http://www.lewrockwell.com/murphy/murphy19.html Chaos Theory by <mailto:robert_p_murphy@yahoo.com>Bob Murphy Throughout history, there have been countless arguments advanced to support the State. None of them has been valid. This essay will address a certain class of these arguments, whose sleight-of-hand consists in a definitional trick. My purpose here is not to make the positive case for pure laissez-faire, but merely to show that each pro-government argument is a non sequitur. Anarchy is the absence of government, both in political science and everyday usage (it is the first definition given by Websters, e.g.). Chaos, in the context of social science, refers to lawlessness, or the absence of a relative degree of regularity in human affairs. (I say a "relative degree" because, obviously, virtually all humans will always obey the rule of, e.g., avoiding someone with leprosy or not slaughtering every female in sight. The laws to which lawlessness is opposed are generally meant to imply the sometimes irksome rules necessary for a civil society.) It should be immediately clear that anarchy and chaos are distinct things; you can have anarchy without chaos (e.g. groups of humans from the Stone Age  if you subscribe to evolutionary accounts) and you can have chaos without anarchy (e.g. the French Revolution, if you subscribe to historical accounts). Any argument that conflates anarchy and chaos is thus invalid. Before proceeding, I ask the reader to indulge me in a brief digression. People often chide me for calling myself an anarchist, rather than a libertarian. The term anarchy conjures up images of atheist nuts who go around throwing bombs. Wouldnt it be much more palatable to make appeals for liberty, rather than for anarchy? Sure it would; but Im not running for class president. (I tried that once. I had the funniest posters an eighth-grader ever designed, and I posted them in the bathroom, where everyone would be sure to see! The other kids peed on them. I didnt win. Is that why Im so bitter?) Also, the statists have had quite a time of stealing labels. The good guys used to be the "liberals." No longer. The good guys used to be the ones championing ever more "rights" for the individual. No longer. The very word liberty has been raped, and I have no doubt that libertarian can be perverted to mean whatever the ruling class wants it to mean. Aside from the danger of devious usage, there is also the legitimate distinction that must be made between those who advocate a "night watchman" state  which merely enforces property rights  and those who favor complete abolition of government. Many people of the former group refer to themselves as libertarians. (They are inconsistent and confused, of course, but thats okay. Theyll come around.) Thus, to avoid any possible confusion, I advocate anarchy, pure and simple. (Also, it sounds tough to say you are an anarchist. Well, it looks tough in print. It wont help you in a fight or anything.) I should also mention that anarchy is not a good of itself; what I really desire is the truly free society. Its just that, in my opinion, only anarchy can achieve this. So, in terms of ethics or morality, I would say the highest end is freedom. But in terms of political science  dealing with forms of government  I would say the goal is anarchy. (To quote my friends bumper sticker: "Theres no government like no government.") This is somewhat analogous to the approach of Friedrich Hayek, who believed in democracy as the best means to a (relatively) free society. Although he was wrong in this conclusion, he was not so naive as to worship democracy per se. Lastly: Certain wise-alecks think they can refute my ideal of "absolute freedom" with a flippant syllogism. One of my smug conservative professors at Hillsdale College (which had a plaque in the library espousing the ideal of "Ordered Liberty," which struck me as akin to "Partial Pregnancy") offered an argument along the following lines: You cant have absolute or total freedom, because if Im free to kill you, then you cant be free to live. This is the sort of strawman logic you expect from sophomore philosophy majors (also prevalent at Hillsdale), which goes through only on a twisted definition of freedom. Imagine the scene from Mad Max, where Mel Gibson gets thrown into the cage to fight that huge brute. (You know, when everyone starts chanting, "Two men enter, one man leave!") Now suppose the "referee" says to the combatants, "All right guys, anything goes!" My question: Would it be legitimate for Gibson, as hes getting his head smashed in, to complain to the ref: "Liar! You said anything goes! I wanted to recite Hamlet!" Of course not. Yet this is precisely the argument of my college professor. So, when I say I desire a society of total freedom, I mean a society where people respect the property of others. I do not mean the physically impossible situation where two people both eat the same piece of pizza, or where people have the "freedom" to jump over the Moon. Finally, on to my main point. One of the most frequent statist tricks is the following: (1) The government assumes the responsibility of X. (2) The government screws up horribly. (3) The government cites the mess as proof of the necessity for government action. (For example, after every plane crash, people demand the FAA gets more funding. After the accidental bombing