Minarchy: Statism-lite

This is the foundational principle of minarchy, that those who do not agree (anarchists) should still have to comply to rule if they are in the geographic region the state claims to own.

We must start with definitions; government can be defined as a group that has a monopoly on the legal right to initiate force. Anarchy is the absence of such, a belief that this concept is illegitimate. Minarchy is defined differently by its followers, but generally is defined as a government with the most minimal amount of ruling power. The minarchist doesn’t argue that statism is a form of freedom (there is no conceivable way to make this argument). The minarchist argues that freedom itself is unsustainable and rather than maximize individual liberty, assert that humans need to be ruled.

Minarchism is a completely utopian ideal. Minarchism is nothing but granting a collective group of people extraordinary power and then telling them not to abuse it. Government is granted permission to steal, murder, and kidnap from individuals that are not allowed to do the same, not that we would want these abilities. This means that they have extraordinary powers that the people do not. The minarchist position is that government is able to violate liberties, but won’t because it will limit itself. However, as history has shown, once people are given a significant amount of power, they will abuse it.

Another reason why a minarchist state couldn’t last is that all governments grow until they implode, or until an outside force stops them. For example, that is exactly what happened to Rome, and is what is currently happening to the U.S, and many other western governments. The reason why this will always happen is because people are so tempted by power, and because governments have nearly unlimited funding, as long as it has loyal taxpayers. Sometimes, an outside force tries to prevent this- usually fed up citizens revolting or countries’ governments retaliating.

However, violent revolutions against governments aren’t exactly historically successful. There would have to be a state of constant revolution in order to maintain the minarchist state. This would increase debt to an absolutely ridiculous amount, which the people would be forced to pay for. On top of that, usually, after a violent revolution, a more tyrannical government comes into power. For example, the U.S government is a lot more tyrannical than the British government was when it had control over the colonies. A group will usually help take down the old government and seize the former government’s structure/ incorporate a new structure, and then essentially enslave the rest of the population. Governments will quickly become tyrannical when faced with violent revolution, especially when it comes to civil liberties and tax rates. What people don’t notice is that during wars, governments enact more tyrannical economic policy, too.

Wars cause embargoes, increasing prices, artificially lowering competition, and generally hurt economies. A minarchist society would be completely uneconomical for this reason, and a lot more. Another example is that a state of revolution would destroy natural resources, therefore, it would generally destroy economic production. Some would argue that the corporations that produce goods valuable to governments during war time would keep the economy okay. This is flawed because mass amounts of debt would still pile up on citizens. The average citizen would be very poor because only the corporations that are producing goods for the state would be earning money.

Minarchy is philosophically inconsistent and unrealistic. It can only be achieved through non-stop revolution, which has historically not been successfully. In fact, revolutions have almost only ended up with a worse government in power in terms of liberty from a civilian’s perspective. However, do not be confused: liberty and minarchy can not coexist. If a group of individuals have the ability to force people into doing whatever the group chooses, or has the ability to forcefully claim one’s property or money, that person can not be considered anywhere near free. Thus, we must declare any man or woman that attempts to do these things tyrants, and must treat them according to the intrinsic immoral nature of these acts.