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Nov. 21, 2005 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
19:34
2 Caging the Devils: The Stateless Society and Violent Crime

Can a society without a government deal with violent crime..?

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Thanks for taking the time to have a listen to this, my second podcast.
My first podcast was called The Stateless Society, An Examination of Alternatives, and it was my thoughts on how society can run in the absence of a government and the reasons why getting rid of the government is so crucial and so essential for the future flourishing of society.
Now that article was published on lewrockwell.com and generated quite a number of questions regarding how a stateless society deals with the problem of violent crime.
So I wrote a follow-up article called Caging the Devils!
The Stateless Society and Violent Crime.
And here it is.
It's my response to the questions that were raised.
After Lou was kind enough to publish The Stateless Society, I received many emails asking pretty much the same question.
How can violent criminals be dealt with in the absence of a centralized government?
This is a challenging and exciting question, which can be answered in three parts.
The first is to examine how such criminals are dealt with at present.
The second is to divide violent crimes into crimes of motive and crimes of passion.
And the third is to show how a stateless society would deal with both categories of crime far better than any existing system.
So, the first question is, how are violent criminals dealt with at present?
The honest answer to any unbiased observer is surely, they are encouraged!
It's a basic fact of life that people respond to incentives.
The better that crime pays, the more people will become criminals.
Certain well-known habits, drugs, gambling, prostitution in particular, are non-violent in nature, but highly desired by certain segments of the population.
If these non-violent behaviors are criminalized, the profits gained by providing these services rises.
The illegality involved destroys all stabilizing social forces – contracts, open activity, knowledge sharing and mediation – and so violence becomes the norm for dispute resolution.
Furthermore, wherever a legal situation exists where most criminals make more money than the police, the police are simply bribed into compliance.
Thus, by increasing the profits of nonviolent activities, the state ensures the corruption of the police and judicial system, thus making it both safer and more profitable to operate outside the law.
I mean, these days it can take literally dozens of arrests to actually face trial, and many trials to get convicted.
Policemen now spend about a third of their time filling out paperwork, and 90% of their time chasing non-violent criminals.
Entire sections of certain cities are run by gangs of thugs, and the jails are overflowing with harmless low-level peons sent to prison as make-work for the judicial system, and thus constantly, by the way, increasing law enforcement budgets.
Also, peaceful citizens are legally disarmed through gun control laws, leaving them that much more vulnerable to criminals.
In this manner, the modern state literally creates, protects, and profits from violent criminals.
Thus, the standard to compare the stateless society's response to violent crime is not some perfect world where thugs are always effectively dealt with, but rather the current mess where violence is both encouraged and protected.
So, Before we turn to how a stateless society deals with crime, however, it is essential to remember that the stateless society automatically eliminates the greatest violence faced by almost all of us, the state that threatens us with guns if we don't hand over our money and our lives should it decide to declare war.
Thus, it cannot be said that the existing system is one which minimizes violence.
Quite the contrary, the honest population is violently enslaved by the state, and the dishonest provided with cash incentives and protection.
State violence in its many forms has been growing in Western societies over the past few generations, as regulations, tariffs and taxation have risen exponentially, almost asymptotically.
National debts are an obvious form of intergenerational theft.
Support of foreign governments also increases violence since these governments use subsidies to buy arms and further terrorize their own populations.
The arms market is also funded and controlled by governments.
The list of state crimes can go on and on.
But one last gulag is worth mentioning.
All the millions of poor souls kidnapped and held hostage in prisons for non-violent, quote, crimes.
So, since existing states terrorize, enslave, and incarcerate literally billions of citizens, it's hard to understand how they can be seen as effectively working against violence in any form.
All right.
So, to the central question.
How does the stateless society deal with violence?
First, it's important to differentiate the use of force into crimes of motive and crimes of passion.
Now, crimes of motive are open to correction through changing incentives.
Any system which reduces the profits of property crimes, for instance, while increasing the profits of honest labor, will reduce these crimes.
In the last part of this essay, we will see how the stateless society achieves this better than any other option.
Now, crimes of motive can be diminished by making crime a low-profit activity relative to working for a living.
Crime entails labor, and if most people could make more money working honestly for the same amount of labor, there will be far fewer criminals.
For those who've listened to my last podcast, or have read my explanation of Dispute Resolution Organizations, or DROs, know that the stateless society flourishes through the creation of voluntary contracts between interested parties, and that all property is private.
How does this affect violent crime?
Well, let's look at break and enter.
If I own a house, I will probably take out insurance against theft.
Obviously, my insurance company then benefits most from preventing theft, not from recovering my property, and so will encourage me to get an alarm system and make sure that all of my property has serial numbers and so on, just as it happens now.
I mean, this situation is more or less analogous to what happens now, However, with the not inconsequential adjustment that, since DROs handle prevention as well as restitution, their motives for preventing theft or rendering stolen property useless is much higher than it is now.
As such, much more investment in prevention would be worthwhile, such as creating voice-activated appliances which only work for their owners.
However, the stateless society goes much, much further in preventing crime.
Specifically, by identifying those who are going to become criminals.
