Is It Really Easier to Move Around Without the State?
Recently here, there's been, at least to me, a tremendous uproar in the anarchy community about arriving at the abolition of the state. The debate between Chase Rachels and Larken Rose illustrates the two perspectives that have been the most loudly expounded upon, but that's not really my concern here. Instead, I'm interested in focusing on something that gets bandied about in this conversations: freedom of movement.
If you've been involved at all in the liberty movement, I'm sure you've heard that familiar refrain. "Imaginary lines in the sand shouldn't restrict people from going where they want to!" It sounds eminently reasonable on its face; how could any individual or group of individuals just tell people no if they want to move from one place to another so long as no one is being hurt? If no damage happens as a result of this transport, what's the problem? To some extent, there's truth there. State agents are automatically aggressors, as there is no way for a "state" to exist absent expropriation; in order for states to live, they have to steal from people, which automatically puts state agents in the position of being aggressors. It's not really an enormous logical leap to assume that everything they could is unjustified aggression.
However, freedom of movement in a state-dominated landscape is significantly different than freedom of movement in a society that has no state. Just to be clear, a society without a state must, by definition, be a private property society if it's going to be ethically consistent. So what does freedom of movement look like in a state-dominated landscape like we have? What would it look like in a private property society that has no state?
Under a state-dominated society, right-of-way properties (roads, highways, thoroughfares, etc.) are all considered public property. Individuals cannot privatize them, as state agents can and will use force to exclude people from doing them. In other words, they are part of the oft-cited "commons:" property for which no one can exercise exclusive control, and for which force will be used to prevent exclusion of any individuals. So what does that actually mean in plain terms? Well, anyone can travel on the road. To some extent the state exercises regulatory control on how one can travel along roadways, but there are no restrictions placed that exclude people from accessing them and using them.
In a private property society, right-of-way properties would, by definition, be privately owned. Unlike the easement provided by agents of the state within its geographical borders, there is no pre-existing easement that can be reasonably assumed. You can't simply assume that you can travel on a road, since you know for a fact that it's private property. This isn't to say that easements can't be established or there's an immutable rule that private property can't ever be open to the so-called general public. Private businesses would operate in this manner, choosing to open up their private lots to any and all comers while still maintaining their right to exclude people. Moreover, since the costs of road maintenance aren't socialized, road owners would reasonably want some method for paying the upkeep of said thoroughfares.
So what does that mean? Well, on its face, that means that moving around in a stateless society that respects private property would actually be more difficult and restricted then how movement happens now. This may seem counterintuitive, and I've already heard objections to it, so I'll address them below specifically:
- "My movement on roads now isn't free! I have to pay taxes for the roads anyway, I have to have a license, registrations tags, and I have to buy insurance. All because the state makes me!" This is absolutely true. Take a second to think about that though: here in the United States, if you have a valid license and valid registration tags, you aren't barred from public roads. Use rules aside (since there's no reason to assume private roads wouldn't also have them), if you register your car and have a license from Alabama, you can drive anywhere in the United States on any of the publicly-funded roads you want. Why would this be the case in a private property society? There is no reason to believe that your use permit to drive around Newport City would have any bearing whatsoever in Everytown. Some places may have an open-use policy, but this cannot be assumed. That you'd need to coordinate with wherever you're going to in order to make sure you have an easement means that movement is more burdensome, not less.
- "Pre-existing roads are controlled by the state, so without a state, they'd be unowned! If it's unowned, I'm free to travel!" Travel over unowned land is unrestricted; this is true. However, even if you assume the fact that property previously in a state of de facto ownership by government agents would become unowned, there would be nothing stopping individuals from homesteading and privatizing these unowned assets. You fall back into the issue I discussed earlier, where, as private property, it cannot be assumed that you have an easement.
- "No one has the right to restrict travel from place to place!" Well, yeah, they do, if that movement requires an individual to cross a private property border, and there's no reason to believe that roads and other thoroughfares would remain unowned for any period of time. The only way you can do this is to bar individual ownership of things, and the only way to do that is via communism. That's a no-go.
If we lived in a private property society, movement along roads and other previously accessible thoroughfares would not be guaranteed in anyway. The only reason it was to begin with was because state agents socialized the cost of maintaining them and decided it would be more feasible to fleece people for it by allowing anyone and everyone to use them. Hell, the roads within a state are paid for by the taxes extorted from residents of that state by that state's government (the same is true on a national scale in the EU). The only thing not preventing a resident from, say, California from using the roads in, say, Tennessee is the federal government declaring this to be the case.
There is no reason to believe movement would be freer absent a state. If anything, travel would likely be more burdensome because private property would be more prevalent, and there is no reason to believe roads would not be privatized or homesteaded and privately owned (assuming they would even be unowned to begin with). If the "free movement of people" is your overriding concern, a stateless society would be significantly more restrictive on its face than a state-controlled society. Food for thought.
How do you """an"""caps not see how private property clearly violates the NAP?
...because it doesn't? Resources are scarce and rivalrous; there's limited quantity of any given resource and there are multiple individuals that want to use a given quantity for competing ends. The simplest way to avoid conflict (the purpose of property norms) is to establish who can use it, since we know for a fact that two or more people can't use the same thing at the same time. I can't build my house on the same plot of land you want to farm on.
So how do you avoid that conflict? By establishing who has the better claim to the resource. First use is the most straightforward and ethical; if you're the first one to utilize previously unowned resources, those are your resources. It's the same lesson we learn as kids. The alternative is for later users to have exclusive use of it, which results in an infinite regression that only exponentially increases conflict over said resource.
If you can demonstrate how private property violates the NAP, I'm welcome to hear it.
awesome article. I think in some sense your right traveling in populated areas would be difficult or maybe just expensive. there is a lot of area though that people wouldn't be taking care of which you would be free to travel upon and even make a claim and homestead or mine if you want.