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[Clips] Pennsylvania's Anarchist Experiment: 1681-1690
by R.A. Hettinga 08 Jul '05

08 Jul '05

--- begin forwarded text Delivered-To: clips(a)philodox.com Date: Fri, 8 Jul 2005 11:15:13 -0400 To: "Philodox Clips List" <clips(a)philodox.com> From: "R.A. Hettinga" <rah(a)shipwright.com> Subject: [Clips] Pennsylvania's Anarchist Experiment: 1681-1690 Reply-To: rah(a)philodox.com Sender: clips-bounces(a)philodox.com --- begin forwarded text From: "Mises Daily Article" <article(a)mises.org> To: "Mises Daily Article" <article(a)mises.biglist.com> Subject: Pennsylvania's Anarchist Experiment: 1681-1690 Date: Fri, 8 Jul 2005 10:00:02 -0400 Mailing-List: contact article-help(a)mises.biglist.com Visit the <http://blog.mises.org/>Mises Economics Blog. Pennsylvania's Anarchist Experiment: 1681-1690 by Murray N. Rothbard <http://www.mises.org/story/1865>[Posted on Friday, July 08, 2005] [This essay, never before online, is from Rothbard's magisterial 4-volume history of the Colonial period of the United States, <http://www.mises.org/store/Conceived-in-Liberty--P96C0.aspx>Conceived in Liberty] In the vast stretches of America, William Penn envisaged a truly Quaker colony, "a Holy experiment...that an example may be set up to the nations." In his quest for such a charter, Penn was aided by the fact that the Crown had owed his father, Admiral Sir William Penn, the huge sum of 16,000 pounds for loans and back salary. In March 1681 the king agreed to grant young William, the admiral's heir, proprietary ownership of the lands west of the Delaware River and north of the Maryland border in exchange for canceling the old debt. The land was to be called Pennsylvania. Penn was greatly aided in securing the charter by his friendship with the king and other high officials of the court. The proprietary charter was not quite as absolute as the colonial charters granted earlier in the century. The proprietor could rule only with the advice and consent of an assembly of freemena provision quite satisfactory to Penn. The Privy Council could veto Pennsylvania's actions, and the Crown, of course, could hear appeals from litigation in the colony. The Navigation Acts had to be enforced, and there was an ambiguous provision implying that England could impose taxes in Pennsylvania. As soon as Penn heard news of the charter, he dispatched his cousin William Markham to be deputy governor of Pennsylvania. The latter informed the five hundred or so Swedish and Dutch residents on the west bank of the Delaware of the new charter. In the fall Markham was succeeded by four commissioners, and they were succeeded by Thomas Holme as deputy governor in early 1682. In May William Penn made the Frame of Government the constitution for the colony. The Frame was amended and streamlined, and became the Second Frame of 1683, also called the Charter of Liberties. The Frame provided, first, for full religious freedom for all theists. No compulsory religion was to be enforced. The Quaker ideal of religious liberty was put into practice. Only Christians, however, were to be eligible for public office; later, at the insistence of the Crown, Catholics were barred from official posts in the colony. The government, as instituted by the Frame, comprised a governor, the proprietor; an elected Council, which performed executive and supreme judicial functions; and an Assembly, elected by the freeholders, Justices of lower courts were appointed by the governor. But while the Assembly, like those in other colonies, had the only power to levy taxes, its powers were more restricted than those of assemblies elsewhere. Only the Council could initiate laws, and the Assembly was confined to ratifying or vetoing the Council's proposals. William Penn himself arrived in America in the fall of 1682 to institute the new colony. He announced that the Duke's Laws would be temporarily in force and then called an Assembly for December. The Assembly included representatives not only of three counties of Pennsylvania, but also of the three lower counties of Delaware. For Delawareor New Castle and the lower counties on the west bank of Delaware Bayhad been secured from the Duke of York in August. While Penn's legal title to exercising governmental functions over Delaware was dubious, he pursued it boldly. William Penn now owned the entire west bank of the Delaware River. The Assembly confirmed the amended Frame of Government, including the declaration of religious liberty, and this code of laws constituted the "Great Law of Pennsylvania.' The three lower Delaware counties were placed under one administration, separate from Pennsylvania proper. Penn was anxious to promote settlement as rapidly as possible, both for religious (a haven to Quakers) and for economic (income for himself) reasons, Penn advertised the virtues of the new colony far and wide throughout Europe. Although he tried to impose quitrents and extracted selling prices for land, he disposed of the land at easy terms. The prices of land were cheap. Fifty acres were granted to each servant at the end of his term of service. Fifty acres also were given for each servant brought into the colony. Land sales were mainly in moderate-sized parcels. Penn soon found that at the rate of one shilling per hundred acres, quitrents were extremely difficult to collect from the settlers. Induced by religious liberty and relatively cheap land, settlers poured into Pennsylvania at a remarkably rapid rate, beginning in 1682. Most of the immigrants were Quakers; in addition to English Quakers came Welsh, Irish, and German Quakers, Penn laid out the capital, destined to become the great city of Philadelphia, and changed the name of the old Swedish settlement of Upland to Chester. The German Quakers, led by Francis Daniel Pastorius, founded Germantown, In addition to Quakers, there came other groups attracted by the promise of full religious liberty: German Lutherans, Catholics, Mennonites, and Huguenots. The growth of Pennsylvania was rapid: 3,000 immigrants arrived during this first year; by 1684 the population of Philadelphia was 2,500, and of Pennsylvania, 8,000. There were over 350 dwellings in Philadelphia by the end of 1683. By 1,689 there were over 12,000 people in Pennsylvania. One of William Penn's most notable achievements was to set a remarkable pattern of peace and justice with the