Before I begin, let me clarify what I mean by “national defense.” By national defense I don’t mean to imply that there is any “nation” in a stateless society. I mean to imply that firms providing “national defense” are engaged providing a service which includes but is not limited to: deterring an invasion and hostile takeover of a relevant region by an opposing army, as well conducting defensive wars which respond tic for tat to foreign or domestic aggression.

The operational parameters of national defense firms may also include dismantling and protecting civilians against other unconventional security threats such terrorist organizations that unlawfully use violence or threat of violence to coerce or to intimidate societies in the pursuit political or ideological goals.

I also mean to suggest that National defense providers are not in the business of protecting civilians from common criminals or criminal syndicates; that issue is dealt with by “local defense.”

Before I go into the issue of the free rider problem, I think it would be useful to operationally define what: “public goods” and “private goods” are; to make clear how the free rider problem is inherent (in different ways) to the issue “public goods.” I will do this because it seems that many anarchists don’t seem to understand the distinction between public and private goods.

What is a public good? In economics, a public good is any good or service that is both non-rival and non-exclusive.

What do I mean by “non-exclusive?” I meant that one cannot be excluded from consuming the good regardless if one pays for it or not.

-Radio stations currently are good example of this. If I purchase any standard radio, I can tune into any AM or FM radio station within range of my radio, and the radio station can’t exclude me from listening as long as they provide their service.

What do I mean by “non-rival?” By this I mean that consumption of this good or service by one consumer does NOT prevent simultaneous consumption of that unit by other consumers.

- If I listen to my radio, does this prevent or exclude others from listening to their radio broadcast? No. My consumption of radio broadcasts does not interfere with their consumption of their radio broadcasts.

Let’s contrast “public goods” with “private goods.” A private good is any good that is rival and excludable.

-A good is “rival” in the sense that if I consume a cheeseburger, this fact precludes other people consuming my cheeseburger. A good is “excludable” it is so in the sense that if I don’t pay for it, I don’t receive it. If I don’t pay for a cheeseburger, then I don’t get a

cheeseburger. Unlike public goods, firms and individuals can deny people private goods if they don’t pay for them.

It’s worth noting that types of goods such as public goods aren’t necessarily static. New technology can sometimes be used to turn what used to be a public good into a private good or another type of good. For instance, we know traditional radio stations can’t prevent anyone from listening to their broadcasts; if I listen to the radio, this doesn’t prevent others from doing the same, and if I don’t pay for the service, I still get to listen.

However, the invention of the technology of satellite radio stations such as: XM Satellite Radio require the use of special digital radio receivers to tune in to their broadcasts. This development allowed the exclusion people from listening who don’t pay a fee. Thus, through technology, the Sirius XM Radio Corporation was able to turn a public good into a “club good” (a non-rival, but excludable good).

Now, let’s move onto the free rider problem with defense in a stateless society, which should appear somewhat obvious at this point.

National Defense is a public good. If I don’t pay for it I don’t get excluded. For instance, if I free ride, and if an imperialist army invades my region, the national defense firms can’t decide to protect all the other houses but mine, they have to protect the entire area, or they’ll lose. Hence, I get the benefit of defense while paying none of the cost. National defense is non-rivalrous because my consumption of it doesn’t preclude other people from that same defense.

Now, suppose for the sake of argument that in a stateless society paying for national defense cost $500 dollars a year. Suppose also, that the end of the financial year I have $500 extra in disposable income. Suppose the following are my only options to: either pay for defense, or pay for a flat screen TV.

In this circumstance, what is the opportunity cost of paying for defense? It’s a flat screen TV and all the utility I would derive from having it. What is the opportunity cost for buying a flat screen TV to me and to society? To me the cost is nothing, because I receive benefits of national defense whether or not I pay for it.

To society the cost of me not paying for defense is almost nothing; it isn’t statistically significant. National defense has extremely high fixed costs. The average annual absolute expenditure of the top 10 military spending states is $118,689,000,000. [1] Of those very same countries the average per capita military spending is $766. So our assumption of $500 is 266 dollars less than the current per-capita average of those countries. In modern society as well in a stateless society, $500 is a grain of sand in the desert. If I don’t pay for defense it doesn’t affect anything in the grant scheme of things.

