Monday, January 9, 2012

Statism breeds violence, Anarchy breeds peace

The most popular thought on Anarchy is that everyone would act like savages and civilization would literally crumble before our feet.  I have been sort of a student of human nature for a while now (I have a BS in Criminal Justice and am a student of the "Austrian" school of economics, which relies heavily on Praxeology in its methodology) and wish to offer an different perspective. 

All human actions are ultimately directed by human thoughts and valuations.  That is to say, it is psychological.

I have observed that most people are polite in civilized society.  Please and Thank You are quite common, holding doors open for handicapped and the elderly... hell, just to be polite, is something I observe on a daily basis.  Obeying the wishes of property owners is also something that happens with almost automatic reflex.

Indeed, if anyone needs to hear a testimony of how much embedded manners and good conduct are in society, ask anyone who works retail about their customers.  They will most likely complain about all the pet peeves they have seen during the day, all the little things they find annoying that people do, and they may even talk about how badly they wanted to quit or tell someone to leave their store.  However, in the vast majority of cases, they respond by treating all their customers with respect.  True, the incentive is not to get fired, but interaction with such people and under such circumstances is something that only happens during the work day.  Nobody is forced to spend time with people they find particularly annoying, so this is not evidence that chaos would breakout without the state, but it is evidence of incentive to be polite when you have to.

Approximately 1/3 of income taxes are implemented to give out welfare benefits.  That is an enormous amount of money being stolen from people.  Are we to believe that a polite society would be reduced to the a massive amount of people taking up arms against others in order to fund their welfare benefits?  There is no reason to suspect such a thing would happen.  I have not observed a movement of people on food stamps picking up weapons and going to maybe some of the nicer areas closeby and attempting to set up a forceful system of more benefits.

It is clear that what really happens is the State operates as a conduit for people to support the use of force, who otherwise would not.  Most supporters of welfare programs are not people who would themselves pick up a gun and go to the homes of others and demand some of their money, yet this is precisely what the state does in their name.

It is the state that justifies violence, with the help of people who support the it.  Most believe the state is a necessary evil... and that is how it is justified; through the notion that evil is necessary... that force can be justified somehow.  Without this justification, the amount of violence in society would clearly diminish.  To say that all evil is unnecessary and unjustified, the amount of evil would shrink, because actions follow thoughts... and since actions follow thoughts, the thought that evil is unjustified would lead to less evil actions.

Statism is unnecessary, unjustified,  and unwanted.

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