Based on early episodes of Stefan Molyneux’s podcast on freedomainradio.com please check that out to fully understand both his view and my response.
Hi Rohan
Like most things in modern life the current medium for
transferring ideas via short sharp instant messages is not adequate at all for
philosophical commentary and conveying complex ideas. I have not listened to
enough of Stefan Molyneux’s podcasts to give a definitive commentary on all of
his ideas so instead I will merely comment on what I have heard. There may very
well be a counter argument he makes in his later works for everything I say.
However the issues with what his podcasts have laid out so far have huge and
fundamental weaknesses that make the system he is selling not only unworkable
but not the fluffy utopia that it seems. These are of course just my thoughts
and I hope they are interesting.
This shall be made like any argument with a series of
premises mostly laid down in the podcasts which are then assessed and then
eventually my conclusion postulated in the previous paragraph should carry some
weight. To quickly add to this my own thoughts are that ultimate freedom would
be a wonderful thing however just because you really want it doesn’t mean it
exists, Otherwise my pet dragon and magical powers would have freed me from my
job a long while ago.
I would also like to add as a note that anything Stefan says
should be carefully scrutinised after listening to his introduction where he
promised a logical and empirical approach what was delivered was only a
skeleton version of this product. Making large concessions and sweeping
absolute statements which almost always declare an absolute right or wrong. I
have always taken a degree of scepticism of anyone who claims an absolute
answer in anything that isn’t mathematics and logic and even then these should
not remain unquestioned.
Now the meat and bones to be looked at one part at a time.
This will be ultimately a utilitarian approach on how viable this political
view as well as a few ideas on how nice this system actually is to the
individuals that make it up. The bullet points bellow will encompass the raison
d’être of each section.
- Gaining Power
- Maintaining Power
- Human Nature
- The ugly side of the free market
Gaining Power
The pursuit of power and control over large groups of people
as obviously been a steady evolution from man kinds early days to now where we
have large countries controlled by states which exist in some eyes to look after their population
and in others eyes to manipulate and use them for nefarious ends. The truth
probably lies somewhere in the middle. Now the Stateless society, which in this
case will always refer to Stefan Molyneux’s model to be found on
freedomainradio.com. This is a model promoting pacifism and the free market as its
two founding pillars. However in the environment we live in any attempt to take
over a country with non violence is going to be very difficult. A steady
education of people towards the stateless society’s agenda followed by support
in elections could see this happen. However seeing as they are run by states it
seems fit that the state agenda is what will be imprinted onto the system. Now
the state of course in democratic countries is run by an elected group of
people which form a representation of that group of people’s views. In order to
govern effectively these representative often belong to political parties which
have a philosophy and try to implement that. So it seems reasonable to believe
that what is often made to sound like an evil machine is actually just a bunch
of political philosophies trying to win support and power through votes.
Stefan’s own model would have to do this short of a military coup and a
complaint made about the states agenda in the education sector would be
mirrored by the stateless society party in order to gain power mumble hypocrisy
mumble mumble. Anyway a long period of
effective education could lead to the rise of a stateless society party and
from there to a country where the government is dissembled. A look at history and
the previous stateless society known as communism which never made it past the
transition stage which was meant to prepare a country to exist without a state
indicates that not everyone may be as willing to relinquish power as Stefan
might hope even among similar thinkers. Communism itself also carries a lot of
bad press despite its origins in Marxism being one of the fairest and
theoretically best ways to govern society. A view brought about because of its
disfigurement over years of trying to maintain power with the various products
being Leninism, Stalinism and Maoism. It would seem likely any real world
attempt to implement the stateless society would see its original views having
to adapt to win favour and power in pursuit of its goals which would also be
the biggest threat to it achieving those goals. Might I also add that Stefan’s
own theory is very different to communism despite the obvious stateless end
goal that they both share. In fact and I shall mention later why communism
(Marxism) represents a more pleasant master when left to live under its rule.
Maintaining Power
The stateless society has won the vote and managed to avoid
being distorted by the whims of people. Now in its end state it represents the
ultimate free market governed entirely by itself. By itself I mean the whims of
the free market through an almost collectively representation of the spending
habits of those within it. There is now only an economic price to be paid for
any misdeeds and those are doled out by the Dispute Resolution Organization’s and the system that
they all share. This of course in
reality would not be a global take over but like all political movements
confined to a set group of countries. The power of the Dispute Resolution Organizations would be significantly
reduced by this seeing as anyone who breaks an agreement can just leave. In
Stefan’s original version I believe the assumption is made that this is a
global movement which everyone has signed up to. So with no laws or rules just
financial penalties any sort of stability should be highly suspect. I realise
Stefan sees it as impossible for people to try to go against these rulings
because being financially crippled to too difficult to live with. It should be
obvious this is nonsense humans were fine without currency for thousands of
years and that was at a time when pacifists were not in the majority like the
stateless society. I will ignore this for now and answer the internal turmoil of
a stateless society in the next section. The biggest issue with its long term
prosperity is anybody who doesn’t share its pacifistic ideals. In Richard
Dawkins ‘The Selfish Gene’ Evolutionary stable strategies are discussed. One of
the strategies is to behave like a dove and it runs from fights. The other is a
hawk which always fights, the basic gist is that in an all dove or all hawk
society everything is fine. However if a dove society is invaded by a hawk then
hawk numbers skyrocket and doves plummet and then it sea sores for a while
before reaching a stable point for obvious reasons. This brings us nicely to
our stateless society that has no standing army and no one within willing to
fight and unlike the dove it cannot run because it is fixed to the land it
exists in. Any nation that forgoes its niceties with the stateless society and
decides to invade wins. Like all fights where one side has an army and the
other chooses not to have one it generally ends one way. So the stateless
society would require political allies that would be prepared to defend it.