Indians. In November 1682 Penn concluded the first of several treaties of peace and friendship with the Delaware Indians at Shackamaxon, near Philadelphia. The Quaker achievement of maintaining peace with the Indians for well over half a century has been disparaged; some have held that it applied to only the mild Delaware Indians, who were perpetually cowed by the fierce but pro-English Iroquois. But this surely accounts for only part of the story. For the Quakers not only insisted on voluntary purchase of land from the Indians; they also treated the Indians as human beings, as deserving of respect and dignity as anyone else. Hence they deserved to be treated with honesty, friendliness, and evenhanded justice. As a consequence, the Quakers were treated precisely the same way in return. No drop of Quaker blood was ever shed by the Indians. So strong was the mutual trust between the races that Quaker farmers unhesitatingly left their children in the care of the Indians. Originally, too, the law provided that whenever an Indian was involved in a trial, six whites and six Indians would constitute the jury. Voltaire, rapturous over the Quaker achievement, wittily and perceptively wrote that the Shackamaxon treaty was "the only treaty between Indians and Christians that was never sworn to and that was never broken." Voltaire went on to say that for the Indians "it was truly a new sight to see a sovereign [William Penn] to whom everyone said 'thou' and to whom one spoke with one's hat on one's head; a government without priests, a people without arms, citizens as equal as the magistrate, and neighbors without jealousy." Other features of the Assembly's early laws were Puritanical acts barring dramas, drunkenness, etc. More liberally, oaths were not required and the death penalty applied only to the crime of murder. Punishment was considered for purposes of reform. Feudal primogeniture was abolished. To make justice more efficient and informal, the government undertook to appoint three arbitrators in every precinct, to hand down decisions in disputes. The Quakers, however, unsatisfactorily evaded the problem of what to do about a military force. So as not to violate Quaker principle against beating arms, the Friends refused to serve in the militia, but they still maintained a militia in the province, and non-Quaker officials were appointed in command, But surely if armies are evil, then voting for taxes and for laws in support of the evil is serving that evil and therefore not to be condoned. On the question of free speech for criticizing government, laws were, unfortunately, passed prohibiting the writing or uttering of anything malicious, of anything stirring up dislike of the governor, or of anything tending to subvert the government. The tax burden was extremely light in Pennsylvania. The only tax laws were enacted in 1683; these placed a small duty on liquor and cider, a general duty on goods, and an export duty on bides and furs. But Governor Penn promptly set aside all taxes for a year to encourage settlers. In 1684, however, another bill to raise import and other duties for William Penn's personal use was tabled; instead, a group of leaders of Pennsylvania pointed out that the colony would progress much faster if there were no taxes to cripple trade. These men heroically promised to raise 500 pounds for Penn as a gift, if the tax bill were dropped. The tax bill was dropped, but not all the money raised. As might have been predicted, the first political conflict in Pennsylvania came as a protest against the curious provisions of the Frame restricting the Assembly to ratifying bills initiated by the Council. In the spring of 1683, several assemblymen urged that the Assembly be granted the power to initiate legislation. Several of Penn's devotees attacked the request as that which seemed "to render him ingratitude for his goodness towards the people." The Assembly balked too at granting the governor veto power over itself. There are indications that the non-Quaker elements in the Assembly were particularly active in criticizing the great powers assumed by the governor and the Council. One of the leaders of the incipient opposition to Penn was the non-Quaker Nicholas More, Speaker of the Assembly in 1684. And Anthony Weston, apparently a non-Quaker, was publicly whipped on three successive days for his "presumption and contempt of this government and authority." Having founded the new colony and its government, and hearing of renewed persecution of Quaker at home, William Penn returned to England in the fall of 1684. He soon found his expectations of large proprietary profits from the vast royal grant to be in vain. For the people of the struggling young colony of Pennsylvania extended the principles of liberty far beyond what Penn was willing to allow. The free people of Pennsylvania would not vote for taxes, and simply would not pay the quitrents to Penn as feudal overlord. As a result, Penn's deficits in ruling Pennsylvania were large and his fortune dwindled steadily. In late 1685 Penn ordered the officials to use force to protect the monopoly of lime production that he had granted himself, in order to prevent others from opening lime quarries. As to quitrents, Penn, to encourage settlement, had granted a moratorium until 1685. The people insisted that payment be postponed another year, and Penn's threatened legal proceedings were without success. Penn was especially aggrieved that his agents in Pennsylvania failed to press his levies upon the people with sufficient zeal. Presumably, the free tax-less air of Pennsylvania had contaminated them. As Penn complained in the fall of 1686: "The great fault is, that those who are there lose their authority one way or another in the spirits of the people and then they can do little with their outward powers." After Penn returned to England in 1684, the Council virtually succeeded him in governing the colony. The Council assumed full executive powers, and, since it was elected rather than appointed, this left Pennsylvania as a virtually self-governing colony. Though Thomas Lloyd, a Welsh Quaker, had by Penn been appointed as president of the Council, the president had virtually no power and could make no decisions on his own. Because the Council met very infrequently, and because no officials had any power to act in the interim, during these intervals Pennsylvania had