Table of Contents
PART
1: GOVERNMENT AND TAXATION
Chapter
1: Liberalism and the Progressive Tax
Chapter
2: Libertarianism, Minarchism, and the Flat Tax
Chapter
3: Agorists, the State, and Compulsory Taxation
Chapter
4: Liberals, Minarchists, and Agorists
Chapter
5: Reconciliation, Freedom, and Reciprocity
PART
2: CONSENT AND LEGITIMACY
Chapter
1: The Panarchist Philosophies
Chapter
2: Panarchic Politicoeconomic Systems
Chapter
3: Default Geographic and Subject-Matter Jurisdiction
Chapter
4: Consent of the Governed Under Duress
Chapter
5: The Legitimacy of Political Associations
PART
3: MARKET ANARCHISM AND THE LEFT
Chapter
1: Democracy, and Sovereignty as Externalization
Chapter
2: Political Choice as Boycott and Market Preference
Chapter
3: Progressivism as Social Convention
PART
4: WEALTH AND PUBLIC SERVICES
Chapter
1: Forms of Wealth, and Banking Practices
Chapter
2: Mutual Risk and the Price of Public Services
Chapter
3: The Wealthy as Charity Cases
Chapter
4: Personal Wealth as a Danger to the Community
Post-Script
PART
1: GOVERNMENT AND TAXATION
Chapter
1: Liberalism and the Progressive Tax
In the view of most
people who are both politically and fiscally liberal, important
reasons to support and pay taxes to government include funding the
administration of social welfare programs aiming to alleviate
poverty, funding of the delivery of goods and services provided
through such
programs, and increasing the equality of economic outcome and of
socioeconomic mobility for members of political society.
Liberal governments
and administrations typically attempt to accomplish
these goals by
taxing citizens’ wealth in property and their personal incomes,
through the implementation of “re-allocative” or “redistributive”
taxes. Such taxes bear structures whose proportions of receipts to
disbursements aim to result in what liberals believe to be a fairer
and more equitable distribution of income and wealth, thus achieving
the aforementioned equality of economic mobility.
In a progressive –
or graduated – tax structure, the rich are taxed more than the poor
in proportion to their wealth and / or income. In an accelerating –
or exponential – tax structure (a form of the progressive or
graduated tax structure), the rate at which the proportion of taxed
wealth and / or income increases itself
increases as
taxpayers accumulate more wealth and earn more income.
Under a regressive
tax structure, the poor and / or low-income are taxed more than the
wealthy and / or high-income in proportion to their wealth and / or
income. Under a flat
tax structure, all
members of society are taxed an equal proportion or percentage of
their wealth and / or income.
Chapter 2:
Libertarianism, Minarchism, and the Flat Tax
In the view of many
political libertarians
(in
particular, minarchists)
the State should
not administer social
welfare programs – or progressive taxes on wealth and / or income –
in order to provide for equality of economic outcome; rather, it
should only provide for equality of economic opportunity
(in addition to
political equality), and eliminate institutional discrimination
(i.e., forms of discrimination practiced by agencies of government,
and by the monopolies and oligopolies which they support and
charter).
Minarchists believe
that the State should only provide a small set of services which are
thought to be essential. Typically this is because such services are
perceived as necessary to foster a just civil society which upholds
and protects the freedom of association and the freedom from
coercion, and also because it is thought that such services cannot be
sufficiently and / or ethically provided through the voluntary
pursuit of rational self-interest in a system of free exchange.
The most common set
of services the provision of which minarchists support include police
services (such as detention, arrest, and detective and investigative
services); court services (such as arbitration, adjudication, and
restitution); personal security and common defense; and the
protection and insurance of property, including the security (and
securitization) of wealth.
Sometimes,
minarchists support the funding of government services through the
implementation of flat tax structures, wherein – as explained above
– all government subjects are taxed an equal proportion or
percentage of their wealth or income.
