RSS 2.0 FeedQuestion For The An-Caps
by Brad WarbianyIn David Friedman’s essay on Anarchy and Efficient Law, he talks about the fact that protection services may be widely varied for various groups of people. For example:
Indeed, one could have more diversity than that. Suppose there is some small group within the population with specialized legal requirements. An example might be members of a religious sect that forbade the taking of oaths, in a society where conventional legal procedure required such oaths. Such a group might have its own enforcement agency and let that agency negotiate appropriate legal rules on its behalf. Alternatively, an agency might produce a specialized product for members of the group by negotiating agreements under which those customers, if involved in litigation, were not required to swear the usual oaths.
So we can see that there may be a very wide range of potential legal codes. And that there will be a market for those codes, where individuals want to get others to agree to negotiate based upon their own codes:
To see why, let us eliminate from our analysis the intermediaries, the enforcement and arbitration agencies, and consider the market for legal agreement in terms of the individual producers and consumers of that good. Each individual wishes to buy the assent of every other individual to some legal code or codes, in order that future disputes between them, if they occur, may be peacefully resolved. Each individual is thus both a buyer and a seller of legal assent, buying from and selling to every other individual.
But this leaves out one idea. What if I don’t care if my disputes are peacefully resolved? What if, for example, I belong to a sect of the population who lives by a warrior code: live by the sword, die by the sword, and take that which I need along the way.
Simply put, it’s not in my interest to peacefully settle my differences. My ethos demands that I not respond to the kind inquiries of a security firm who want restitution for me breaking into someone’s house and stealing their stereo. What security firm do I hire?
Or, more generally:
What security firm will exist to serve the needs of a professional criminal class, and what will it look like?
This is the central question to which I haven’t got an answer I like. Again, it goes back to the idea of the mafia. There are people in our society who are more than willing to use violence to further their ends. They are willing and able to do so, and in an an-cap society, the only check on their power will be that of rival security firms. And if they are able to take enough power, they will try to “clear and hold” a territory in order to cement that power into place.
So what will we have? Essentially we’ll have pockets of liberty and pockets of tyranny, the exact same way that we have right now on a world scale. Right now, we have some security firms that are geography-based (i.e. governments), that are largely good to their citizens, and try (albeit not very well, most of the time) to be a fair arbiter of disputes and let their citizens live in freedom. We also have some security firms that are geography based, such as North Korea, that tyrannize and subject their citizens in the face of overwhelming power.
In a minarchist society, we will have a government which I would have empowered with the use of force to break up the mafia in New York (since the government will have more guns than the mafia), knowing that if the mafia started giving me trouble down here in Atlanta, the government would come down to protect my rights. Conversely, in an an-cap world, I’m not going to pay my security firm here in Atlanta to fix the mafia problem in New York (nor am I sure they’ll be large and violent enough to be able to do so), because my freedom isn’t in jeopardy. Much like in the real world, I’ll fight for the US government to denounce eminent domain takings in New London, CT, because I’m living under those rules and I want the rules to be the best I can make them. However, I won’t ask my government to go fix North Korea and Zimbabwe, because the problems of those countries don’t directly affect me.
As I’ve said before, I’m not sure that my ideal minarchist society will last longer or be optimal for longer than the ideal an-cap society. As I brought up last time I covered this subject, the question is largely whether minarchy or an-cap will turn into bad governments faster, and what types of governments will result. My intuition is that minarchy will break more slowly and in a more liberty-friendly direction than an-cap:
I can see an-cap devolving into a city-state system pretty quickly. The question between that and a federalist minarchy such as what the USA was designed to be is that the federalist minarchy has a binding higher authority to appeal to. City-states, much like our current world order, doesn’t have a binding authority to appeal to. Thus, if you’re stuck in one of the bad ones (bad enough, like communist Russia, or East Germany) where they don’t let you escape, you have no recourse.
There are bad people in the world, who are willing to use violence toward their ends. The question of any legal system is not how peaceful people will coexist, but how we protect ourselves from those who aren’t peaceful. It’s never an easy question, because when you allow the non-peaceful people into government (see Venezuela, Zimbabwe, North Korea, Cuba, Saddam’s Iraq), you get horrific results. My worry with an an-cap society is that we don’t have an effective answer to deal with the violent people among us.
“What security firm will exist to serve the needs of a professional criminal class, and what will it look like?”
I think you can find the answer to that question in my _Machinery of Freedom_, published quite a long time ago. The value to the criminal of being able to steal from me (kill me, assault me) is almost always less than the value to me of his not being able to do so, hence the criminals will find that they cannot buy the rights they want at a price they are willing to pay.
If they decide to try to act as if they had those rights without having obtained agreement, their agency will find itself in a losing war with the agencies selling rights protection to the much larger number of people who don’t want to be victims.