almost no government at alland seemed not to suffer from the experience. During the period from late 1684 to late 1688, there were no meetings of the Council from the end of October 1684 to the end of March 1685; none from November 1686 to March 1687; and virtually none from May 1687 to late 1688. The councillors, for one thing, had little to do. And being private citizens rather than bureaucrats, and being unpaid as councillors, they had their own struggling businesses to attend to. There was no inclination under these conditions to dabble in political affairs. The laws had called for a small payment to the councillors, but, typically, it was found to be almost impossible to extract these funds from the populace. If for most of 1684-88 there was no colonywide government in existence, what of the local officials? Were they not around to provide that evidence of the state's continued existence, which so many people through the ages have deemed vital to man's very survival? The answer is no. The lower courts met only a few days a year, and the county officials were, again, private citizens who devoted very little time to upholding the law. No, the reality must be faced that the new, but rather large, colony of Pennsylvania lived for the greater part of four years in a de facto condition of individual anarchism, and seemed none the worse for the experience. Furthermore, the Assembly passed no laws after 1686, as it was involved in a continual wrangle over attempts to increase its powers and to amend, rather than just reject, legislation. A bit of government came in 1685, in the person of William Dyer as collector of the king's customs. But despite the frantic urgings of William Penn for cooperation with Dyer, Pennsylvanians persisted in their de facto anarchism by blithely and regularly evading the royal navigation laws. William Penn had the strong and distinct impression that his "holy experiment" had slipped away from him, had taken a new and bewildering turn. Penn had launched a colony that he thought would be quietly subject to his dictates and yield him a handsome profit. By providing a prosperous haven of refuge for Quakers, he had expected in turn the rewards of wealth and power. Instead, he found himself without either. Unable to collect revenue from the free and independent-minded Pennsylvanians, he saw the colony slipping gracefully into outright anarchisminto a growing and flourishing land of no taxes and virtually no state. Penn frantically determined to force Pennsylvania back into the familiar mold of the old order. Accordingly, he appointed vice commissioners of state in February 1687 "to act in the execution of laws, as if I myself were there present, reserving myself the confirming of what is done, and my peculiar royalties and advantages" Another purpose of the appointments, he added, was "that there may be a more constant residence of the honorary and governing part of the government for the keeping all things in good order." Penn appointed the five commissioners from the colony's leading citizens, Quakers and non-Quakers, and ordered them to enforce the laws. The colonists were evidently content in their anarchism, and shrewdly engaged in nonviolent resistance against the commission. In fact, they scarcely paid any attention to the commission. A year passed before the commission was even mentioned in the minutes of the Council. News about the commission was delayed until the summer of 1687 and protests against the plan poured in to Penn. The commissioners, and the protesters too, pretended that they had taken up their posts as a continuing executive. Finally, however, Penn grew suspicious and asked why he had received no communication from the supposedly governing body. Unable to delay matters any longer, the reluctant commissioners of state took office in February 1688, a year after their appointment. Three and one-half years of substantive anarchism were over. The state was back in its heaven; once more all was right with the world. Typically, Penn urged the commissioners to conceal any differences they might have among themselves, so as to deceive and overawe the public: "Show your virtues but conceal your infirmities; this will make you awful and revered with ye people." He further urged them to enforce the king's duties and to levy taxes to support the government. The commissioners confined themselves to calling the Assembly into session in the spring of 1688, and this time the Assembly did pass some laws, for the first time in three years. The two crucial bills presented by the commissioners and the Council regulated the export of deerskins and once again, levied customs duties on imports so as to obtain funds to finance the governmentin short, imposed taxes on a taxless colony. After almost passing the tax bill, the Assembly heroically defied the government once again and rejected the two bills. The state had reappeared in a flurry of activity in early 1688, but was found wanting, and the colony, still taxless, quickly lapsed back into a state of anarchism. The commissioners somehow failed to meet and the Council met only once between the spring meeting and December. Pennsylvania was once again content with a supposedly dreadful and impossible state of affairs. And when this idyll came to an end in December 1688 with the arrival of a new deputy governor, appointed by Penn, the deputy governor "had difficulty finding the officers of the government. . . [He] found the Council room deserted and covered with dust and scattered papers. The wheels of government had nearly stopped turning."