WEBVTT NOTE 1. Defense Services on the Free Market 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.000 Power and Market 2 00:00:03.000 --> 00:00:09.000 Chapter 1 Defense Services on the Free Market 3 00:00:09.000 --> 00:00:14.000 Economists have referred innumerable times to the free market, 4 00:00:14.000 --> 00:00:19.000 the social array of voluntary exchanges of goods and services. 5 00:00:19.000 --> 00:00:22.000 But despite this abundance of treatment, 6 00:00:22.000 --> 00:00:27.000 their analysis has slighted the deeper implications of free exchange. 7 00:00:27.000 --> 00:00:28.000 Exchange. 8 00:00:28.000 --> 00:00:34.720 Thus, there has been general neglect of the fact that free exchange means exchange of 9 00:00:34.720 --> 00:00:41.320 titles of ownership to property, and that therefore the economist is obliged to inquire 10 00:00:41.320 --> 00:00:47.040 into the conditions and the nature of the property ownership that would obtain in the 11 00:00:47.040 --> 00:00:48.720 free society. 12 00:00:48.720 --> 00:00:54.600 If a free society means a world in which no one aggresses against the person or property 13 00:00:54.600 --> 00:01:01.460 of Others, then this implies a society in which every man has the absolute right of 14 00:01:01.460 --> 00:01:09.940 property in his own self, and in the previously unowned natural resources that he finds, transforms 15 00:01:09.940 --> 00:01:15.580 by his own labor, and then gives to or exchanges with others. 16 00:01:15.580 --> 00:01:22.540 A firm property right in one's own self, and in the resources that one finds, transforms, 17 00:01:22.540 --> 00:01:29.180 gives or exchanges leads to the property structure that is found in free market capitalism. 18 00:01:29.180 --> 00:01:36.100 Thus, an economist cannot fully analyze the exchange structure of the free market without 19 00:01:36.100 --> 00:01:42.040 setting forth the theory of property rights, of justice in property that would have to 20 00:01:42.040 --> 00:01:45.940 obtain in a free market society. 21 00:01:45.940 --> 00:01:52.500 In our analysis of the free market in man economy and state, we assumed that no invasion 22 00:01:52.500 --> 00:02:00.000 of Property takes place there, either because everyone voluntarily refrains from such aggression, 23 00:02:00.000 --> 00:02:06.740 or because whatever method of forcible defense exists on the free market is sufficient to 24 00:02:06.740 --> 00:02:09.580 prevent any such aggression. 25 00:02:09.580 --> 00:02:17.140 But economists have almost invariably and paradoxically assumed that the market must be kept free 26 00:02:17.140 --> 00:02:25.180 Free by the use of invasive and unfree actions, in short, by governmental institutions outside 27 00:02:25.180 --> 00:02:27.460 the market nexus. 28 00:02:27.460 --> 00:02:33.980 A supply of defense services on the free market would mean maintaining the axiom of the free 29 00:02:33.980 --> 00:02:41.840 society, namely that there be no use of physical force except in defense against those using 30 00:02:41.840 --> 00:02:45.680 force to invade person or property. 31 00:02:45.680 --> 00:02:51.080 This would imply the complete absence of a state apparatus or government. 32 00:02:51.080 --> 00:02:58.600 For the state, unlike all other persons and institutions in society, acquires its revenue 33 00:02:58.600 --> 00:03:07.880 not by exchanges freely contracted, but by a system of unilateral coercion called taxation. 34 00:03:07.880 --> 00:03:13.900 Defense in the free society, including such defense services to person and property as 35 00:03:13.900 --> 00:03:21.900 as Police Protection and Judicial Findings would therefore have to be supplied by people or firms who 36 00:03:21.900 --> 00:03:27.900 a. gained their revenue voluntarily rather than by coercion, and 37 00:03:27.900 --> 00:03:37.900 b. did not, as the state does, arrogate to themselves a compulsory monopoly of police or judicial protection. 