Objectivist Craig Biddle: 'anarchy violates the law of identity'

As a final example of what happens when deeper philosophic truths are ignored, observe that many libertarians—including Murray Rothbard, Bryan Caplan, Roy Childs, Randy Barnett, Peter Leeson, Walter Block, and David Friedman—embrace anarchism, the idea that all government should be eliminated. On this view, government, by its nature, is unacceptable because, by establishing and enforcing laws in a given geographic area, government “aggresses” against those in the area who don’t want to obey those laws. Government, according to anarchism, must be abolished so that people are “free”—free not only to produce and trade, but also to form their own “private defense agencies” or “competing defense agencies.” In the absence of government, the argument goes, these competing defense agencies would render society peaceful.24

This idea, and every variant of it, ignores so many moral and philosophic truths that it’s hard to know where to begin. It ignores the fact that a free market presupposes the existence of a government that bans initiatory force from social relationships and uses force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use. (If initiatory force is not banned by a government, then people and property are at the mercy of any thug or gang that decides to use force.) It ignores many facts about human nature, including the fact that without assurance that they can keep and use the product of their effort, people lose incentive to produce; and the fact that if people must constantly worry about whether they will be attacked by a thug or a group or a competing defense agency, they cannot focus on being productive or on pursuing other life-serving values—whether romantic relationships or recreational activities or a vacation or a meal. It ignores the fact that competing defense agencies would necessarily be based on competing ideas about what is and isn’t the true source of proper rules or “laws” (the Bible? the Koran? social consensus? Mugsy’s wish?), what is and isn’t permissible (property? abortion? pedophilia? free speech?), what kind and degree of force should be used against those who violate the laws of the clan (stoning? amputation? revenge on family members?), what to do when someone from clan A does something impermissible according to the laws of clan B (kidnap him? invade and conquer his clan? kill them all? forget about it?), and on and on.

Most fundamentally, though, anarchism ignores the laws of identity and noncontradiction—the genuinely axiomatic facts that things are what they are and cannot be what they are not. Anarchism pretends, for instance, that many small governments are somehow not governments at all. The great 19th-century classical liberal Auberon Herbert addresses this and related points definitively. “Anarchy,” explains Herbert, “seems to us not to understand itself”:

It is not in reality anarchy or “no government.” When it destroys the central and regularly constituted government, and proposes to leave every group to make its own arrangements for the repression of ordinary crime, it merely decentralizes government to the furthest point, splintering it up into minute fragments of all sizes and shapes. As long as there is ordinary crime, as long as there are aggressions by one man upon the life and property of another man, and as long as the mass of men are resolved to defend life and property, there cannot be anarchy or no government.

By the necessity of things, we are obliged to choose between regularly constituted government, generally accepted by all citizens for the protection of the individual, and irregularly constituted government, irregularly accepted, and taking its shape just according to the pattern of each group. Neither in the one case nor in the other case is government got rid of. The more true anarchist, the man who actually gets rid of government, is Tolstoy, who preaches as Christ did, that we should bear all injuries without returning them. In that way, it is true, government can be got rid of—but then how many of us are prepared to follow Tolstoy?

There still remains, as anarchists might urge, another method of dealing with ordinary crimes. Under the theory of “no government,” the defense of person and property, and the punishment of crime might be left absolutely to the individual; and this method, like Tolstoy’s method, would be quite consistent with the true anarchistic theory. I have heard an able anarchist defend it on the ground that men would exercise force with more scrupulousness, when obliged to act in their own persons, than when acting through a judge and policeman. But here again how many of us on the one hand are prepared to judge and to act for ourselves as regards our own wrongs; or on the other hand to consent to the self-made appointment of those—who believe themselves to be injured by us—as our judges and executioners? To most of us such a system could be described only by the word—pandemonium.25

Herbert’s reasoning here is unassailably sound. But it will not persuade those who refuse to consider anything more fundamental than a so-called nonaggression axiom.

Observe that Herbert’s point is essentially metaphysical and epistemological. It involves the law of identity: Things are what they are—decentralized government is decentralized government. It involves the nature of man: As long as people choose to defend their lives and property (as they must in order to live), they will form governments to do so; thus there cannot be “no government,” at least not for long. And it involves the law of noncontradiction: Nothing can be both what it is and what it is not—government cannot be nongovernment, and pandemonium cannot be peace.

http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2013-winter/libertarianism-vs-radical-capitalism.asp

What a lot of usual objectivist shit!

Man, I'm so bored with their nonsense, all I wanna do is: Vomit

More dribble by Biddle...

Although anarchy is allegedly the absence of government, there actually can't be any such thing. In the absence of a government, people would form gangs—some hoping to protect their rights thereby, and some hoping to rape, pillage, and plunder thereby. The result would be (and historically has been) gang warfare until one gang seizes enough power to become the de facto government.

In my chart of moral theories, I placed anarchy under both social subjectivism and personal subjectivism because neither of these moralities recognizes or upholds an objective standard for right and wrong, or an objective standard on which to base rights; thus each gives rise to rule by men of some kind or another. Anarchy, for a short time, is a possibility under each. But it wouldn't last long.

http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/blog/index.php/2014/01/basic-moral-theories-essentialized/

Objectivist Craig Biddle: 'anarchy violates the law of identity'

Objectivist Craig Biddle: 'anarchy violates the law of identity'

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