Anarchy, the institution of Government, and self-governance.

I just recently listened again to a talk on the FEE podcast entitled “Self-Governance.” As I was listening the speaker, who is a self-proclaimed anarcho-capitalist, gave Somalia as an example of how anarchy can sometimes be a better option than government. He described a graph where one axis is some “best-to-worst” scale of both options (I’ll address that difficulty in a minute), with the US and Switzerland as an example of 1st Best government and Somalia as an example of “n”th best government (meaning, when Somalia had a government, it was far from the best.)

The other axis was a scale of how well off the people/citizens were under whichever institution.  Under 1st best government (US), the people are doing pretty well, which is why anarchists, at least this one, does not want to move to Somalia, and under “n”th best anarchy (Somalia), the people are doing a lot better economically speaking, than they were under “n”th best government.

He was making the argument, that we don’t know whether anarchy under the best circumstances is better than government under the best circumstances, or not – but we do know, because of the example of Somalia, that anarchy under those circumstances is better than the government under those same circumstances.

First of all, I think it is important to differentiate between the intellectual concept “government” and the institution which we call “government.”  The concept of government is simply that there is governing going on – that there is not chaos and there is some semblance of order.  The institution of government that to which we refer when we say “The government is doing such and such …” or “I wish the government would … ” or “I hate the government.”  Whenever we refer to “the government” as if it were an actual thing, we are actually referring to the institution of government, not the concept of governing.

In his talk, he is talking about the institution of government and comparing it to the instituion of anarchy.  Anarchy is another word which must be understood.  The word itself comes from the prefix “an-” which means, without, and the root “arch”, which is the same root of architect (master builder), arch-bishop (master bishop), arch-enemy (chief enemy), monarchy (single ruler), oligarchy (rule of the few), polygarchy (rule of the many), etc. – meaning master, ruler, or chief.  In today’s vernacular, this word has come to mean a bit more than simply without a ruler, but actually to mean, without rule, or order – chaos.  I don’t think that anybody who is intellectually honest can argue that chaos is better than order, so we are going to assume that reasonable anarchists are referring to a social arrangement which is without a central or sovereign ruler or rulers.

Now, I don’t think it’s reasonable to assume that this would automatically lead to chaos, any more than it is reasonable to assume that any ruler automatically leads to tyranny, but I think this is the argument that has gone between political theorists for centuries.  Lack of leadership leads to chaos, which is rebutted by making the argument that any central leadership leads to tyranny.

I happen to see that under the best of circumstances, that there is no difference between anarchy and tyranny.  Both of these are focussing on the societal institutions that are outside of the individual.  There are many in society that want to create a new law whenever anything unpleasant happens because collective effort “should be able to fix this” and that if “those people” would just make better choices, I would be happier, therefore I am going to force them to make better choices.

There are also many in society that don’t want any rules or restrictions on their personal decisions and think that removing all exterior restraints is the secret to personal happiness.  In reality, the secret to personal happiness lies neither in making other people make better choices, nor in removing rules and standards of behavior from our lives.  The secret to personal happiness is in taking personal responsibility for every single thing that happens to you.  This doesn’t mean that you say that everything that happens to you is your own darn fault, though that is probably at least partially the case.  It means that no matter what happens, you take responsibility for having the best response as possible – in fact you actively seek to make the best things happen in your life.

Now about the difficulty of the graph that was presented in the speech.  How do you measure “best” government?  What is the unit of measure?  It cannot be the well being of those being ruled or else your essentially saying, “the who people are well off under government or anarchy are doing well under government or anarchy” which is ciruclar and not a useful conclusion.  In order to have the one axis to compare government to anarchy, there must be an objective way to measure both anarchy and government.  There must be a something about each, separate from the well being of the people, which is common attribute to both, which can at least be measured relativistically (best and worst), in order to measure whether we have “first best” or “300th” best government, or anarchy.  The only thing I have been able to think of is the tendency amoung the people generally to self govern.  However, whether under an institutional and formal governmental system, or under no formal government at all, a willingness in the people who participate is essential for there to be any measure of well being in that society.  I come to the conclusion, once again, that it is not about what institution, or lack thereof, which determines or creates well being in the life of the individual or a cumulative well being in society.  What determines well being and prosperity is the willingness of the individual to self-govern.