38 00:03:37.900 --> 00:03:44.300 Only such libertarian provision of defense service would be consonant with a free market 39 00:03:44.300 --> 00:03:52.380 and a free society. Thus, defense firms would have to be as freely competitive and as invaders 40 00:03:52.380 --> 00:03:59.020 as are all other suppliers of goods and services on the free market. Defense services, 41 00:03:59.020 --> 00:04:04.060 like all other services, would be marketable and marketable only. 42 00:04:04.060 --> 00:04:18.060 Those economists and others who espouse the philosophy of laissez-faire believe that the freedom of the market should be upheld, and that property rights must not be invaded. 43 00:04:18.060 --> 00:04:25.220 Nevertheless, they strongly believe that defense service cannot be supplied by the market, 44 00:04:25.220 --> 00:04:31.620 and that defense against invasion of property must therefore be supplied outside the free 45 00:04:31.620 --> 00:04:35.660 market by the coercive force of the government. 46 00:04:35.660 --> 00:04:42.100 In arguing thus, they are caught in an insoluble contradiction, for they sanction and advocate 47 00:04:42.100 --> 00:04:49.800 massive invasion of property by the very agency, government, that is supposed to defend people 48 00:04:49.800 --> 00:04:52.340 against invasion. 49 00:04:52.340 --> 00:04:58.540 For a laissez-faire, government would necessarily have to seize its revenues by the invasion 50 00:04:58.540 --> 00:05:05.560 of property called taxation, and would arrogate to itself a compulsory monopoly of defense 51 00:05:05.560 --> 00:05:11.260 services over some arbitrarily designated territorial area. 52 00:05:11.260 --> 00:05:16.780 The laissez-faire theorists, who are here joined by almost all other writers, attempt 53 00:05:16.780 --> 00:05:23.580 to redeem their position from this glaring contradiction by asserting that a purely free-market 54 00:05:23.580 --> 00:05:30.660 defense service could not exist, and that therefore those who value highly forcible 55 00:05:30.660 --> 00:05:37.260 defense against violence would have to fall back on the state, despite its black historical 56 00:05:37.260 --> 00:05:47.260 The Federal Record as the great engine of invasive violence as a necessary evil for the protection of person and property. 57 00:05:47.260 --> 00:05:53.260 The laissez-faireists offer several objections to the idea of free market defense. 58 00:05:53.260 --> 00:06:00.260 One objection holds that since a free market of exchanges presupposes a system of property rights, 59 00:06:00.260 --> 00:06:05.700 of Property Rights, Therefore the State is needed to define and allocate the structure 60 00:06:05.700 --> 00:06:07.500 of such rights. 61 00:06:07.500 --> 00:06:14.020 But we have seen that the principles of a free society do imply a very definite theory 62 00:06:14.020 --> 00:06:21.340 of property rights, namely self-ownership and the ownership of natural resources found 63 00:06:21.340 --> 00:06:24.540 and transformed by one's labor. 64 00:06:24.540 --> 00:06:32.820 Therefore, no state or similar agency, contrary to the market, is needed to define or allocate 65 00:06:32.820 --> 00:06:34.420 property rights. 66 00:06:34.420 --> 00:06:41.380 This can and will be done by the use of reason and through market processes themselves. 67 00:06:41.380 --> 00:06:48.100 Any other allocation or definition would be completely arbitrary and contrary to the principles 68 00:06:48.100 --> 00:06:50.540 of the free society. 69 00:06:50.540 --> 00:06:56.940 A similar doctrine holds that defense must be supplied by the state because of the unique 70 00:06:56.940 --> 00:07:04.280 status of defense as a necessary precondition of market activity, as a function without 71 00:07:04.280 --> 00:07:08.240 which a market economy could not exist. 72 00:07:08.240 --> 00:07:12.780 Yet this argument is a non sequitur that proves far too much. 73 00:07:12.780 --> 00:07:19.280 It was the fallacy of the classical economists to consider goods and services in terms of 74 00:07:19.280 --> 00:07:24.600 of Large Classes Instead, modern economics demonstrates that 75 00:07:24.600 --> 00:07:33.840 services must be considered in terms of marginal units, for all actions on the market are marginal. 