<http://www.mises.org/story/1865#sdfootnote1sym>1 William Penn, seeing that the Pennsylvanians had happily lapsed into an anarchism that precluded taxes, quitrents, and political power for himself, decided to appoint a deputy governor. But the people of Pennsylvania, having tasted the sweets of pure liberty, were almost unanimously reluctant to relinquish that liberty. We have observed that the commissioners of state had failed to assume their posts and had virtually failed to function after it was presumed they accepted. No one wanted to rule others. For this reason, Thomas Lloyd, the president of the Council, refused appointment as deputy governor. At this point, Penn concluded that he could not induce the Quakers of Pennsylvania to institute a state, and so he turned to a tough non-Quaker, an old Puritan soldier and a non-Pennsylvanian, John Blackwell. Once a state has completely withered away, it is an extremely difficult task to re-create it, as Blackwell quickly discovered. If Blackwell had been under any illusions that the Quakers were a meek and passive people, he was in for a rude surprise. He was to find very quickly that devotion to peace, to liberty, and to individualism in no sense implies passive resignation to tyranny. Quite the contrary. In announcing Blackwell's appointment in September 1688, Penn made it clear that his primary task was to collect Penn's quitrents and secondarily to reestablish a government. As Penn instructed Blackwell: "Rule the meek meekly, and those that will not be ruled, rule with authority." John Blackwell's initial reception as deputy governor was an omen of things to come. Sending word ahead for someone to meet him upon his arrival in New York, he landed there only to find no one to receive him. After waiting in vain for three days, Blackwell went alone to New Jersey. When he arrived at Philadelphia on December 17, he found no escort, no parade, no reception committee. We have mentioned that Blackwell couldn't find the Council or any other government officialsand this was after he had ordered the Council to meet upon his arrival. One surly escort appeared and he refused to speak to the new governor. And when Blackwell arrived at the empty Council room, a group of boys from the neighborhood gathered around to hoot and jeer. The Quakers, led by Thomas Lloyd, now embarked on a shrewd and determined campaign of resistance to the imposition of a state. Thomas Lloyd, as keeper of the great seal, insisted that none of Blackwell's orders or commissions was valid unless stamped with the great seal. Lloyd, the keeper refused to do the stamping. It is amusing to find Edward Channing and other thorough but not overly imaginative historians deeply puzzled by this resistance: "This portion of Pennsylvania history is unusually difficult to understand. We find, for instance, so strong and intelligent a man as Thomas Lloyd declining to obey what appeared to be reasonable and legal direction on the part of the proprietor. As keeper of the great seal of the province, Lloyd refused point blank to affix that emblem of authenticity to commissions which Blackwell presented to him."<http://www.mises.org/story/1865#sdfootnote2sym>2 What Channing failed to understand was that Pennsylvanians were engaged in a true revolutionary situation, that they were all fiercely determined to thwart the reimposition of a burdensome state upon their flourishing stateless society. That is why even the most "reasonable and legal" orders were disobeyed, for Pennsylvanians had for some years been living in a world where no one was giving orders to anyone else. Lloyd persistently refused to hand over the great seal or to stamp any of Blackwell's documents or appointments with it. Furthermore, David Lloyd, clerk of the court and a distant relative of Thomas, refused absolutely to turn over the documents of cases to Blackwell even if the judges so ordered. For this act of defiance, Blackwell declared David Lloyd unfit to serve as court clerk and dismissed him, but Thomas Lloyd promptly reappointed David by virtue of his alleged power as keeper of the great seal. As a revolutionary situation grows and intensifies, unanimity can never prevail; the timid and the shortsighted begin to betray the cause. Thus the Council, frightened at the Lloyds' direct acts of rebellion, now sided with Blackwell. The pro-Blackwell clique was headed by Griffith Jones, who had consented to let Blackwell live at his home in Philadelphia. Jones warned that "it is the King's authority that is opposed and looks to me as if it were raising a force to rebel." Of the members of the Council, only Arthur Cook remained loyal to the Lloyds and to the resistance movement. Of a dozen justices of the peace named by Blackwell, four bluntly refused to serve. When Blackwell found out the true state of affairs in Pennsylvania) his state-bound soul was understandably appalled. Here was a thriving trade based on continuing violations of the navigation laws. Here, above all, were no taxes, hence no funds to set up a government. As Bronner puts it: "He [Blackwell] deplored the lack of public funds in the colony which made it impossible to hire a messenger to call the Council, a doorkeeper, and someone to search ships to enforce the laws of England. He believed that some means should be found to collect taxes for the operation of the government."<http://www.mises.org/story/1865#sdfootnote3sym>3 His general view, as he wrote to Penn, was the familiar statist cry that the colonists were suffering from excessive liberty: they had eaten more of the "honey of your concessions than their stomachs can bear." Blackwell managed to force the Council to meet every week during the first months of 1689, but his suggestion that every county be forced to maintain a permanent councillor in Philadelphia was protested by the Council. Arthur Cook led the successful resistance, maintaining that the "people were not able to bear the charge of constant attendance." As Blackwell continued to denounce the Council and Pennsylvania as a whole before his accession, Pennsylvanian opposition to his call for statism was further intensified. On the Council, Arthur Cook was joined in the intransigent camp by Samuel Richardson, who launched the cry that Penn had no power to name a deputy governor. For this open defiance, Richardson was ejected from the Council. The conflict of views continued to polarize Blackwell and the Pennsylvanians. Finally, the climax came on April 2, 1689, when Blackwell introduced proceedings for the impeachment of Thomas Lloyd, charging him with eleven high crimes and misdemeanors. (Blackwell had also refused to seat Lloyd when the latter was elected councillor from Bucks County.) In his impeachment speech, Blackwell trumpeted to his stunned listeners that Penn's and therefore his own powers over the colony were absolute. Penn was a feudal lord who could create manorial courts; furthermore, Penn could not transfer his royally delegated powers to the people, but only to a deputy such as himself. The Council, according to Blackwell's theory, existed in no sense to represent the people, but to be an instrument for William Penn's will. Blackwell concluded this