Which in all likelihood would want money to do so, meaning that some sort of
charge for everyone who lives in the stateless society would be inclined to pay
essentially setting up a protection racquet. This charge kind of like a tax
which of course everyone would have to pay to keep the stateless society which
would otherwise be crushed and added to a state once more. Pacifism was also a
key tenant of Christianity until it no longer had Roman legions to protect it
at which point it picked up arms to instantiate its power. The chance of the stateless
society surviving without any violent means either by proxy or on its own seems
unlikely. This also means it is still dependant on a state or setting up
infrastructure slowly morphing itself into a state.
Human Nature
The argument is
made that anyone who drops out of economic standing within the stateless
society will not last very long and be reported by those watching to DRO’s to
deal with. Leading to the conclusion that only limited amounts of people would
do this. Of course this is a free market and as in recent years free markets
when left unwatched are unstable and companies are likely to take shortcuts to
get ahead or just simply make mistakes. These companies have employees who all
have insurance against being fired and thus the insurance company has a vested
interest in keeping the company afloat. This would be the norm in the stateless
society. However sometimes people are bad at their job and will be fired and
receive nothing. These people will exist in large numbers as on the whole humans
make mistakes and are not always that bright. They also tend to want more for
very little and with the cost of healthcare, education, security and everything
else now no longer insured if they lose their job it would seem people would be
in a fearful situation most days. Those who can no longer support themselves
get dropped from the DRO system and live in the gaps being constantly monitored
by the DRO’s who have huge amounts of power and control and with no monopoly
laws could all exist under one roof. They are also not bound by any enforcement
that commands them to remain as pacifists. It wouldn’t take long for people
dropping off the grid or merely unhappy with having to live in fear of being
financially crippled to band together and start a revolution to ensure that
they will all be protected. The people who are then within the stateless
society being assaulted by the new rebel group will need protection from the
DRO’s who will merely need more power and the use of violence to remove the
threat. Now as farfetched as this rapid dissent into rebellion sounds just look
around the world at people who are suffering and how often it is those people
who end up controlling the country before long for example The Round Heads in
England, The Bolsheviks in Russia, The Founding Fathers in America and of
course the huge list of French revolutions. Power in the world is gained and
maintained by force this applies to nature and it applies to humans (also part
of nature despite our ideas of grandeur), there are few examples that counter
this and non that have lasted very long. Even on a small scale order breaks
quickly e.g. The London riots and New Orleans after hurricane Katrina.
The Ugly
Side of the Free Market
It is assumed throughout Stefan’s writings that corruption
is sourced from the state and that once it is removed corruption will simply
vanish. Any look at world corporations or any human endeavour should dispel
this idea. People are ultimately individuals out for their own survival or if
they get comfortable enough their own ambitions. The direction a country or
company or family takes is often that of
the most powerful member rather than a consensus. That direction is of course
not always a morale one but ultimately we all have different views on morale’s
and the world is merely created by opposing objectives sugar coated with morale
reasoning to make us all feel a little better. The natural world controlled by
competition and the theory of evolution culminating in a survival of the
fittest is one of the most ruthless and difficult places to survive and
certainly something we would not like to be ruled by still. This is however the
core of the stateless society. The free market is very much the economic
incarnation of survival of the fittest and certainly not a peaceful house of
freedom where everyone is equal. This is where I would recommend communism over
the stateless economy of Stefan Molyneux everyday of the week. As much as we
might all hope that a stateless system might work this is ultimately a utopian
idea where reality and human nature rendering the stateless society the most
dystopian utopian idea I have ever been presented with. To expect companies and
people to always to the right thing when in the free market their ultimate goal
is measured in dollar signs is a difficult one to understand.
Conclusion
Like I have stated at every turn there are obvious
weaknesses with the stateless society and its applicability in the real world.
As bad as some states are they are a concession which we ultimately choose to
submit a portion of our freedom to in order to survive. Maybe we should be
taught how to survive in the wild giving us a better chance to turn the social
contract down but ultimately Stefan Molyneux’s views have been allowed to exist
because of the state that protected and cared for him. I will admit there are
areas of my life I would like more freedom in but I also do not rate my chances
without the state I was born in to. Of course this is not the case for everyone
and people will always disagree and have a right too which is why governments
change all the time. The state is allowed to exist because its population
benefit more from it than they would from the effort needed to change it or
break the social contract. When breaking the social contract becomes more
viable than following it a revolution is likely to change this. Many may not
always like the state but maybe like Stefan says we should try to envisage a
world without them. How would the world look if western democracy was removed?
I would given the choice certainly choose to live in one of those states
instead of any other state or system of government that has ever existed.
Stefan’s stateless society is a nice academic idea but in practice is not
viable or likely to be the bastion of freedom it sells itself as unless you are
head of a large company and wield a giant amount of financial weight
These are just some thoughts and can be criticised and
picked apart where necessary and I admit given the little amount of time I had
to spend will be flawed at points but I would certainly stand by a lot of what
I have thought and the suspicion of the stateless society unless it had a major
rework.