Thus we say that it is individually rational for me to become a free rider, and it is individually irrational for me to pay for defense. This is because if I spend my money on

defense I will receive no additional services that cause me utility. If I instead spend my money on other things which do cause me utility, I will be happier and better off.

The problem is if everyone thinks this way, i.e. acts rationally, then no one will pay for defense. In the event of a hostile invasion, the relevant region or sub-national unit will be screwed, taken over, and plundered, and it will constantly be “at risk” for invasion.

The problem for national defense entails that although it is individually rational not to pay for defense; it is still collectively rational to pay for defense in order to ensure enough domestic security required for the economy to function efficiently, and to avoid the terrors, wealth destruction, and bloodshed of war.

The problem of free riders and national defense entails that when people in society are all being individually rational regarding national defense, that the collective result is a very irrational un-optimal solution.

A similar problem of rationality is with democracy. In a democratic government it is collectively rational if everyone who votes is informed, so that they choose leaders who create policies to best support their interests and the health of the society in general. However, as there are millions upon millions of voters, the likelihood that one individual vote will influence an election statistically approaches zero. Thus it is individually rational for all citizens not to vote, or if they do vote, to be ignorant of the person they’re voting for. This is because the more time they spend learning about the candidates (which gives them no benefit as their vote doesn’t matter), the less time they can spend gaining utility from doing other things.

Its worth mentioning that the state does have a solution for this problem: the state uses force and the threat of force to insure that its citizens pay taxes. With part of the tax revenue the state collects, they pay for their own military. Thus, since people are forced to pay the balance of military costs year after year, the service of defense is provided. Now do I think this the state the only solution to the free rider problem? No, but its worth remembering that the state’s solution is one way to solve it.

Now that we have defined what problem for national defense in a stateless society, let’s move on to why the answers anarchists have proposed to this problem are wrong.

As a quick note, I’ll be referring to National Defense Firms by the abbreviation NDF, and by to the National Defense Industry by the abbreviation NDI.

1) Donations

The first solution to this proposed by anarchists to address the free rider problem is what I call: “The Donation Argument for Defense.” Advocates of this position point out that Americans currently give about 300 billion dollars to charity every year. They argue that in a stateless society, individuals would have more disposable income to donate as they

wouldn’t be paying taxes. They could then use this extra income to donate to their preferred national defense provider.

Advocates point out that donations to national defense would increase when the society was under the threat of war, and that in times of peace they substantially decease. Thus (goes the argument) the threat of conflict coupled with donations would hopefully provide enough resources to mount an effective defense.

Now let’s tip over this house of cards shall we? This idea is a non-solution for several reasons. First and foremost, if we assume NDF’s are funded exclusively by donations, (like charities currently are today) then we have to assume that the market for NDF’s will look similar to market for charities. The market for charities is a market of monopolistic competitors. The characteristics of the market for charities are as follows:

-There are a large number of relatively small charities-Charities produce differentiated goods-There is free exit and entry into the charities market in the long run-Charities have control over the type and amount of donations they accept

If we assume that NDF’s (in a stateless society) are like charities, this is bad news for the defense firms. National defense is an economy of scale. This means that the average cost per unit of defense fall as the scale of output is increased for NDF’s. In other words, the NDI will be more efficient by being large instead of being small.

If the NDF’s in a stateless society are relative small and have different interests, then they can easily be overcome by a large well funded state army that takes advantage of the economy of scale inherent to the industry. The small stateless NDF’s will always be at a comparative disadvantage in terms of combat ability relative to large state defense firms.

If this wasn’t enough, there are additional problems. Proponents of the donations argument for national defense admit that in times of peace, donations will be scarce, and in times of war or the threat of war, they will probably be increased.

However, this causes yet another problem. Effective modern militaries have huge fixed costs, and are very large and complicated institutions. They take a long time and a lot of money to organize, run, and maintain.

This means that in times of peace, if donations are low, the much of the NDI is likely to go bankrupt, and will not have the funds required to organize and maintain a sufficient large force capable of defending the area. After a perceived time of peace ends, a stateless society whose NDI is funded exclusively by donations will be ill prepared to deal with credible military threats that emerge in the present. A reactionary flood of donations comes too late to purchase and organize most of what needs to be done ahead of time.

