We can all agree that invasions are ideally prevented rather than repelled, just as illnesses are rather avoided than cured. A strong argument for a stateless society is that, by its very nature, it discourages invasion. Before discussing how a stateless society can defend itself from aggressors, let’s talk about how it avoids them.
WHY INVADE?
Let us imagine two farms. One farm is owned by Bob, a sadistic, menacing fellow who wishes to expand his farm to make more money. To the east of Bob is the second farm, owned by Jim, which is tidy, productive, and lovely, with a wide variety of cows, chickens, and crops. To the west of Bob is a vast expanse of wilderness filled with bears, wolves, coyotes, poisonous plants, mosquitoes, and all sorts of other scary, unpleasant things. From a purely practical standpoint, what would be the least expensive way for Bob to expand his farm?
Clearly it would be to purchase a few guns, move east, and take over Jim’s farm by force. For a relatively small investment of money, Bob finds himself with new cows, chickens, and crops, all ready to provide him with new profit.
On the other hand, he could move west, battle bears, drain swamps, and commit years of backbreaking labor to perhaps increase his acreage by a small amount. Of course, the investment of time and resources hardly seems profitable.
Thus we can see that the reasons to invade a region are based primarily on the ease of conquering and the amount of readily available resources which can be extracted. In the same way that Bob wants to take over Jim’s farm to acquire the milk of the cows, the eggs of the chickens, and the vegetables of the Earth, a government would invade another state in order to acquire the wealth from the taxation. If the population is unaccustomed to tax collection and a tax collection system is not already in place, they are akin to the wilderness west of Bob, and the resources expended to violently impose such a system would likely be greater than the revenue collected from it.
Furthermore, if the invasion itself proves expensive, and even risky, the disincentive for invasion becomes considerably larger. Bob’s potential personal losses are much greater if all of Jim’s chickens and cows are heavily armed and willing to fight to the death to defend their farm. An armed population is considerably more difficult to conquer and rule than a population which has been disarmed by its own government (which likely disarmed them specifically for this reason). Thus it is easy to see why nations with free or compulsory arms ownership in the population tend not to be invaded. Giving aggressive governments reasons not to invade a country is always preferable to fighting them.
In a very real sense, stateless societies cannot be invaded because there is nothing to invade. There are no leaders to capture or assassinate, no government buildings to inhabit, nor any taxation system to take over, and most importantly of all, no way of knowing who is armed and who is not. With statist societies, invading armies can be fairly certain that, once they break through the military defenses, there will be little resistance left to defeat. In a stateless society, the unknown variables are tremendous, and the potential for failure is at best unknown, and likely, very high.
INVADING ANARCHY
Let us imagine that some day France decides to become a stateless society, but Germany and Poland do not. Let us also imagine a cliché that Germany has a desire to expand militarily. The German leaders look at a map and try to decide whether to attack Poland or France.
If the Germans go east, and successfully defeat the Polish militarily, they will immediately make use of Polish tax collectors to enrich their own government simply by imposing force against a disarmed citizenry. This seems profitable!
However, if they decide to go west to France, they face many obstacles indeed!
The Germans are faced with the difficulty of defending against completely unknown enemies. They have no idea who is armed and who is not. They have the option of simply slaughtering everyone, but this is hardly beneficial if the goal is to extract wealth from the population, and extremely inefficient, as it gives the population abundant time to mobilize against the Germans while they drain their resources. In effect, the invading army must constantly be on the defensive, even when they are attacking.
Secondly, what would the Germans take over? If there was a central governing body, they would clearly take Paris, kick out the French government, and impose their own rule on the people. If there was no government, what would they take over? It is the equivalent of Bob invading the wilderness to the west and killing a coyote. Clearly the bears and mosquitoes will not obey him simply because he defeated a single animal.
Let us put all this aside, however, and assume that the leaders of the German military are utterly retarded and the French have forgone all attempts at collective defense whatsoever. What will the German government do now? Go from door to door with guns and demand peoples’ silverware? Even if this were possible and actually achieved, as soon as the silverware was shipped back to Germany, there would be an enormous surplus of silverware in the German market. German silverware manufacturers would immediately be put out of business. The result would be layoffs, and German tax revenue would be hurt.
