As I sat and watched tonight’s GOP Presidential debate in South Carolina it became clear to me that despite much greater name recognition than four years prior, Congressman Ron Paul’s message of non-interventionism will continue to fall on deaf ears. As a minarchist this phenomena was both infuriating and incomprehensible. As an anarchist, however, it makes perfect sense.

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The other day I began reading Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs. Though I’m a bit turned off by some aspects of Jobs’s personality, I’m fascinated by the entrepreneurial eagerness that seemed to fill his brain from an early childhood.

Looking back, many other industry titans, including Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates, also had jobs when they were young; their intuition wasn’t limited to the classroom.

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Many people who come to the philosophy of liberty from the right hold on to their conservative talking points on corporations and unions. I came here from the radical left. So it was obvious to me that organized labor played a legitimate role in a free market and that corporations were a creation of the state. But I hadn’t committed a lot of time to forging my opinion.

Both unions and corporations are rooted in freedom of association, but it seemed to me that corporations limit legitimate liability, and unions violate freedom of disassociation. They seem fundamentally similar because they both mitigate economic liability with state force. But I wanted to check my own ex-liberal bias. So, I interviewed one person from each side, a radical unionist and a tea-party patriot, to talk me through the gaps in my understanding.

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An interviewer once asked H.L. Mencken, “If you find so much that is unworthy of reverence in the United States, then why do you live here?” Mencken quickly responded, “Why do men go to zoos?”

It is for the same reason that I find myself continually watching political debates.

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Almost all of us hold two beliefs which contradict a third near-universal belief.  The first is that a state, however else defined, is a geographic monopoly of security and justice.  One cannot appeal a ruling beyond the state, and whatever private providers of security and justice may exist, they do so in pronounced subservience to and supervision by the state.

The second is that monopolies invariably cause high prices and low quality.  Is it so absurd to unite these two self-evident ideas and suggest that states are poor providers of security and justice?

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What is a natural right as opposed to a right acquired by contract?

Natural rights begin with the idea that a human being is a form of property. The question becomes “who is the owner?” There are three possible alternatives: each person is a self-owner; someone else owns him (slavery); or he is an unclaimed good.

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If you have the stomach to follow political debate at all in the United States, you cannot avoid the constant references to the government’s “Founding Fathers” — the small group of political heroes who make up the grand pantheon of antique moral authorities invoked to justify almost every form of political action today.
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For my previous article introducing the topic of free-market justice, please click here.

The individualist-anarchist view of justice is based on a two-pronged approach: (1) eliminating the state; and (2) replacing it with voluntary associations in which defense is viewed as a commodity or service, like education. Defense associations would function in a manner similar to modern insurance companies. Beyond a basic coverage, customers would choose the particular level and type of service they desire, just as they currently choose the deductible on their car insurance and whether or not to cover collision damage.

Would such a system include trial by jury?
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Many voluntaryists have looked longingly toward Somalia for evidence of our ideas in practice. But it’s a little tough when that real-world example also happens to be the quintessential image of extreme poverty and feuding warlords for most people.

Nonetheless, sometimes an article appears that rightly points out that comparing Somalia to developed nations is a little intellectually dishonest. In fact, Somalia has improved by virtually every measure of standard of living without a state, or when compared to its neighbors that still have a state.
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I have a fundamental objection to the prison system that I rarely hear raised. Why does a man who steals a loaf of bread lose his freedom of speech? Why does a woman who vandalizes a car lose the freedom to associate with her children? These questions are a challenge to those who view rights as social constructs as well as those who believe they are inalienable. Stated in more general terms, how is it that aggressors lose virtually all freedom because of what might be a minor transgression?
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