Anarchist vs. minarchist debate misses the shift to post-statist world

By David McElroy · July 18, 2011

I’ve struggled for a long time to figure out what to call my current political position — or whether I have have a political position anymore. It depends on what you mean by “political,” I guess.

As the word is normally understood, I’m apolitical, almost to the point of indifference. If you’re talking about the bigger question of how power is organized and distributed, that’s a different matter entirely. I’m certainly not a statist. I’m also no longer what you’d consider a minarchist. But I’m finding that none of the variations of “anarchist” really work for me anymore, either. (All of the labels just seem to confuse the issue.) I’d like to take a look at why I think the debate between anarchists and minarchists is going to cease to matter soon.

Let’s say the debate is among plantation slaves about whether to co-operate with plantation owners for better treatment or to openly revolt. You could quibble about how good the analogy is, but I’d say it’s reasonable.

You could make good arguments on both sides of that argument. The ones arguing for co-operating and working for better treatment and better working conditions would be the pragmatic ones. That position would especially appeal to the slaves who might have built up a bit of status or privilege with the owners. For them, it could seem foolish to risk everything, especially when the chances of success seemed low and they weren’t sure what would come next. The ones arguing for open revolt would take the position that being a slave of any sort was immoral, demeaning and unacceptable. I can understand how each would feel. I’d like to think I would opt for open revolt, but if the danger were really great, I might not. I might play it safe.

As long as the state is around — and has the guns and other power to go after us — we face pretty much the same choice. As I’ve written before, I don’t choose open revolt. I choose to obey the stupid rules to stay out of trouble. But it doesn’t mean I favor the rules or think they’re moral.

Now, let’s take the analogy about the slaves and plantation owners one step further. Let’s say that you foresaw that there was a change coming that was going to render their plantations obsolete and make slaveholding unprofitable. Because of this, you felt certain that the plantation owners were going to go away — at least insofar as their ability to keep forcing you and your fellow slaves to do anything. Assuming you believed that, would you really care who won the debate between the “revoltists” and the “appeasers”? Or would you just think it was an irrelevant question — and that the real question was what came next — after your oppressors were gone?

That’s why I’m not terribly interested in the anarchist vs. minarchist argument. It’s simply because I believe the state is going away for economic, technological and social reasons, so the debate about how to face it down is soon going to be a moot question.

I believe the real issue is looking to what comes next — to planning what we’re going to do when the state starts collapsing.

I might be wrong, but I’ve slowly become convinced of this over the last 20 years or so. I started looking at bits and pieces of the evidence nearly two decades ago, but I was so entrenched in “the way things are” that it was hard to wrap my mind around how much was going to change. (A book that was important to opening my eyes to the possibility was 1994’s “The Great Reckoning,” by James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg. They turned out to have their timing badly off, but their logic and historical analysis still hold true for the longer term, as far as I’m concerned.) It’s taking even longer to put that into words and find a new paradigm to explain what’s coming. I’m just happy to see that other people have been looking toward alternatives, too, and are further down the road to figuring it out than I’ve been.

I have friends who are working in the two mainstream political parties. I have friends who are active with the Libertarian Party. I have friends who are disgusted and apathetic, so they’ve withdrawn from the process. I have other friends who are dedicated anarchists of various types. The arguments for each of those choices have merit. I can understand how someone can come to any of those positions. I’m not trying to argue with people and tell them that they should choose my path. I’m just explaining why I’m not joining you on the particular choice you’ve made if you’re doing one of those.

I’m actively looking for alternatives. I might end up on an island of my own somewhere. I might end up on one of Patri Friedman’s seasteads. I might end up in a free city in Honduras. I might end up in some group that carves out an enclave nearby after the state collapses. I don’t know.

There are many possible choices — and that’s the real point. There are potential choices. You’re not limited to thinking about simply choosing between wild anarchic lawlessness or just beating back the state to a manageable level.

Those who start thinking about this now — and adjusting their lives to the new reality now — are going to be in a much better position to deal with the coming changes. It’s time to dream big and then make it happen.

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If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

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