76 00:07:33.840 --> 00:07:40.480 If we begin to treat whole classes instead of marginal units, we can discover a great 77 00:07:40.480 --> 00:07:47.120 myriad of necessary indispensable goods and services, all of which might be considered 78 00:07:47.120 --> 00:07:55.720 as pre-conditions of market activity is not land room vital or food for each participant 79 00:07:55.720 --> 00:07:58.140 or clothing or shelter? 80 00:07:58.140 --> 00:08:01.260 Can a market long exist without them? 81 00:08:01.260 --> 00:08:07.040 And what of paper, which has become a basic requisite of market activity in the complex 82 00:08:07.040 --> 00:08:08.960 modern economy? 83 00:08:08.960 --> 00:08:16.360 Must all these goods and services therefore be supplied by the state and the state only? 84 00:08:16.360 --> 00:08:23.440 The laissez-fairest also assumes that there must be a single compulsory monopoly of coercion 85 00:08:23.440 --> 00:08:30.740 and decision-making in society, that there must, for example, be one supreme court to 86 00:08:30.740 --> 00:08:34.800 hand down final and unquestioned decisions. 87 00:08:34.800 --> 00:08:40.580 But he fails to recognize that the world has lived quite well throughout its existence 88 00:08:40.580 --> 00:08:47.180 without a single ultimate decision-maker over its whole inhabited surface. 89 00:08:47.180 --> 00:08:54.100 The Argentinian, for example, lives in a state of anarchy, of non-government in relation 90 00:08:54.100 --> 00:08:58.020 to the citizen of Uruguay or of Ceylon. 91 00:08:58.020 --> 00:09:03.940 And yet, the private citizens of these and other countries live and trade together without 92 00:09:03.940 --> 00:09:10.340 Without getting into insoluble legal conflicts, despite the absence of a common governmental 93 00:09:10.340 --> 00:09:11.340 ruler. 94 00:09:11.340 --> 00:09:18.060 The Argentinian who believes he has been aggressed upon by a Salonese, for example, takes his 95 00:09:18.060 --> 00:09:25.180 grievance to an Argentinian court, and its decision is recognized by the Salonese courts, 96 00:09:25.180 --> 00:09:29.820 and vice versa if the Salonese is the aggrieved party. 97 00:09:29.820 --> 00:09:36.040 Although it is true that the separate nation-states have warred interminably against each other, 98 00:09:36.040 --> 00:09:42.480 the private citizens of the various countries, despite widely differing legal systems, have 99 00:09:42.480 --> 00:09:48.540 managed to live together in harmony without having a single government over them. 100 00:09:48.540 --> 00:09:54.780 If the citizens of northern Montana and of Saskatchewan across the border can live and 101 00:09:54.780 --> 00:10:00.540 and trade together in harmony without a common government, so can the citizens of northern 102 00:10:00.540 --> 00:10:02.880 and of southern Montana. 103 00:10:02.880 --> 00:10:09.520 In short, the present-day boundaries of nations are purely historical and arbitrary, and there 104 00:10:09.520 --> 00:10:15.220 is no more need for a monopoly government over the citizens of one country than there 105 00:10:15.220 --> 00:10:20.820 is for one between the citizens of two different nations. 106 00:10:20.820 --> 00:10:26.180 It is all the more curious, incidentally, that while laissez-faireists should, by the 107 00:10:26.180 --> 00:10:33.120 logic of their position, be ardent believers in a single, unified world government, so 108 00:10:33.120 --> 00:10:39.940 that no one will live in a state of anarchy in relation to anyone else, they almost never 109 00:10:39.940 --> 00:10:40.940 are. 110 00:10:40.940 --> 00:10:47.600 And once one concedes that a single world government is not necessary, then where does 111 00:10:47.600 --> 00:10:52.440 Why does one logically stop at the permissibility of separate states? 112 00:10:52.440 --> 00:10:58.280 If Canada and the United States can be separate nations without being denounced as being in 113 00:10:58.280 --> 00:11:05.280 a state of impermissible anarchy, why may not the South secede from the United States, 114 00:11:05.280 --> 00:11:10.320 New York State from the Union, New York City from the State? 