Recently, in a discussion on various forms of government or lack thereof, and anarchy in particular, I brought up the well-known argument that the main risk of anarchy is that it will devolve into “might makes right,” wherein bands of well-armed bandits would take advantage of the power vacuum to establish zones of control and pillage, or what some refer to as “warlordism.”  I was referred to the article, But Wouldn’t Warlords Take Over, by Robert P. Murphy, by way of rebuttal to my question.  Being generally disposed toward anarchy, but harboring serious doubts about its workability and robustness, I was interested in reading what I hoped would be a solid rebuke to my concerns, finally to assuage my fears about what would happen in the wake of a removal of the State, either abruptly, or through initially slow, but increasingly fast, decay.

Murphy’s argument starts out by characterizing the question in a way I will paraphrase as “What would happen to a state of market anarchy, given that market anarchy already exists.” This is not, unfortunately, the situation I envision.  My concern is “What would happen on the way to anarchy, given a destruction or decline of a functioning state.”  Murphy thus avoids the difficult problem of understanding what will happen as a large Federal state, with many subsidiary agencies and sub-states that are well-armed and on paper, well-organized, fragments as “The center does not hold.”

Murphy states:

It is not enough to demonstrate that a state of private-property anarchy could degenerate into ceaseless war, where no single group is strong enough to subjugate all challengers, and hence no one can establish “order.”  After all, communities living under a State degenerate into civil war all the time.  We should remember that the frequently cited cases of Colombia and now Iraq are not demonstrations of anarchy-turned-into-chaos, but rather examples of government-turned-into-chaos.

This is a fair statement, as it is obvious that well established states can, and have, degenerated into chaos at times throughout human history. However, this is precisely the problem I am concerned about:  we do not live in a blank-slate world; we have all these preexisting structures of government and its executive agencies floating around–think local police departments, State police agencies, and militarized Federal law enforcement agencies of many types, not to mention our State National Guards and the Federal military itself.  In addition, in the United States, at least, we also have large numbers of armed civilians, who have a wide variety of small arms available to them, and a rather smaller amount of ammunition, armor, and logistical stores laid in stock.

Murphy’s argument continues:

Now that we’ve focused the issue, I think there are strong reasons to suppose that civil war would be much less likely in a region dominated by private defense and judicial agencies, rather than by a monopoly State.  Private agencies own the assets at their disposal, whereas politicians (especially in democracies) merely exercise temporary control over the State’s military equipment.  Bill Clinton was perfectly willing to fire off dozens of cruise missiles when the Lewinsky scandal was picking up steam.  Now regardless of one’s beliefs about Clinton’s motivations, clearly Slick Willie would have been less likely to launch such an attack if he had been the CEO of a private defense agency that could have sold the missiles on the open market for $569,000 each.

While this is clearly logical in saying that owners of military hardware and organizations have more of a stake in their wise use than mere controllers of such assets (it’s a restatement of the Tragedy of the Commons), in a state of market anarchy, pieces and parts of these structures would look very tempting to a potential “warlord” who is merely trying to take over the next town over and gain control of their instrastructure that is lying around, and, by the way, to get a piece of its industrial or agricultural output.  To such a man or woman in such a situation, the expenditure of some hardware and lives may well be a reasonable price to pay for acquiring the assets or labor force of a weaker neighbor.

Murphy goes on to say:

We can see this principle in the case of the United States.  In the 1860s, would large scale combat have broken out on anywhere near the same scale if, instead of the two factions controlling hundreds of thousands of conscripts, all military commanders had to hire voluntary mercenaries and pay them a market wage for their services?

Again, the question is not so much the scale of the combat or conquest, but that any combat or conquest would happen at all.  My concern is not whether a large nation dukes it out over high-minded principles such as chattel slavery and state’s rights, but whether some dude over in the next county has amassed a group of raiders and an arsenal by which the wish to compel me to give up my stuff or enslave me and my family and friends.

Let’s take the two extreme cases of devolution (or ascension, if you are of an anarchist mind) from Big Statism to Anarchy:  the complete and simultaneous evisceration of the national, state, and local governments through something like a catastrophic EMP attack, or a natural disaster such as a large meteor strike that ruins large parts of the national infrastructure while leaving most of the population alive; and a medium-slow decline as a result of economic and political shocks, both exogenous and endogenous, that call into question the legitimacy of our well-known and -loved system of “democracy” here in the good, old, US-of-A.