Perhaps the Germans would seize French cars and electronics. Well, the effect would be the same, except in those markets rather than silverware. BMW, Mercedes, and VW would be crippled, as would German electronics companies.
By destroying domestic industries for the sake of one-time acquisition of French goods, Germany would be utterly destroying its tax base and economy. The resulting loss in innovation and finances would be utterly devastating to the future of the country.
Perhaps instead of seizing goods, the Germans could capture French citizens and enslave them.
This would not work for long either, because slave labor cannot be taxed, and the slaves would take jobs from working citizens whose incomes were being taxed. Once again the German government would be reducing its money and power, which is not something governments tend to do.
I think my argument has been well-established, but I’m willing to take it even further by presenting a worst possible scenario. Let’s imagine a dictator rises to power in Germany who, as a young child, was beaten by baguettes and taunted with poetry by Molière. He has thus developed a terrible, bitter hatred of all that is French and wishes to conquer it regardless of how it may cripple his own power.
We will talk about private agencies in many fields later, but we can spend some time discussing private defense agencies now. If I am a private defense business which operates like an insurance company (I collect money from my customers and am only required to spend money when something bad happens, in this case, an invasion), it is clearly in my best interest financially to do everything I can to discourage invasion against my clients, and to do so with the smallest possible cost.
The first thing I would note is that nuclear weapons have been the single most powerful deterrent of invasion in the history of the world. No nuclear power has ever been invaded, or threatened with invasion, thus, there is no better “bang for your buck” than well-placed nuclear silos (yeah, I know that was a bad pun :-p)
If we assume that a million subscribers are willing to buy invasion insurance which uses nuclear weapons as a deterrent, and it costs about $30 million to maintain the nuclear weapons and their silos, then each subscriber will have to pay approximately $30 per year in fees. Since the economic livelihood of the private defense agency rests on an invasion never taking place, clearly their employees would work day and night to find ways to make invasion of the stateless society as costly as possible, while defending it as cheap as possible. If I were running one of these businesses, I might think of something like this…
DEACTIVATED MONEY
If I were responsible for defending my clients against foreign invasion, and I was concerned with foreign invaders taking advantage of the money possessed by my clients, I would offer membership discounts to anyone willing to secure their bank accounts with some sort of definitive identification lock (a thumb print, retina scan, etc.). (Naturally any system can be hacked, and people can be kidnapped along with their money, but the purpose of this is to act as an additional deterrent against invasion in the first place, as it is yet another obstacle for the invading army to overcome.)
Similarly, I might offer reduced rates to manufacturers who place GPS devices in their electronics and automobiles which automatically deactivate the device when it goes beyond the country’s borders (obviously such GPS devices would not be present in internationally traded materials, or could be deactivated if a citizen wished to travel outside the country).
If invasion seemed imminent, I would arm and train as many citizens as possible. When the German army invades Poland, what is the likelihood the Polish people would be willing to fight to the death to defend their government? Perhaps some would out of patriotism, but probably not very many. After all, would paying taxes to the German government really be so different from paying taxes to the Polish government? Is it worth leaving your children fatherless or motherless to prevent? Of course not, it’s just a change of the aggressor – average citizens don’t especially care who runs the local mafia either. Citizens of the stateless society, on the other hand, would be resisting a violent attempt to inflict taxation and government upon them, and would be willing to fight endlessly against the occupying force, as we saw with the French Résistance in World War II and see today in Iraq.
These are just a few ideas, but it is plainly evident how the advantages of invading a stateless France are far fewer and far more expensive to attain than the advantages of invading a statist Poland.
The argument could be made that some “nuclear madman” could detonate an atomic bomb somewhere in France. Of course, governments are no more able to prevent such an event than a private security force, thus I fail to see how this is an argument for statism. A stateless society would be far less likely to provoke such an attack, however, as its defensive businesses would only be devoted to defense, while statist militaries can often be quite imperialistic. Switzerland, for instance, has not been the target of any terrorist attacks.
