On Libertarianism and Statecraft, Part IV: Libertarian Governance
By Insula Qui
Author’s note: The main themes of this series will be further expounded upon in my upcoming book Anarcho-Monarchism, which will be available in April.
Introduction
Part III concluded by asserting that without governance in a libertarian social order, each property holder is vulnerable to social and economic issues, to say nothing of conquest. But the reasons provided did not form a definitive case for why it is necessarily true. There still could be an appeal to private defense agencies, decentralized collaboration, and independence. Thus, let us consider the fundamental reasons why people are so drawn to governance.
The Necessity of Governance
A benefit of governance is that it can regulate both the economy and society. This is completely counter-intuitive to almost any libertarian, but there is a good case to be made for government regulation on a completely anti-state basis. Provided that government is formed voluntarily, it will regulate effectively at least insofar as fulfilling the wishes of the public is effective. But as libertarians, should we not be opposed to economic and social intervention? Should we not challenge social systems whenever they encroach upon private affairs? Individualism would imply that whenever social systems invade the lives of individuals, the results will be undesirable. This is certainly true insofar as we are talking about the democratic nation-state, which is rarely held accountable for what it does. However, if governance is completely voluntary, then it fulfills important roles via regulation. First, it prevents social problems caused by incohesion that people wish to avoid. If, for example, the majority of a population want to end drug use, they would need to unite into a covenant to do so. By imposing a cost of, for example, mandatory rehabilitation for people caught with drugs alongside a confiscation of any drugs on all property in an area, a covenant community could greatly reduce drug problems in their society.
If one finds this to be disagreeable, one can attempt to find property owners who do not wish to impose any such conditions or withdraw one’s sovereign property from associations that require such conditions. No one is entitled to use drugs on the property of someone who disallows it or to violate a contract that binds one to abstain from drugs. Each person could certainly exit such a contract by the means specified therein and be completely free to do whatever they themselves want. Though contracts without an exit are unlikely, it would be a matter of personal responsibility not to enter into such an agreement. (This is unlikely because most people desire to prevent any imposition of costs that could arrive with changing circumstances and unchanging contracts.)
Community and Individual
Whereas most people wish to have their communities conform to their personal values, it is of vital importance to have a mechanism by which this is possible. That mechanism is the structure of governance that would take shape in a completely voluntary society. We can all remain nihilistically uninvolved with our communities, but this is dispreferable and value-destructive for most people. Furthermore, even keeping a purely individualist view, one can see a community as a market with people contributing to it and, in exchange, receiving status. This also applies in reverse as whenever people go against the community, they must be sanctioned. This must be the case because a community is formed of individual interactions which create either utility or disutility within the social realm.
From this, we can logically infer that a progressive society is fundamentally communistic, as it forces people to subsidize undesirable behaviors. The same problems that appear whenever communism is introduced into economics appear whenever progressivism is introduced into society. Progressivism makes exclusion socially unacceptable, and its adherents expect degenerates and anti-socials to receive status. This is contrary to nature, so there is a pressing need to end progressivism by privatizing social interactions.
Governance is also necessary due to the variability of preferences. It is easy to demonstrate this by considering what different anarcho-capitalists think about economics. Some favor corporations, some support fractional reserve banking, some are virulently against unions, and some think intellectual property is a right. If there cannot even be economic consensus across different populations of anarcho-capitalists, then there can be no expectations that society as a whole can agree on one cohesive standard in a spontaneous manner.
Thus, to make economic transactions practical, there is a necessity for the enforcement of universal standards within a community. If there is no agreement on the standards for transactions, the cost for every transaction becomes much larger. For example, if one tried to haggle in a Western country, one would be a bother to shopkeepers. On the other hand, if one refrained from haggling in the Middle East, one would surely be overcharged. This is an issue even when everyone agrees on pure and radical libertarianism. However, the only real solution to this is to have a meta-structure in which there is a foundational market for governance. This is the only way in which to ultimately rehabilitate varying preferences.
Contracts and Non-Aggression
The fundamental philosophy of libertarianism is rooted in respect for property rights. But the real productive aspect of libertarianism is that it ensures the ability to form contracts pertaining to one’s own property alongside the right to organize in whatever way anyone sees fit. This means that libertarianism is compatible with any form of organization insofar as it is contractual as opposed to being coercive. Moreover, not only is libertarianism compatible with all contractual relations, but contractual relations are at the basis of all social and economic growth.
When people give their voluntary consent, they do so because all parties expect to benefit from a contractual association. However, no one intrinsically benefits from plain non-violence, insofar as that person is not on the perpetual receiving end of violence. However, if we imagined a non-violent society in which each person would be relegated to a life in a forest without any access to water or electricity, we would certainly see a drop in the living standards despite the non-violence. Society is ultimately necessary for any personal benefit. Non-aggression is the best way to organize a society, but it necessitates that a society be useful for individuals. There is a theoretical possibility that aggression could result in greater social wealth, but this is only true if aggression creates society. This should be the foremost faulty conception that libertarians dispute.