115 00:11:10.320 --> 00:11:13.360 Why may not Manhattan secede? 116 00:11:13.360 --> 00:11:19.260 Each neighborhood, each block, each house, each person. 117 00:11:19.260 --> 00:11:25.480 But of course, if each person may secede from government, we have virtually arrived at the 118 00:11:25.480 --> 00:11:32.240 purely free society, where defense is supplied along with all other services by the free 119 00:11:32.240 --> 00:11:38.460 market and where the invasive state has ceased to exist. 120 00:11:38.460 --> 00:11:44.900 The role of freely competitive judiciaries has, in fact, been far more important in the 121 00:11:44.900 --> 00:11:48.380 history of the West than is often recognized. 122 00:11:48.380 --> 00:11:54.440 The law merchant, admiralty law, and much of the common law began to be developed by 123 00:11:54.440 --> 00:12:01.800 privately competitive judges who were sought out by litigants for their expertise in understanding 124 00:12:01.800 --> 00:12:04.560 the legal areas involved. 125 00:12:04.560 --> 00:12:10.960 The fairs of Champagne and the great marches of international trade in the Middle Ages enjoyed 126 00:12:10.960 --> 00:12:17.720 freely competitive courts, and people could patronize those that they deemed most accurate 127 00:12:17.720 --> 00:12:20.080 and efficient. 128 00:12:20.080 --> 00:12:26.280 Let us then examine in a little more detail what a free market defense system might look 129 00:12:26.280 --> 00:12:27.280 like. 130 00:12:27.280 --> 00:12:33.960 It is, we must realize, impossible to blueprint the exact institutional conditions of any 131 00:12:33.960 --> 00:12:40.120 Any Market in Advance, just as it would have been impossible 50 years ago to predict the 132 00:12:40.120 --> 00:12:44.040 exact structure of the television industry today. 133 00:12:44.040 --> 00:12:51.000 However, we can postulate some of the workings of a freely competitive, marketable system 134 00:12:51.000 --> 00:12:54.560 of police and judicial services. 135 00:12:54.560 --> 00:13:00.580 Most likely, such services would be sold on an advance subscription basis, with premiums 136 00:13:00.580 --> 00:13:05.640 Payments paid regularly and services to be supplied on call. 137 00:13:05.640 --> 00:13:11.680 Many competitors would undoubtedly arise, each attempting by earning a reputation for 138 00:13:11.680 --> 00:13:17.200 efficiency and probity to win a consumer market for its services. 139 00:13:17.200 --> 00:13:24.320 Of course it is possible that in some areas a single agency would out-compete all others. 140 00:13:24.320 --> 00:13:30.640 But this does not seem likely when we realize that there is no territorial monopoly and 141 00:13:30.640 --> 00:13:37.040 that efficient firms would be able to open branches in other geographical areas. 142 00:13:37.040 --> 00:13:43.600 It seems likely also that supplies of police and judicial service would be provided by 143 00:13:43.600 --> 00:13:49.720 insurance companies, because it would be to their direct advantage to reduce the amount 144 00:13:49.720 --> 00:13:53.320 of crime as much as possible. 145 00:13:53.320 --> 00:13:59.720 One common objection to the feasibility of marketable protection, its desirability is 146 00:13:59.720 --> 00:14:03.360 not the problem here, runs as follows. 147 00:14:03.360 --> 00:14:11.800 Suppose that Jones subscribes to defense agency X and Smith subscribes to defense agency Y. 148 00:14:11.800 --> 00:14:17.640 We will assume, for convenience, that the defense agency includes a police force and 149 00:14:17.640 --> 00:14:23.920 and a court or courts, although in practice these two functions might well be performed 150 00:14:23.920 --> 00:14:26.360 by separate firms. 151 00:14:26.360 --> 00:14:31.680 Smith alleges that he has been assaulted or robbed by Jones. 152 00:14:31.680 --> 00:14:33.560 Jones denies the charge. 153 00:14:33.560 --> 00:14:36.880 How then is justice to be dispensed? 