The Mises Institute is kindly hosting a guest lecture I gave in Brad Birzer’s “American Order and Disorder” seminar. Just to set the context, I had the students read my essay “Private Law” beforehand (a $3 value, theirs for free!). The class’s main text was Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind, and most (possibly all) of the students are serious Christians, so that’s why I tailored my remarks the way I did.
Source link: http://blog.mises.org/3142/murphy-talk-on-anarchism/
Murphy Talk on Anarchism
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This speech lacks one of the fundamental elements that many other materials on anarchism lack. Murphy failed to fully explain the fundamental reasons why the current government is illegitimate, only managing to briefly touch on the “social contract.” Hence, it sounds as if he was sputtering somewhat when he was challenged with the question of why he shouldn’t just leave the U.S.
Can you be more specific as to when I was sputtering? In response to a student question, or to a hypothetical objection that I brought up myself in the prepared remarks?
At about the 55:30 mark during the student Q&A.
If I understood the answer correctly, you merely referred to the utilitarian/pragmatic argument that there would be more insurance companies to choose from than the government. However, to me this was not adequate in explaining the truly unjust nature of government.
I’m at home (dial up) so I can’t go back and listen to the exact wording, but that student did not say to me, “If you agree to stay here, then the US government must be justified, right?” What she said was something like this:
“In your speech you said that just because you choose to remain in the US, doesn’t justify the government. ["Yep."] OK, but if we had a system of insurance companies, and we all agreed to live with them, why wouldn’t that just be the same thing?”
Do you see now why I was confused by this question? With her specific wording (which I have not reproduced accurately above), she wasn’t just saying, “What’s the difference between your system and the government?”–that’s a simple question to answer. She seemed to be saying that my response to the “why don’t you leave?” objection was somehow inconsistent with my view of a just society.
So to answer that, I just pointed out that I was being perfectly consistent; if a particular insurance company violated its contract, it would still be theft, even if the customer in question chose to retain it because of the hassle of switching. At the end I tacked on the stuff about minimizing the damage because of numerous companies just to generalize the answer, but I try to answer student’s specific questions.
And anyway, they had already read my 20-page essay on the evils of the US government, and even in the talk itself I said that the government does things (like theft and monopoly of service) that would be criminal for private individuals. What else were you hoping I’d say?
Ok, I could not hear the question too clearly. I think that another thing you should have explained is that the government does not wield legitimate authority, and that elections cannot magically transfer to politicians powers that we do not have.
Without this premise, economic theory just shows that we are masochists, not victims of an unjust government (i.e. we are taxing & regulating ourselves).
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