An Old Friend

I have commented in the past regarding my relationship with The Daily Bell and my favorable view of the site and many of the regular feed-backers.  One of the more enjoyable encounters was with Lila Rajiva, who for a time regularly maintained community at the site. 

That’s enough set-up for the following comment, which I posted at her site:

Lila

It is nice to see you again.  I saw your comments at EPJ and followed the links.

As to this post, this is certainly the elephant in the room for an-caps.  It is an even larger elephant in the room for those advocating some form of "government" as that term is commonly used.

While critics of an-cap society can point largely to "what-if" questions and the inability of an-caps to give absolute certainty in response, critics of investing final monopoly power of force in an entity have hundreds of millions of victims to point to as evidence of the folly of this faith.  Al Capone never caused the harm of an FDR or a Stalin.  And an FDR or a Stalin could never have done the harm they did absent a centralized apparatus available as the means. (And I do not suggest that those who criticize certain shortcomings in an-cap thought automatically are advocating for the next Stalin; I only suggest that criminals can do exceedingly more harm when a monopoly of legalized force and final arbiter status is available to them.)

I have no final summary - brighter minds than mine (including Rothbard) have failed to answer these questions.  However, regularly calling into question faith in the state as an effective (or least bad) means of ordering society is one step in the most needed change - an educated and enlightened population on matters of organizing society.  Without this, no form of ordering society is safe from predators looking to take advantage of the cracks in the system (and every system will have its cracks).  With an educated population, I will take the an-cap option – the predators can do far less harm!


My subsequent comment:

"Even in the matter of financial speculation - there is never a real self-questioning of fundamental problems and issues, just some reiteration of talking points and ideology."

As much as I promote the an-cap view, I find myself at a loss - for an example - specifically on this issue of financial crimes.

I would love for there to be private solutions for things such as the fraud (if actions were as reported) of liborgate.  Most of these private solutions have been stripped due to government action.  So the only means of some form of justice is through state action.  I won't cry if beneficiaries of state interventions (many in the banking industry) get knifed by their own benefactors.

But to worsen the situation, the real manipulations come directly from the state - again, liborgate will only serve to distract from the real interest rate manipulations of central banks.

Anyway, I find it hard to remain pure in thought (impossible to do so in deed, though many an-cap proponents go apoplectic about this) - and I often cannot even articulate what "pure" means in any case....

Take care.