Modern militaries cannot be formed at the drop of a hat. Military hardware has to be produced, research programs have to be organized and funded, a chain of command has to be formed, different kinds of troops have to be trained and organized, the principle-agent problems, communication problems, and cooperation problems have to be dealt with and overcome. This takes years and years of large sustained capital investment, and huge organization efforts, which cannot be consistently sustained through donations.

Thirdly, never in the history of the word has a totally voluntarily funded effective NDI existed in the long run. Not only this, but states that have near universal support for war by their own population have never been able to fund their military entirely though those donations. The US military has always accepted donations. In early 2003, US citizen support for the Iraq was about 75%. At the time, the US military despite getting record numbers of donations was no where close to paying for the budget from the donations they received. World War One and World War Two, had over 90% public support, however everyday citizens were never willing to donate enough to fund the wars.

History gives us no reason to think that patriotic donation giving would ever constitute a sufficient reliable basis to pay for national defense. To assume otherwise is to assume a huge number of people would suddenly display severe altruistic behavior, while doing so in a way is individually irrational (as they deliberately make themselves worse off, and receive no individual benefit). This would be a huge assumption that has no historical precedent whatsoever.

Furthermore, people who argue this view seem to commit the fallacy of “wishful thinking.” They seem to think that because believe something would be the case, or want something to the case, that it will-infact be the case (when we have no reason to think this). This is a classic example of a non-sequitur. I wish that I had a billion dollars and I want to have the power to be irresistible to any women of my choosing. Yet, sadly, (like the argument of the anarchists) this is not the case.

2) Ostracism

Let us move on. The second response given by anarchists in response to the free rider problem of national defense is: “The Ostracism Argument for National Defense.” The argument goes as follows: a majority of individuals and firms in society will use social pressure and will: ostracize, refuse to do business with, and will disassociate from free riders. If free-riders understand that they will be unable to get jobs or buy food, that they’ll be unable to sell goods or conduct business, that eventually they’ll wise up and pay for defense, as it will be rational for them to do so. Furthermore (goes the argument) firms that sell to free-riders will be ostracized by the general public and other firms; so, to avoid loosing revenue by being ostracized, firms will conform to the mob’s preferences and will ostracize free riders.

There are several problems with this. The first problem is what I call “The Problem of the Orwellian Society.” In order for businesses and firms to discriminate against free riders,

they have to figure out a way of discovering who is paying for defense, and who isn’t; otherwise, there will be no effective way to discriminate against free riders.

To do this effectively requires implementing several huge assumptions

1) The entire NDI has to be willing to release the name of all people in the area currently paying for defense2) All those names have to somehow be added to a publically accessible data-base3) Someone somehow will have to acquire a list of name of everyone who lives in the area (presumably through spying)4) The vast majority of firms and individuals who pay for defense have to be both willing and able to discriminate against free riders5) All firms must have an electronic E-Verify system with a card scanner and consumer software that allows employees to cross-reference every customers ID with an online database to verify if such persons were free-riding on defense or not.6) Most firms would have to perform this E-Verify “check” on every customer during every single business transaction.7) The vast majority of firms and individuals would have to have already paid for defense8) Households and firms would need to spy to learn if and when other households and firms are doing business with free riders.

The problems with this should be obvious and are as follows:

1) Individuals who pay for national defense may have privacy concerns and may not want firms releasing their personal information to a publically accessible database

2) Firms might not want to release the names of their customers to their competitors for fear of loosing them to their competitors

3) Who is going to pay for the publically accessible database full of national defense customers; what incentive do they have to provide this service?

4) It is irrational for both individuals and firms to discriminate against and ostracize other individuals and firms.

Now this is a very important point. As we have mentioned earlier the cost of a single individual (not paying for national defense) to firms or other individuals is virtually zero; because one person not paying for defense makes almost no statistical difference in the grand scheme of providing national defense.

This raises the question: what incentives do firms have to discriminate against free-riders? Imagine for a minute that I’m Safeway and a single free rider who lives in my community walks into my store. Suppose for a minute that the average person who lives in my community spends $1,000 a year in my store. Now the cost of the dude in my store free-riding in terms of my total revenue as a business is zero; however, I know that his likely potential revenue is $1,000 a year. Thus, if I discriminate against this person, the

opportunity cost of doing so would likely be $1,000. If I do business with him, my opportunity cost is extremely low (as I don’t give up anything). Thus as a profit-seeking firm, it is rational for me to not discriminate against free-riders.

