This Memorable Day

James A. Donald jamesd at echeque.com
Wed Nov 3 11:11:15 PST 2004


     --
R.A. Hettinga wrote:
> Seriously, any future crypto-anarchy / anarcho-capitalist society is
> probably not going to succeed unless it can project *more* force
> than we can project currently with force monopoly -- not less. That
> *doesn't* mean centralized, but it certainly means *more*.

It is often argued that since war, violence, etc, are public goods,
only a state can efficiently defend against states.  Yet in most wars
since 1980, non state entities have done most of the heavy lifting
-loose coalitions containing many independent groups, for example the
contras, the holy warriors that overthrew the Taliban.

Looking at the events of World War II, it looks to me that it does
indeed require a state to conquer and occupy a hostile government, as
the US conquered and occupied Germany, but the Japanese army was
broken by a thousand small groups.

Defeating a large scale evildoer is a public good - but large scale
evil consists of many acts of small scale evil, and defeating each
particular small scale evil act is a private good.

When it came to the part of the war that was purely a public good,
conquering the German and Japanese homelands, America did indeed bear
almost the whole burden, but when it came to defending Australia
against the Japanese, the Australians bore the major burden, and
similarly for most other battlefields outside of the aggressors'
homelands.  Most German troops died fighting Russians in Russia, not
Americans in Germany. The particular victims of particular Japanese or
German acts of aggression counter attacked those particular Japanese
or Germans attacking them.

National defense, or at least some forms of national defense, such as
destroying Hitler's Germany, is a public good, and genuinely anarchist
societies are apt to under provide public goods.

On the other hand governments tend to provide the wrong kind of public
goods, providing what serves their purposes rather than the supposed
purpose of the public good,  Further, when a government gets in the
business of providing a some supposed public good, it creates a lobby,
which results in the public good being over provided, thus for example
ever lengthening copyright, ever more expansive patents for ever more
trivial "inventions", and, of course, the infamous military/industrial
complex, such as Haliburton.

War, for example destroying Hitler's Germany, is the most plausibly
essential public good, the strongest justification for the state.  But
when we look at the defeat of the Soviet Union, or the defeat of the
Taliban, this argument looks considerably weaker.  The heavy lifting
in those wars was done by loose alliances of small groups, for example
the holy warriors and the contras, which did not rely on a single
large centralized authority to support the public good of defeat of an
oppressive regime.

In the second world war, public good theory would lead us to expect
that the most powerful state, America would bear almost the whole
burden of defeating the threat, and smaller states would hang back and
cheer the winner.

The holy warriors were probably effective against the Soviets because
each holy warrior was defending his home, and each small group of holy
warriors were defending their village. Among the contras, it appears
that the Indian contras defended the Indians against forced
collectivization, breaking up collectives with extreme violence and
killing the collectives functionaries and administrators, often in
disturbingly unpleasant ways, but failed to participate in other
contra struggles.

Thus anarchic forms of society appear to be capable of waging war
defensively with considerably effectiveness, but are considerably less
capable of taking the war to places far away.

This is not such a severe limitation as it might appear, since the
Soviet Union was overthrown by essentially defensive wars, leading to
the dominoes falling all the way to Moscow.

It is the nature of Islam to impose dhimmitude on nonbelievers,
without much regard for official state boundaries.  "Dhimmitude" being
a dangerously inferior status where one's property is insecure, and
women are apt to be raped.  Existing Muslim states often fail to
prosecute crimes against infidels, and when crimes are prosecuted,
penalties are slight.

The West has tried to confine Dhimmitude inside a system of states -
the Muslims can oppress their minorities inside Muslim state
boundaries all they like, but cannot oppress outside Muslim state
boundaries.  This artificial boundary bends under pressure, creating
the conflict we now see.

The anarchic equivalent of the current policy of imperial state
building, would be to enter mutual defense arrangements with dhimmi,
without regard to state boundaries.

The Taliban had imposed Dhimmi status on Muslims they did not agree
with in Afghanistan.  An anarchic America would not be able to occupy
Iraq, nor would it be capable of "building democracy" in Afghanistan,
but it would be able to do the equivalent of sending special forces to
assist the Northern Alliance.


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          James A. Donald
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      Jyneib4EqTRVeeBY0/BjpjdEidDWCmp8YSQkckag
      47p0ym1TCnknVRDL2q1wHz9ykyIr4wMdZjZBin9s/





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