From: Michael Lorrey (mike@lorrey.com)
Date: Mon Dec 14 1998 - 15:33:52 MST
den Otter wrote:
> > From: Dick.Gray@bull.com
> > Emmanuel Charpentier <manu@cybercable.fr> asks:
> >
> > >How could an anarcho-capitalist nation deal with an outside
> > >aggression???
> >
> > >Can competing entreprises or individuals offer the same level of
> > >service than a one block organisation, like the army?
> >
> > Remember the American Revolution, Emmanuel? The populace didn't need
> a
> > government to drive off the British aggressors, they took up arms of
> their
> > own volition - and the rest is history.
> >
> > Too bad the revolution has been consistently betrayed by the
> government
> > that was set up specifically to perpetuate it.
>
> And there you have it: a power vacuum will *always* be filled by some
> new form of government. Anarchy is inherently unstable due to human
> nature (we freedom-loving individualists are a small minority).
Well, its all a matter of what memes are used to sustain the system.
Unfortunately, we have had too many people making anti-individualist
slogans like "United we stand, divided we fall.", "We must hang
together, or surely we shall all hang separately.", "when evil men
conspire, free men must associate." into grand patriotic mottos, while
individualist mottos like "Give me liberty or give me death", "Live
free or die", "a society which surrenders some small measure of freedom
for security shall end up with neither", "from time to time the tree of
liberty must be watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots." are
reacted against as extremist, even though they were stated by the
founding fathers (Thomas Paine, General John Stark, Ben Franklin, and
Thomas Jefferson, respectively).
While the American Revolution was very broad based, it was not supported
by more than a simple majority at the time, so collectivist and feudal
serf groupthink was still pretty prevalent even after the most able
Tories headed back to England or moved to Canada after the war, and the
feds had to work hard to keep the colonies from splitting up after the
war anyways, especially when such questions as slavery were debated.
Nor is it a given that any vacuum will be filled by a government. While
a primitive anarchy will tend to be colonized by a more advanced
government, a high tech anarchy would not necessarily do so, especially
when high power, low cost mini weapons give the individual the ability
to exert a big punch against a larger enemy, especially in an insurgency
environment. Additionally, an established society of PPAs in an
ungoverned market is hardly a vacuum of power, its merely distributed,
rather than centralized power.
Mike Lorrey
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