85 lines
5.7 KiB
Plaintext
85 lines
5.7 KiB
Plaintext
Inciting to riot
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<p>Gary Farber asks:</p>
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<blockquote><p>
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Would you assert that a modest libel law, or copyright law, or<br />
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incitement to riot law, inevitably lead to 1984? How about a law<br />
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banning private nuclear weapons?
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</p></blockquote>
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<p>I would say that the risk from a modest libel law or copyright law<br />
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is small, though not nonexistent; look at the way the DMCA has been<br />
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used to justify schemes that would embed controlware in everyones’<br />
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computers. State power is no less real if it consists of NSA or FBI<br />
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back doors built in by an acquiescent Gateway or Dell.</p>
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<p>If the lawmaker/law-enforcer is a monopoly government, then a law<br />
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banning private nuclear weapons would worry me a little more, basically<br />
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because I don’t trust governments to have <em>any</em> control over<br />
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the weaponry their citizens can keep. History shows that that power<br />
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is invariably extended by degrees and abused until the citizenry is<br />
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totally disarmed; the case of Great Britain in the 20th century is a<br />
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particularly telling one (and its sequel in the 21st is proving<br />
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just as bloody and insane as the NRA diehards predicted, with criminal<br />
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gangs machine-gunning each other in the Midlands cities while<br />
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law-abiding citizens are jailed for carrying pocketknives).</p>
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<p>I would prefer the risks of private nukes to the disarmament of the<br />
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civilian population. But that’s not a choice anyone will actually<br />
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ever have to make, because the intersection of the set of people who<br />
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want nukes and the set of people who would obey or be deterred by a<br />
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law against them is nil. A law against nukes would therefore be<br />
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pointless, except as an assertion of the power and right to enforce<br />
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other sorts of weapons bans that are harmful in themselves.</p>
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<p>Nukes are different than handguns. Handgun bans are bad, but<br />
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they’re not utterly pointless; there is a significant class of<br />
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criminals who would carry in the absence of a ban but don’t in the<br />
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presence of one. The real problem with handgun bans is that the good<br />
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effects of slightly fewer bad guys carrying weapons are swamped and<br />
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reversed by the bad effects of far fewer good guys carrying<br />
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weapons. It’s all in how the disincentives against crime shift.</p>
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<p>An “incitement to riot” law is a huge and obvious red flag. A<br />
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political culture in which that becomes entrenched would be one headed<br />
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for the überstate fairly rapidly.</p>
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<p>But much depends on who makes those laws and how they are enforced. I<br />
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could live with a ban on certain sorts of heavy weapons or a Riot Act,<br />
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for example, if they were a condition of my contract with my<br />
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crime-insurance company, or part of the covenant of my homeowners’<br />
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association. Powers that are too dangerous to grant a monopoly<br />
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government could safely be delegated to security agencies and<br />
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judicial associations that have active competitors, and who do not<br />
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in the nature of things have universal jurisdiction.</p>
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<p>Mr. Farber may not be aware than anarchists like myself actually<br />
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envision living in a society that still has police and courts and a<br />
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common legal code, but one in which no one organization has a status<br />
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that is uniquely privileged under the law. There would be something<br />
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that is functionally not completely unlike a “government”, but it<br />
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would be a virtual entity — a contract network of courts,<br />
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police, and citizens. I would delegate my right to resist assaults on<br />
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my life and property to the police agency that acts as my agents. That<br />
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police agency would have reciprocity agreements with other police<br />
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agencies; they, in turn, would contract with judicial associations<br />
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to arbitrate disputes among their clients. Find a copy of<br />
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<cite>The Market for Liberty</cite> for the details.</p>
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<p>Finally, I comment on Mr. Faber’s attempt to reduce the<br />
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slippery-slope argument against statism to an absurdity by applying it<br />
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to libertarians (“libertarianism, because it values the individual<br />
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without regard for society, inevitably leads any individual who<br />
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believes in it to become a sociopathic serial killer”).</p>
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<p>There are several obvious problems with this argument. First,<br />
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sociopathy is a wiring defect only found in less than 1% of the general<br />
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population (but including a large percentage of politicians,<br />
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and that is no joke). Libertarianism cannot turn people into sociopathic<br />
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serial killers because <em>nothing</em> (other than some odd and rare<br />
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sorts of injuries to the brain) can turn people into sociopaths.</p>
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<p>The argument also ignores a glaring asymmetry in the real-world<br />
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facts. Extreme libertarians do not as a rule go on senseless killing<br />
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sprees. Governments, even “good” governments, often do. In the U.S.,<br />
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the scarifying examples of MOVE, the Branch Davidians, and Ruby Ridge<br />
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are before us even if we agree to leave warfare out of the picture and<br />
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consider only the last two decades.</p>
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<p>But more importantly, the claim that libertarianism values the<br />
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individual without regard for society is damagingly false. The<br />
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assumption that “valuing the individual” and “valuing society” are<br />
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opposed is precisely what thoughtful libertarians reject. Our highest<br />
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value is non-aggression, peacefulness — voluntary cooperation.<br />
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Our message is that only when individual freedom is properly held to<br />
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be the greatest good can a sane, peaceful, and truly just society<br />
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flourish.</p>
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