of the Chinese Embassy, an ex-CIA agent wrote an Op-Ed piece explaining that budget hikes were necessary to update the maps. Imagine if Firestone, after the recall fiasco, explained that it needed to raise its prices in order to provide safer tires. Im sure Ralph Nader would give them a thumbs-up.) P.J. ORourke, in his funny book, <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0871137607/lewrockwell/>Eat the Rich, has a chapter called "Bad Capitalism," in which he says that a certain country (Albania?) is the victim of a giant Ponzi scheme  i.e. you cant have too much economic freedom. Although ORourke doesnt explain how a Ponzi scheme can make the group as a whole poorer (the original Ponzi, after all, got rich  thats why he started his scheme), his basic message is a good one, so Im not too bothered by his slight error. The same cannot be said for Ian Fisher, who wrote an August 10th article for the NY Times entitled, "Somali Businesses Stunted by Too-Free Enterprise." After detailing the thriving business competition in Somalia, Fisher sadly relates: What Somalia does not have is a government...[making] it the worlds purest laboratory for capitalism. No one collects taxes. Business is booming. Libertarians of the world, unite! So it may come as a surprise that business people in Mogadishu, the wrecked and lawless capital, are begging for a government. They would love to be taxed and would gladly let politicians meddle at least a bit in their affairs. If everyone is willing to pay for protection services, whats stopping them? Further, its a bit fishy to describe a group of warlords who use violent thugs to exact tribute as the absence of government, since a government is, among other things, a group of warlords who use violent thugs to exact tribute. (I know, I know, the common argument against anarchy is that it would entail the situation of warrior bands, and that I seem to be using a definitional trick myself  but this articles already way too long. All I shall mention further on the Somalia example is this: Even if it were the case that the Somalia situation can happen when we overthrow "government," this alone would prove nothing. I can just as well point to Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, Maoist China, and Pol Potian Cambodia as examples of government gone bad. Take your pick.) But the best comes from a recent haughty piece by that oh-so-clever Paulina Borsook, who first quotes from her book, <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1891620789/lewrockwell/>Cyberselfish: Quiz: where would you want to do business in 2000? In Russia where theres no regulation, no central government, no rule of law; or in Northern California where the roads are mostly well-paved and well-patrolled and trucks and airplanes are safer than not...where people mostly dont have to pay protection money, and the majority of law-enforcement personnel are not terribly corrupt or brutal? This is classic. Now Russia is cited as an example of pure capitalism? As a land of no central government?? Give me a break. Borsook destroys her own argument by saying the law enforcement personnel are not terribly corrupt or brutal. (We overlook what a silly defense indeed it is to say, "The majority of people under my proposed system will not be terribly corrupt or brutal.") By this she is undoubtedly referring to the fact that relatively more police officers in Russia are corrupt and brutal. Well then, were not dealing with anarchy, are we, Ms. Borsook? (Oh yeah: People in California do pay protection money: They call it T-A-X-E-S.) Borsook then continues: I will instead mention a recent nasty epidemic of food-poisoning that just erupted at a Mexican restaurant in San Mateo county....Turns out the restaurant hadnt been inspected in more than a year because  surprise!  it turns out budget cuts made it impossible to hire enough health inspectors. But hey, government is the Great Satan and we all believe in self-regulation and who needs taxes? Again, I feel silly even pointing this out, but this sort of argument is made over and over. Do you see what Borsook is trying to pull here? She is ridiculing those who think the government does a bad job regulating private industry. To demonstrate their error, she cites an example of government doing a bad job regulating private industry. Like I said, you hear this sort of argument anytime chaos erupts. So Bob, youre opposed to government control, eh? Try telling that to the peasants in Colombia! Ho ho, Bob, youre for anarchy, eh? Why dont you move to the Gaza Strip? The Colombian case is exactly the same as Borsooks Mexican restaurant. The Colombian government taxes its citizens in order to provide police and legal services, and it fails miserably. We must never confuse governments impotence with governments absence. And whatever else you want to call it  i.e. unwarranted oppression or legitimate defense of settlers  you certainly cannot describe government soldiers shooting children as anarchy. Are certain regions in chaos? Sure. In anarchy? I wish. December 1, 2000 Bob Murphy is a graduate student in New York City. <http://www.lewrockwell.com>Back to LewRockwell.com Home Page <http://ad-adex3.flycast.com/server/click/Antiwarcom/Mainad/123456> --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@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'