STATIST NATIONAL “DEFENSE”
“National defense” is the need for a government to protect citizens from aggression by other governments.
If you could do a magical survey of everyone in the world to find out which they felt more threatened by – their own government, or a foreign invasion, the results might be intriguing. If you were to ask a Roman who he felt more threatened by, his own government, which drafted him for twenty years, or the Carthagians, how do you think he would answer? In the Middle Ages in England, do you suppose peasants were more afraid of the taxation and mobility restrictions imposed by their own lord, or the aggression of the king of France? In 18th century Russia, do you think the serfs were more afraid of the Russian Tsar, or the German Kaiser? In the United States today, do you think citizens are more frightened by foreign invaders taking over Washington D. C., or the fact that if they don’t pay their taxes, they are arrested and imprisoned?
To further illustrate this point, let’s take a look at World War II, which is without a doubt the single most propagandized conflict in the history of mankind. Didn’t the British government save the British people from Germany? What an intriguing question! Well, the British government was a major player in WWI, imposing the Treaty of Versailles on Germany, which utterly destroyed the German middle class, crushed their economy, and can be directly blamed for Hitler’s rise to power. During the 1930s, the British government supported Hitler’s reign through subsidies, loans, and appeasement, even after he showed significant signs of aggression. When all else failed, the British government threw hundreds of thousands of young boys against the German forces. They then decided to invade France and Africa, costing even more British life, even though it was evident that Germany was defeated as soon as they directed their efforts toward Russia. Can it be said, then, that Britain effectively protected its citizens through the 20th century? After all, they sacrificed millions of lives and destroyed countless families for the sake of, in the First World War, honoring treaties made with fellow rulers of other nations, and in the Second, dethroning a dictator they created. Even after the dust of WWII settled, they surrendered half of Europe to Stalin, including Poland, which suffered extreme slavery for generations, and was supposedly the reason Britain entered the war to begin with. They’d lost China to Mao, who proceeded to murder 10 million Chinese citizens. The British economy was left in complete shambles, along with the rest of Europe. Oh yes, all of those governments did a fantastic job protecting their citizens! People never win wars. Wars are paid for by people, fought by people, and died for by people. Only governments win wars.
The fact of the matter is that EXTREMELY rarely are people threatened by violence from foreign governments. When compared with the violence imposed by domestic governments, it is effectively nonexistent. Governments may justify their existence by claiming protection against other governments, but this is the moral equivalent of the New York mafia demanding half your income to protect you from the Chinese mafia. Do you REALLY feel threatened by the Chinese mafia, or by the New York mafia? The answer’s obvious.
Let us take a look at the war in Iraq and see if a similar pattern is forming. In the 1990s, the American government launched a tremendous bombing campaign in Iraq that killed hundreds of thousands. The 9/11 attacks were justified by the terrorists due to the presence of American military in Saudi Arabia. In that these violent foreign actions by the American government directly provoked the attacks on 9/11, and if it were not for the American government they probably would never have happened, can it be said that the people in those buildings and on those planes were being protected by the US government? Considering the tremendous expenses the Iraq war has cost the American people, can we say that US government is effectively protecting the property of its citizens? How much ability would Bush have had to conduct a war in Iraq if the US government did not tax half of the national income? The government does not need taxes to wage war – it wages war because it already has taxes, and uses war to justify increasing the taxes, either on the current citizens through printing money and inflation, or on future generations through the accruing of national debt.
This simple fact explains the tremendous lack of war between the end of the Napoleonic Era in 1815 and the start of World War I in 1914. Governments simply could not afford to wage war. As soon as they created their own national banks, however, war could be financed through deficit financing and inflation. World War I resulted from an increase in state power, and in turn expanded state power, setting the stage for WWII. Thus the idea that we need governments to tax us to protect against war is utterly ludicrous, as war could hardly exist without the existence of government.