154 00:14:36.880 --> 00:14:44.600 Clearly, Smith will file charges against Jones and institute suit or trial proceedings in 155 00:14:44.600 --> 00:14:47.000 the why court system. 156 00:14:47.000 --> 00:14:52.540 Jones is invited to defend himself against the charges, although there can be no subpoena 157 00:14:52.540 --> 00:15:00.320 power since any sort of force used against a man not yet convicted of a crime is itself 158 00:15:00.320 --> 00:15:07.020 an invasive and criminal act that could not be consonant with the free society as we have 159 00:15:07.020 --> 00:15:08.800 been postulating. 160 00:15:08.800 --> 00:15:15.320 If Jones is declared innocent, or if he is declared guilty and consents to the finding, 161 00:15:15.320 --> 00:15:21.640 Then there is no problem on this level, and the why courts then institute suitable measures 162 00:15:21.640 --> 00:15:23.440 of punishment. 163 00:15:23.440 --> 00:15:30.160 Suppose that Smith, convinced of Jones' guilt, takes the law into his own hands rather than 164 00:15:30.160 --> 00:15:32.600 go through the court procedure. 165 00:15:32.600 --> 00:15:33.820 What then? 166 00:15:33.820 --> 00:15:40.440 In itself, this would be legitimate and not punishable as a crime, since no court or agency 167 00:15:40.440 --> 00:15:47.740 may have the right in a free society to use force for defense beyond the self-same right 168 00:15:47.740 --> 00:15:49.460 of each individual. 169 00:15:49.460 --> 00:15:55.440 However, Smith would then have to face the consequences of a possible counter-suit and 170 00:15:55.440 --> 00:16:02.200 trial by Jones, and he himself would have to face punishment as a criminal if Jones 171 00:16:02.200 --> 00:16:04.800 is found to be innocent. 172 00:16:04.800 --> 00:16:08.200 But what if Jones challenges the finding? 173 00:16:08.200 --> 00:16:14.720 In that case, he can either take the case to his ex-court system, or take it directly 174 00:16:14.720 --> 00:16:21.040 to a privately competitive appeals court of a type that will undoubtedly spring up in 175 00:16:21.040 --> 00:16:26.960 abundance on the market to fill the great need for such tribunals. 176 00:16:26.960 --> 00:16:32.560 Probably there will be just a few appeals court systems, far fewer than the number of 177 00:16:32.560 --> 00:16:39.320 of Primary Courts, and each of the lower courts will boast to its customers about being members 178 00:16:39.320 --> 00:16:45.320 of those appeals court systems noted for their efficiency and probity. 179 00:16:45.320 --> 00:16:50.920 The appeals court decision can then be taken by the society as binding. 180 00:16:50.920 --> 00:16:57.520 Indeed, in the basic legal code of the free society, there probably would be enshrined 181 00:16:57.520 --> 00:17:04.720 some such clause as that the decision of any two courts will be considered binding, that 182 00:17:04.720 --> 00:17:11.160 is, will be the point at which the court will be able to take action against the party adjudged 183 00:17:11.160 --> 00:17:12.780 guilty. 184 00:17:12.780 --> 00:17:20.160 The law code of the purely free society would simply enshrine the libertarian axiom, prohibition 185 00:17:20.160 --> 00:17:27.360 of any violence against the person or property of another, except in defense of someone's 186 00:17:27.360 --> 00:17:33.360 Transformation or Property, Property to be defined as self-ownership plus the ownership 187 00:17:33.360 --> 00:17:41.980 of resources that one has found, transformed or bought or received after such transformation. 188 00:17:41.980 --> 00:17:47.740 The task of the code would be to spell out the implications of this axiom. 189 00:17:47.740 --> 00:17:54.560 For example, the libertarian sections of the law merchant or common law would be co-opted, 190 00:17:54.560 --> 00:18:01.040 While the statist accretions would be discarded, the code would then be applied to specific 191 00:18:01.040 --> 00:18:08.100 cases by the free market judges who would all pledge themselves to follow it. 192 00:18:08.100 --> 00:18:14.980 Every legal system needs some sort of socially agreed upon cut-off point, a point at which 193 00:18:14.980 --> 00:18:21.560 judicial procedure stops and punishment against the convicted criminal begins. 