The End of Anarchy Part I: Unconscious Harm

I’ve seen several posts about Anarchism (or Voluntaryism) in the last day, which gave me the idea to, essentially, rebut anarchism in a series of posts. This is the first post in said rebuttal and will focus on how humans can harm each other and the world around them unconsciously.

Anarchy is certainly a seductive idea, complete freedom and harmony because all behavior is freely chosen. It’s right up there with communism in terms of attractiveness; it’s also equally unrealistic due to human nature.

Let’s start off by imagining a patch of grass between two sidewalks. What invariably happens to such a patch? People cut across it to make their walk shorter. This is in no way whatsoever a problem when one person does it. Or even when five people do it. Once dozens of people a day start, however, an observer would notice the grass starting to die in places. Given enough time, a path is worn across the grass, and the aesthetics of the lawn are ruined. Turn it up to 1000 people a day and there would be a dirty, mud pit of a field rather than a nice, grassy lawn.

This is certainly a very minor example. I doubt many people are out there losing sleep over a lawn, yet it illustrates clearly why anarchy cannot work: Large groups of people, while making thoroughly reasonable decisions in their own self-interest, can unwittingly cause harm to the environment around them.
Let’s look at some more important examples:

Pollution: It’s perfectly reasonable for an entrepreneur to build a factory and let all the pollutants go into the air. When thousands of factories do that, however, it makes the area terrible for everyone around. It even potentially leads to climate change, which could cause a lot of harm to anyone living in coastal areas.

Overfishing/Hunting: It’s perfectly reasonable for a hunter to kill as many animals as he wants. One guy can only kill so many deer. Hundreds of people, however, can cause the animal population to collapse leading to ecosystem collapse, extinction, other hunters being unable to find game, etc.

Food Safety: In the “not so perfectly reasonable” file, a new restauranteur could open a restaurant while being ignorant of food safety. They certainly aren’t trying to hurt anyone, but this can cause outbreaks of disease. For reference, see the Penny Licks of the 1920’s. Vendors would re-use ice cream glasses without washing them, leading to an outbreak of tuberculosis.

The essence of the problem in all of these cases is that people are unaware or unconcerned about the problems their actions can cause, especially when those actions only cause harm in aggregate. Voluntaryism is completely unequipped to handle such situations due to the lack of awareness of aggregate harm.
Then what is the solution? Well, to date, society has decided that the decision is government. Someone with authority whose job is to evaluate the consequences of peoples’ actions, and try to prevent them from causing harm. We have pollution limits to prevent the air from becoming unbreathable. We have hunting licenses and kill limits to prevent depopulation of game. We have food safety standards and inspections to reduce the chances of deadly disease outbreaks.