harangue by threatening to unsheathe and wield his sword against his insolent and unruly opponents. Blackwell's proclamation of absolute rule now truly polarized the conflict. The choice was now narrowed: the old anarchism or the absolute rule by Blackwell. Given this confrontation, those wavering had little choice but to give Thomas Lloyd their full support. Blackwell now summarily dismissed from the Council Thomas Lloyd, Samuel Richardson, and John Eckly. On April 9, while the Councilthe supreme judicial arm of the colonywas debating the charge against Lloyd, Blackwell threatened to remove Joseph Growdon, At this point, the Council rebelled and demanded the right to approve its own members. Refusing to meet further without its duly elected members, the Council was then dissolved by Blackwell. With the Council homeward bound, the disheartened Blackwell sent his resignation to Penn, while seven councillors bitterly protested to Penn against his deputy's attempt to deprive them of their liberties. As for Blackwell, he believed the Quakers to be those agents of the devil foretold in the New Testament, who "despise dominion and speak evil of dignities." >From this point on, the decision was in the hands of Governor Penn, and Penn decided in favor of the Quakers and against Blackwell. For the rest of the year, Blackwell continued formally in office, but lost all concern for making changes or exerting his rule. From April 1689 until early 1690 he was waiting out his term. Blackwell wrote to Penn that "I now only wait for the hour of my deliverance." He summed up his grievance against the Quakers: "These people have not the principles of government amongst them, nor will be informed" <http://www.mises.org/store/Conceived-in-Liberty--P96C0.aspx>A remarkable achievement: $100 Meanwhile, the Assembly, headed by Arthur Cook, met in May and fell apart on the issue of protesting the arrest of one of its members. Between May and the end of the year, the Council met only twice. Pennsylvania was rapidly slipping back toward its previous state of anarchism. William Penn enlivened this trend by deciding to reestablish the old system with the Council as a whole his deputy governor. Writing to the leading Quakers of Pennsylvania, Penn apologized for his mistake in appointing Blackwell but wistfully reminded them that he had done so because "no Friend would undertake the Governor's place." Now he told them: "I have thought fit . . . to throw all into your hands, that you may all see the confidence I have in you." With Blackwell out of office, the Council, back in control, resumed its somnolent ways. Again headed by Thomas Lloyd, it met rarely, did virtually nothing, and told William Penn even less. Anarchism had returned in triumph to Pennsylvania. And when Secretary William Markham, who had been one of the hated Blackwell clique, submitted a petition for levying taxes to provide some financial help for William Penn, the Council completely ignored the request. ________________________ Murray Rothbard (1926-1995), economist and historian, wrote a 4-volume history of the US: Conceived in Liberty, which is available from the Mises Institute store for $100. <http://www.mises.org/story/1865#sdfootnote1anc>1 Edwin B. Bronner, William Penn's "Holy Experiment" (New York; Temple University Publications, 1962), p. 108. To Professor Bronner belongs the credit for discovering this era of anarchism in Pennsylvania. <http://www.mises.org/story/1865#sdfootnote2anc>2 Edward Channing, A History of the United States, 6 Vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1905-25) 2:125. <http://www.mises.org/story/1865#sdfootnote3anc>3 Bronner, "Holy Experiment," p. 119. In response to many requests, it is now possible to set your credit-card contribution to the Mises Institute to be recurring. You can easily set this up on-line with a donation starting at $10 per month. See the <https://www.mises.org/donate.asp>Membership Page. 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Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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[Clips] But Wouldn't Warlords Take Over?
by R.A. Hettinga 07 Jul '05

07 Jul '05

--- begin forwarded text Delivered-To: clips(a)philodox.com Date: Thu, 7 Jul 2005 15:57:37 -0400 To: "Philodox Clips List" <clips(a)philodox.com> From: "R.A. Hettinga" <rah(a)shipwright.com> Subject: [Clips] But Wouldn't Warlords Take Over? Reply-To: rah(a)philodox.com Sender: clips-bounces(a)philodox.com --- begin forwarded text From: "Mises Daily Article" <article(a)mises.org> To: "Mises Daily Article" <article(a)mises.biglist.com> Subject: But Wouldn't Warlords Take Over? Date: Thu, 7 Jul 2005 09:30:03 -0400 Mailing-List: contact article-help(a)mises.biglist.com July Special: <http://www.mises.org/store/Myth-of-National-Defense-The-P171C0.aspx>The Myth of National Defense, 20% Off (from $25 to $20). But Wouldn't Warlords Take Over? by Robert Murphy <http://www.mises.org/story/1855>[Posted on Thursday, July 07, 2005] On two separate occasions in the last couple of weeks, people have asked me a familiar question: In a system of anarcho-capitalism or the free-market order, wouldnt society degenerate into constant battles between private warlords? Unfortunately I didnt give adequate answers at the times, but I hope in this article to prove the adage that later is better than never. APPLES AND ORANGES When dealing with the warlord objection, we need to keep our comparisons fair. It wont do to compare society A, which is filled with evil, ignorant savages who live under anarchy, with society B, which is populated by enlightened, law-abiding citizens who live under limited government. The anarchist doesnt deny that life might be better in society B. What the anarchist does claim is that, for any given population, the imposition of a coercive government will make things worse. The absence of a State is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition to achieve the free society. To put the matter differently: It is not enough to demonstrate that a state of private-property anarchy could degenerate into ceaseless war, where no single group is strong enough to subjugate all challengers, and hence no one can establish order. After all, communities living under a State degenerate into civil war all the time. We should remember that the frequently cited cases of Colombia and now Iraq are not demonstrations of anarchy-turned-into-chaos, but rather examples of government-turned-into-chaos. For the warlord objection to work, the statist would need to argue that a given community would remain lawful under a government, but that the same community would break down into continuous warfare if all legal and military services were privatized. The popular case of Somalia, therefore, helps neither side.