Sargon of Akkad's Answers for Libertarians Rebuttal

Hello Sargon

I watched your podcast with great interest. There were some parts that I agreed with and unsurprisingly, a great deal that I didn't. First, allow me to introduce myself. I'm a canadian who lives in the suburbs of Montreal in the province of Quebec. I'm in my 50's, so if anyone is wondering, no, I'm not some teenager living in my parent's basement. Those are more likely to be SJW's or alt-righters. My political leanings came after a great deal of thought and as J.R. R. Tolkien did, I lean more towards anarchy because not one in a million men are actually fit to rule other men, least of all those who seek the privilege.

I pretty much started out as a right-leaning classical liberal, so like you, I used to think that governments are a necessary evil, but the more I read about liberal thought - bearing in mind the term «liberal» was hijacked by progressives in North America, so liberalism in Canada and the US no longer has anything to do liberty. Therefore, libertarianism is just a label that Murray Rothbard decided to use to designate classical liberals in the US. That's why you find libertarians «less objectionable» than other groups. They have more in common with you than you might think. - the more I came to realize that «The State», as french philosopher Frédéric Bastiat once put it, truly is «the great fiction through which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else and fascinatingly, he thus defined the state almost a hundred years before social-democratic nanny-states began to appear. A fiction because it doesn't actually exist any any real way. You can't show «The State». You can show buildings and people that work in them, put you can't show «The State» because it's an abstract construct. There is nothing that you can point to and say «That's government».As far as the «everyone trying to live at the expense of every one else» part, it's because it fosters rent-seeking on a grand scale. Just observe all the lobbyists soliciting elected officials everywhere.

Anarcho-Capitalism or voluntaryism, as some call it, is what I consider classical liberal philosophy taken to it's logical conclusion. You yourself admit that governments are a necessary evil, which means at the very least that you admit that governments are fundamentally evil. You believe they are necessary because you were taught to believe that. Most people haven't come to that conclusion through any sort of rational thought, but they simply accept it on faith as an unquestionable truth much like Christians take it for granted that a man named Jesus of Nazareth was the son of God. However, there is no real proof of either. This is partly why people like me tend to liken the belief in the authority of government to a religion. Hence we had to have a term to designate that religion and it's believers, therefore we call it statism and them statists. But I do agree that term is imprecise and nobody identifies as such so it is rather useless to call people that way other than amongst ourselves, I suppose. And yes, generalisations are very unproductive. So I will make efforts to remember your point about that. In any case, it should behoove my associates to not attack non-libertarians and limit ourselves to challenging their core beliefs as I plan to challenge some of yours while I answer what I believe as some rather big misconceptions you seem to have about libertarianism and voluntaryism. I won't address your video point by point because that would just be too long and I'm already verbose enough. I apologize in advance, but it's hard to discuss a philosophy in just a few sentences. Please bear with me. I will rather address certain recurring themes in your video. So let's begin, shall we?

Why are there more libertarians in the US?

Simply put, it's not so much because the US government has become unresponsive to it's population, although it certainly has, so much as the fact that the country was actually built on classical liberal concepts, including it's fundamental distrust of governments. The US's founding fathers wrote that country's constitution after having gotten rid of what they considered a tyrannical government. Therefore, they were anxious that their government was to remain as small and as unobtrusive as possible and they wrote their constitution with that in mind. You might say that classical liberal or libertarian distrust of government is very much a part of the American political DNA, more so than the other western democracies. Unfortunately, even the founding father's brilliantly written constitution, designed specifically to severely limit the powers of their federal government, failed miserably, mostly because US Presidents from Washington to Obama, as well as all members of Congress and judges of the Supreme Court have all failed to hold their oath to uphold and protect their constitution and the American people was deceived into believing that all those encroachments were legitimate. Now the US government has become a bureaucratic behemoth. And if the one government specifically designed to be small and stay small became the monster that it is now, imagine all the other western democratic governments. And as a matter of fact, they're not far behind in size and interventionism. This is why the libertarian movement is getting more and more popular in the US and that popularity is spilling over in other western democracies. I don't know if you've ever seen the animated movie «Free Bird», but libertarians are very much the turkey in that movie who is trying to warn his fellows that the farmer is not their friend and he's just fattening them up for people to eat them. An apt analogy if there ever was one.

