RE: Dtube BuzzSteem Ep. 28 [Will Mass Shootings Ever End?]
You say people aren't ready to govern themselves, but people are all we have to work with. The only real choices are supporting the idea that people should all be considered equal and held to the same standards morally and ethically, or supporting the idea that some people should be recognized as exempt from those standards and allowed to ignore certain ethical principles in order to enforce standards on others.
I'm not arguing that abolishing the government would suddenly cause everyone to embrace peace and sound ethics, but I do think that supporting and excusing some people who claim a special right to use violence will result in a more violent society. Promoting a coherent ethical framework and teaching people why peace is objectively better than violence I think are essential to building a more peaceful society, and I don't see how a person can reconcile those efforts with defending centralized government power.
Well this is the reality/pseudo reality problem I have with Libertarianism. Libertarians want to believe that most people are inherently good, because Libertarians themselves are. Some people just aren't. Actually a lot of people just aren't. It would be wonderful if people could have some sense just talked into them, but as I said, I think we are generations away from that kind of thinking. There will always be two types of people: The followers and the Advantage Takers. There will be a great majority of people that agree with you and do indeed think peace is objectively better than violence. I would reason to say even the majority of people. But there will be outliers as well, ready to pounce on people as soon as they feel safe in this new peaceful community they have created. As it stands right now, the only thing keeping some of those people from going out and committing crimes is the threat of centralized government power, of being locked away.
The more simplistic way I see it even is through my own children. One is a carrot and the other a stick. My daughter can be reasoned with, she understands that good behavior leads to positive results, so she is well behaved nearly all the time. My son cannot be reasoned with. He is a stick. He needs threats, punishments, time-outs and things taken away from him. No amount of reasoning with him will get him to behave properly. He has to know there is consequence for his actions.
My real question then is, what are the proposed consequences in an anarchist society for those that just won't conform to an ethical framework of peace? And then who enforces that? I think it's naive to expect that every person will choose peace over power, or what they perceive as power. Some (men especially) think that peace makes you weak, and this is possibly a trait built into our DNA. So what do we do with those people? How does a decentralized society take care of lawbreakers, or disrupters of the peace, without inherently resorting to some form of centralizing?
I'm not a pacifist, and I fully recognize and accept the need to apply force against those who attempt to exploit others violently. I'm aware that many people are horrible and abusive. That's all the more reason no one should be exempt from accountability, and no one organization should have a monopoly on dispute resolution. Centralization is not fault tolerant, so the need for decentralization only increases when a lot of people aren't trustworthy. It's unreasonable to talk about the amount of abuse agents of a centralized government may deter while ignoring the amount of abuse they commit themselves.
I like the model of competing arbitration and security agencies, but the core principle is the rejection of double standards. Hopefully I'll get more written on this in the near future.