Abolish the State!

I'm a Libertarian, I believe everything should be privatized based on the moral position that: "No personal or group of people can initiate violence against another person". Human beings have a specific nature in how they deal with nature and how they deal with each other. Namely that-if not subjected to or empowered with institutionalized violence-humans will naturally seek friendship, honest trade, and a good reputation with other people. To the Libertarian, a free country would be one in which no individual is violently coerced into sacrificing his life or property for the sake of another person's values or demands. Certainly there will always be individual outlaws who seek to live parasitically off the efforts of others; but private channels of security can deal with them via buying insurance, installing security systems, purchasing weapons, and private defense agencies. However, the main focus of Libertarian passions in towards the greatest outlaw of all; the State. For centuries the state has robbed its subjects at gun-point and called it "taxation". For centuries the state has ennobled slavery and murder and called it "conscription" and "war". Critics of Libertarians claim that a state is necessary to prevent rampant violence throughout society, but the opposite is true, governments are the most violent feature of society. Absent a central state, people would interact through the means of the free-market. A market activity is where people exchange their property without any outside interference. If Bob has one dollar and mike has a soda, Bob giving the dollar to get the soda would be a market exchange-note that if either party felt that this trade was unfair then they could simply refuse and hold onto their property. Individuals under Capitalism would be free to work for the companies they wish and choose what items they will spend their money on. There is a lot of fear that "unbridled" industry would quickly destroy an economy and create a cartelized society of super-rich lording over the impoverished, but this forgets the important factor of competition. Under Capitalism, business must stay honest and deliver quality products that raise the living standards of their customers-because if they don't they will lose the customers to more reputable businesses. But wouldn't they merge into monopolies? No, monopolies only emerge when governments artificially restrict entry into a market, a "free-market monopoly" has simply never happened. America's Corporate corruption is the result of the government giving special privileges to favored businesses which allows them to lord over smaller competitors. Private industry competing on an open market could easily provide the services government currently monopolizes such as transportation, education, healthcare, defense, electricity, etc. If it is poor quality, the company will lose sales and go out of business. Given time, a totally private economy would produce huge amounts of wealth for society and create enormous prosperity. But what about the poor? This is a valid question. But, contrary to popular belief it is actually Capitalism that is the greatest aid program the poor have ever had available to them. Looking back, the allegedly "horrible" conditions of the Industrial Revolution were quite an improvement over the dawn-to-dusk toiling of England's agricultural economy. By allowing individuals to sell their labor and products to the highest bidder the poor were able to work themselves into undreamt living standards where they could enjoy financial independence and physical mobility. Where Socialism hands a man a fish so he can eat for a day, Capitalism hands a man a reward for learning how to fish so he can feed himself and earn a living. As for the elderly and disabled who cannot work, Capitalists have long been known for making generous donations to charity to aid these invalids. Government-run services have no incentive to be efficient or honest, since their pay-check is not connected to how well they perform and no competitor can out-match them. But even if they wanted to do well, they still could not, because they would lack the price-signals that Business enjoys. If people want electricity, the price of electricity goes up which signals entrepreneurs that they should enter that field and provide that service to make money-which then causes the price to fall as the supply of electricity increases. The business enjoys profits and consumers enjoy a low-cost power supply. This doesn't exist under state-planned ventures. How many resources should the government devote to its different projects? Where should the roads go? What size should the schools be? How many police should there be? Should there be more or less food production? Any government planner is just guessing when he answers these questions, he could not know the right response. Wouldn't a stateless society be vulnerable to foreign attack? Another good question. For starters, it is true that America has enemies but it is also true that America's imperial foreign policy is the central reason for these countries having become hostel to the US. A stateless society would not exercise the aggression and imperialism that the US has and thus would have few if any of the same incited enemies. But suppose a country invaded anyways, it would immediately run into a well-armed society(after all there would be no gun laws)and who is to say that businesses looking to protect their investments could not hire private defense agencies to fight off the Chinese or the Russians or whoever did the invading? Okay, maybe all of this is an interesting theory but even if such a society got started wouldn't it just break down into perpetual violence and gun-fights over turf and customers? Wouldn't the businesses constantly war with each other? Even if they did would this be as bad as the constant total-war and genocide campaigns carried out by governments? Haven't governments shown a near-obsession with killing their own people? Governments have the unique abilities of taxing and conscripting to raise large armies which they can use for long, expensive conflicts. Even if the worst happened and the stateless society had constant fighting we would still be safer than we would under government. But this concedes too much, violence is bad-very bad-for business and companies would want to avoid it. Rather than shooting it out every time two parties had a disagreement we can expect them to seek a compromise via a mutually agreed-on private judge who could look at a case and decide a verdict. Private courts? There is actually historical evidence to back up the idea that they could work. During the Medieval times, merchants made use of the Merchants Courts, a totally private network of judges that settled disputes. They were able to enforce their decisions because of the threat of boycott, any merchant who refused to submit to a judge would boycotted by the other merchants which would leave him in permanent unemployment until he submitted. Celtic Ireland, a land that could be described as Libertarian, maintained law and order for a thousand years strictly through the use of private courts. The Free-Market has a bad reputation, but that is unwarranted. Capitalism is the surest way to peace and prosperity.