{"id":1476656,"date":"2024-07-11T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-07-11T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/?p=1476656"},"modified":"2024-07-11T09:00:00","modified_gmt":"2024-07-11T13:00:00","slug":"anarchy-in-the-uk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/anarchy-in-the-uk\/1476656\/","title":{"rendered":"Anarchy In The UK"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anarchy In The UK<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Authored by Joakim Book via The Mises Institute,<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Anarchism\u00a0<\/em>[an\u00b7ar\u00b7chism]\u00a0n.<\/em>\u00a0
\n1. \u201ca political theory holding\u00a0all forms of governmental authority to be unnecessary and undesirable<\/em>\u00a0and advocating a society based on voluntary cooperation and free association of individuals and groups\u201d
Merriam Webster<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The venerable British magazine\u00a0The Economist<\/em>\u00a0has us worried in their May 11 issue titled \u201cThe New Economic Order.\u201d<\/strong> Contemplating what seems to be the collapse of the global, liberal order\u2014Francis Fukuyama\u2019s\u00a0End of History<\/em>\u00a0story, more or less\u2014the leader article argues that \u201ca worrying number of triggers could set off a descent into anarchy, where might is right and war is once again the resort of great powers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Later in the piece we\u2019re told that once the precious conditions of the last three decades break, \u201cit is unlikely to be replaced by new rules. Instead, world affairs will descend into their natural state of anarchy that favors banditry and violence.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Adding to the unhelpful pile is\u00a0Oxford English Dictionary<\/a>, giving us a wholly misleading entry for\u00a0anarchy<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\u201cpolitical or social disorder resulting from the absence or\u00a0disregard of government\u00a0or the rule of law.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Granted, this is how most people think about anarchy. Upon mentioning this frightful word, most react in horror. Yes, communist types from the tweed-wearing intellectual to the stone-hurling Antifa member embrace the term for themselves in their literal banditry and violence.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

But anarchy only means \u201cdisorder\u201d to the mind that can\u2019t fathom anything but top-down dirigisme. <\/strong>Altogether foreign is a universe of emergent order, of \u201cthe products of human action but not human design\u201d in the\u00a0famous phrase<\/a>\u00a0that harks back to Adam Ferguson (Adam Smith\u2019s contemporary during the Scottish Enlightenment). Instead, it\u2019s a state of affairs of\u00a0rules, not rulers<\/em>. The etymological origin is\u00a0\u03b1\u03bd\u03b1\u03c1\u03c7\u03af\u03b1<\/em><\/a>, where\u00a0an<\/em>\u00a0means \u201cwithout\u201d and\u00a0\u03b1\u03c1\u03c7\u03af\u03b1<\/em>\u00a0\u201crulers.\u201d Anarchy isn\u2019t disaster, destruction, or war but rules without rulers.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re sometimes told that nation-states are acting with respect to one another in a state of anarchy, since nothing\u2014no world government or court\u2014binds them, and a plethora of ever-passing democratically rulers merely play an infinitely lived game of mutual interaction. The equivalence is false, since nation-states aren\u2019t natural entities, but contrived aggregations of mafiosos that extract maximum value from their (tax) hostages via the use of violence.<\/p>\n

It was roughly\u00a0a decade ago<\/a>\u00a0that the social purpose of \u201cproperty rights\u201d clicked for me, and it was directly in connection with a world of\u00a0an-archy<\/em>\u2014rules without rulers.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I hadn\u2019t thought much about the\u00a0concept<\/a>\u00a0or its role in economic affairs, but picturing the frontier setting in Terry Anderson\u2019s and P.J. Hill\u2019s\u00a0The Not So Wild Wild West<\/em><\/a>\u00a0made it obvious. We humans\u00a0establish<\/em>\u00a0property rights, not in some pen-wielding constitutional setting or faraway legal process involving bribing (sorry, \u201clobbying\u201d) and political horse-trading, but by literally fencing land when the (transaction) cost of the process makes sense given the scarcity of land. And land only becomes scarce when humans have conflicting uses for the exact same plot of land.<\/p>\n

Until then, a hyperabundant resource (well, \u201cresource<\/a>\u2026\u201d) like land\u2014more than you can fence or cultivate or put livestock on even if you wanted to\u2014becomes like a non-resource like oxygen: All possible and practical demands for it won\u2019t make more than a negligible dent in its availability.<\/p>\n