What anarchists are really proposing by saying that firms will discriminate and ostracize individuals who don’t pay for goods is that that all firms would form a cartel. The problem for them is: since the society in question is a free market with no barriers to entry or exit; would-be entrepreneurs have an incentive to start new firms that don’t discriminate against free-riders, because their total revenues would be higher than firms that do discriminate. Furthermore, all firms currently in the cartel will have an incentive to break ranks, and to stop discriminating thus undercutting the competition for the sake of additional profit.

Firms receive no additional revenue by ostracizing free riders, and actually loose revenue by discriminating; therefore if they are rational they generally will not do it. To assume that most or all firms would do this to their customers is to assume that all or most of firms in society would behave consistently in an irrational way.

As a side note, I find it amazing that many anarchists are just find with using the free-rider problem as an argument against communism and communal property, but ignore their past arguments entirely when someone points out it’s a problem for their own system of defense. Market anarchists such as Thomas De Lorenzo in his book: “How Capitalism Saved America” says in his book quoting US Historians: [QUOTE]

“The first American settlers arrived in Jamestown in May of 1607. There, in the Virginia Tidewater region, they found incredibly fertile soil and a cornucopia of seafood, wild game such as Deer and Turkey of all kinds. Nevertheless, within six months, all but 38 of the original 104 Jamestown settlers for dead, most having succumbed to the famine. Two years later, the Virginia Company sent 500 more “recruits” to settle in Virginia, and within six months, a staggering 440 were dead.”

In his book De Lorenzo points point that the famine was induced by the settlers system of collective property and collectivized agriculture production. In this system every settler received an equal share of food from the harvest. Thus no individual settler had any incentive to plant or tend more crops, since no one individual would receive any noticeably larger quantity of food from doing so. The result of this free rider problem was the slow painful death of almost all the settlers. De Lorenzo also mentions that the famine stopped almost immediately when the Settlers implemented systems of private property which gave individuals an incentive to increase their levels of farming.

The settlers in Jamestown used extreme levels of social pressure to encourage people to work by harvesting crops, yet not even extreme social pressures solved free rider problem in Jamestown enough to prevent the deaths of hundreds of early American sellers from the perverse incentives inherent to their system of property. If social pressure didn’t work for them, why would it be an end-all solution for anarchists?

5) Fifthly it costs money to implement a system of E-Verification; a firm has to purchase machines, card readers, software, and pay employees to implement the process; money that could be better spent on other things that actually provide a marginal benefit.

6) It collectively takes a lot of time for to run an ID-check on every single customer for every single business transaction; time that could be better spent doing other things. Furthermore, it makes the business atmosphere very awkward and Orwellian for both the employees and customers.

7) Proponents of the ostracism argument already assume a majority of people would be willing to pay for defense so as to discriminate against others who don’t. In doing so they are assuming most of that they are trying to prove (i.e. begging the question).

8) Lastly, it would be irrational for firms and households to waste: time, money, and effort, spying on other firms and households, for the sake of effectively ostracizing people; as they receive no benefits by doing so. To assume this, is to assume most of society will consistently be irrational.

Now to gauge the strength of the ostracism argument, let us use the principle of parsimony [6] to evaluate if ostracism solution to the free-rider problem of defense is stronger, or if the statist solution is stronger. The principle of parsimony states that the argument which makes the fewest number of assumptions is more likely to be true, because it is less likely that one of the argument’s assumptions is false.

The ostracism argument makes 8 large assumptions. The statist argument to solve the free-rider problem makes two: 1) that the state will effectively force individuals to pay taxes, and 2) that part of the state’s tax revenue will be used to pay for national defense. The statist argument makes 6 fewer assumptions than the argument of the anarchists; therefore it is a stronger argument that is more likely to be correct.