STATELESS WAR
Let's say for some reason the leader of some powerful nation goes insane and decides he wants to invade our stateless society, and we don't want to lose all our silverware and cars to his lack of foresight. How might stateless wars be fought?
Firstly, here is a list of the top ten largest military budgets in the world according to http://www.globalsecurity.
1. United States: $650 billion (2008)
2. China: $65 billion (2004)
3. Russia: $50 billion (?)
4. France: $45 billion (2005)
5. United Kingdom: $42.5 billion (2005)
6. Japan: $41.75 billion (2007)
7. Germany: $35.1 billion (2003)
8. Italy: $28.2 billion (2003)
9. South Korea: $21.1 billion (2003)
10. India: $19 billion (2005).
Here is a list of the world's largest companies by revenue.
1. ExxonMobil: $390.3 billion (2007)
2. Wal-Mart: $374.5 billion (2008)
3. Royal Dutch Shell: $355.8 billion (2007)
4. BP: $292 billion (2007)
5. Toyota: $264.8 billion (2008)
6. Total: $217.6 billion (2007)
7. Chevron: $214.1 billion (2007)
8. ING Group: $197.9 billion (2007)
9. ConocoPhillips: $187.4 billion (2007)
10. Samsung: $174.2 billion (2007)
I point this out not to suggest these companies could provide defense, nor to claim that corporations in a stateless society would have such funds in the absence of state-enforced monopolies, but merely to point out that private businesses can conceivably acquire the resources necessary to raise a formidable military. Economies of scale on the level of a 20th century military are not beyond the realm of possibility in a free market, and in the event of a total war, the infrastructure of a free market would be the most efficient means of production to equip the defending military possible.
In the event of a military invasion of a stateless society, it is clear the institutions with the most to lose would be the private defense organizations, as they would be the first to go and the most likely to be killed. As such all of the stateless defense organizations have an enormous incentive to prevent and repel the invasion. What options would they have?
1. They could offer the foreign troops sanctuary, property and jobs if they lay down their arms, desert and cross the border peacefully.
2. They could declare that, if the troops are not disbanded, no offensive action will be taken against soldiers or civilians, but instead political leaders will be targeted.
3. The defense agencies could arm everyone along the the border with any weapons they liked – for free (In Switzerland, for instance, every household has to have a gun – and the Swiss have not been involved in a war in 800 years, despite being right in the middle of Europe).
4. If the threat continued to escalate, the defense agencies could offer a large quantity of gold to anyone able to convince the invading leaders to demobilize their troops.
5. The defense agencies could issue massive bounties on the heads of the invading state.
6. They could mount their own covert assult, kidnap the leader's family and hold them hostage until the troops were demobilized.
7. If all else failed, they could hire mercenaries and fight a guerrilla war.
Historically stateless armies have been immensely more efficient than statist armies in fighting guerrilla wars. Examples of such occurrences include the American Revolution, the Vietnam War, the Korean War, Afghanistan, and many others. In Iraq, a unique perspective as to the effectiveness of stateless and statist armies can be seen.
The Iraqi military had an annual budget of $1.2 billion as of 2002. This military ostensibly lasted for 41 days against the NATO military. More realistically it lasted for about 20 days, and that was with the aid of an enormous sandstorm. The guerrilla forces, on the other hand, have lasted for years up through the present day, and may yet outlast the NATO forces. These guerrilla forces started with a fraction of the resources the Iraqi military possessed, and much of what they have now was left over from the Iraqi military, smuggled in from Syria, or stolen from the NATO military. Clearly, just looking at the vast differences in resources, the stateless guerrilla defenders have been immensely more efficient than the statist military. If these insurgents are victorious against the NATO forces, which have a budget of $481 billion for the Iraq war and an additional $218 billion for the War Against Terror, free market defenses will have proven thousands of times more efficient than statist militaries.
If you want to know how a stateless society defends itself against overwhelming force, just look at historical examples where state militaries failed, but resistance continued. If free market defense is so efficient under the worst possible conditions, imagine how much more effective it could be if organized and funded by the full power of a free market economy. Then add nukes.
Would you want to invade?
Thanks for reading
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