Comment by David Friedman — February 9, 2007 @ 4:36 pmDavid,
You’re assuming that they’re going to try to “buy” those rights. My thought is that they would simply try to “take” those rights. Essentially they won’t be looking for a security firm, they would form a gang. The question is whether it’s more efficient for other security firms to go to war with them, or simply to pay them protection money.
If I’m the owner of a security firm, and to take on the local gang in a war will require me to pay outlandish sums to outfit my officers with SWAT gear, as well as pay them enough to risk their lives in a gang war, wouldn’t it make more sense for me to simply pay them a small tribute to leave my customers alone?
Comment by Brad Warbiany — February 9, 2007 @ 5:18 pmMy thought is that they would simply try to “take†those rights. Essentially they won’t be looking for a security firm, they would form a gang.
Thank goodness that doesn’t happen now.
Less flippantly, how is an ancap society going to look? First, there is no gun control. So, a new gang forms in the area and starts terrorizing people. What happens? There’s a run on the gun store – everyone picks up a piece to defend themselves. As we know, guns deter crime.
Secondly, a new gang forms in the area and starts to terrorize people. People, of course, call their security agenc(y/ies) to round these people up. Their premiums may go up, of course, but a security agency that doesn’t respond to threats isn’t going to be in business very long.
Thirdly, under what kinds of situations do gangs form? Most of the time, they form under two circumstances: 1. there is some illegal, but widely desired, service, and 2. there is a community cut off from the legal powers around them. Number one isn’t likely to happen in an anarchist society. Number two is also unlikely, because the legal powers will have market relations, not power relations, with those it protects. If a large immigrant population moves into the city, it makes sense for a local defense agency to hire a few translators and go get that business. Not so much for the city government.
- Josh
Comment by Wild Pegasus — February 10, 2007 @ 12:32 pmJosh,
1) Agreed. There would be a run on the gun store. That will go a long way towards reducing crime, but it may just force the criminals to act as a group and be even better armed. While it may deter petty crime, it doesn’t exactly stop organized gangs.
2) What if it’s more costly to round these people up than to pay them off? Again, against a violent gang, you don’t just “round them up”… You go to war with them. At what point does the cost become worth it, and at what point do I try to be a free-rider, not paying my security firm to go to war, hoping that yours does and you bankroll it?
3) This is a very strong point, and may be strong enough to make the argument. I don’t know of any situation where gangs are formed when there isn’t an illicit trade to bankroll them. I don’t know that there would be “gangs of robbers”. I’m not willing to concede the point yet, but I definitely see where you’re coming from.
Your point 3 is the main reason that, if we ever got a true system of minarchy, that I would hope to experiment with anarchy in some territories. I’d love to see if it will work as advertised.
Comment by Brad Warbiany — February 10, 2007 @ 4:36 pm1. It may not stop organized gangs, but it does raise the costs of gang activity. Even criminals respond to incentives, and if they need to ramp up to AK-47s just to get what they could get with pistols and knives in a gun-restricted society, fewer of them are going to pony up for it.
Remember, also, that utopia is not an option. The state doesn’t abolish crime, and in many countries, it is the main criminal element, in addition to the crime of its ultimate jurisdiction.
2. If paying them off ends the problem, what’s the big deal? But I don’t see this as much of a problem. Few people want criminals paid off. I would venture to say that most people believe that more spending on anti-criminal activity is always good, regardless of its effectiveness.
While you may attempt to free-ride, there will likely be social pressure to contribute. Between agencies, a free-riding agency is likely to find its customers in worse positions in cases. For example, if Alef Agency lets Bet and Gimel Agencies pick up the bulk of the crime-fighting, when Bet or Gimel’s customers end up suing Alef’s customers, Alef’s customers are likely to get lower procedural protections and/or be required to present higher burdens of proof.
Among individuals, he who doesn’t contribute ends up getting ostracised from society. If someone refuses to pay for the common defense, he’s going to have a lot more trouble in his day-to-day activities.
Moreover, again, utopia is not an option. There will be free-riding in the market anarchist system, but there is a massive amount of free-riding on the state. I’m not talking about welfare queens so much as the big corporations, both within the M-IC and without.
- Josh
Comment by Wild Pegasus — February 10, 2007 @ 9:31 pmI just see a disconnect here. Fighting back raises the cost of gang activity, and should reduce it. Paying them off incentivizes gang activity, so will increase it.
Perhaps there’s some optimal level of payoff/gang activity, and an an-cap society will find it, at which point there will be a semi-stable equilibrium that doesn’t devolve into chaos or tyranny.
I suppose the counterargument is that in our current society (or even minarchy), government only has to fight crime hard enough to make the populace feel like they’re working hard enough to fight crime. I.e. there is still crime, and perhaps it’s sitting at some equilibrium point.
I guess the question still comes down to whether the an-cap society can hold a workable equilibrium better or longer than the minarchy society (which all experiments have shown that the minarchy government ceases to be “small” over time).
Comment by Brad Warbiany — February 10, 2007 @ 10:12 pm