#panarchism

In general, I’m a “live and let live” kind of person.

I don’t insert myself into other people’s lives. I respect other people’s freedom to do whatever they want, even if that does not necessarily align with my values, or if I find their behaviors stupid.

But I am not so open-minded that my brain would fall out of my skull. I’m far from naive or gullible. 

I will never let anyone fuck with me.

When I encounter progressives, as well as some of the left-anarchists and left-libertarians, I sense that their view of humanity is that human beings are fundamentally good. From this point of view, their thought develops along the line of, “since people are good, there’s no need for oppressive, top-down authoritarianism.”

I find this position problematic, I don’t buy into it, and it is quite contrary to the historic development of liberty in the Western thoughts. 

If people are intrinsically and fundamentally “good,” that is, all human beings are instinctively predisposed toward altruism, the progressives would extend this assumption to justify mob rule and totalitarianism at the expense of individual liberties, as long as it is “democratic.” Power to the people, indeed. 

But history tells us that mob rule rarely produces positive results, especially when it lacks sound principles and safeguards against excess.

The underlying bedrock idea upon which libertarianism, anarchism, and classical liberalism are built is, seemingly paradoxically, that human beings are fundamentally evil and are instinctively predisposed toward evil. 

Since individuals are of fallen nature, any concentration of powers into a smaller number of people (politically, into a hand of a government; economically, into a hand of a capitalist; and culturally, into a hand of a religious hierarchy) would only magnify the evil. 

Therefore, to limit the evil is to decentralize and spread out the powers to the point where no one class of people (or an organization or institution) can become a single point of failure; whereas every individual has meaningful autonomy over their own lives but does not have power over anyone else.

As Ludwig von Mises famously wrote: “The worship of the state is the worship of force. There is no more dangerous menace to civilization than a government of incompetent, corrupt, or vile men. The worst evils which mankind ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments. The state can be and has often been in the course of history the main source of mischief and disaster.” 

Think of Pol Pot’s reign of terror in his so-called “Democratic Kampuchea”; Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich; Chairman Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. These occurred because they sincerely believed that people (at least the “people” of their own kind) are “good.” 

Another interesting phenomenon I’ve observed over time is that those who believe “people are good” often come from a considerable place of privilege. On the contrary, ask anyone who had a hard life -- whether a life on the street, a stint in prison, or growing up in an abusive family -- and they all can tell you how people are NOT good by nature. They’ve wised up enough never to show a sign of weakness, knowing that this is a harsh world where they could literally get killed at any time for being perceived to be weak. 

The reality is that the latent animal instinct within human beings is geared toward self-preservation. In fact, this was understood by psychologist Marshall Rosenberg, the “father” of Non-Violent Communications (NVC) and the principles of NVC is based on the premise that every human behavior is intended to satisfy the unmet fundamental human needs. Far from utopian or naive, NVC works around this reality to prevent violent conflicts. 

Authoritarianism: "Why do all of you keep resisting? I! AM! ALL-POWERFUL!"

Anarchism: "Me and my children will always fight!"

Exploring Le Grand E Day’s Theory of Multigovernment – Part 2

In part 1 of this two-pronged exploration of the theory of multigovernment, we delved into the structural aspects of the theory. In this second and final part, I examine the fundamental principles of the theory.

The Principles of the Theory of Multigovernment

Principle 1: Each person’s needs and desires for a government are different

Day holds, quite correctly, that the world is a…

Exploring Le Grand E Day’s Theory of Multigovernment – Part 1

“It is not a matter of emigration. A man does not carry his native land on the soles of his shoes. Moreover, such colossal expatriation is and always will be impracticable. The expense involved could not be met by all the wealth in the world. I have no intention of resettling the population according to its convictions, relegating Catholics to the Flemish Provinces, for example, or marking the…

If I accomplish anything with this blog, I hope it’s to promote Panarchism into a more accepted and known concept.  I’ll definitely be getting into the finer points of it in the future.  This post will be a nice primer to introduce it.  I won’t put much original content in this entry, that’ll come later.

Panarchism “Panarchism is a political philosophy which advocates one's right to voluntary association in the choice of one's own governance.  Most individuals did not choose their current government and many citizens disagree with some of the rules they are expected to obey.  Panarchism means that a government, just like a church, should only have power over the individuals who choose to opt in.  This allows for multiple simultaneous governments in one state, where the citizens can select the system which best suits their needs and views.  Panarchism would give both responsibility and self-determination back to the citizen, while allowing the best governmental system(s) to prevail due to natural selection.” (T. E. Diamond Lawrence, http://www.panarchism.org/)

People often think Voluntaryism is inherently anarchist. In fact most people conflate Voluntaryism and Anarcho-Capitalism as synonymous. But while many Voluntaryists are Ancaps like Murray Rothbard, voluntaryism is not inherently anarchist.

In fact the founder who coined Voluntaryism Auberon Herbert specifically stated that he was not an anarchist and even argued against it. Instead he promoted a voluntary state funded through non-coercive means. And i pretty much agree with him, i believe that the best system would be voluntary states that are panarchist in nature.

Anarcho-Capitalists however believe that states are inherently coercive because of the tax system, ancaps frequently ask how it would be possible to have a voluntary state when a state lives based on coercive tax funds, since taxes are involuntary and considered theft by libertarians. And i agree, i strongly oppose any form of coercive tax, i believe tax is simply legalized theft. So then what alternative would i propose to fund the state by non-coercive means? Well there are actually plenty of great alternatives to the tax system to keep a state alive.

Firs of all a big point to make is that a minimal state needs far less taxes to stay alive than a big government we have nowadays, the state's only job being police, courts and defense means that it doesn't have to waste so much spending on useless things like attacking countries and the war on drugs, which already lowers the need for funding significantly, but they still need funding.

