The minarchist is like a scientist who insists a bumblebee cannot fly because it doesn't satisfy his theoretical criteria for that capability. That bumblebees do in fact fly apparently offers little ground for examing and revising the theory.
Similarly, minarchists insist that market competition in the "production" of law and security in theory cannot generate a peaceful, just, and efficient society. Like the scientist, they ignore the many examples of successful stateless relations in history and in our own time, and refuse to examine and revise their theory of where law comes from and how it is enforced.
(The apparently true story on scientists and the bumblebee is here.)
"Apparently true story on scientists and the bumblebee..." The very article you link to suggests this is an apocryphal story circulated in German technical universities in the 1930s, and that even if the story were true, it was about ONE particular scientist (and a drunk one at that), not "scientists" in general.
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me of those stories circulated by young-Earth creationists about how "scientists" can't explain this or that feature through natural selection, or how "scientists" have shown that this or that method of fossil dating doesn't work.
In other news, frogs will jump out of a pan of water that is gradually brought to a boil, and human beings (other than young-Earth creationists) use more than 10% of their brains.
Neither anarchy nor minarchy will arise in my lifetime. At best we'll get a violent chaotic period of lawlessness that will be midwife to more authoritarianism. So why bother debating the issue? I'll be happy just to get back a 1999 level of government, and even that is naive wishful thinking.
ReplyDeleteThe sad truth is that people WANT big government. Sometimes for themselves, but always for their neighbors.