Category: Politics, Power, and Governance

—“Q&A: I am curious to know how war and interventionism would be dealt with within a propertarian polity. Anarchists are obviously dogmatically supportive of “non-interventionism” but do you find this a viable position?”— Great question. We can address the general topic of war on one hand, and the criteria for moral war on the other. ONE. 1) as for war, it is the most costly and consequential commons that a group can produce. It’s is, like norms and law, a necessary commons if for no other reason than it is the sole criteria upon which sovereignty ( control of ones destiny ) depends. In the case of Liberty if you are not sufficiently capable of denying others dominance over you, then regardless of your opinion, you have not Liberty but permission. It is only through organised violence that we obtain Liberty in fact rather than permission. So in this sense I can find no other argument of any kind other than the capacity for war is necessary for Liberty, and that the militia is the only effective producer of Liberty, even if led by a minority of professional warriors. TWO Now Liberty will always be the desire of the minority. It is an aristocratic and bourgeoise desire. The majority of men lack the ability to compete in any sphere of life and as such desire entertainment, consumption and security, not Liberty. So as a minority, those who seek Liberty have, and must, always seek to expand their numbers. Liberty is and can only be constructed by the reciprocal insurance of life and property – creating legal equals where no other equality exists. So any man that offers this contract for reciprocal insurance regardless of stature, increases our numbers and increases equality under law even if vastly unequal in ability and property. THREE So that any request by other peoples to join the group of reciprocally insured will increase our numbers, our strength, strength, our resources, and our territory — and consequently deny illiberalism over those people, resources and territory. Increasing our competitiveness and decreasing the competitiveness of the illiberal. So any request for reciprocal insurance is one that we must accept as long as we can succeed in it. FOUR Now we come to the problem of conquest: the involuntary imposition of rule. If other are a constant problem of immigration, conversion, cheating, raiding, or harming, even if they do not conduct the war of states, then their conquest and rule and domestication is objectively moral. FIVE Now we come to the problem of the less moral or the primitive and impossible to cooperate with. Any group less objectively moral ( gypsies ) less objectively rational ( Muslims / women ) less objectively truthful ((( you know who ))), is a candidate for domestication. So it is not a question of whether violence is employed but whether one domesticates and rules, or whether one conquers, damages, and exploits. If we are eliminating parasitism and increasing productivity then since morality is reducible to the universal incentive to cooperate productively, then exercise of violence is warranted. LASTLY. In my experience libertines and libertarians are nearly always social misfits unable to obtain status signals in the status quo equal to their perception of self worth. In other words they are largely parasites trying to escape the very high cost of creating the high trust polity that grants them Liberty to live parasitically off the commons just as leftists want to live parasitically off private production. Thanks for the great question. Curt Doolittle.