Chapter 3:
Agorists, the State, and Compulsory Taxation
Unlike minarchists,
Agorists
believe that there
are no
services which are
customarily provided by government which could not be sufficiently
and ethically provided through voluntary market exchange; not the
services the provision of which is often supported by political
libertarians, nor even those supported by minarchists.
Most Agorists would
agree with the definition of “State” – and many with the
definition of “government” – as “an agency which seeks to
prevent and prohibit – through armed conflict, and through clear,
present, and immediate threats thereof – all agencies (which are
not its truly co-sovereign subsidiaries) from competing against it
(within some given claimed territory) to provide persons with goods
and services which are widely perceived as being of the general
social, common, and / or public welfare”.
This definition can
be simplified to “an agency which wields a credible territorial
monopoly on the legitimate initiation of coercion (or violence, or
force)”; or to the simpler “an agency wielding a monopoly on
violence”.
Agorists believe
that upholding the freedom from aggressive, initiatory coercion and
violent conflict (for reasons other than self-defense, and the
defense of justly acquired property) is the most important goal –
if not the
only goal – of
civil society; and that no person can ethically be compelled against
his will to fund the services of this or that particular provider of
public services.
This means that
Agorists oppose taxation (as we know it), typically preferring to
instead implement fee-for-service
and
/ or insurance-
and risk-based models
for the funding of competing
providers of public
services.
Chapter 4:
Liberals, Minarchists, and Agorists
In the view of many
liberals, to decrease government provision of goods and services to a
small, minimal set of several essentials borders on “barbarism”,
“the survival of the fittest”, “social Darwinism”, “the
State of Nature”, and “chaos”.
Indeed, in the view
of many minarchists
and liberals,
an Agorist
society would be
chaotic; and driven by greed, profit motive, and self-interest which
is irrational, selfish, and divorced from – and independent of –
the interest of the multitude.
In the view of the
Agorists
however, the State
is an intrinsically
violent, exploitative, discriminatory institution which perpetuates
social and economic hierarchies, privileges, control, domination, and
even the ownership of human beings as property (as some are inclined
to characterize political representation).
To the Agorists,
taxation
is a form of
legalized – although unethical – theft and plunder; it is the
compulsory transfer of wealth from one group of people to another,
which occurs without the authentic, verifiable, voluntary, and
consensual delegation of authority. It is the use of coercion against
the individual to cause him to fund the operations of an entity which
he may morally abhor.
Chapter 5:
Reconciliation, Freedom, and Reciprocity?
These facts beg the
question: Might it be possible to reconcile the seemingly
diametrically-opposed philosophies of political liberalism and
Agorism, or – at the very least – to establish some set of
standards agreeable to both ideological tendencies (as well as most
or all others) which defines the conditions necessary for the
legitimacy of systemic political association and of the pursuit of
political goals?
Might it also be
possible to do so in a manner which eliminates all forms of
institutional discrimination and provides for the equality of
economic opportunity;
promotes the alleviation of poverty and increases of the equality of
economic outcome;
minimizes both chaotic and
authoritarian forms
of violence, coercion, and abuse; and
allows for an
efficient allocation of goods and services to the public?
Might it be possible
to uphold the institution of private property without diminishing the
common or public good, imposing unreasonable impediments on the
rational pursuit of self-interest, or
resulting in an
inefficient and / or inhumane allocation of resources?
Might it be possible
that to utilize social ostracism and boycott to non-violently
“impose” personal social conventions, traditions, customs, and
social order upon agencies which provide us with public services may
be sufficient to bring about a relatively uniform, free, and fair set
of available service providers?
Might it be possible
that the available set of providers would begin to reflect the
interests of the buyers, and influence the decisions of consumers of
public services regarding which providers shall be most important
with which to ensure that they share ethics?
Might it even be
possible to legitimize voluntary association, voluntary cooperation,
and reciprocity; and to establish a funding system for public goods
and services which is fee-for-service, insurance-based, and
consistent with free-market principles, which does necessitate the
initiation of coercion, and
which functions as
an accelerating progressive “tax”?