In the excellent book\u00a0The Company of Strangers: A Natural History of Economic Life<\/em><\/a>, economics professor Paul Seabright gets to the same point using property rights over water:<\/p>\n

\u201cProperty rights are, above all, rules that determine how water may be used, and water use is a social institution whose rules we collectively invent.\u201d But, he adds crucially, \u201cRules are worth making only if we can afford the expense of enforcing them,\u201d <\/strong>which explains the classic difference in riparian vs prior appropriation rights between eastern and western United States.<\/em><\/p>\n

In his slam-dunk\u00a0Bitcoin: Everything Divided by 21 Million<\/em><\/a>, Swedish author Knut Svanholm hits on exactly that very Austrian point:<\/p>\n

\u201cEconomics only applies to scarce goods. Things in abundance are free because their supply greatly exceeds the demand. <\/strong>The air you breathe is an example of such goods.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Similarly, the\u00a0core thesis of Anderson and Hill\u2019s work<\/a>\u00a0is positively blasphemous to most statists and the average man on the street alike, misunderstanding the state of anarchy in which the rules themselves evolve:<\/p>\n

The West during this time is often perceived as a place of great chaos, with little respect for property or life. Our research indicates that this was not the case; property rights were protected, and civil order prevailed. Private agencies provided the necessary basis for an orderly society in which property was protected and conflicts were resolved.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Hobbes was off; there is no need for an overbearing Leviathan threating all of us with violence. Rousseau\u2019s\u00a0general will<\/a>\u00a0is nonsense. Left to their\u00a0own devices<\/a>, humans\u2014aided by\u00a0social institutions<\/a>\u2014are\u00a0pretty nice<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Plenty of our everyday interactions are anarchical, too, merely mundane instances of repeat games in the pursuit of common wellbeing.<\/strong> Svanholm clearly realizes that Bitcoin is anarchism; it\u2019s rules without rulers, and your option is to obey them or exit. Nobody \u201cruns it,\u201d and there\u2019s no management to replace or CEO to jail. Still, it functions.<\/p>\n

For freedom to prevail, we instead choose to submit ourselves to good rules, not dismantling every last hard and difficult obstacle standing in our way to an imagined utopia. In a forthcoming book about the Christian faith and Bitcoin, Jordan Bush, executive director at educational foundation\u00a0Thank God for Bitcoin<\/a>, gives an allegory about a fish in pursuit of ultimate freedom:<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m going to free myself from the confines of the water and live on land.\u201d He swims as fast as he can, leaps out of the water, and comes to rest on the riverbank only to find that he fundamentally misunderstood the nature of freedom.\u00a0Freedom isn\u2019t found in the pursuit of the absolute absence of restrictions. It\u2019s found by submitting oneself completely to the right restrictions\u2014the ones that correspond to one\u2019s nature.<\/em><\/p>\n

Broadly speaking, faith groups are pretty anarchical: They join together in commune or various religious institutions, but your faith is with God\u2014not the leaders of those man-made organizations; you leave, or re-create them, when they break apart. Most friendships, too, are anarchic: You cooperate and do together what both parties voluntarily agree to. Contrary to Bitcoin, the rules of which are crystal clear, friendships are hazy and often undefined. They can be negotiated, expanded, or reduced; nobody but the parties to the interaction governs it (no Friendship Tsar at the Office for Friendly Relations)\u2014and you leave, i.e., dissolve the friendship, when it no longer functions.<\/p>\n

In none of these anarchic domains do we find \u201cmight is right\u201d or the destruction of property that the word traditionally invokes.<\/strong> Anarchy doesn\u2019t mean anything goes, the purview of the postmodern left\u2014or might is right, the ever-lasting claim of the extreme right.<\/p>\n

It may well be the case that the on-going regime shifts in the global world order will take place through destruction and conflict\u2014but it won\u2019t be because of anarchy.<\/p>\n

Anarchy is\u00a0rules<\/em>\u00a0without rulers.\u00a0The Economist<\/em>\u00a0overlooked that first, crucial part.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nThu, 07\/11\/2024 – 05:00<\/span><\/p>\n

\u200bhttps:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/geopolitical\/anarchy-uk<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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