A Civil Society Without a Government?

InformationLiberation
Sep. 20, 2010

This is an email response to a reader's question. The question is basically how would a society without a government function without costumed strangers bossing everyone around and "laying down the law." It's a good question which I myself had and it kept me on the precipice of minarchism (a minimalist state) until I was explained how a free society would actually work (and also how having a 'limited' state is literally impossible). I wrote a nice response so I figured I might as well post it. - Chris, InfoLib

----- Original Message -----
From: "B"
To:
Sent: Monday, September 20, 2010 7:42 AM
Subject: dig your site

> Chris-
> I dig your site a lot, but I wonder why you don't criticize corporations
> as much as government. They mess with my life as much or more than the
> gummint, and I don't even get to vote for them. They RUN the government.
> Corporate tyranny is just called efficiency. Criticism of corporations
> is all but non-existent in national discourse, but criticism of govt is a
> blood sport. Anarchy in an age of the mega-corp is impossible. People
> are really pissed off at the corps, it's being focused grouped which is
> why Obama is so lamely using it as a campaign issue while suck the
> corporate maypole. How do we regulate Monsanto and BP and Big Phama
> without government?
>
> Peace-
> b
>
> do you really think libraries should be privatized? National parks?
> Public schools? Is everything just about profit?

Hey B, thanks so much.

There is a saying that when dealing with government you have to 'point out the gun in the room.' The reason corporations are looting everything is because they use the government as their tool of conquest. If some stranger tried to mandate you to buy a product from them, they'd be laughed at and considered insane. When the government does it (IE new health care mandate) everyone gets in line and says it's for the greater good. All the health care bill is is a mandate of 30,000,000 new customers to the insurance cartel, along with a ton of regulations to put the smaller companies out of business and create even more barriers to entry. Monopolies of the oppressive type can only exist when they're backed up with the barrel of the government's guns. When any company is making huge profits that's a major signal for others to come into the market, the more companies come in the lower the profits become until they eventually become almost nothing. That's capitalism and that's a great thing. What the government does with "regulations" is create massive barriers for entry into these markets. So to make a drug you need to get it FDA approved and it costs about 100
million dollars just to bring it to market. No one can do that besides big pharma so we don't really have any small drug producers and entrepreneurs pushing progress forward. Same goes for almost every industry.

The gov is a hindrance to actual regulation because they give the impression everything is being taken care of. See this comic: http://www.informationliberation.com/index.php?id=31986 In organic foods private companies are paid to certify food organic. The producer gives Quality Assurance International money to come and give them their certification. QAI knows if they give certification to non organic food their label will become worthless so they have incentive to only certify legit products. Underwriters Laboratories does the same with electronic products to make sure they're safe. There would be tons of companies like this whose only job is to certify products safe and we'd actually have the safest products ever created if the market was left to function. Instead the government nationalizes an entire industry and we have total stagnation and even degeneration.

Just imagine where computers would be if the government nationalized the industry because it was "completely unregulated" and "only motivated by profit." The places where prices are highest and continue to go up are the areas where government is most involved. Namely health care and housing (through so-called regulations, zoning, and low interest rates). The reason we're all getting raped is because companies are banned from competing, that's entirely due to the government, the government wants you to believe it's due to "excessive" greed and profit, which has always been a constant.

Check out this article I wrote:
http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=30333
Here is a good video where anarchy, or a civil society w/o a government, is discussed:
http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=30467
Austrian Economics explained, this will change the way you view everything:
http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=30611
If you want to go deep into everything this is one of the best series of lectures ever:
http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=31554

All my best,
Chris