What are we to make
of Milton Friedman’s promotion of both “voluntary cooperation”
and
aspects of the
negative income tax (a progressive tax which guarantees a
supplemental, government-provided minimum income for untaxed
citizens)?
PART 2: CONSENT
AND LEGITIMACY
Chapter
1: The Panarchist Philosophies
Agorism was proposed
by Samuel E. Konkin III, and developed by J. Neil Schulman, Wally
Conger, Brad Spangler, and others. Austrian School economist Robert
Murphy has made contributions to topics related to aspects of
Agorism, and fellow Austrian School proponent Murray Rothbard
influenced Samuel Konkin.
Being that one
aspect of the Agorist philosophy is support for the freedom of
multiple agencies to compete against one another in the same
territory to provide goods and services to the public, Agorism is
compatible with several strikingly similar philosophies.
One of such
philosophies is called panarchism, meaning “the system of the
leadership or rule by all”; its developers include Paul Émile de
Puydt, Kurt and John Zube, and Gian Piero de Bellis.
Another philosophy
is known as “National Personal Autonomy” or “National Personal
Sovereignty”. It was proposed by Austrian Marxist Otto Bauer, who
desired that persons have the freedom to choose who governs them
regardless of where they live. Bauer believed the idea to have
potential to protect national and religious minorities from
oppression.
Yet another
philosophy is a form of direct democracy developed by Bruno Frey and
Reiner Eichenberger; it which invokes the phrase “Functional
Overlapping Competing Jurisdictions”. This system allows for the
potential that jurisdiction which is non-geographical and
non-territorial may be wielded. Additionally, it could permit or even
require
overlapping
subject-matter
jurisdiction, and /
or other unknown varieties of non-geographical and non-territorial
forms of jurisdiction.
Classical liberal C.
Frederic Bastiat, his intellectual heir market anarchist Gustave de
Molinari, individualist anarchists Max Nettlau and Le Grand E. Day,
and objectivist Roderick T. Long also made significant contributions
to schools of thought similar to those mentioned above.
Chapter 2:
Panarchic Politicoeconomic Systems
The fact that these
philosophies are compatible with one another means that political
thought which aimed to develop each of the two greater general
economic paradigms (typically referred to as “capitalism” and
“socialism”) resulted in the evolution of multiple ideological
strains into a group of practically structurally-identical
philosophies, which may be referred to as the panarchist
philosophies.
It should also be
noted that it is conceivable that each pillar of the American
democratic-republican federalist system – namely, democracy,
republicanism, and federalism – could be developed and improved in
its own way through the adoption of panarchist principles of
subsidiarity.
This means that
implementation of such a system likely carries with it a high
potential that the two general political and economic systems (which
many presumed to be diametrically opposed to one another) – as well
as their adherents – may develop alongside and in commerce with one
another, and co-exist in general solidarity without much conflict,
armed or otherwise.
This is especially
true if several of the issues appearing to cause the most différance
between the systems can actually be resolved
and reconciled.
Treating the
reconciliation of the issues most
likely to cause
controversy as the most important to resolve would run contrary to
the current mainstream tactic of uniting factions of radicals by
concentrating on noticing and reinforcing existing widespread
agreements.
Chapter 3:
Default Geographic and Subject-Matter Jurisdiction
The
geographic-jurisdictional goal of panarchy can be termed
“extra-territoriality”, “exterritoriality”,
“aterritoriality”, or “overlapping jurisdictionality”. It
could be achieved in the event that existing governments were to
offer to provide goods and services to persons living and traveling
in unincorporated and / or outskirt settlements, neighboring
jurisdictions, then to other nearby territories, and then to more and
increasingly distant places.