The Social Contract

Several times in your video, you mention the so-called «social contract». Let me boil down this concept to its simplest expression. We supposedly need to have a government and a social contract because we believe that people can't be trusted to govern themselves. So therefore, we have to endow some of the people; who are incidentally no more able to govern themselves than we are, but have suddenly become wiser by virtue of having won a popularity contest; with the power to govern hundreds of millions of their peers through violence and coercion. All the while, we hope to hell that the people to which we grant such powers won't decide to abuse them because, aside from the US and it's 2nd amendment, other liberal democracies have no provisions to form a «well regulated militia» should their government decide not to hold it's part of the bargain of the social contract and even then, the size the US government has become pretty much proves that even there, the social contract supposedly established by it's constitution is literally unenforceable. It can only depend on the goodwill of politicians. But here's the catch. Not only does power corrupt and absolute power corrupt absolutely, as Lord Acton eloquently put it, but it is also a magnet to the corruptible which is why in governments the worst eventually come out on top, as was explained by Hayek in chapter 10 of «The Road to Serfdom». Sometimes, it's useful to remind people that there are historical precedents of whole countries voting themselves into absolute servitude. Just ask Germans and Japanese who have lived through WWII.

And if you think my desciption of it is absurd, that's because the whole concept of government and a social contract actually is that absurd.

If men can't be trusted to govern themselves, that's no argument to have a government to rule over them, but rather an argument against trusting any one man or small group of men to wield the power to rule over millions, especially those who actually desire that power because they are generally the least fit for the job. How do you think the Americans wound up having to choose between Trump and Clinton and Canadians wound up with a doofus like Justin Trudeau? There actually is no such thing as legitimate authority if we're all supposed to be equal before the law because anyone having the ability to be exempt from the morality we're all subjected to is de facto above the law.

Nobody should have the moral right to rule over other people. All of the genocides and democides and wars in history didn't happen so much because despots wound up in power somewhere but because the majority of people there actually believed that those despots represented legitimate authority and were willing to go along with whatever they said. If it hadn't been for that belief, then Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Polpot, Castro et Al. would never have been able to perpetrate the horrors they did. At the most, they would have been common criminals.

We have a valid reason to complain against governments because History has shown us that they all too often become tyranical and abusive the bigger they become and it just so happens that's exactly the direction most governments are going right now. Becoming ever bigger and ever more intrusive on people's lives. Maybe it's not the only problem, but it dwarfsa most other problems by comparison.

So when you answered Larken Rose that the US wasn't comparable to Nazi Germany, that is true, but you are sadly mistaken if you think that the US or any other western democracy could never become Nazi Germany at the drop of a hat because it can and maybe one day, it will.

And when you say that society must be governed, that's just an assumption on your part. I do agree that society must have rules and that those rules must be enforced, but it doesn't necessarily follow that they must be enforced by a monopoly. If anything, economic science pretty much demonstrates that monopolies (government monopolies especially because they are completely shielded from market forces) are notoriously inefficient and if free market competition can produce ever cheaper and better products to consumers in every other respects, what makes you believe that government monopolies can actually be any better at anything than the free market?

Anarchy vs Anomy.

Most people have a hard time knowing the difference between anarchy and anomy, you're not alone in this, but if you look at the greek roots of those words, you'll realize that anomy is an absence of rules whereas anarchy simply means an absence of rulers. The two simply don't mean the same thing. But politicians everywhere just love to make them seem like they're synonymous. Now I know you believe that an absence of rulers would lead to chaos, but really it's mostly because you were taught to think that way.

Of course, if you take a savage society and leave them to themselves, they will return to a bestial state because they aren't sophisticated enough to govern their own conduct and will tend to operate on instinct. But if you can have a sufficiently law-abiding society to have the kind of small government that classical liberalism prescribes, it might just be sufficiently law-abiding to function without government as most things that happen in a small government society happen outside of government intervention anyway.And only a handful of people will be tempted to become outlaws and I'd be willing to bet we could find some ways to keep them at bay. Indeed, some of them already exist and only need to be expanded.

Also, it may shock you to learn that most anarchists don't want to «abolish» governments outright but rather believe that they are something we are likely to outgrow as a species, much like a toddler outgrows a safety blanket. Most of us don't believe we'll see that happen in our lifetime, but that doesn't prevent us from sowing the intellectual seeds that may lead the majority of people to believe that governments are not only an evil but not really a necessary evil. We see ourselves mostly as teachers trying to push humanity in a direction where it's less dependent on governments to solve their problems and more reliant on themselves. After all, 7 billion brains are better than the mere handful that work for governments everywhere, even if they were geniuses which manifestly they aren't. But I'll concede you're right. For now it's just a pipe dream and humanity has not yet reached adulthood. But we will someday. Wisdom isn't something we are born with, it's something we acquire with time. We feel humanity is on the wrong course right now and we're just trying to correct it.