3) War Insurance

Another argument made by market anarchists as a way to address the free-rider problem can be called “The War Insurance Argument for National Defense.” The argument goes like this: in society, there are individuals who are concerned about loosing their property during a war. To meet the demand, “war insurance companies” will emerge on an open market to sell insurance policies which cover life, limb, and property in the event of a war. [7]

War Insurance Companies don’t want war; just like car insurances companies don’t want car crashes. War is bad for business. To deter other invading states from invading, war insurance companies would finances national defense with a portion of the revenue they acquire from people who purchase war insurance; or, in the event of an invasion, such companies would finance an NDF to drive back the invading army in order to mitigate losses caused by having to pay out money to consumers on their insurance policies.

While this argument may sound plausible, it is fatally flawed and does not address the free-rider problem at all.

First, if I know that lots of other people have purchased war insurance; and, I also know that the war insurance companies finance defense providers who protect my life and property regardless if I pay or not, then why would I buy war insurance or national defense? I’ll know that in any event my life and property will be at least defended, so, I’d be acting rationally if I spend my money on other thing.

If everyone thinks this way and behaves rationally, then no one will buy war insurance, and the NDF’s wont be financed. War insurance is just a continuation of the free-rider problem, not a solution to it.

Furthermore, War Insurance Companies can only hire NDI protection out of profit they make selling insurance policies. States have no such financial limit when financing a war. For states, the ability to finance as war is based largely on that state’s ability to: tax, borrow, or print enough money, (as well as the political will to conduct war). Hence, the minimal financing the NDI receive from the War Insurance Company profits will pale in comparison to the potential revenue state’s can give to their military through deficit spending, taxation, and inflation. Thus a stateless society’s NDI will always be at a comparative disadvantage in terms of funding with a conventional state military.

Also, paying for an ongoing national defense is extremely costly for War Insurance Companies, because of the high fixed costs of National Defense. Thus, insurance companies that offered individuals insurance protection without hiring a NDF could consistently offer consumers comparatively lower prices than those insurance companies who paid for defense. Therefore, war insurance companies who paid for defense would always be at a competitive disadvantage relative to insurance companies that did not; and such companies would be quickly weeded out of the marketplace.

We see similar phenomenon with Hurricane insurance today. Hurricanes are devastating and rack up huge costs for insurance companies. However, do insurances companies today hire thousands and thousands of aircrafts and purchase thousands of tons of silver iodide to cloud seed a hurricane when it’s over the open ocean: to reduce the size the hurricanes? No they don’t. Why? Primarily because it’s too expensive, and the result is uncertain. However it is also because firms that cloud seeded would quickly go out of business because the others firms would free-rider on their efforts. Hurricane insurance companies are better off paying for damages if and when the hurricane destroys homes, instead of trying to prevent hurricanes themselves. The same is true of war insurance providers hiring national defense firms to fight or prevent war.

4) War Bonds

These so-called “solutions” just get worse and worse. A fourth argument anarchists give to solve the free-rider problem I shall call: “The War Bonds Argument for National Defense.” The argument is quite simple; and it goes like this: to finance day to day

operations, NDF’s will issue “War Bonds.” Bonds will cover the balance of the extremely high fixed costs of the NDI.

Let us remember that a bond is a kind of debt security, in which the bond issuer legally owes the bond holder’s debt. Depending on the terms of the bond, the bond issuer is legally obliged to pay interest over time on the principle amount lent to the purchaser, and then to finally to repay the principal amount at a later date, called the bond’s “maturity.” [8]

People only buy bonds from people who they have good reason to believe will be able pay them back. If one has good to believe that a bond issuer won’t pay back the principle amount plus interest, then it is a stupid idea to give the issuer money.

Since National Defense is a public good with a free rider problem, if we assume society is acting rationally on an individual level, the total revenue of firms will be zero. If we assume society acts irrationally a small amount of the time (which is the predominant assumption of economics today) then only a few people do buy defense; from this we can safety infer that the total revenue of the NDI will be very small.

Why would anyone in their right mind buy bonds from an industry they have no reason to believe would be able to pay the debt back? Furthermore, if most of the NDI was financed by bonds, the result would be a Ponzi-Scheme, where debt from one bond was used to pay the coupon and maturity of another, all of which was financed by debt from yet another bond, and so on and so fourth.

In this event, the whole system would collapse in the long run. The credibility of the NDI would be eroded as NDF’s would at some point fail to pay back their debts due to of Ponzi schemes stacking up on each other. Thus in the long run no one would be willing to buy bonds from the NDI, and defense would not be provided in such a stateless society.