Given sufficient
time for governance agencies to expand their offers of coverage and
service provision (both geographical and in terms of types,
varieties, and combinations of goods and services) into new markets,
outside the reach of their current claimed jurisdictions, there would
exist a state of affairs in which people’s freedom to choose which
agency or agencies provide(s) them with “public” services –
regardless of where they happen to be living or traveling, and
without being required to move to a different location – would be
free from the unnatural and artificial commercial inhibitions, civic
barriers, economic distortions, and networks of privilege which
result from the monopolization and oligarchization of the market for
government and in the markets participated-in by the beneficiaries of
corporate government.
A political
environment fostering panarchist geographical-jurisdictional
subsidiarity would render moot nationalist arguments such as “if
you don’t like the laws here, you can always move somewhere else”,
and the “vote with your feet” position articulated by Ronald
Reagan which may be construed to support states’ rights.
Such arguments
fallaciously assert that one is free to relocate oneself to the
territorial jurisdiction claimed by the monopolistic agency whose set
of laws one despises less than others. Individuals may
be free, however,
provided that they can afford
to relocate
themselves – being fortunate enough to have protected their
earnings from undue taxation and burdensome regulation – and
that they have been
fortunate enough not to have been convicted of crimes whose
punishment entails prohibitions on traveling or moving to outside the
claimed sphere of sovereignty of their birthright default regional
overlords.
Chapter 4:
Consent of the Governed Under Duress
The barriers and
distortions caused by default governance – and by the exclusive
(and exclusionary) political, propertarian, and commercial privileges
which it confers – together create an environment of permanent
duress.
Populaces living
under duress cannot be expected – and should not be assumed – to
make rational, independent, enlightened, informed, consensual
decisions regarding who provides them with political representation
and other commercial goods and services (this statement could be used
to promote the consent of the governed as easily as it could be used
to revoke the right to vote).
One presumes that
this duress does not exist, and that the giving of consent (really,
submission) is legitimate, when he accepts requests of – and makes
contracts with – customers (including both citizens and
participants in non-governantial markets) to buy his goods and
subscribe to his services.
If he is a
monopolist, he rationalizes himself to be the legitimate beneficiary
of the privilege bestowed by the rightful sovereign. If he is an
oligopolist, he rationalizes himself to be a “competitor” in a
“free-enough” market in which provision of services by default
according to location is simply the unquestioned norm, and in which
his market “freedom” lies in the power – whether earned,
bestowed, both, or neither – to prohibit distant “competitors”
from offering services to their claimed customer-subjects.
Just as an act of
violence can be as convincing a show of power as the issuance of a
credible threat, ability and privilege have the same influence on
increasing the likelihood that persons will have to submit to some
monopolistic or oligopolistic actor in order to obtain their basic
subsistence and survival needs.
It is exploitive; in
that it derives advantage – as well as utility and usefulness –
from the fact that, to survive, consumers must frequent markets,
which can be dominated by one of few providers, and whose rules can
be influenced by one or few agents.
The perpetuation of
monopoly and oligopoly is an abuse so egregious that it should be
considered tantamount to violent aggression. Of course, violence and
abuse of all varieties are to be discouraged, minimized, defended
against, and compensated for.
Chapter 5: The
Legitimacy of Political Associations
First, there is to
be no violence or coercion in the authoritarian
sense; that is, no
person shall be required
to
subject himself to a political association without exercising the
freedom to choose which agency – from among a set of fairly
competing alternatives (fairness defined as all market agents having
more or less the same influence, market share, and information, or at
least not posing a risk of constituting an artificial oligopoly) –
shall be delegated the authority to resolve disputes which he cannot
resolve on his own without resorting to armed conflict.
Second, there is to
be no violence or coercion in the chaotic
sense; i.e., no
person shall be free
or
permitted
to adjudicate or
arbitrate disputes of others if and when he has some substantial
vested interest in resolving the dispute.