194 00:18:21.560 --> 00:18:29.520 But a single monopoly court of ultimate decision-making need not be imposed, and, of course, cannot 195 00:18:29.520 --> 00:18:37.480 be in a free society, and a libertarian legal code might well have a two-court cut-off point, 196 00:18:37.480 --> 00:18:44.800 since there are always two contesting parties, the plaintiff and the defendant. 197 00:18:44.800 --> 00:18:51.140 Another common objection to the workability of free-market defense wonders, may not one 198 00:18:51.140 --> 00:18:57.220 One or more of the defense agencies turn its coercive power to criminal uses. 199 00:18:57.220 --> 00:19:03.700 In short, may not a private police agency use its force to aggress against others, or 200 00:19:03.700 --> 00:19:11.060 may not a private court collude to make fraudulent decisions and thus aggress against its subscribers 201 00:19:11.060 --> 00:19:12.620 and victims? 202 00:19:12.620 --> 00:19:19.180 It is very generally assumed that those who postulate a stateless society are also naive 203 00:19:19.180 --> 00:19:21.180 The Theory of Money and Credit 204 00:19:49.180 --> 00:20:01.180 No government apparatus, the control of which, provides a secure monopoly for invasion of person and property. 205 00:20:01.180 --> 00:20:14.180 When a state exists, there does exist such a built-in channel, namely, the coercive taxation power and the compulsory monopoly of forcible protection. 206 00:20:14.180 --> 00:20:23.620 In the purely free market society, a would-be criminal, police or judiciary would find it very difficult to take power, 207 00:20:23.620 --> 00:20:32.180 since there would be no organized state apparatus to seize and use as the instrumentality of command. 208 00:20:32.180 --> 00:20:40.100 To create such an instrumentality de novo is very difficult, and indeed almost impossible. 209 00:20:40.100 --> 00:20:47.140 Historically, it took state rulers centuries to establish a functioning state apparatus. 210 00:20:47.140 --> 00:20:54.500 Furthermore, the purely free market stateless society would contain within itself a system 211 00:20:54.500 --> 00:21:00.900 of built-in checks and balances that would make it almost impossible for such organized 212 00:21:00.900 --> 00:21:03.060 crime to succeed. 213 00:21:03.060 --> 00:21:08.460 There has been much talk about checks and balances in the American system, but these 214 00:21:08.460 --> 00:21:14.340 These can scarcely be considered checks at all, since every one of these institutions 215 00:21:14.340 --> 00:21:20.940 is an agency of the central government, and eventually of the ruling party of that government. 216 00:21:20.940 --> 00:21:28.100 The checks and balances in the stateless society consist precisely in the free market, that 217 00:21:28.100 --> 00:21:35.100 is, the existence of freely competitive police and judicial agencies that could quickly be 218 00:21:35.100 --> 00:21:40.720 be mobilized to put down any outlaw agency. 219 00:21:40.720 --> 00:21:48.540 It is true that there can be no absolute guarantee that a purely market society would not fall 220 00:21:48.540 --> 00:21:55.740 prey, but this concept is far more workable than the truly utopian ideal of a strictly 221 00:21:55.740 --> 00:22:02.820 limited government, an idea that has never worked, historically, and understandably so, 222 00:22:02.820 --> 00:22:09.740 For the state's built-in monopoly of aggression and inherent absence of free-market checks 223 00:22:09.740 --> 00:22:16.340 has enabled it to burst easily any bonds that well-meaning people have tried to place upon 224 00:22:16.340 --> 00:22:17.340 it. 225 00:22:17.340 --> 00:22:23.560 Finally, the worst that could possibly happen would be for the state to be re-established, 226 00:22:23.560 --> 00:22:30.100 and since the state is what we have now, any experimentation with a stateless society would 227 00:22:30.100 --> 00:22:34.940 have nothing to lose and everything to gain. 228 00:22:34.940 --> 00:22:42.000 Many economists object to marketable defense on the grounds that defense is one of an alleged 229 00:22:42.000 --> 00:22:49.000 category of collective goods that can be supplied only by the state. 