Anatomy of a Disagreement

Why I am an anarcho-capitalist is summarized in this fantastic episode of the Human Action Podcast, hosted by the ineffable Jeff Deist with the great Ryan McMaken.

To read Murray Rothbard’s Anatomy of the State is to open up a worldview that I can only equate to going on a hot air balloon ride and finally seeing the tops of trees and roofs of buildings. You knew of their existence, but now you see them for what they really are. Rothbard writes what is empirically true and what we all know, regardless of how blue vs. red pilled we might be:

 [The state is] that organization in society which attempts to maintain a monopoly of the use of force and violence in a given territorial area; in particular, it is the only organization in society that obtains its revenue not by voluntary contribution or payment for services rendered but by coercion.”

Now, Ludwig von Mises was not totally on board with this. For all of his sympathies with Rothbard’s position and then requisite disgust with the state, he still maintained that there might be a role for government in society. Not that he would care from paradise, but do not judge the genius too harshly. Mises was a man who lived through a time as a child and young man in which the state tended to step aside and let the market do its work. Furthermore, I suspect, he was a romantic at heart and witnessed the state as being more of a conduit of patriotism rather than the criminal architect of deranged, command and control, nationalism. Austria wasn’t so bad once, and Thomas Aquinas asserted that love of one’s country is a virtue.

Today, hate of the state is a requisite one.