That is, all
disputes which cannot be resolved through peaceful,
mutually-consensual decision-making must be submitted to some –
although not necessarily always the same, and preferably not
always the same (due
to the high potential of abuse) – fair, neutral, and independent
arbiter (or, eventually, series
of arbiters) which
lacks substantial, direct, vested interest in the outcome of the
decision.
More generally, no
person or agent may make decisions which directly affect the freedoms
of others without their consent. This conception of arbitrary powers
and abilities should contribute to the conception of the privileges
of those taking-up enough market share to wield oligopoly powers as
tyrannical.
The very existence
of these agents and powers pose threats to the freedom and fairness
of markets – and the rights of consumers to participate in them –
worldwide. The freedom to intervene arbitrarily in the affairs of
others is no less a privilege because it is unchecked than because it
is bestowed.
In regards to
whether individuals would be permitted to refrain
from submitting
irreconcilable disputes to some neutral agent or agents, economist
Robert Murphy writes in “Chaos Theory” that others would likely
refrain from association with such individuals due to the high risks
involved in doing so.
This is especially
true given the perception that, given the irreconcilable nature of
such disputes, such individuals often attempt to inappropriately
“take the matter into their own hands”. As doing this under
default government would mean rejecting the authority of the only
government making a claim on the territory one occupies, under a free
market in governance it would mean rejecting entire markets of
agencies operating under an accommodatingly broad array of systems of
judicial ethics.
Overall, adopting
such a stance on the conditions for the legitimacy of political
associations would help to decrease the number and impact of
decisions made on the behalves of agents which inhibit said agents’
freedom to act in accordance with their own ethics and self-interest.
PART
3: MARKET ANARCHISM AND THE LEFT
Chapter
1: Democracy, and Sovereignty as Externalization
An emphasis on
personal choice in commercial and civic matters should not preclude
the freedom to make decisions democratically – nor in concert with
and consideration of the wishes of others – provided that such
systemic decision-making structures are acceded to voluntarily; that
is, in the presence of alternate decision-making modes and
structures, provided that no agency may compel any person to come
exclusively to it for any service, and provided that such political
associations are not permanent, may be terminated, and are subject to
frequent option of renewal and scrutiny.
Provided that the
costs and responsibilities associated with the application and
enforcement of such decisions are not externalized (passed-on) to
non-consenting, unaware, and / or not yet affected persons or
agencies, the freedoms of those who wish to make decisions via
democratic processes would in fact be augmented.
Perhaps most
importantly, they would be protected from actors attempting to impose
fiscal austerity measures, which many in modern American political
society view as being often arbitrary in regards to alternative
budgetary reform measures which may be more conducive to the
promotion of peace and socioeconomic justice, such as the removal of
privilege from the military-industrial complex and the removal of
barriers to commerce and the labor market.
Chapter
2: Political Choice as Boycott and Market Preference
The majority of
Americans today – some 60 percent, at least – believe that the
wealthy should pay a greater percentage of their income (and / or
property) than the middle-class and the poor to fund the operations
of government.
Given this fact, it
seems reasonable to expect that in a free market for governance, at
least – and probably significantly more than – 60 percent of the
agencies competing to provide goods and services to the public would
implement a progressive fee-structure.
They would do this
(at least in part) in order to appeal to their would-be customers’
ethical sensibilities – i.e., their support of socioeconomic
justice, fairness, and equality – and with a set of underlying
goals which include expansion into untapped markets and service of
dissatisfied former customers of competitors.
Given that a
significant majority of the market for – and customers of –
public services would choose to abide by and
demand such
a fee-structure, direct-action efforts may further
increase that
majority.
This is due to the
facts that most or all customers would impose their desire for such a
fee-structure on the market; and that many of the remaining 40
percent or less of the populace which does not already support
progressive taxation may come to see that intentional interruptions
in the structure which benefit the very top percentage of earners the
current system disproportionately benefits the top income earners at
their expense, and that it was not progressive taxation but rather
imperfections
in it which
has significantly contributed to the disparity in wealth and income.