<http://www.mises.org/story/1855#_edn1>[i] It is true that Rothbardians should be somewhat disturbed that the respect for non-aggression is apparently too rare in Somalia to foster the spontaneous emergence of a totally free market community. But by the same token, the respect for the law was also too weak to allow <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Somalia#Somali_Civil_War>the original Somali government to maintain order. Now that weve focused the issue, I think there are strong reasons to suppose that civil war would be much less likely in a region dominated by private defense and judicial agencies, rather than by a monopoly State. Private agencies own the assets at their disposal, whereas politicians (especially in democracies) merely exercise temporary control over the States military equipment. Bill Clinton was perfectly willing to <http://news.telegraph.co.uk/htmlContent.jhtml?html=/archive/1998/08/21/wemb…>fire off dozens of cruise missiles when the Lewinsky scandal was picking up steam. Now regardless of ones beliefs about Clintons motivations, clearly Slick Willie would have been less likely to launch such an attack if he had been the CEO of a private defense agency that could have sold the missiles on the open market for <http://www.chinfo.navy.mil/navpalib/factfile/missiles/wep-toma.html>$569,000 each .<http://www.mises.org/story/1855#_edn2>[ii] We can see this principle in the case of the United States. In the 1860s, would large scale combat have broken out on anywhere near the same scale if, instead of the two factions controlling hundreds of thousands of conscripts, all military commanders had to hire voluntary mercenaries and pay them a market wage for their services? CONTRACT THEORY OF GOVERNMENT I can imagine a reader generally endorsing the above analysis, yet still resisting my conclusion. He or she might say something like this: In a state of nature, people initially have different views of justice. Under market anarchy, different consumers would patronize dozens of defense agencies, each of which attempts to use its forces to implement incompatible codes of law. Now its true that these professional gangs might generally avoid conflict out of prudence, but the equilibrium would still be precarious. To avoid this outcome, my critic could elaborate, citizens put aside their petty differences and agree to support a single, monopoly agency, which then has the power to crush all challengers to its authority. This admittedly raises the new problem of controlling the Leviathan, but at least it solves the problem of ceaseless domestic warfare. There are several problems with this possible approach. First, it assumes that the danger of private warlords is worse than the threat posed by a tyrannical central government. Second, there is the inconvenient fact that no such voluntary formation of a State ever occurred. Even those citizens who, say, supported the ratification of the U.S. Constitution were never given the option of living in market anarchy; instead they had to choose between government under the Articles of Confederation or government under the Constitution. But for our purposes, the most interesting problem with this objection is that, were it an accurate description, it would be unnecessary for such a people to form a government. If, by hypothesis, the vast majority of peoplealthough they have different conceptions of justicecan all agree that it is wrong to use violence to settle their honest disputes, then market forces would lead to peace among the private police agencies. Yes, it is perfectly true that people have vastly different opinions concerning particular legal issues. Some people favor capital punishment, some consider abortion to be murder, and there would be no consensus on how many guilty people should go free to avoid the false conviction of one innocent defendant. Nonetheless, if the contract theory of government is correct, the vast majority of individuals can agree that they should settle these issues not through force, but rather through an orderly procedure (such as is provided by periodic elections). But if this does indeed describe a particular population, why would we expect such virtuous people, as consumers, to patronize defense agencies that routinely used force against weak opponents? Why wouldnt the vast bulk of reasonable customers patronize defense agencies that had interlocking arbitration agreements, and submitted their legitimate disputes to reputable, disinterested arbitrators? Why wouldnt the private, voluntary legal framework function as an orderly mechanism to settle matters of public policy? Again, the above description would not apply to every society in history. But by the same token, such warlike people would also fail to maintain the rule of law in a limited State. FREE RIDERS? A sophisticated apologist for the Stateespecially one versed in mainstream economicsmight come back with yet another justification: The reason a limited government is necessary is that we cant trust the market to adequately fund legitimate police forces. It may be true that 95 percent of a population would have similar enough views with respect to justice such that peace would obtain if they all contributed substantially to defense agencies dedicated to enforcing their views. However, the apologist could continue, if these police agencies have no right to extract contributions from everyone who endorses their actions, then they will be able to field a much smaller force. The market fails specifically because of the free rider problem: When a legitimate firm cracks down on a rogue agency, all law abiding people benefit, but in a free market they would not be obliged to pay for this public good. Consequently, rogue agencies, funded by malevolent outlaws, will have a much wider scope of operation under anarchy. Again, there are several possible replies to such a position. First, let us reflect that a large standing army, ready to crush minority