5) Rules of Anarchism, the NAP, and the Inter-subjective Consensus

The next argument is one of the silliest. I call it the “Naive Natural Rights Solution to National Defense.” It goes like this: in a stateless society, everyone will accept the non-aggression principle, and self-ownership; thus national defense isn’t a problem because everyone will behave morally and there will be an intersubjective consensus that national defense is not needed.

This is yet another example of fallacious wishful thinking. In other-words, proponents of this argument “wish” that everyone accepted and followed their moral system. However, merely wishing that society would accept and follow one’s own morals does not logically entail that people will accept and follow one’s moral system (as there are other kinds of moral systems they could follow). One’s own morals do not determine how people behave in the world.

If I think wearing disgusting looking ear gauges is immoral, it does not follow that other people won’t wear them if I wish they didn’t wear them.

6) Wishful Market Fundamentalist Thinking About the Unknown Future

The sixth argument for solving the free rider problem anarchists use I shall call the “The Argument for Naive Market Optimism About the Unknown Future.” The argument is fairly straightforward. It goes like this: the future is uncertain; many of the attempts of humans to predict the future and future societies have failed, but since markets in the past have done a efficient job at allocating goods and services, the market will hopefully be able to work out a good solution with the right incentives required to overcome the free rider problem in a stateless future.

This answer is a non-answer to the free rider problem for two reasons. First, while it is true that markets have a long history of successfully allocating private goods and services in an efficient manner (without shortage or surplus), it is not true that markets have historically been able to deal with public goods in an efficient manner because of collective action problems.

This is because firms cannot exclude people from receiving the benefits of their public good if they don’t pay; hence, people have never had any incentive to pay firms for public goods. Thus this analogy between past successes leading to future successes is false because it extrapolates a kind of market success that did not actually occur in the past onto the future.

Furthermore, this view appears to be a form of naïve market fundamentalism, where it is just assumed without proof that ordinary market functioning will always lead to an optimal solution.

If someone came to me and said: “there is such and such a problem with society” and I replied “don’t worry, the state will pass a law to fix it,” I could rightly be accused of statist fundamentalism. The same is true with religion, if someone came to me in an existential crisis, and I said “ah don’t worry, god will take care of it;” I could rightly be accused of religious fundamentalism, or “magical thinking. The same here criticism can be accurately levied on anarchists who use this as a knee-jerk response to the free rider problem of statelessness and national defense.

7) Guerilla War and Militias

The seventh argument for overcoming the free rider problem is: what I call “The Argument for National Defense by Guerrilla War and Militias.” The argument goes as follows. In the even of an invasion by a foreign hostile power, people in a stateless society will be so moved by their love of liberty and their hatred of the invading army, that many of them will voluntarily form militias. These militias will conduct a long bloody Guerilla war of attrition to bog down the enemy and break their will to fight so as to repel them eventually.

This argument (like so many others) rests on a large number of bad assumptions:

1) That a substantial minority or majority of anarchists in the event of an invasion are willing and able (out an insane level of patriotism) to: make themselves worse off, to put their life, health, property, family and friends at risk, in order to fight a Guerilla War against a large invading state army.

2) That the militias have enough men, arms, training, and logistical ability to drive out the invading armies.

3) That the militias are both willing and able to conduct a violent prolonged war of attrition with huge losses on both sides to break down the enemies will to fight gradually over time.

4) That many attempts to pacify the stateless society by the invading state, using pacification methods which have worked throughout history will be ineffective

5) That in the event of every new invasion all the pervious assumptions will hold.

6) That large security threats from say terrorist groups who are not conventional armies can be effectively tackled by militias.

Now, let us go through these assumptions one by one and challenge their soundness. Then, let us compare parsimoniously this anarchist solution to the free rider problem, to the statist solution.

1) Concerning the first assumption, it would be good to point out that militias use voluntary conscription to recruit soldiers whom they pay either little or nothing in compensation for time spent soldiering. It is also worth noting that one individual solider makes no statistically significant difference in a war between two huge armies. Thus, from an individual level, people who join militias to combat an invading armies or states are acting irrationally. They put their lives, their health, their property, their friends, and their families at great risk; and they do so with little or no payoff, as they get nothing in wages, and make no important difference to the war effort (if that is indeed their goal).