So here are alternative methods for the state to gain revenue.

1. Voluntary Tax

Just like private charity would be a voluntary alternative to welfare, voluntary tax could easily be a replacement for the coercive system we now have. There are many people who feel that they need to pay more taxes and that taxes should go higher. Bill Gates and Warren Buffet despite being really rich support higher taxes on them. So what exactly would prevent these men to give taxes to the government if it weren't mandatory? If these men where real philantropists they would have no problem i'd imagine. Same goes with a lot of people who would likely have no problem donating a little to the night watchman state.

In fact we've seen this system done in history. During the Icelandic Commonwealth there was a system known as Goðorð, which was a sort of state system led by Chieftains. People could voluntarily support these Chieftains through a tax system called Temple Dues. And this system stood for three centuries which is longer than the US has existed and definitely far longer than any attempt at communism.

2. Lottery system

Who doesn't like lottery? The idea of having a chance to get millions is a very persuasive thought that often makes people willing to take a shot at. A lottery would be a great way for the state to persuade people into voluntarily giving them revenue. The state could then use the money gained from the people participating partly for state funds and partly to select a lucky winner.

George Washington used this system to gain revenue for infrastructure.

3. Usage fees

Rather than having to pay taxes for things you do not want to pay for like war or imprisoning innocent people a usage fee would be a good system in order to maintain specific things you want to have. While normally government doesn't even need to maintain infrastructure in a libertarian society since private companies do a better job at them the things that the state does maintain like courts and police there's definitely opportunity for usage fees, at the very least usage fees give you a choice as opposed to mandatory taxes.

4. For profit government systems

There's nothing stopping the state from joining in the market. Rather than trying to create a monopoly through non-profit government divisions the state could make their companies into profit making ones and as such gain revenue from voluntary trade.

New Zealand had this feature for a while when they reformed their government companies into for profit companies which got them plenty of income.

5. Fines

Fines are used for when you break the law such as illegally entering someone's private property, these fines could be used to fund the state and could only be implemented for breaking the NAP.

Depending on who you ask (admittedly there aren’t many you can) Panarchy will either fall into a Central (or statist) model and a Common (or anarchic) model. Central models, such as Zach Weinersmith’s Polystate have overarching statutory rules about when you can enter or leave an anthrostate, what happens when a criminal or civil incident occurs between citizens of differing anthrostates, and so on. One of the key points is that a person must be a citizen of a state, its simply assumed. Early academic articles discussing Panarchy similarly assume a bureaucratic body that might administer the registration and transfer of citizenship in Panarchy.

I am not going to argue in this piece as to which would be best (and I think some of these are downright terrible) and instead provide a handful of theoretical frameworks for administering a Panarchist system. I will start with the most anarchic and move to the most centralized with two intermediary models. This is not meant to be a comprehensive list and the variations you could perform on any one of these could probably fill a book in and of itself.

1. Free Association (Contractual) Panarchy

Contractual Panarchy bears more resemblance to the one found in Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age, in which ‘Thetes’ roam the streets, citizenshipless, right alongside those who are members of a ‘Phyle’. In many ways, provided systems of property rights remain in place as they would in an anarcho-capitalist society, there is no fundamental difference between this and voluntaryism. After all, the right of free association taken one step further by anarchists from their minarchist counterparts could really be taken again with the reacceptance of a state. It’s nothing more than a facet of anarchism in this sense, a brain toy in which people hypothetically utilize an association to protect their rights and provide them (possibly) services.

Any Common Economic Protocol or similar system used to administer differences between states would find itself working in a Friedmanesque polycentric system, one that might organically arise out of mutual benefit to the disagreeing parties.

2. State Registration Panarchy

SRP operates in a similar way to how many modern nation-states such as Australia and The United States of America have a register for corporations. A new state would register itself, lodging its constitution (regardless of whether it is a few lines or a ten volume civil code) with the International Bureau of States, who would only serve an administerial role, acting as an acceptable neutral agent to grant (and possible revoke) state licenses. Of course, there would need to be some body and method for determining whether or not to revoke a state’s license. An independent but official court whose role was solely to deal with cases involving a breach of a registered constitution (resulting in the state’s dissipation) or a conflict between state interests.

3. Fixed Number Panarchy

Fixed Number Panarchy, or FNP simply means that the number (and overarching organizational structure) of the states in a Panarchist system are fixed, subject to the ability for a convention of states to convene to create a new one, due to demand or agreement. The states then would have an organized way in which to resolve large-scale disputes, a World Congress of sorts, with the menagerie of states being able to democratically come to agreement on issues that are best suited to a central authority. These FNP states would ideally be anthrostates rather than geostates, not claiming sovereign monopolies on territory and the people therein. The primary issue at hand is representation in the FNP Congress. Is it proportional to the number of people within a state or are the number of votes fixed subject, again, to a ratification by the FNP? This might lead to skewed turnouts either way or the inevitable creep towards a two-party system found in democracies with anything but mixed-member proportional electoral systems. Simply choosing between the Republican State or the Democratic State would hardly be an ideal system for anyone.

4. Nominal Panarchy

Rather than choosing which state to subscribe to, Nominal Panarchy instead allows people to choose what “level” or “mode” of citizenship they want. A “Blue” citizen may be forced to pay high taxes but is given higher quality services in exchange. A “Yellow” citizen may pay little to no taxation, but may not be able to bring proceedings in publicly funded courts or have access to public healthcare. “Purple” citizens might be required to serve in the military for several years before receiving high priority services at a comparatively lower taxation rate but will also suffer the downside of being on active reserve status so long as they remain a “Purple” citizen.