- 09 Dec 2018 08:34
#14970656
We ordinarily think of a libertarian society as one of maximum freedom and maximum privacy: a society where you can do whatever you like (so long as it's peaceful) and no one else can pry into your personal affairs.
Rich suggests otherwise. A libertarian society, he argues, is one in which public space — both physical space and decision space — has been privatized as far as possible. This is desirable, he says, because it is easier to police irresponsible behavior in private space than in public space. Since no one can be excluded from public space, no one has any incentive to maintain it properly, and so a "tragedy of the commons" is generated. By contrast, in a world where everything is privately owned, we must abide, wherever we go, by the rules laid down by the owners. Rich envisions a society in which no one is allowed access to the means of cooperation with others unless he submits to a multitude of restrictions: bonding, disarmament, full disclosure of finances, and so forth. Those who do not comply with these rules will find themselves cut off from food, drink, communication, transportation, even the use of restroom facilities.
Rich's arguments are a useful corrective to the popular notion that a libertarian society would be a hopeless chaos. But we may feel some discomfort at how far Rich's vision goes in the direction of the opposite extreme. In a famous quote, the 19th-century anarchist Proudhon wrote:
"To be GOVERNED is to be kept in sight, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, ...noted, registered, ... taxed, stamped, measured, ... assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished."
[The Columbia Encyclopedia defines government as "a system of social control under which the right to make laws, and the right to enforce them, is vested in a particular group in society".]
But if to be free is also to be inspected, licensed, numbered, stamped, authorized, and so forth, we might wonder whether building a Free Nation is worth the effort.
But is this world of hyper-regulated anarchy the only possible model for a libertarian society? I don't think so. But to see why it is not, I suggest we need to rethink our assumption that a libertarian society must be a society without public space.
http://freenation.org/a/f33l2.html
Rich suggests otherwise. A libertarian society, he argues, is one in which public space — both physical space and decision space — has been privatized as far as possible. This is desirable, he says, because it is easier to police irresponsible behavior in private space than in public space. Since no one can be excluded from public space, no one has any incentive to maintain it properly, and so a "tragedy of the commons" is generated. By contrast, in a world where everything is privately owned, we must abide, wherever we go, by the rules laid down by the owners. Rich envisions a society in which no one is allowed access to the means of cooperation with others unless he submits to a multitude of restrictions: bonding, disarmament, full disclosure of finances, and so forth. Those who do not comply with these rules will find themselves cut off from food, drink, communication, transportation, even the use of restroom facilities.
Rich's arguments are a useful corrective to the popular notion that a libertarian society would be a hopeless chaos. But we may feel some discomfort at how far Rich's vision goes in the direction of the opposite extreme. In a famous quote, the 19th-century anarchist Proudhon wrote:
"To be GOVERNED is to be kept in sight, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, ...noted, registered, ... taxed, stamped, measured, ... assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished."
[The Columbia Encyclopedia defines government as "a system of social control under which the right to make laws, and the right to enforce them, is vested in a particular group in society".]
But if to be free is also to be inspected, licensed, numbered, stamped, authorized, and so forth, we might wonder whether building a Free Nation is worth the effort.
But is this world of hyper-regulated anarchy the only possible model for a libertarian society? I don't think so. But to see why it is not, I suggest we need to rethink our assumption that a libertarian society must be a society without public space.
http://freenation.org/a/f33l2.html
Socialism without freedom is fascism.