Thus, to make the National Defense argument for Guerilla War and Militias, we have to assume a majority or large minority of people in a stateless society will behave in a way that generally is individually irrational (though collectively rational). We must also assume they will do this “often.” This assumption requires a strong argument; and is not born out by history, thus we have no reason to believe it.

Furthermore, there are additional cultural concerns in the United States as to the viability of this option. According to Hofstede’s Index of Individualism which is the best respected index measuring individualism by country in the social sciences today, the US was measured at number 1 for individualism (relative to other countries). [10] People in

individualist societies tend to act more in their own individual self interest whereas people collectivist societies that have a sense of group duty and obligation (such as China or Japan), are more likely to act in a way that is rational for the collective. We can therefore conclude that because our culture is an individualistic culture, the Guerilla War and Militias option would be very unlikely to emerge, because more people in the US are motivated by individual rationality.

2) Secondly, since militias are funded by voluntary donations instead of state taxation or inflation, militias have a comparative disadvantage at providing defense against states because: they cannot meet their costs as well as well as states can. Furthermore, militias are reactionary solutions; they form or gain most of their soldiers in the event of a conflict; not prior to a conflict. So any solution that involves militias will be reactionary solution and not pro-active solution (like conventional militaries are). Hence, militias will not be able to retain the military advantage of purchasing large numbers of arms and organizing large numbers of men before a war.

3) It is highly unlikely that an immense group of brainwashed uber-anarchists would be willing to fight a long horrible, bloody, wealth destroying, protracted war of attrition, which would make them individually worse off in the long run.

4) State’s a have a remarkable to ability to employ the calculated use of force to crush, overwhelm, and pacify rebellions. State armies or police forces have very often throughout history been able to pacify populations with remarkable success. In American history we can see examples of the state doing this in the Whiskey Rebellion [11] and in Shay’s Rebellion [12].

Furthermore, the Nazi’s were able to employ pacification techniques with wide success throughout Western Europe. When the Nazi’s invaded cities in Western Europe, they were often instructed to not damage any property, or initiate violence against any passive citizen. They were told that if they did these things, they would face a firing squad.

Nazi soldiers were given training in etiquette, and were instructed to be very polite to the native population. Also, the Nazi State would set an official exchange rate between the currency of the country they took over and the German deutschemark. Then, they would give their soldiers 4-6 months extra pay and instruct them to splurge it amongst the local businesses to win the support of the business community.

Prior to invasion, German army intelligence would gather a list of names of revolutionaries and intellectuals who were likely to oppose the regime. When the Nazi’s invaded, these dissenters would “mysterious vanish” (i.e. be killed) in the night in large numbers. That way, the Nazi’s could crush acts of dissent before they even began, without anyone knowing about it.

Later, the Germans would erect signs and issue public service announcements, saying that the civilized way the Nazi’s were currently treating occupied citizens would disappear if they resisted; or, if partisans attacked or sabotaged the Germany army. In the

event of their resistance (the occupied population was told) the German high command would let their army, steal, rape, and murder, seize property, brutalize, and assault the population, and do all manner of horrible things to them. This pacification tactic was so remarkably successful that no Nazi occupied state was ever overthrown by revolutionaries, and the most occupied cities, townships, and regions offered little to no resistance.

Hence, anarchists who support the militia argument have make the very unlikely ahistorical assumption that an invading foreign power would be totally unable to pacify the native population.

5) It is unlikely for Militias to receive continued ongoing support in the long run. Sane people generally don’t want to fight a long bloody war of attrition, they want to make the best of their circumstance and get on with their lives.

6) Militias are generally not equipped or designed to deal with non-conventional warfare such as terrorist security threats; these would present a real problem for militias.

Moving onto number 8) PDA’s

The 8th argument proposed by anarchists to overcome the free rider problem is what I call: “The Private Defense Agencies Solution to National Defense.” The argument goes like this: people demand local defense, they want their homes and families protected. Stateless PDA’s will provide local defense. Their service will be a private good. It will be rival and exclusive; i.e. firms will not respond to the crime scenes and inquiries of people who don’t pay for defense; and, the services PDA agents grant through investigation or direct protection of a single customer cannot be simultaneously consumed by other people. In addition to local defense, PDA’s will also use their resources to provide national defense.

