Natural law Freemen, Radical libertarians/ minarchists/ anarchists - all us freedom lovers are to a greater or lesser extent guilty of trying to template freedom. People ignorant or unaware of the possibility and indeed preferability of non coercive solutions frequently pelt us with 'but how would...' questions. Whether they truly can't imagine the simplicity and consistency of voluntary solutions or the statist mindset holds such sway over their natural minds that some cognitive dissonance causes this defensive reaction to the suggestion of freedom - still they demand answers. They want an anarchist society to provide the same statist solutions to the same problems the state itself created. 'what about the poor?' (1) They cry 'what about the railways?' They want reassurance that everything will be the same.
The crime we are often guilty of in answering these questions is rushing to positively answer these challenges in the hope of converting another believer for the cause. First off unfortunately the way the world is designed to maintain the privilege of legitimised coercive control, additional support won't make much difference right now. Yes the idea needs to spread but we are too early. By a longshot.
Secondly by trying to reassure the statist that there won't be any scary differences in libertopia we are trying to predict the future. We are also templating and compromising total freedom. The voluntary society cannot be planned. There cannot be an anarchist position on motorways or anything else come to that. We don't have views or policies.
The fact is some things that we have come to appreciate may well only be possible through coercion.
In statist healthcare debates socialists often attack free marketeers with claims that no insurer would pay for intensive cancer care or other serious diseases. If the only way to fund these extra few days of miserable excruitiating terminal decline is through violent extortion then perhaps it just isn't ethically justifiable.
Likewise without compulsory Purchase orders or as the yanks call it emminent domain it might be impossibly expensive to drive a road across a continent of private homesteads. Without corpratist protectionism the scale and rate of technological and industrial innovation might be very different. Why would voluntary customers subscribe to a legal system that granted privileged exceptions to safeguard risky investments?
Some of us go to extraordinary lengths to assuage these concerns.
I often mention Walter block. He defends the most extreme aspects of total freedom. See his 'in defense of' book for radical views of slum lords, wealth hoarders and pimps. He is radical and uncompromising in his application of anarchist principles. He alone has outlined in detail a complete examination of coercive roads and a full illustration of possible voluntary alternatives. (Google Walter block roads for the free pdf) In order to make this work he has had to argue some extremely problematic ideas.
These are not problematic because the principles are faulty but because he is trying to provide an anarchist provision of what is possibly a uniquely statist concept. There may be some things such as motorways that will not be consistent with freedom based on voluntary principles. Just because the state used violence to give us things we have grown to love does not mean we should attempt the impossible to preserve the few coercive treats we're addicted to. If coercive rule had never existed we may never have imagined or grown used to such provisions. There would have been no question of rolling back corpratism/globalism/consumerism or maintaining them under anarchy.
Block's world of competing flag poles a la the north/south Korean border in order to homestead airspace to defend against bridges over landowners who refuse to sell to the road builders might be as impossible as it sounds.
One of the amazing things about discovering and adhering to the non aggression axiom in the pursuit of whatever freedom we crave is that it forces us to rexamine assumptions we have been brought up not to question. Many of us have found our views and attitudes changed. We realise that we cannot have our freedom without extending that same equal boundless freedom to others.
The possibility that libertopia might be radically different in unexpected and even unwelcome ways is one such revelation.
The only thing of which we can be certain is freedom from coercion. The M25 might not be on the cards.
(1) as if social welfare is why we have rulers. This is merely the latest historical excuse from the coercive class who used to ride on such shams as divine right, the greater good and hypocriticaly the defense of freedom.
Even the justification of collective defence is a fallacy. It might fit. It might appear to make sense. But it can never be more than a fabrication. Whether created out of wishful misguided idealism or from intentionally deceptive design this justification cannot be the truth. The objective truth is that there is no social contract. The mythical collective does not and never has voluntarily subjected to coercive authority for any reason whether that be social welfare, collective defense or the provision of choo choo trains.
Hobbes was a cunt. And so was Plato. He really was a cunt.