This system would
function best in a society in which individuals are free and
encouraged to boycott and protest agencies which they believe act
unethically, to spread information about such agencies to others, and
to reach their own conclusions about which facts about agencies are
true or false.
Naturally, the
individuals (and groups) who believe that refusal to implement a
sufficiently just and equitable fee-structure is a good enough reason
to refrain from supporting an agency should be treated as no
exception.
Given sufficient
sustained dedication and coordination of the actions of such
individuals (and the citizen advocacy, consumer awareness, and public
interest groups – and other associations – which they form), it
is conceivable that agencies perceived as among the most amoral or
exploitative would lose most or all of their share of the markets and
of their patrons.
This would likely
occur due to resignation of officials and employees, desertion by
customers, lack of ethical sympathy felt by potential customers to
begin with, protests by outside actors, and / or increased
competition by better-respected agencies.
Chapter
3: Progressivism as Social Convention
Given the
aforementioned conditions, it is also
conceivable
that the implementation of an equitable accelerated progressive
fee-structure would dominate – or even, potentially, completely
encompass – the
market for the provision of public goods and services.
Before continuing,
it should be noted that fee-structures are multi-variable cartels;
that is, multi-variable standards on the prices which customers are
willing to pay in exchange for services (multi-variable because a
graph of this type of fee structure describes a rate of acceleration
of the ratio of income and wealth to portion taxed). It should also
be kept in mind that price cartels are imposed by either or both the
providers and the consumers of goods and services.
In summation, it is
conceivable that the implementation of just and equitable
fee-structures could pervade the entire market for the provision of
goods and services to the public, through the acceptation and
adoption of social norms and customs which assert and defend the
ethical imperative of implementing such fee-structures; actions such
as information-sharing, protesting, boycotting, and forming customer
price cartels.
In regards to the
protection, insurance, and securitization of private and personal
wealth, property, and income (insofar as they are services offered
and provided to the public), all consumers of public goods and
services – especially those who believe in socioeconomic justice
and equality and
want their property
protected and insured – would be urged to adopt unwavering personal
standards of how equitable the fee-structure of the agency protecting
and insuring their property need be in order for them to be able to
justify to themselves becoming customers of such agencies (that is,
to always demand that the fee-structure of their property-insurance
agency be both graduated and accelerating in respect to the wealth
and income of the customer). Consumers would also be encouraged to
urge others to do the same.
However –
considering the possibility that direct-action information-spreading,
protests, boycotts, and adoption of standards through the formation
of peaceful cartels may not
be sufficient to
bring about the universal implementation of fair and equitable fee
structures providing for the funding of the administration of
agencies protecting and insuring wealth, property, and income – it
is necessary to explore the possibility that self-interest
and profit incentive may
help guard against such failures.
PART
4: WEALTH AND PUBLIC SERVICES
Chapter
1: Forms of Wealth, and Banking Practices
The “flat tax”
fee-structure which is often supported by libertarians and
minarchists is the most simplistic model of a fee-for-service system
providing for the protection, insurance, and security of wealth. In
this model, the owners of wealth would pay an insurance premium whose
amount is in direct proportion to the quantity of wealth to be
insured.
Given the diversity
of the forms which wealth can take – for example, physical assets
like landed property and metallic currencies versus monetary assets
tracked by banks’ computers – and the varying amount of
difficulty involved in protecting these different forms, the numeric
relationship between the price of the premium and the value of the
wealth would vary widely when one takes into account the relative
amounts
of the different
forms of wealth which an insurance customer possesses. This would
cause interruptions in – and distortions of – the
direct-proportional relationship between the amount of wealth and the
cost of insuring it.
However, this
problem could be solved by prohibiting practices such as speculation
without full possession of assets (which can manifest as usury and
fractional-reserve banking), and the manipulation of interest rates
by non-market actors. Such reforms would be especially justifiable
given that the allocation of resources is inefficient in the presence
of such practices, all of which may be characterized as
non-negligible transaction costs. Additionally, the system of the
sale, purchase, and trade of debt should be re-examined, as should
anything resembling the use of debt as a medium of exchange be
abhorred.