Legal vs moral

A lot of libertarians you replied to in your video had questions regarding laws and whether or not governments should be making some of the laws they are making and whether we should obey them. I don't think you really understood their point. I agree that some laws are just and are meant to protect people from harm, but a lot of them are not. Most of the regulations regarding industry, for example, are actually written by industry lobbyists and are designed to limit their competition because the cost of compliance acts as an entry barrier to smaller competitors and that actually protects big corporations and hurts consumers. Similarly, a lot of laws exist to do social engineering. Anti-discrimination laws, which are often concealed reverse discrimination are a good examples of this. Just because duly elected representatives in a legislature declare something to be legal doesn't make it moral. Slavery was legal, apartheid was legal, Jim Crow segregation was legal and so was the holocaust. We don't believe we should not have rules, we just believe we could do with a lot fewer of them. And of course, we completely disagree on who should have the power to enforce these rules.

Private business, private security, etc. vs governments

You seem to be prejudiced against private enterprise. Most often, that's a byproduct of government-controlled education. You mentioned rational self-interest several times in your video. Has it never occurred to you that rational self-interest actually applies to private businesses and that part of maximizing profits is to provide consumers with products and services that they like, that they can use and that they can afford? Otherwise, they go bankrupt. So if a racist owns the only medical clinic for 60 miles in the Australian outback and refuses to provide care to people because of his prejudice, rest assured that he won't be the only one for long, and that he'll eventually go out of business because someone will come along who isn't a dick and will only be too happy to steal his customers away and maybe even his staff too.

I find it interesting that so many people place their trust in governments to give them better service than private enterprise when government has the least incentive to give better service as opposed to businesses whose survival actually depends on beating their competitors to your money.Governments get their revenues from forcibly extracting money from you. They don't actually have to provide any value in return in reality. As I mentioned before, the social contract is unenforceable - other than by bloody revolution, at least - so our receiving our due is wholly dependent on the goodwill of politicians, which we know are all too often cheats and liars.So governments will get their revenues whether they provide you with something of value to you or not. If fact, very often, a lot of the services they offer you don't need, but you have to pay them anyway. Some of them you may even object to, but you pay for them anyway. Many are downright crappy, but try and get a refund, just for fun. So you see, taxes really have nothing to do with the services that governments provide. If they did, then they would have to give us our money's worth. And since government workers' paychecks don't depend on the quality of the services they provide, and that since the government monopolizes those services so you can't get them anywhere else, they have little reason to care whether you are satisfied of what you're getting. So when one of us asks you if you actually want the same people who run the DMV to provide you with health care, he/she doesn't mean the same exact people, but the very same bureaucracies and the very same incentives to not care about giving you a crappy service. That isn't to say that all bureaucrats give crappy service, I'm sure many of them are quite «Johnny on the spot», they just don't have any incentive to be. But don't take my word for it, you can read the book «Bureaucracy» by Ludwig Von Mises. I'm sure you'll find it very interesting.

Private businesses, on the other hand, have no other way of having any revenues at all unless they manage to convince consumers that their product or service offers more value to them that the business down the street that offers the same goods or services, so they have every incentive to want you to be satisfied that you get the value you expect in return for the money you pay because that's what markets are all about. An exchange can only take place if both parties are satisfied they are gaining more than what they are giving up in exchange, otherwise the transaction just won't take place. And although there are some very shoddy businessmen, their self interest will still dictate that they serve their customers well, if they expect to stay in business, at least.

I also find interesting the notion that if something is provided by private enterprise, then it's predicated on wealth. For well over 200 years, capitalism has been catering to the masses and providing them with living standards that kings of yesteryear could only dream of. Capitalism hasn't just benefited the rich, it has benefited everybody. In western democracies, real poverty is virtually nonexistent. There is only relative poverty and, no matter what you do, in any society, there will always be people who are more wealthy than others. Those societies that actually try to make everyone equal only succeed in making them equally poor, and even then, as George Orwell put it, some manage to be «more equal than the others». So the argument that there are some services that can only be provided by government because then they would not be available to the poor doesn't actually hold water, even when it comes to security and justice. When you have nothing to steal, you have little need for protection from theft, so whatever your material means, it's more than likely that the market will provide whatever level of service you actually need. Besides, saying that government provides the same level of protection and justice to rich and poor is an utter falsehood. Police services are always of a lesser standards in poor neighborhoods than in rich ones and poor people are always more likely to wind up in jail for crimes they didn't commit than rich people.

