The Limitations of Anarchy

I tried calling myself an anarchist for while, but it didn't really work. Only people who were somewhat aware of Von Mises knew what I meant. The old strain of anarchism was a leftist strain, and very much against private property. Some of them even resorted to terrorist acts, which seldom made any sense from a strategic standpoint.

The other gigantic pink elephant in a tutu standing in front of the eight ball for wanna-be anarchists is idiots. I like calling this problem the king of the hill problem. As long as there's a hill some bastard is going to take the hill so he can be king. Or, in a democracy, as long as people think elections confer some sort of legitimacy, then eventually they'll be over by your house insisting you give them money because they voted on it.

So there has to be some sort of anti-state state. I think this is what pre-absolutist monarchies were. Authority tended to fall to men based either on a property right or war. We can blame many of the screw ups on war. It is easier to invade and take over a piece of land than it is to make that land fertile and produce many crops with it. As much as possible, it is better to select for those who can make so that we have life and have it more abundantly.

But we had regular injections of the war like. Not just defenders, but nut jobs who spent a lot of money traipsing around Europe, having many battles, but not doing anything strategic to win a war.

Still, from a systemic standpoint, that was not as bad as now. Now we have bureaucrats, the myth of the objective expert, and the incredibly tiresome tendency of writing everything down. And the old warriors fought like it was a sport; the bureaucrats came up with total war, and sent body count into the stratosphere.

Imagine your nearest H.O.A. You don't, if you can help it, become a member of the board, or whatever they call themselves because you have better stuff to do with your time. Meanwhile, the busybodies who don't have anything to do but to tell you what to do migrate to these positions of power like moths to a bug zapper. Unfortunately it is us, not them who end up getting zapped.

We can have these positions of power just laying around, nor can we have an absence of them, for then they'll just go and write something else down. As an example, ponder, if you will, why did they go and write the Constitution when there already was an Articles of Confederation? It is a clear centralization of power, one that doesn't appear possible to be arrived at legitimately in a country where the AofC was in effect.

Now, of course, the Constitution suffers the same Achilles heel that the ranchers in Oregon do- the inability to defend itself. The paper itself is good for very little.

So there must be men, even in the most libertarian- even the most anarchic of societies- that enforce the principles of the society on those who either don't get it, or don't want to get it.