Essentially –
given successful universal implementation of such prohibitions of
superfluous transaction costs – the normality of the flat
fee-structure model would be preserved; that is, all persons would
pay the same fraction or percentage of their wealth in order to
protect the remainder of their wealth, regardless of how rich or how
poor they are.
However, the purpose
of explaining how a flat model could be perfected is not to propose
or promote the
flat model, but rather to introduce
it as a basis for a
more
complex model.
Chapter
2: Mutual Risk and the Price of Public Services
Thus far, the
influence which the difficulty of insuring wealth exerts on the price
of premiums has been taken into account, but the influence of risk
has
not.
Just as insurance
companies could not stay in business without carefully and accurately
determining the risk associated with insuring persons and their
property, consumers of security cannot expect to stay safe without
carefully and accurately determining the risk associated with hiring
one insurance agency over its competitors.
Being that income
earners and property owners want to keep their wealth safe from those
who would take or damage it – and keep themselves safe from those
who would attempt to kill or injure them in order to take it – they
are willing to pay in order to fund such security efforts.It is
reasonable to expect that in any just society, those who earn and own
the most would be willing to pay the most in order to protect
themselves and their wealth.
In the
administration of a taxation system for the funding of security of
person and property which is based on insurance against mutual risk
of buying and selling goods and services which promote such security,
we would see a flat-tax-style linear relationship between wealth and
income, and the “tax rate” (being that the
fee-for-security-service voluntary “tax” is a form of insurance,
the tax rate can also be termed “the insurance premium:”).
Not only would there
be the psychologically satisfying fairness of the flat tax, but
additionally the wealthy – being that with their greater wealth
they are more likely than others to become victims of theft and
bodily harm – would be willing to pay higher premiums (and even
premiums they consider exorbitant and ridiculous) in order to protect
and insure their wealth and income and themselves.
Chapter
3: The Wealthy as Charity Cases
The effects of
administering such a taxation system would likely be compounded and
complemented by the sharing of information regarding the risks of
associating with customers and providers of security; and through
protest and the formation of customer price standards, and the
boycott of agencies who do not implement such a system.
As a reminder, these
customer standards regarding fee structures are multi-variable
“cartels” which are “enforced” by the available set of
potential customers associating faithfully and legitimately in
markets which have fair conditions for participation and can be
influenced by customary personal and societal standards.
In such a system,
any agency which pledges to protect the property of the wealthiest
consumers of security for a reduced premium would effectively be
promising to perform something resembling a charity service,
essentially transforming the wealthiest consumers into “welfare
cases”. Such agencies would likely allow for the vast accumulation
of wealth in property in private hands, leading to a diminution of
profitability (unless and until such agencies decide not to play fair
and begin to threaten, attack, and / or externalize costs onto
unwilling potential customers).
Chapter
4: Personal Wealth as a Danger to the Community
In the event of a
sustained, effective boycott against competing property insurers,
property owners would continue to desire that their property remain
safe from those who would take or damage it, and also desire to keep
themselves
safe
from those who would attempt to kill or injure them in order to take
their property.
As
a reminder, in a panarchist system, property protection and insurance
companies would negotiate with, and occasionally sue one another,
when their insured customers wrong one another. Also, agencies
offering property insurance policies would not be able to stay in
business (i.e., avoid going bankrupt) without carefully determining
the risk associated with resolving to protect, and issuing an
insurance policy that covers the property of, some particular
customer or other agency. Additionally, the premium rates on such
insurance would reflect each company's past measures of success in
providing restitution to victims of property theft or damage.