dissenters, is not an unambiguously desirable feature of government. Second, the alleged problem of free riders would not be nearly as disastrous as many economists believe. For example, insurance companies would internalize the externalities to a large degree. It may be true that an inefficient number of serial killers would be apprehended if the relevant detective and police agencies had to solicit contributions from individual households. (Sure, everyone gets a slight benefit from knowing a serial killer has been caught, but whether or not one person contributes probably wont make the difference between capture or escape.) Yet insurance companies that each held policies for thousands of people in a major city would be willing to contribute hefty amounts to eliminate the menace of a serial killer. (After all, if he kills again, one of these companies will have to pay out hundreds of thousands of dollars to the estate of the victim.) The same reasoning demonstrates that the free market could adequately fund programs to contain rogue agencies. Third, people need to really picture the nightmare scenario to see how absurd it is. Imagine a bustling city, such as New York, that is initially a free market paradise. Is it really plausible that over time rival gangs would constantly grow, and eventually terrorize the general public?<http://www.mises.org/story/1855#_edn3>[iii] Remember, these would be admittedly criminal organizations; unlike the city government of New York, there would be no ideological support for these gangs. We must consider that in such an environment, the law-abiding majority would have all sorts of mechanisms at their disposal, beyond physical confrontation. Once private judges had ruled against a particular rogue agency, the private banks could freeze its assets (up to the amount of fines levied by the arbitrators). In addition, the private utility companies could shut down electricity and water to the agencys headquarters, in accordance with standard provisions in their contracts. <http://www.mises.org/store/Myth-of-National-Defense-The-P171C0.aspx> <http://www.mises.org/store/Myth-of-National-Defense-The-P171C0.aspx>The Myth of National Defense, 20% off Of course, it is theoretically possible that a rogue agency could overcome these obstacles, either through intimidation or division of the spoils, and take over enough banks, power companies, grocery stores, etc. that only full-scale military assault would conquer it. But the point is, from an initial position of market anarchy, these would-be rulers would have to start from scratch. In contrast, under even a limited government, the machinery of mass subjugation is ready and waiting to be seized. CONCLUSION The standard objection that anarchy would lead to battling warlords is unfounded. In those communities where such an outcome would occur, the addition of a State wouldnt help. Indeed, the precise opposite is true: The voluntary arrangements of a private property society would be far more conducive to peace and the rule of law, than the coercive setup of a parasitical monopoly government. <mailto:robert_p_murphy@yahoo.com>Robert Murphy is an adjunct scholar of the Mises Institute. He teaches economics at Hillsdale College. See the Murphy <http://www.mises.org/articles.asp?mode=a&author=Murphy>Archive. Buy his <http://www.mises.org/store/Chaos-Theory-P190C0.aspx>book on the stateless society. Discuss this article on the <http://www.mises.org/blog>blog. <http://www.mises.org/story/1855#_ednref1>[i] Having made this concession, I should point out that <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Somalia#Recent_History>anarcho-capitalists can see their theories borne out in Somalia to some extent. <http://www.mises.org/story/1855#_ednref2>[ii] Its true that this figure would be lower for a private defense firm, since it would control costs much better than the Pentagon. Nonetheless it is still true that a private firm would husband its stockpile of weapons better than State officials. <http://www.mises.org/story/1855#_ednref3>[iii] Let us also keep in mind that currently, mob groups (1) do not extract anywhere near as much money, nor kill as many people, as any government in a typical days work, and (2) they derive their current strength from government prohibitions (on gambling, drugs, prostitution, loan-sharking, etc.) and hence are not representative at all of an anarchist world. In response to many requests, it is now possible to set your credit-card contribution to the Mises Institute to be recurring. You can easily set this up on-line with a donation starting at $10 per month. See the <https://www.mises.org/donate.asp>Membership Page. This is one way to ensure that your support for the Mises Institute is ongoing. <http://www.mises.org/story/1855>[Print Friendly Page] <http://www.mises.org/store/> <http://www.mises.org/elist.asp>Mises Email List Services <https://www.mises.org/donate.asp>Join the Mises Institute <http://www.mises.org/store>Mises.org Store <http://www.mises.org/>Home | <http://www.mises.org/about.asp>About | <http://www.mises.org/elist.asp>Email List | <http://www.google.com/u/Mises>Search | <http://www.mises.org/contact.asp>Contact Us | <http://www.mises.org/journals.asp>Periodicals | <http://www.mises.org/articles.asp>Articles | <http://www.mises.org/fun.asp>Games & Fun <http://www.mises.org/fun.asp>FAQ | <http://www.mises.org/StudyGuideDisplay.asp?SubjID=117>EBooks | <http://www.mises.org/scholar.asp>Resources | <http://www.mises.org/catalog.asp>Catalog | <https://www.mises.org/donate.asp>Contributions | <http://www.mises.org/calendar.asp>Freedom Calendar You are subscribed as: rah(a)ibuc.com Manage <http://mises.biglist.com/list/article/?p=prefs&pre=l&e=13958347&pw=1tyvx5to…>your account. Unsubscribe <http://mises.biglist.com/list/article/?m=423&p=unsub&pre=l&e=13958347&pw=1t…>here or send email to <mailto:article-unsub-13958347@mises.biglist.com>this address. Report abuse or Spam on the <http://mises.biglist.com/abuse/article/13958347/423>abuse page. --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' _______________________________________________ Clips mailing list Clips(a)philodox.com http://www.philodox.com/mailman/listinfo/clips --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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[Clips] Re: [Forwarded] RealID: How to become an unperson.
