I still owe H&R a response. Yang may be out, but I still think this is an interesting topic.
I’m not here to tell people how to arrange their lives or businesses. So I don’t like answering these questions about what do people do in this situation and what do people do in that situation. Because I’m not those people. I don’t get a say in how they live their lives. That’s the entire point of my philosophy. You don’t get to control other people, you can only control how you react to other people.
That said, it’s clear to me that human nature loves organizing itself into large groups and pooling its resources to execute large, complicated projects, either to make the world a better place or just place their mark on the world. So by that mechanism I can easily see most of the services we enjoy in our current regime being replaced or transitioned to something very similar, just removing the part where you’ll be imprisoned or killed for disobeying. Anarchists who oppose the idea of hierarchy or authority don’t make sense to me. People love following leaders. I don’t expect great leaders to stop being born, but I do expect the class of leaders we have will improve when their authority is based on experience, skill, knowledge and inspirational ability rather than the threat of imprisonment or violence for disobedience.
The law has very little to do with how restaurants deter dine and dashing even today. I’m sure some restaurants will continue as always, some will make changes like asking for a deposit or paying first, others will hire security teams and others will ban any dine and dashers from entering the place in the future, and make sure all the other restaurants in the area know as well. There might even be a nationwide organization of restauranteurs that tracks these things, so that anyone who tries to dine and dash will never be able to step foot in another restaurant again. At least not without paying ahead of time. In general, it’s that sort of thing I envision will replace violence and imprisonment: For want of better terms, let’s call it social ostracism and economic sanctions. People can voluntarily refuse to associate or do business with you today, I just expect that to get more methodical and explicit as it becomes the main tool organizations have to enforce considerate, nonviolent behavior.
Sure, professional or volunteer organizations of security personnel, private detectives and neighborhood watches might form some sort of quasi-police force. But they won’t have any more rights than anyone else, so no more paid vacations for murdering people. You do realize the rich own the police forces today, right? In my anti-regime the rich will most likely still own police force analogs, but any group of people that can pool together the money can organize their own as well, leveling the scales a bit. Sure, the rich still have more power than the poor in my world, but they don’t have access to a four trillion dollar machine designed over the centuries to more efficiently oppress the masses.
No, when the rich and powerful control everyone else by force, that’s called “government”. “Anarchy” is the opposite of that.
I expect some arrangement will be made so that we have a very similar situation we have today. Maybe trucking companies will have a complicated system of paying each other to travel over other companies’ roads, but the average person either rides for free, or pays some nominal fee into an ASCAP type system that allows them to drive anywhere. And I’m sure some toll roads will continue to exist like they do today. Or maybe we all just pay into a National Highway Organization which manages the collection of fees and the maintenance and construction of roads. This is another scenario where I don’t want to make choices for other people, I’m merely suggesting the type of thing I think will work. It could go another way.
The rich in the middle ages were incredibly motivated by religion. You think kings wore hair shirts for their own pleasure? You think a wealthy nobleman financed an army and took it on a Crusade for his health? Or even his personal gain? Sure, there’s glory to think of, and one’s legacy, and there were some political benefits as well (and war booty if you’re lucky), but mostly it was a huge expense in money and lives for little gain except what they considered making the world a better place. I believe the rich of tomorrow could be motivated to make similar sacrifices if the culture and society they lived in values it, the same way the rich of the past were motivated to be highly trained fighters and officers, and to spend their fortunes on incredibly expensive armies and weapons and horses and castles. If the wealthy of tomorrow are raised in a culture where they are expected to regularly make large contributions to societal organizations that better the lives of humanity as a whole, a significant percentage of them will do it, and those that don’t will be looked down upon by their upper class social circle. Especially if there are zero taxes at all and this is all asked of them on a voluntary basis. It’s a win win for them. They get the power, they get the status, they get zero taxes, and they get to display their wealth to everyone in a way that makes the masses like them more, unlike, say, a three hundred foot yacht or an offshore tax haven. Look at Bill Gates. Is he not charitable enough? He plans to leave his children $10 million each and spend the rest of his $100 billion on charitable causes. With the right ad campaign, whole heaps of billionaires and multi-millionaires could follow in his footsteps, not to mention the average middle class guy like me who, with fat pockets and no tax bill, would gladly pay my fair share for many of the programs we currently enjoy, except for things like bombing third world children and operating concentration camps on the Mexican border.
What was the historical example of today’s status quo? There wasn’t one until it existed. It came into being piecemeal, mostly through cultural, economic and historical influences, not modeled off of some ideal society in the past. No, I don’t think there’s ever been an anarchist society that comes close to what I advocate. But there are examples of pieces of it everywhere you look. Take something like industrial and manufacturing standards. Created by industry for industry to follow, “enforced” by voluntary organizations like UL that simply withhold a sticker if the standard isn’t met. Yet the standard exists and is mostly followed where applicable, for merely economic reasons (i.e., their customers demand it). You see something similar with, say, non-GMO food labeling or using government-standard signage and road markings on private roads. If you look, you’ll see people everywhere following standards and obeying rules at their own expense, without any threat of violence, because they recognize the benefits for themselves and society.
If the policy you advocate cannot be explained to people in such a way that they’ll voluntarily agree to fund it, you might want to rethink your policy. If you have to threaten people with violence to get them to comply, perhaps your goals are not as benevolent or beneficial as you imagined?