The case of the sudden collapse is closest to the situation Murphy suggests, but still would require a subsequent formation of a “market anarchy” from the tabula rasa of collapse to demonstrate the situation Murphy lays out in his argument. In this case, I think it’s more likely that the sudden availability of massive amounts of small arms, ammunition, and ordnance once held behind the secure doors of their armories would represent too strong a temptation for local Sheriffs and Police Chiefs, if not Mayors, to resist.  While we all like to hope that our military leadership is made of more disciplined stuff, the sudden unavailability of the normal supply chains for food and other necessary consumables might quickly find use as justifications for regional or local base commanders to send out patrols to “requisition” supplies and even labor, all, of course, in their minds allowable in such exigent circumstances to allow them to continue carrying out their duties of maintaining order and whatever else they may tell themselves.

One need not imagine hordes of Mongols sweeping across the country, raiding from town to town to keep themselves supplied; it is enough to see that local power structures will do what is necessary to perpetuate themselves when their superiors are removed or out of touch.  This is not, I think, a controversial concept among libertarians.

In the case of a slow decline, one could argue that “market anarchy” could develop more easily as localities begin to understand that their far-flung support networks and sources of funding will no longer be available to them.  They might look inward to solve their problems, rather than relying on external assets.  In such a case, though, the smaller markets that develop would likely be focused more on survival items such as food and energy production, labor markets, legal services, and education more than defense.  It’s obvious that people generally don’t prioritize defense until they find themselves in dire need of it.  The number of concealed carriers, or even people who keep a firearm ready for quick deployment for home defense, in this country is much smaller than some fear, or that others would like to imagine.  The more successful communities might find themselves ripe for the picking if they look “too successful” to others who have prioritized strength over building institutions.  Thus, we have the Mongol horde problem looming its ugly head.

Later in his article, Murphy states:

But for our purposes, the most interesting problem with this objection is that, were it an accurate description, it would be unnecessary for such a people to form a government.  If, by hypothesis, the vast majority of people—although they have different conceptions of justice—can all agree that it is wrong to use violence to settle their honest disputes, then market forces would lead to peace among the private police agencies.

Yes, it is perfectly true that people have vastly different opinions concerning particular legal issues.  Some people favor capital punishment, some consider abortion to be murder, and there would be no consensus on how many guilty people should go free to avoid the false conviction of one innocent defendant.  Nonetheless, if the contract theory of government is correct, the vast majority of individuals can agree that they should settle these issues not through force, but rather through an orderly procedure (such as is provided by periodic elections).

While we would like to think this is the case, consider the number of people in the USA, much less the world, who have even heard of the NAP, much less make any effort to practice it.  I feel Murphy gives too much credit to humanity here.  It seems obvious that most people actually believe that solving disputes through violence is acceptable, otherwise we would live in a very different world than we currently inhabit.  As a person who has great faith in humanity, I like to give people the benefit of the doubt here, but sadly, I don’t see much in the way of confirmation of Murphy’s thesis here.

I’m going to skim past Murphy’s discussion of “free riders” because I think it’s a bit too high-level and relies too much on his other arguments being correct.

Murphy concludes:

The standard objection that anarchy would lead to battling warlords is unfounded.  In those communities where such an outcome would occur, the addition of a State wouldn’t help.  Indeed, the precise opposite is true:  The voluntary arrangements of a private property society would be far more conducive to peace and the rule of law, than the coercive setup of a parasitical monopoly government.

While I really would prefer that a state of Market Anarchy can be stable, robust, and long-lived, I don’t feel that Murphy has convinced me with this particular line of argument.  He starts with a state of Market Anarchy and argues that it would hold up.  I look at it from the point of view of where our society is and how can it get from here to Anarchy without collapsing and I don’t see the answers in his article.  I believe Murphy has argued his proposition well, but it doesn’t constitute an answer to my concern because he has avoided the difficult notion of transition to anarchy.

I really would like to see a rebuttal to my concerns, which are primarily, again, How Do We Get To Anarchy Succesfully from Where We Are?

Like Special Agent Fox Mulder, I Want To Believe.  Help me out.