by R.A. Hettinga 07 Jul '05

07 Jul '05

--- begin forwarded text Delivered-To: clips(a)philodox.com Date: Thu, 7 Jul 2005 15:50:46 -0400 To: "Philodox Clips List" <clips(a)philodox.com> From: "R.A. Hettinga" <rah(a)shipwright.com> Subject: [Clips] Re: [Forwarded] RealID: How to become an unperson. Reply-To: rah(a)philodox.com Sender: clips-bounces(a)philodox.com --- begin forwarded text Delivered-To: cryptography(a)metzdowd.com To: hadmut(a)danisch.de Cc: cryptography(a)metzdowd.com Subject: Re: [Forwarded] RealID: How to become an unperson. From: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry(a)piermont.com> Date: Thu, 07 Jul 2005 09:52:28 -0400 User-Agent: Gnus/5.1006 (Gnus v5.10.6) Emacs/21.4 (berkeley-unix) Sender: owner-cryptography(a)metzdowd.com hadmut(a)danisch.de writes: > But nevertheless, I do not understand why americans are so afraid of > an ID card. Perhaps I can explain why I am. I do not trust governments. I've inherited this perspective. My grandfather sent his children abroad from Speyer in Germany just after the ascension of Adolf Hitler in the early 1930s -- his neighbors thought he was crazy, but few of them survived the coming events. My father was sent to Alsace, but he stayed too long in France and ended up being stuck there after the occupation. If it were not for forged papers, he would have died. (He had a most amusing story of working as an electrician rewiring a hotel used as office space by the Gestapo in Strasbourg -- his forged papers were apparently good enough that no one noticed.) Ultimately, he and other members of the family escaped France by "illegally" crossing the border into Switzerland. (I put "illegally" in quotes because I don't believe one has any moral obligation to obey a "law" like that, especially since it would leave you dead if you obeyed.) Anyway, if the governments of the time had actually had access to modern anti-forgery techniques, I might never have been born. To you, ID cards are a nice way to keep things orderly. To me, they are a potential death sentence. Most Europeans seem to see government as the friendly, nice set of people who keep the trains running on time and who watch out for your interests. A surprisingly large fraction of Americans are people or the descendants of people who experienced the institution of government as the thing that tortured their friends to death, or gassed them, or stole all their money and nearly starved them to death, etc. Hundreds of millions of people died at the hands of their own governments in the 20th century, and many of the people that escaped from such horrors moved here. They view things like ID cards and mandatory registry of residence with the local police as the way that the government rounded up their friends and relatives so they could be killed. I do not wish to argue about which view is correct. Perhaps I am wrong and Government really is the large friendly group of people that are there to help you. Perhaps the cost/benefit analysis of ID cards and such makes us look silly. I'm not addressing the question of whether my view is right here -- I'm just trying to explain the psychological mindset that would make someone think ID cards are a very bad idea. So, the next time one of your friends in Germany asks why the crazy Americans think ID cards and such are a bad thing, remember my father, and remember all the people like him who fled to the US over the last couple hundred years and who left children that still remember such things, whether from China or North Korea or Germany or Spain or Russia or Yugoslavia or Chile or lots of other places. Perry --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo(a)metzdowd.com --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' _______________________________________________ Clips mailing list Clips(a)philodox.com http://www.philodox.com/mailman/listinfo/clips --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Re: Private Homes may be taken for public good
by Steve Schear 07 Jul '05

07 Jul '05

At 10:19 PM 6/23/2005, you wrote: >On Fri, 24 Jun 2005, Jay Listo wrote: > > > Well, once the Supreme Court starts coming up with stuff like this, you > > know you've been Bush-whacked. > >Maybe you should take another look at who voted how. The Bushies >dissented on this opinion. Go figure. Not surprising at all. The Bush camp's court agenda is spearheaded by members of the Federalist Society which wants to roll back many of the SC's decisions of the early-mid 20th century (esp. the Social Security Act and the expansion of the Commerce Clause during FDR's reign). Steve

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Auction bid : Rolex or Cartier or Breitling
by Billy 06 Jul '05

06 Jul '05

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The Nazification Of America ("Show Me Your Papers" - Day 1)
by J.A. Terranson 06 Jul '05

06 Jul '05

For those of you who may have missed it, today was the first day of the new "Real ID Act", a/k/a, the American Nazification Papers Act. I wouldn't have know myself except that I recently moved, and wanted to exchange my current Illinois drivers license for a Missouri one. Not so fast... "You have a passport?" "No, I don't travel." "A certified copy of your original birth certificate?" "Haven't had one since I was born, fifty years ago. And since I was born about 1500 miles from here, getting one is no small task." "Too bad. Your old license is invalid and you can't get another one in any state, starting today, without at least one of the two documents, PLUS secondary ID to back them up." Even though I have a current license, and even though I am in their system as having held a valid Missouri license for 15+ years, photo included, none of it is good enough. OK, so I have no choice, I go to the post office to get a Passport - same thing. Fine, I'll just order the birth certificate and get it over with, right? Wrong. New York wants affirmative proof of identity for a copy now: passport or your [missing] original birth certificate. Anyone else see a circular problem here? "I need a new birth certificate because the old one was lost about forty years ago. And I don't have a passport to prove my identity." "Get your parents to testify who you are, and make sure they bring their passports." "They are both dead." "Sorry Sir, I'm afraid we won't be able to help you then." <click> Durbin was right. And he didn't even scratch the surface! Anyone who thinks this "Real ID Act" is about getting false ID out of the hands of "The Terrorists" is an idiot: they will simply print their own drivers licenses - this is about forcing the regular population to get used to intrastate passports. This act essentially forces you to have a passport for everyday things like banking, car purchases and certain repairs, checks, etc. We have literally allowed the Nazification to begin, and we've even welcomed it with eager open arms - all in the name of "Fighting Terror". Crystal clear, pure unadulterated bullshit. -- Yours, J.A. Terranson sysadmin(a)mfn.org 0xBD4A95BF "Never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty." Joseph Pulitzer 1907 Speech

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