an Anarchist

So in addition to gaming it turns out *gasp* I have other interests; one of them being politics. Political junkies unite, because it's time to dive into some overlong philosophical rambling.

Just recently I had a discussion for the first time with an anarchist. Previously I've never gotten to hear their side of the story in politics, so I knew this would be an interesting debate. I've always generally disagreed with the philosophy because I feel that no matter what there will exist conflicts of interest that need to be resolved and under an anarchist system inevitably in the absence of laws that enforce nonviolent resolutions to conflicts, there will be violence and societal decay similar to what we see in Africa where in the absence of government, many people form various gangs and mafias for protection and security that invariably result in lots of bloodshed over disputes.

Because it would fail instantly.

So one of the key things I learned from this discussion is that there are in fact varying forms of anarchy, which seems a bit strange to me as I always thought anarchy was simply the absence of government period and there were no other alternatives, but the way this anarchist described her beliefs sounded more to me like a very extreme form of libertarianism wherein some type of government still exists in some sense but it is extremely minimal. She called it voluntary anarchism, which is sort of an anarcho-pacifism where everyone peacefully enters into voluntary contracts for all their interactions with other people. There are no taxes, there is no military, and there is no police force. All of this sounds just peachy in theory because I am very pacifistic myself, and in many ways I like the idea of people having as many choices as possible so long as all parties involved agree, but I fail to see how this system offers a superior alternative to current forms of democratic governments, which I will explain my reasons for shortly.

So this anarchist constantly alluded to this idea that government is a form of coercion that "forces" people to follow terms and agreements that they don't necessarily agree to, and to that I must say, yes, it forces everyone to play fair despite that some people would rather not. In particular, she claimed that government is the biggest monopoly on mafias there is. She repeatedly used the word "force" to make her case, implying that her own system of "government" so-to-speak solves this issue. However, I find this a very dubious argument especially from my own experience having dealt with many licenses and contracts throughout my own life.

Almost as dubious as this recruitment poster.

First of all, I dispute her claim that democratic governments are any more "forceful" or "coercive" than her own system of governance. For example, in a functioning democracy, if there is a particular law that you take dispute with, you have the right and ability to vote for a representative who falls more in line with your beliefs on that particular issue, and if none such candidates exist, you can opt to be that representative yourself. In this sense, democratic government is very much voluntary in that you have options you can pursue if you don't like certain laws that your government imposes. If enough people seek the changes you want, you can bring about those changes through like-minded interests similar to her contract system. Of course the immediate argument an anarchist might make here is that still inevitably no politician will fall perfectly in line with your views and there will be laws that you will be forced to follow against your will. But then I have to ask, how is this any different under a contract system that she proposes? She might say, "It's a contract, you don't have to agree to its terms." This is true. However, contracts can be just as coercive and contain terms that you don't necessarily agree with, but you technically "agree" to them anyway because overall you might feel that the benefits of the parts that you do agree with outweigh the cons. Of course, you could say at this point, "Then I just won't agree with any terms that don't fall exactly in line with my views," but anyone should be able to realize that contracts can very much be an exercise in compromise. You are communicating with another party after all who inevitably has their own interests at heart over yours. If you unflinchingly refuse to make any compromises in your agreements, then you will be left isolated and unable to do business with anyone. Let's suppose for a moment that the economy is doing very poorly and few businesses are hiring except for ones that will pay you at minimum wage despite that you know with your expertise you qualify for better pay. Nonetheless, you agree to a minimum wage contract because you don't have any other choice. Oh wait, except there's another problem. There is no government, so there is no guaranteed minimum wage either. Therefore, they could easily end up paying you even less than what the minimum wage would otherwise be as well. So now with all this in mind I can simply point out that ultimately you will be forced to follow terms that you don't necessarily agree with in order to further your own goals overall, just like democratic government, only now you have a slew of other problems on top of it.

Most notably, let's talk about the absence of any law enforcement. I posed this hypothetical scenario to her: Suppose someone decides to make a purchase of a rather expensive item from a shop and they come to discover the item is broken and defective upon arriving home, so they return to the store to ask for a refund. The shopkeeper then simply replies, "Sorry, but no." Now how does one go about resolving this conflict fairly under her system? She replied that most likely both parties would have entered into a contract beforehand wherein they either agreed to provide refunds or not and so if the contract said they didn't have to offer refunds, then that is a sad day for the consumer because they already agreed to those terms and they will need to consider those terms more carefully in the future. Fair enough, but then I proposed, "So what if the terms said the shop was obligated to provide a refund but they decided not to honor it anyway? Since there is an absence of any law enforcement, they are under no pressure to uphold those terms after all." She then replied that the business' reputation would be tarnished and it would come back to hurt them. This is similar to libertarian and conservative arguments I've heard about regarding free markets before and I find it highly simplistic and ignores nuances in the market that allow bad businesses to continue thriving. Consider Electronic Arts for example, despite receiving 2 Golden Poo Awards in a row from Consumerist and being voted worst company in America, they continue to make money producing games regardless through--that's right--COERCIVE marketing methods, which I might add, don't involve a need for government at all, but DO ironically involve consumers agreeing to license contracts. For example, their intrusive anti-consumer DRM service called Origin is often required to be installed in order to play some of their latest games, so many gamers will be forced to agree to its terms and services if they want to experience the latest game in one of their beloved franchises. Even though many gamers may find this practice despicable, they will overwhelmingly be unable to resist the temptation of playing the game and will agree to the terms anyway, and thus EA's cycle of discontent continues despite that their bad reputation should supposedly lead to their downfall under a free market system.