Having property rights and an absolute right to contract establishes the best potential to benefit from the structure of libertarianism. The real motivation to have a libertarian society is not the philosophy of libertarianism but rather the metastructure of efficient contract within that society. The only compromise inherent is that each person can either accept or reject the contract. The terms of the contract are subject to change, but there is no need to adopt mutually disagreeable contracts. This is contrasted with the state, where all relations are fundamentally based on compromise as the state makes decisions by accounting for a variety of special interest groups.
The Form of Governance
But how could this sort of contractual governance emerge in a libertarian society, and what form would it take? It is obvious that there is some need for contractual governance as property has to be managed, but the form of governance is still highly subject to controversy. The problems within governance based purely on contract are largely threefold. First, all people within a given area have to join their ‘domains’ and agree to be governed. This may be changed with the growing digitization of society where we can find ourselves in allegiances without physical contact. There is a distinct possibility for more complex systems using digital contracts. However, there will never be a society that can remain wholly digital because people need physical social contact. Second, there is a need for some people to govern those who agree to be governed. Third, the people who are governed cannot be taxed or coerced to maintain the union. The government needs to be funded completely out of personal volition and not coercion by the government.
Fortunately, all of these problems are easily solved because each person is motivated to move away from unconnected instability into governance by joining a social structure. As contractual government structures are purely voluntary entities, each person seeks to join the one that produces the most value. As these structures benefit greatly from economies of scale until they exceed their optimal size, governance will offer more benefit to late-comers than to early-comers, all else being equal. This does not mean that each productive late-comer is not a benefit to all early-comers; it simply means that the people who take the most risk for the least reward are those who form governments.
The establishment of such a structure has a large cost because it is not easy to set up a government, even without forcing people to submit to it. These structures will tend to be confederal, as each person wants to retain their sovereignty while delegating part of the management of their property to the managerial entity. This creates a social contract which is actually valid because its members are free to leave it if it becomes value-destructive. However, until the governance structure becomes overtly value-destructive, each person would have to take upon themselves the cost of their own exit.
The government wants to prevent exit as much as possible to maintain its role in society. A governmental collapse imposes a giant burden upon those who are in charge of the government at the moment of collapse. To prevent this collapse in a libertarian order, the government must be constantly and perpetually value-productive to the greatest majority of its people. The government has to cater to the population and ensure that the relations between government and property owners are truly reciprocal. The issue of such a government rejecting libertarianism and trying to force people to submit to it will be discussed in Part V.
Those Who Govern
There is still the question of who will govern when there is no destructive selection for governance. It seems difficult to have a system of governance without vested structures, but this is false. There will always be the people who are most fit to govern as per the division of labor. These are the natural elites, the community leaders, the aristocracy of men who do not need to initiate the use of force to have respect and status. The people who would ensure proper statecraft would be the people who can demonstrate their worth. The only requirement for this is a truly privatized social order where social benefits result in personal profits.
This is contrasted with the current regime where those who govern are those who can be the best demagogues or use aggressive violence most effectively. There is never any requirement for testimony to prove that those who govern are apt in statecraft. There is never a demonstration of merit aside from rhetoric. The best way to have great men govern society is to allow free competition in governance so that those who are great can govern as they are able to demonstrate their worth.
In essence, the liberty that can allow for a contractual society ensures a proper hierarchy in matters of statecraft. The most capable will be the ones in charge of government. But governments by many men are inherently prone to conflict. Furthermore, all additional men in governance impose a risk on those who might be burdened with their responsibility. Under unlimited liability, all members of a government have responsibility over the actions of that government. Thus, if the number of people who are in that government were to increase, those already in that government would have to shoulder the additional risk.
There are only two ways to resolve this. One is to have the greatest of all men take upon himself the ultimate burden in his own society. This is the owner of the government, or the trustee who is in ultimate charge of it. In other terms, this is the libertarian king. The other is hyper-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction that make conflict far too damaging to consider. But this goes against the preferences of a great majority of people. Even so, it may be desirable to have nuclear armament regulated by an aristocratic upper class to ensure that devastating arms do not end up in the hands of people who have nothing to lose. It is always preferable to arm upstanding people, as they are less likely to initiate violence because they will bear greater costs for it.
An aristocratic monarchy is the natural form of a libertarian social order, just as each well-managed business has similar organizational principles. The libertarian monarch could just as well be called the CEO, and the natural aristocracy could be called the shareholders. Both the classical and corporate allegory are fit for the form of governance that would emerge within a libertarian society. However, as each man is the sovereign of his own property and yet has this greater sovereign over them, how can the interests be harmonized into a cohesive political system without excessive conflict? This may seem contradictory to the entire notion of sovereignty, but the sovereigns are divided in their capacity. The individual sovereigns become only sovereign over themselves while the sovereignty of the government only extends to the structure of that governance. This results in successfully dividing sovereignty to create the perfect confederation, thus squaring the proverbial circle.
Conclusion
To answer the remaining questions in this article, it is necessary to create a collaborative theory of statecraft and to have a consistent theory of governance. We cannot simply impose the statist framework on a libertarian society and expect it to work. And a critique without a consistent alternative is often a futile exercise. Additionally, our critique remains woefully insufficient from a reactionary point of view. Thus, Part V will begin the tasks of removing statecraft from the area of interpersonal conflict, forming a theory of statecraft which is compatible with libertarian principles of trade and non-aggression, and demonstrating why this is preferable to a statist society from a reactionary standpoint.
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