230 00:22:49.000 --> 00:22:52.640 This fallacious theory is refuted elsewhere. 231 00:22:52.640 --> 00:22:59.460 And Merlin H. Hunter and Harry K. Allen, two of the very few economists who have conceded 232 00:22:59.460 --> 00:23:04.460 and the possibility of a purely market defense have written, 233 00:23:04.460 --> 00:23:12.580 If then individuals were willing to pay sufficiently high price, protection, general education, 234 00:23:12.580 --> 00:23:19.860 recreation, the army, navy, police departments, schools and parks might be provided through 235 00:23:19.860 --> 00:23:25.380 individual initiative as well as food, clothing and automobiles. 236 00:23:25.380 --> 00:23:32.380 Actually, Hunter and Allen greatly underestimated the workability of private action in providing 237 00:23:32.380 --> 00:23:33.980 these services. 238 00:23:33.980 --> 00:23:40.580 For a compulsory monopoly, gaining its revenues out of generalized coercion rather than by 239 00:23:40.580 --> 00:23:47.300 the voluntary payment of the customers is bound to be strikingly less efficient than 240 00:23:47.300 --> 00:23:53.100 a freely competitive private enterprise supply of such services. 241 00:23:53.100 --> 00:24:01.060 The price paid would be a great gain to society and to the consumers, rather than an imposed 242 00:24:01.060 --> 00:24:02.700 extra cost. 243 00:24:02.700 --> 00:24:11.200 Thus, a truly free market is totally incompatible with the existence of a state, an institution 244 00:24:11.200 --> 00:24:19.980 that presumes to defend person and property by itself subsisting on the unilateral coercion 245 00:24:19.980 --> 00:24:24.300 Against Private Property, known as taxation. 246 00:24:24.300 --> 00:24:30.580 On the free market, defense against violence would be a service, like any other, obtainable 247 00:24:30.580 --> 00:24:34.860 from freely competitive private organizations. 248 00:24:34.860 --> 00:24:40.500 Whatever problems remain in this area could easily be solved in practice by the market 249 00:24:40.500 --> 00:24:47.780 process, that very process which has solved countless organizational problems of far greater 250 00:24:47.780 --> 00:24:49.480 intricacy. 251 00:24:49.480 --> 00:24:55.720 Those laissez-faire economists and writers, past and present, who have stopped short at 252 00:24:55.720 --> 00:25:04.200 the impossibly utopian ideal of a limited government, are trapped in a grave inner contradiction. 253 00:25:04.200 --> 00:25:10.320 This contradiction of laissez-faire was lucidly exposed by the British political philosopher 254 00:25:10.320 --> 00:25:12.640 Auberon Herbert 255 00:25:12.640 --> 00:25:21.720 A is to compel B to cooperate with him, or B to compel A. But in any case, cooperation 256 00:25:21.720 --> 00:25:29.720 cannot be secured, as we are told, unless, through all time, one section is compelling 257 00:25:29.720 --> 00:25:32.880 another section to form a state. 258 00:25:32.880 --> 00:25:33.880 Very good. 259 00:25:33.880 --> 00:25:37.780 But then, what has become of our system of individualism? 260 00:25:37.780 --> 00:25:46.520 A has got hold of B or B of A and has he disapproves, extracts service and payment from him which 261 00:25:46.520 --> 00:25:51.400 he does not wish to render, has virtually become his master. 262 00:25:51.400 --> 00:25:56.280 What is all this but socialism on a reduced scale? 263 00:25:56.280 --> 00:26:01.440 Believing then that the judgment of every individual who has not aggressed against his 264 00:26:01.440 --> 00:26:10.360 is supreme as regards his actions, and that this is the rock on which individualism rests. 265 00:26:10.360 --> 00:26:18.160 I deny that A and B can go to C and force him to form a state, and extract from him 266 00:26:18.160 --> 00:26:22.600 certain payments and services in the name of such state. 267 00:26:22.600 --> 00:26:29.800 And I go on to maintain that if you act in this manner, you at once justify state socialism.