As for private armies, have you ever given any thought to the fact that if there were no governments, there wouldn't be any need for armies? There would be no borders to defend. Only property lines. There would be no conflicts on a national scale simply because there would be no nations. The only possible conflicts would occur between individuals or small groups of people. There would be nothing to collectivize us on a large scale. Besides, war is expensive and can be paid for only by the virtually infinite credit provided to governments by central banks - which couldn't exist without government protection - and taxation powers, which no private enterprise can ever have. Without governments, nobody could ever afford to spend trillions of dollars to fund huge armies, navies and air forces or to build multi-million dollar jet fighters and bombers, tanks and multi-billion dollar aircraft carriers. Just imagine what else could be done with all these resources we utterly waste on destruction! Just that is a sufficient argument for me to consider trying to find ways to live without governments, how about you?

This is what anarcho-capitalists mean when they say that statism is a religion that has people so utterly brainwashed that they absolutely can't imagine what a world without it would look like. Yet when you really try to let go of the programming, you amazingly find yourself open to possibilities you hadn't considered before.You think it's a utopia simply because when we talk about not having any governments, you can hardly imagine all of the bad things that would disappear with them. There are hundreds of trillions of sovereign debt out there that can never ever be repaid. This is all mostly overconsumption and waste. This is all us consuming resources that don't even exist yet through our governments and you're all worried about people buying too many iPhones? This is where I go «Ugh! Come on, people!»

«Governments don't rob the rich»

Let me just finish by addressing this particular statement of yours that I have trouble believing came from someone I imagine intelligent and so well read. I've already argued that taxes have little to do with trading value for value like private businesses do, so goods and services provided by governments are completely disconnected from the taxes they collect. Let me bring the point all the way home. I'm sure you may have heard this argument before, but in all humility, maybe those who tried to explain it to you didn't to as good a job of it as I can. Taxes are not voluntary. If you refuse to pay them, some armed men will eventually take you to jail and if you won't go quietly and decide to defend what is actually your property by all that is moral, those armed men have the license to use any force necessary to get you to comply. Why would I resist? Because many of the «services» the government claims to provide I don't need. Some are downright objectionable. Why would I pay for wars that I don't agree with and have little to do with me? Some are downright ludicrous, like Justin Trudeau pledging $13 million to fight corruption in other countries. Why the fuck should I pay for that?!? Not to mention things I have to put up with like an average 18 hour wait time in hospital emergency rooms. I don't know what the British NHS is like, but here the wall to wall socialist universal health care sucks almost as much as the Cuban system. If all those services were private, I would have the choice to get a refund and go elsewhere, but with government, I don't. So yes, there are plenty of reasons to not want to pay.

Canadian households pay on average 42% of their income in various taxes. Since 1961, that burden has increased a whopping 1787%! More than food, clothing and shelter. Taxes are actually the biggest item on the average household budget in Canada.

But it's even worse when you're rich. Because you see, all western democracies have progressive tax systems. So «the rich» actually wind up paying way more than the proportion their numbers would justify. So in Canada, for example, the top 10% of earners pay around 75% of income taxes collected while the bottom 45% pay no income tax at all and roughly the bottom 60% are net beneficiaries, meaning they get more in government benefits than they pay in taxes. And some people still have the gall to say that the rich don't pay their fair share! I don't know the British figures, but if you care to look them up, they're probably similar.So given that the government takes a very disproportionate amount from these people under threat of imprisonment and violence, yes, they are positively, absolutely being robbed. Or actually «extortion» is the more exact term we would be using if it came from anyone else but the tax collector.

Now I know what you're going to say. «If you don't like it, why don't you get together with your libertarian friends and petition your government?» So I'll just say that I truly wish you'd look up «public choice theory» so that you would find out that your one vote will never ever make a difference, that only well organized and very well financed groups actually get anything from democratic governments and that a politician's rational self interest revolves mainly around what gets him elected or re-elected, so political action in the direction of reducing government power is futile and just as much of a pipe dream as you think anarchy is. Just look at Gary Johnson's results in the recent presidential election. Freedom is simply not on any of the ballots and never will be so quite frankly we just consider the system illegitimate and a lot of us just refuse to lend it any legitimacy by voting. If one day we have +90% abstentions, maybe it'll be a sign that government has become obsolete like we wish it to be.

In closing, let me say that even if I'm criticizing you now, it doesn't mean that I don't appreciate what you do. I just recently discovered your podcasts and you strike me as a very intelligent and above all very rigourous chap and even if I don't agree with everything you say, I get the feeling I would very much enjoy having a chat with you one day. On this particular podcast though, I just felt compelled to give you my two penny's worth (and then some). Do keep up the good work.

Best regards,

Philippe David