In defence of the money equals power criticism of anarchy

Roderick Long has a nice response to this objection:"Another worry is that the rich would rule. After all, won�t justice just go to the highest bidder in that case, if you turn legal services into an economic good? That�s a common objection. Interestingly, it�s a particularly common objection among Randians, who suddenly become very concerned about the poor impoverished masses. But under which system are the rich more powerful? Under the current system or under anarchy? Certainly, you�ve always got some sort of advantage if you�re rich. It�s good to be rich. You�re always in a better position to bribe people if you�re rich than if you�re not; that�s true. But, under the current system, the power of the rich is magnified. Suppose that I�m an evil rich person, and I want to get the government to do something-or- other that costs a million dollars. Do I have to bribe some bureaucrat a million dollars to get it done? No, because I�m not asking him to do it with his own money. Obviously, if I were asking him to do it with his own money, I couldn�t get him to spend a million dollars by bribing him any less than a million. It would have to be at least a million dollars and one cent. But people who control tax money that they don�t themselves personally own, and therefore can�t do whatever they want with, the bureaucrat can�t just pocket the million and go home (although it can get surprisingly close to that). All I have to do is bribe him a few thousand, and he can direct this million dollars in tax money to my favorite project or whatever, and thus the power of my bribe money is multiplied. Whereas, if you were the head of some private protection agency and I�m trying to get you to do something that costs a million dollars, I�d have to bribe you more than a million. So, the power of the rich is actually less under this system. And, of course, any court that got the reputation of discriminating in favor of millionaires against poor people would also presumably have the reputation of discriminating for billionaires against time. They�d only want to deal with it when they�re dealing with people poorer, not people richer. The reputation effects � I don�t think this would be too popular an outfit. Worries about poor victims who can�t afford legal services, or victims who die without heirs (again, the Randians are very worried about victims dying without heirs) � in the case of poor victims, you can do what they did in Medieval Iceland. You�re too poor to purchase legal services, but still, if someone has harmed you, you have a claim to compensation from that person. You can sell that claim, part of the claim or all of the claim, to someone else. Actually, it�s kind of like hiring a lawyer on a contingency fee basis. You can sell to someone who is in a position to enforce your claim. Or, if you die without heirs, in a sense, one of the goods you left behind was your claim to compensation, and that can be homesteaded." That would be my fear for a Somalianesque state; that the militias would abuse their power and individuals would have no recourse to justice. What is our recourse when governments abuse their power, as they always do? Voting? Besides the public choice reasons why voting is a poor mechanism for excercising and implementing individual preferences, what happens when your vote is in the minority? The government is already the ultimate arbiter of justice; it grants itself the power to interpret its own constitutional limitations. It need not face any competition, as Somalian warlards do. Posted by Micha G