So in implementing something fundamentally different from the state, we have only to gain.
Funny thing, in one of the few online discussions concerning "institutional aggression" vs. "no institutional aggression" that didn't devolve into name calling and bald assertions of insanity, that was exactly the result.
The general consensus was that, regardless of the theoretical problems that "might" occur without the state, not having a state for however long that condition lasts would be an improvement.
What I find interesting is that the objections to not having a state do come up, continuously, and they're always the same: Nothing will stop someone from taking over.
As if that's not exactly what we have now?
As if every "state" that might arise must, for some unstated reason, be worse than what we have now?
The State, as we know it, perpetuates itself by the same mechanism by which chattel slavery was perpetuated past its point of economic inefficiency: Government externalizes its costs.
A private defensive agency cannot do that. The entirety of its costs must be born by its subscribers. War is very, very expensive.
As Roderick Long puts it so well in his "Answers to 10 Objections to Anarchy":
http://mises.org/mp3/MU2004/Long2.mp3http://mises.org/etexts/longanarchism.pdf(paraphrased from memory) "Which is fine until you get your bill. Here's the part for basic protection, legal defense subscription, etc, and then here's the premiums to cover spying on people to see what they're doing in their bedrooms, violent conquests, etc. Maybe there are people who are that dedicated, but when people see the bill they may think, well, is it really worth it to pay this much?"
Thanks, MacFall, you put the case very well. Regardless of how "dangerous" private criminals might be, the effects of private criminals pales to vanishing compared to the destructive effects of the state.
But again, it's not like this objection hasn't been put forward before:
"There are some troubles from which mankind can never escape. . . .
[The anarchists] have never claimed that liberty will bring perfection;
they simply say that its results are vastly preferable to those that
follow from authority....
As a choice of blessings, liberty is the greater; as a choice of evils,
liberty is the smaller. Then liberty always says the Anarchist. No use
of force except against the invader."
--- Benjamin Tucker
To object to "anarchy" because it won't be perfect is to raise a huge straw-man argument. Nothing in human associations is perfect, as the existence of the legal procedure called "divorce" demonstrates perfectly. That's why business contracts have adjudication and penalty clauses.
I can't remember which Mises.org professor in which talk says this, but I think it deserves to be repeated:
All I'm saying is that for any given population, they are better off without a coercive state than they are with one.
If Roderick Long's talk isn't convincing, if "The Market For Liberty", "The Voluntary City", "For A New Liberty" and the other well-worn anarchist discussions are unconvincing, then maybe you really do have a new objection that no one has heard of.
So far, every objection I've seen revolves around someone (or group) getting away with doing what no private person could do and not be labeled as "anti-social" and universally rejected.
Those raising these objections do not say why anyone would continue to do business with them. Why their "subscribers" would not kill those who came to tax them. Why those same "subscribers" could not, or even would not, subscribe to different defensive agencies to defend them from the taxmen.
Now I have no doubt that some agency might try it some time, but without the
legitimate authority to initiate force, nothing protects them from retaliation, peacemeal as their agents are killed off by irate "subscribers" when they come to collect their fees, or wholesale in response to a wholesale assault on their part.
Private security agents today far outnumber "police", filling the very real need of actual protective services that government police do not provide for anyone other than the politicians who employ them. If the police vanished tomorrow....nothing. There would be very little change in how people deal with day to day issues.
And those who are presented as too stupid to know what to do without Big Mommy Government to tell them? That's just another market opportunity.
Some self-help titles from anarchic North America: "Private Protection for Dummies" "Liability Insurance for Dummies" "Don't Panic! You're Just Being Sued."
That's not even bringing up the various voluntary civic groups that already exist, such as churches, clubs and charities, that already help their members and neighbors without resorting to government coercion. There is no reason to assume that the basic human motivation to associate with other people on mutually beneficial grounds will change.
Sure, that means that the Free Masons will continue to exist, but without
the institution with the monopoly on legitimate coercion to infest and wield, they're just another bunch of guys who get together and dress funny, no different than the Society for Creative Anachronism.