If this seems to you like this argument doesn’t address the free rider problem of national defense, then you are absolutely right. The argument for PDA’s does not propose any solution to transform national defense (a public good) into a private good.

If some PDA’s provide national defense with the revenue they get from providing local defense, they will be outcompeted by PDA’s who only provide local defense and don’t spend their resources on other things that don’t generate additional revenue (i.e. national defense).

Alright, now that we’ve examined all these solutions, what can we conclude from them? I think we can conclude that that anarchists have not offered any plausible solution to solve the free-rider problem of national defense. I think we can also say that if anarchists ever want to make their ideal society a reality, they will have to either find a solution to this fundamental free rider problem, or let their ideas be relegated to closet of history; a closet full of failed ideas.

Before I end this video I’ll briefly mention my proposal, which I hope to be able to go into in future videos.

My proposal is as follows:

A stateless societies’ polycentric legal order will pass common law making it illegal for firms who provide: either local defense or legal services, not to bundle their service with national defense.

- In other-words, under the law, all people who purchased local defense or legal services would have to also purchase national defense; otherwise, they would not receive local defense or legal services.

- New firms or existent firms who tried to provide local defense or legal services without bundling it with national defense would be shut down and prevented from doing so by the polycentric legal agencies.

While this may seem harsh, the horrible consequences caused by domestic security threats, and foreign imperialist states in the absence of national defense are too great. There is too much potential for death, economic depression, bloodshed, terrorism, wealth destruction, suffering, and cultural destruction, to ignore national defense.

Furthermore, no one would be against prohibiting legal agencies or local defense agencies that made it legal to: brutally murder people, torture people, molest infants, to steal money from poor people, or detonate nuclear weapons in a city. Similarly no would be against prohibiting legal agencies which made it illegal to defend yourself,

Every sane person would be fine with using force to prohibit deviant agencies which allowed for a greater social harm such as these. Not having national defense, is a greater social harm. Therefore, since we would accept in the aforementioned cases, it makes sense to accept it also for national defense.

At the end of the day, people are anarchists, or anti-statists, not because they think that anarchism is the final goal, but because think the set of theories and propositions proposed by anarchists would if implemented lead to a better life. If we have good reason to believe that some current anarchist theory would not lead to a better life (and we do), then it makes good sense to either change the theory so that it would lead to a better life, or, to abandon it outright. In this case, I think a change is necessary.

References

1) Average Absolute Annual Expenditure for the top 10 military spenders

List: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures#cite_note-The_SIPRI_Military_Expenditure_Database-0 Source: http://milexdata.sipri.org

2) Average Per-Capita Annual Expenditure for the top Absolute Military Spenders:List: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures_per_capita Source: http://milexdata.sipri.org/

3) XM Satellite Radio’s Pay Scheme:

http://www.siriusxm.com/ourmostpopularpackages-xm

4) Americans currently give 300 billion dollars annually to charity

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-06-25-charitable_N.htm

5) About 3/4ths of the country “initially” supported the war in Iraq

http://pewresearch.org/pubs/770/iraq-war-five-year-anniversary

6) Principle of Parsimony (Occum’s Razor)

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/simplicity/ http://www.theness.com/index.php/the-razor-in-the-toolbox/

7) War Insurance:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig8/bryan4.html

8) “Bond” Definition:

O'Sullivan, Arthur; Sheffrin, Steven M. (2003). Economics: Principles in action. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458: Pearson Prentice Hall. pp. 197, 507.

9) Problem of Rational Ignorance and Democracy

http://wikisum.com/w/Downs:_An_economic_theory_of_democracy

10) Hofstede’s Index of Individualism

http://www.geert-hofstede.com/hofstede_united_states.shtml

11) The Whiskey Rebellion

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiskey_Rebellion#cite_note-0

12) Shay’s Rebellion

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shays%27_Rebellion

13) How Capitalism Saved America (Quotes the Death of Early US Settlers)

http://books.google.com/books?id=_YaS18_3nlQC&printsec=frontcover&dq=how+capitalism+saved+america&hl=en&ei=qCx2TNiTCMKclgfL6_mzCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCwQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Jamestown&f=false

14) The Rise and Fall of the 3rd Reich

http://books.google.com/books?id=sY8svb-MNUwC