Reframing the Debate: Anarchism vs. Minarchism

[Published in the Front Range Voluntaryist, by Justin Longo. Opening remarks to a Liberty on the Rocks debate, Flatirons chapter]

Professor Huemer and I are under no delusion. We don’t expect to change anyone’s mind tonight in 2 hours of discussion. So what we intend to do rather, is to reframe this issue in your minds. It’s a confusing and muddled issue for many different reasons. One of which is the ever elusive A word. Yes, “anarchy.” First, I’d like to strike that word from your thinking. It is a loaded term that means a million different things to a million different people. And anarchy is not even what we are talking about here. Instead, I’d like to reframe the issue as markets vs. monopoly.

Human beings need goods and services to survive and thrive in the world. The question then becomes, by what mechanism do we produce and receive these goods and services. Things like food, shelter, protection, dispute resolution, ROOOOADS and yes, even the rules under which we live. All of these important things are goods or services that must be provided somehow.

Richard Dawkins has a famous one-liner he uses that I think fits very well into what we’re discussing tonight. When he’s talking with various religious people about atheism, he draws common ground by saying to a Christian for example, “Mr. Christian. There have been 1,000 gods worshiped over the course of human history. You are an atheist when it comes to 999 of them. I just go one god further.”

And that’s how I want to reframe the discussion tonight. Our opponents love and revere the market. There’s no question about that. And they want markets to provide 98% of goods and services. We just go 2% further.

So we’re not asking you to choose the “system” of anarchy. Which is a nonsensical statement. We’re asking you to choose the market system. So why markets vs monopoly? The State is a monopoly – a coercive one at that. Meaning, it’s not like a private company that comes to acquire 100% market share of a good. The company would still have to ask you to buy its product. The state however does not have to ask you anything. It compels you.

Meaning, even if we’re talking about 1 or 2% of the goods and services in the economy – say protection services for example. The State doesn’t ask you to purchase protection services from them. It compels you – by taking money directly out of your paychecks – and using that stolen money to provide police services on your behalf - whether you like it or not. We have no say over how much those protection services cost us. And we have no say over the quantity produced or the manner in which they are provided to us.

All of the failings of monopoly provision we instinctively fear are worse when it comes to the State’s monopoly provision – because the State has the ability to legally take our stuff. Monopoly provision of goods and services results in all the things we as free marketers despise – central planning, no consumer choice, no competition, no profit and loss test, no prices, and so on.

We all understand why monopoly provision of food and health care ends in disaster. What I’m asking you to do is apply that same reasoning to things like protection services and dispute resolution. It’s not as though market economics only applies to things like food and health care. Economic laws don’t suddenly suspend themselves when it comes to the last 2% of the stuff we need.

I’ll end by issuing a challenge – the very challenge that finally cleared up my thinking about this issue back in college. Towards the end of one of my upper level econ classes, our Professor pushed our view of the market process all the way to the edge. He gave us a brief overview of the ways in which the market could provide the really tough cases – goods and services like defense, fire protection, and dispute resolution. You can imagine the pushback he got from the class.Full disclosure: I was one of the ones leading the charge against such “utopian” thinking.

In response to the outcry, he issued a challenge: “Give me economic reasons why the market cannot provide the goods and services you believe it incapable of providing.” My challenge is this: Every time you advocate that government provide a certain good or service, replace the word government in your mind with the word monopoly. Then try to think of economic reasons why a monopoly would provide that particular thing better.