Psychopath Makes Absurd Proposition To Conscious Anarchist In The Street - A Dialogue
Scene: In a voluntary society on a distant planet, a stranger with psychopathic traits from another land shows up. The psychopath steps in front of one of the local anarchists in the street.
Psychopath (huge fake grin): Give me half your cash.
Anarchist: NO.
Psychopath: You have to, so I can protect you.
Anarchist (trying to contain laughter): For the sake of argument, how are you going to do that?
Psychopath: Well, in more than one way, actually. If you have any type of threat, you can call a special number and someone wearing a special badge and uniform might respond.
Anarchist: Look, I don’t know where you’re from, but around here, individuals take responsibility for their own defense. Some voluntary security firms exist here, but that’s the thing. They’re voluntary. The people that work for the firms adhere to Natural Law, just like everybody else.
Psychopath: Well, that’s not all I’m planning to do for your protection! There’s more! I’m going to pay people to go to the other side of the world and kill people and take their stuff. It will be called "the military".
Anarchist: That's violent aggression, which is WRONG! I don't want anything to do with that! And how the hell is that supposed to protect anyone anyway? (starts to walk away, but the psychopath persists)
Psychopath: But I’m going to build roads, too! (pulls out gun) Give me half your cash so I can protect you and build roads!
Anarchist: Number one, someone sticking a gun in my face and trying to rob me leads me to have serious doubts as to their sincerity in wanting to protect me. Number two, roads already exist. Even if roads didn’t exist, I’m sure the best way to build them wouldn’t involve robbing people. Also, I don’t want your so-called protection, and you couldn’t protect me even if you wanted to, anyway. Now leave me alone.
Psychopath: I’m not robbing you! It’s called taxation!
Anarchist: Don’t play some ridiculous, euphemistic word game for mind manipulation purposes with me! You’re trying to take my stuff by using a violent threat! That’s called robbing!
Psychopath: But I’m going to build schools, too!
Anarchist: What are those?
Psychopath: An education center for children! Places where children will be forced to go for 15,000 hours in the first 18 years of their life. They’ll be away from their families and with complete strangers and learn the value of unquestioning obedience. You don’t have schools here?
Anarchist: Dude, what planet are you from? First of all, that is NOT education. Secondly, why the heck would anyone want to do that to their children? And unquestioning obedience, also known as order-following without conscience, allows evil to occur, so I have a serious moral objection to your absurd proposal. Of course, your proposal is based in violence anyway, because you’re trying to rob me to pay for it, so that makes it illegitimate to begin with. Does this insane, overall plan of yours have a name?
Psychopath: It’s called “government” where I come from.
Anarchist: Well, then, "government" is the worst idea I’ve ever heard. And by the way, government means mind control. I already have internal government because I control my own mind. I rule myself, and nobody else. That’s how the vast majority of people behave here. I think what you’re describing is some immoral, harmful external government where you’re trying to rule other people. Now, please, leave me alone.
Psychopath (hand holding pistol starts to quiver): But don’t you want to help people?
Anarchist: Don’t try to guilt trip me with some lame, fallacious appeal to emotion fallacy! Violent actions, fraud, and coercion are immoral and harmful! Period! Look, this is your last warning. I’ll exercise my right to self-defense if you don’t leave me alone.
Psychopath: I’ll pull this trigger! I will!
Anarchist does a quick draw with his own pistol and points it to the psychopath’s head.
Anarchist: No you won’t. You’re just a con man with empty threats.
Psychopath lowers pistol, frowns, and walks away.
Anarchist continues to be free.
Thanks for your time and attention!
Just say "NO" to slavery!
Top image is from ids.uni.edu
Understanding the violent psychopath.
A psychopath trying to extort money would pistol whip you first and then demand money if you don't want to die.
Voluntarist : hey! that's violating the NAP
Psychopath:
I’ll pull this trigger! I will!- He doesn't listen to your words, or threaten you any more.He pulls the trigger..
You die.
'...just sayin....'
Thanks. Point well taken. The thing is, I was trying to somewhat merge the order giver with the order follower. So, for example, a politician and a cop. I did this just to simplify things for the sake of a short, easy to read dialogue.
Also, you might be right. In any given situation like that, the psychopath would likely pull the trigger, rather than using a verbal threat.
However, in the wider context of society as a whole, the violent "ruling class" cannot rule simply by "pulling enough triggers", so to speak. They can't rely simply on violence. They much prefer that people willingly comply and act like slaves, rather than having to crack the whip. Kind of a "velvet glove" tyranny like in Brave New World.
In short, tyranny over the mind is their preferred method of control overall, rather than explicit violence, although violence is used sometimes. I was trying to convey both of these aspects of control, in an extremely abbreviated manner.
Anyway, thanks for stopping in and for the thoughtful comment.
I understand exactly what you meant to portray, and this is a perfect example of ideology not surviving realty (imo).
Using your scenario above...
Instead of pulling the trigger and asking for his money, he asks for his obedience instead. (threat of killing him/his family etc).
Now we have one psychos and one follower...now multiply it and we have authority through coercion...
My idealism of younger years has changed to a more pragmatic look at the world...
...The 4% of socio/pschcho's can never be excluded from the equation.
For voluntarism to work ( as understand the ideology), it needs to be without the manipulators of men in the world ...and this will never happen - no matter how much an ideology wants it to be the case.
(Like communism working - if only it wasn't for those pesky human drives of ambition, and freedom, kind of thing...)
Absolutely - it requires less effort from them. (lazy bastards!)..But that is the extended result of the coercion, not the start of the coercion..
Don't accuse me of thoughtful comments, I'll get triggered!
😂😂😂
Yes, you're right. There will always be some psychopaths to deal with. However, they're vastly outnumbered. For voluntarism to work, people just have to ignore the psychopaths immoral wishes. This would render them relatively harmless.
Trigger more thoughtful comments, please! :)
To listen to the audio version of this article click on the play image.
Brought to you by @tts. If you find it useful please consider upvoting this reply.
Yeah, equate the social contract with a psychopath, that's gonna work.
Thanks for stopping by. The social contract is a myth.
Tell that to Kant, Rousseau, Locke...
Happily, if they were around
They are, in their books haha
Hahaha. You should write a book; please. I could tell from the opening line this psychopath was actually the government. I wish I could pull a gun on them and they would walk away. Some day :)
Thanks. Actually, I've written and published 3 books. My favorite one is called "Will". It's a sci-fi/thriller that has Natural Law messages woven throughout. Here's a free pdf download if you're interested.
https://www.docdroid.net/OomSV17/will.pdf
Cheers
I am very interested! Was no empty comment I genuinely enjoy your writing a lot. Am gonna download it when I'm back on the computer and read it as soon as I get the time!