A Very Long Six Months

One of my favorite all-time movies is a French film starring the captivating Audrey Tautou, Une Si Longue Dimanche des Fiançailles or A Very Long Engagement. If you have not seen it, you’re a lesser person and should check it out. Epic.

Reason for the mention here is simply that, per the old joke that the difference between a minarchist and an anarchist is about six months, I am beginning to reassess.

Time to declare that the interim period might be a lot longer if it comes to fruition at all.

With now two significant wars raging and tribalism raging like Vikings sailing down the River Liffey, even self-identified state-minimalists have lost their minds and are pining for more health for the state, i.e. war.

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Before the Israel-Hamas War erupted, minarchist-objectivist-Randian Yaron Brook debated with Professor Bryan Caplan over the resolution: “Would anarcho-capitalism be a disaster?”

Seems like a low hurdle to clear for Caplan–after all, he would just have to prove that a voluntarist, laissez-faire society would not be disastrous, not the usual and often progressive ploy of “Anarchism will not be utopia”.

And still, before a libertarian leaning, at least apparently well-read audience, Caplan lost. Sorry for being a spoiler.

Click Here to Watch the SoHo Forum Debate

Brook appeared to land some punches in a debate that saw the pugilists engage in more peripheral arguments than substantive ones:

“Democracy is ‘you do whatever you want to your neighbor provided your gang is bigger than his–bigger in terms of size.

Anarchy is ‘you do whatever you please to your neighbor provided your gang is stronger than his’–same principle.”

-Yaron Brook

What is left out of this generally unhelpful syllogism is that democracy, as Hoppe has rightly pointed out, is used as a bludgeon in the modern world to justify the usurpation of rights and property from the righteous and the prosperous. Brook throws out a strawman in the second part: Anarchy is not a status of disorder or non-order–hierarchies and meritocracy do not fade to oblivion as we approach anarchy, quite the opposite in fact–but rather, voluntarist and consensual cooperation would resume its rightful and natural place.

To quote a rather well-known Galilean virgin of the greatest repute, “The [illegitimate] mighty will be cast down from their thrones.”

I made this point in the comments on the debate’s YouTube page:

Anyone–but minarchists especially–must contend with this emergent order, deontological approach as much as the consequentialist approach, ala. David Friedman and Bryan Caplan here.

Tolstoy (shocker) expressed it better:

One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and Nature shall not be broken.

Even if the absence of government really did mean anarchy in a negative, disorderly sense – which is far from being the case – even then, no anarchical disorder could be worse than the position to which government has led humanity.”

-Leo Tolstoy

A fair consideration of those notes ought to abbreviate, if not eliminate altogether, the six months.