Or more likely most gamers won't even know they just agreed to screw themselves.

So her next argument was that there would also be "third party mediators" involved, but she did not elaborate on who exactly these third party mediators would be and how their decisions would not be influenced through bias, since in this particular system almost everything is run entirely through private interests which will inevitably follow the money trails rather than necessarily what's fair. Furthermore, since these "third party mediators" must be nonviolent and nonbinding, there is again no pressure on the shopkeeper to honor their agreement since he won't be forcefully taken into custody anyway if he just continues to ignore the mediators' rulings.

A "third party mediator" at work.

Her final argument was that the consumer would have also likely bought into some sort of insurance for protection against incidents like this, but in many ways this just loops back to the same problems I've already outlined; insurance companies are under no real obligation to honor their contracts with you and even if they did, this would tremendously increase the cost of living on everyone because they would have to resort to buying into insurance for every conceivable product since any company can potentially just ignore their agreements and obligations to provide you quality goods.

One thing I'd like to quickly note before continuing was that she also said that while government might be able to resolve these issues adequately through the court system, it's not really as effective as it could be under her own system, likening the trial system to raising a child by whipping it whenever it does something wrong rather than making it understand why it did something wrong. It's an interesting analogy, and while I generally agree with this philosophy in many instances, by handling all disputes this way it ignores the very real existence of sociopaths who couldn't care less about morality in the first place and can frequently end up in high positions at businesses because they know how to make money but not necessarily how to treat other human beings fairly.

In a system that is entirely "free market" driven, the reality is that it isn't free at all. You simply trade your deference from one evil to another; in this case, from government to corporations, which can in many ways be just as evil, if not more so than government. Money becomes the ultimate rule of law, and morality is not even computed into the equation. Hello again, child labor and no vacations. You don't think businesses would bring such practices back? Why wouldn't they? These practices existed before when government didn't bother to step in and regulate. See, this is one of my largest criticisms of libertarianism and by extension voluntary anarchism. In a perfect world, these would probably be ideal philosophies to live by, but the problem is we don't live in a perfect world. We live in a world full of assholes, and granted, I would say that the number of caring and empathetic people probably outnumber the assholes by a significant margin, but it only takes an exceedingly small 1% to ruin it for the other 99. Less than 1% of the world's population currently holds over a third of the entire world's resources, and among that 1% are Wall Street bankers who were responsible for the 2008 global economic crash. Through their fraudulent practices, they were able to significantly and negatively affect people to the tune of billions; all just to further their own personal interests. This is one of the main reasons I stopped considering myself a libertarian; I assumed too much that other people would behave as empathetically, rationally, and responsibly as me, but the fact of the matter is that they don't, and that's really the only way that such an idealistic system could work.

I always wanted to work for a real-life Jeremiah Fink.

Of course, an anarchist might say that my Wall Street example is actually a perfect counter-example to having a government in place, as it was the government itself that aided and abetted Wall Street in doing this. While it may be true that government contributed to the problem, this is still actually an example of pure free market capitalism running amok, because we currently don't live in a functioning democracy anymore; we are ruled by a government that is bought out by private business through legalized bribery, which is why the government was aiding Wall Street in the first place. That is to say, it is the free market itself that took over and is now calling the shots. Under a properly-functioning democratic government, representatives actually represent their constituents, not their donors. This is where I believe the true root of our problems lies. By taking away unlimited corporate spending on government, banning corporate personhood, and publicly financing all political campaigns through campaign finance reform, we can properly restore a functioning democracy that works for the benefit of its constituents. Cue shameless plug for Wolf-PAC, the organization you can join right now to help fight this battle. I've already donated to the cause, and I highly recommend you consider it yourself.

We're comin'.

Finally, she also failed to understand the basic recognition that due to the unique lack of profit motive involved in the institution of government, this potentially allows it to streamline and increase efficiency with certain services through providing wider access to them at cheaper cost. Consider for example the public healthcare systems of many first world countries which are able to provide better quality healthcare than through privatized systems at cheaper cost and to greater amounts of people than the United States. This can be statistically demonstrated through various economic indicators like mortality rates and percentage of healthcare coverage. Putting healthcare aside though, I gave her the example of roads being just one service that is best handled through government. She claimed that roads existed before there were governments, a statement that I am skeptical of, especially in particular if we're considering roads as they exist today which aren't just simple dirt paths but made of pavement that requires special materials and frequent maintenance to upkeep. The only way these could reasonably be maintained under an anarchist system is again through private business which will inevitably cost more through tolls as opposed to taxes. Again, she failed to understand why, due to a basic misunderstanding about profit motive whichs adds extra administrative cost to any service.

So to me, no matter how you look at it, again this all comes back to the fact that inevitably there will be conflicts of interest that need resolution, and voluntary anarchism fails to adequately address how it would solve these disputes without ultimately resulting in violence or coercion potentially to more extreme degrees than through traditional democratic governments, as there exists no real protections to enforce fair contracts for all parties involved. Furthermore, the lack of government regulation in the economy would quickly lead to pure monetary interests becoming the new rule of law, and therefore human rights and dignity would become irrelevant if they don't lead to greater profits. It seems to me that rather than seeking to address problems individually with government as issues should be handled on a case-by-case basis, anarchists simply seek to go to the extreme end of the spectrum and toss government out almost entirely, which in all likelihood creates more problems than it solves.