Wealthy property
owners whom do not pay protection premiums, the price of which
approaches that of fair market standards set by the consumers of
security, would have no reason to expect others not to attempt to
seize or diminish the utility of their claimed property, and / or
attempt to physically harm them for defending it. This is to say that
the wealthiest property owners whom
do not pay to have their property protected and insured, would have
no reason to expect people not to steal it.
This
proposition could easily be construed to suggest that
property claims which are uninsured – and / or not readily and
actively protected or maintained – are illegitimate. This is
important because it is compatible with views on property rights
expressed by Mutualist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, by geoists such as
Henry George, and in John Locke’s labor theory of property; i.e.,
that the ownership of landed property is legitimate only when it
remains in use or occupation.
To fail to pay more would be to fail to
internalize the protection costs which the presence of that wealth
would externalize upon the remainder of the community (literally, the
geographical community, whose occupants are vulnerable to attack or burglary due to the possibility of their homes being mistaken for the wealthy property).
The
wealthy would be both obligated
and willing
at
the same time, to pay higher amounts for the premiums to have their
property protected and insured, even if those prices are exorbitant
and ridiculous in their own opinion. First, because they have more
wealth, and second, because they, with their greater wealth, are more
likely to become victims of theft.
It
would be especially true that the wealthy would be willing to pay
more if “cartels” are “enforced” universally; that is, if
each and every one of the many property insurance agencies selling in
the market, were to accede to consumer demand that those with more
land and wealth, pay more to protect their property, and additionally
pay to defer the protection costs which would normally be incurred by
the least wealthy property owners.
Property
owners would become
willing to
pay more – both proportionately and absolutely – in order to
protect their property and keep their persons safe (i.e, against
those many consumers who would demand that their property insurer
threaten loss of life and limb against those who own so much property
and wealth, that the presence of that wealth (and neighbors'
knowledge that it exists) puts the safety of their neighbors
at
similar risk (i.e., of burglary and unmerited occupation). In
acceding to consumer demands, the wealthy property owner protects his
own self-interest, and succeeds at protecting both his person and his
property.
It is in the
afore-explained manner that rational self-interest and profit
incentive may help guard against the failures of direct action,
account and correct for the externalization of costs onto society and
unwilling potential customers, and fuel a market mechanism which
would prevent and limit the accumulation of vast sums of private
property (i.e., in the means of production) in private hands.
Simply, not only
does this system take into account the motivation of
businesses to reap net benefit and to serve the interest of their
board members, investors, and customers; the success of the system
depends on the rational pursuit of self-interest and profit
motive (in a context of non-aggression, and of just legal and
economic repercussions for aggressing against competitors and
unwilling potential customers).
Agencies which do
not administer such equitable "tax" policies could even be
sued for exploitation by a potentially infinite series of appeals to
mutually-chosen fair, neutral, and independent arbiters which do not
have vested interest in the outcome of the decisions made.
Additionally, direct-action tactics and lawsuits alike could result
in the bankruptcy and / or abolition of the offending agency.
Post-Script
How much more difficult a time would those who benefit from government largess have protecting their own wealth (i.e., through their own effort) if they had to possess all of their physical property and wealth on one parcel of land, instead of ten or more houses?
How hard would it be to protect their wealth if they had to carry all of their wealth on them in a sack of physical gold, tied around their ankles, so that instead of being free to go to the marketplaces and the auctions, they are forced to dislocate their own knees in order to get there?
I would not object if we lived that way. In Ancient Rome, if someone became too wealthy, they would strand them on the outskirts of the city. Not only can my idea be used to achieve just that, it could also spare the marketgoing public the indignity of having nearly every item at the auction bought out from under them right in front of their eyes.
For additional reading, see "Chaos Theory" by Robert P. Murphy, and "The Market for Liberty" by Linda and Morris Tannehill.
See also: the following blog entries.
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/04/using-profit-incentive-to-promote.html
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/05/agorist-protection-agencies-and.html
Written in May 2013
Edited in November 2014 and January 2015,
Published November 21st, 2014
Edited on February 27th, 2019