In this situation, the stateless society is far more effective than any state system.
As you may remember, in a stateless society, contracts with DROs, these Dispute Resolution Organizations, are required to maintain any sort of economic life.
Without DRO representations, citizens will find it very hard to get a job, to hire employees, to rent a car, buy a house, or send their children to school.
Any DRO will naturally ensure that its contracts include penalties for crimes.
So, if you steal a car, your DRO has the perfect right to use force against you to get the car back and probably retrieve financial penalties to boot.
How does this work in practice?
Well, let's take a test case.
Suppose that you wake up one morning and decide to become a thief.
Well, of course, the first thing you have to do is to cancel your coverage with your DRO, so that your DRO can no longer act against you when you steal.
DROs, of course, would have clauses allowing you to cancel your coverage, just as insurance companies have now.
Thus, you would have to notify your DRO that you were dropping coverage.
No problem.
No must.
No fuss.
You're off their list.
However, DROs as a whole really need to keep track of people who have opted out of the entire DRO system, since those people have pretty clearly signaled their intention to go rogue, to live off the grid, and to likely commit crimes.
Thus, if you cancel your DRO insurance, your name goes into a database available to all DROs.
If you sign up with another DRO, no problem, your name is taken out.
However, if you do not sign up with any other DRO, red flags are going to pop up all over the system.
Well, what happens then?
Remember, there is no public property in the stateless society.
If you've gone rogue, where are you going to go?
You can't take a bus.
Bus companies won't take rogues because their DRO will require that they take only DRO-covered passengers in case of injury or altercation.
Want to fill up on gas?
No luck for the same reason.
You can try hitchhiking, of course, which might work, but what happens when you get to your destination and try and rent a hotel room?
No DRO card?
No luck.
You want to sleep in the park?
Sorry, parks are privately owned.
Keep moving.
Getting hungry?
No groceries.
No restaurants.
No food.
What are you going to do?
Obviously those without DRO representation are going to find it very hard to get around or find anything to eat.
But let's go even further and imagine that as a rogue you're somehow able to survive long enough to start trying to steal from people's houses.
Well, the first thing that DROs are likely to do is to give a cash reward to anyone who spots you and reports your position.
In fact, there will probably be companies which specialize in just this sort of service.
As you walk down a street on your way to rob a house, someone sees you and calls you in.
The DRO immediately notifies the street owner, remember, no public property, who then boots you off his street.
Are you going to resist the street owner?
His DRO will fully support his right to use force to protect his property or life.
So you have to get off his street.
Where do you go?
All the local street owners have been notified of your presence and will refuse your entrance.
You can't go anywhere without trespassing.
You're a pariah.
No one will help you, or give you food, or shelter you, because if they do, their DRO will boot them or raise their rates, and their name will be entered into a database of people who help rogues.
There is literally no place to turn.
So, given all this, But what incentive is there really to turn to a life of crime?
Working for a living and being represented by a DRO pays really well.
Going off the grid and becoming a rogue pits the entire weight of the combined DRO system against you.
And even if you somehow do manage to survive their scrutiny and steal something, it has probably been voice-encoded or protected in some other manner against unauthorized reuse.
But let's go all the way and suppose that you somehow bypass all of that and do manage to steal, where are you going to sell your stolen goods?
You're not protected by a DRO, so who's going to buy from you, knowing that they have no recourse if something goes wrong?
And besides, anyone who interacts with you will get a substantial reward for reporting your location, and if they deal with you, will be dropped from the DRO system themselves.
Will there be underground markets?
Perhaps, but really, where would they operate?
People need a place to live.
They've got to rent cars.
They've got to buy clothes.
They've got to eat groceries.
No DRO means little or no participation in economic life.
Thus, I think it's pretty fair to say that any stateless society will do a far better job of protecting its citizens against crimes of motive.
What, then, about crimes of passion?
Well, crimes of passion are of course harder to prevent, but also present far less of a threat to those outside of the circle in which they occur.
I mean, let's say that a man just up and kills his wife.
Well, they're both covered by DROs, of course, and their DRO contracts would include specific prohibitions against murder.
Thus, the man would be subject to all the sanctions involved in his contract, probably forced labor until a certain financial penalty was paid off, since DROs would be responsible for paying financial penalties to any next of kin.
Well, fine, you say.
Well, but what if either the man or woman was not covered by a DRO?
Well, where would they be living then?
No one would rent them an apartment if they weren't covered.
If they owned their house free and clear, who would sell them food?
Or gas?
Who would employ them?
What bank would accept their money?
The penalties for opting out of the DRO system are almost infinite, and so it's safe to say that it would be next to impossible to survive without any form of DRO representation.
But let's say that only the murderous husband planning to kill his wife opted out of his DRO system without telling her.
Well, the first thing that his wife's DRO system would do is inform her of her husband's actions and the ill intent it may represent, and help her relocate, if desired.
If she decided against relocation, her DRO would promptly drop her, because by deciding to live in close proximity with a rogue man, she was exposing herself to an untenable amount of danger, and so, of course, the DRO to a high risk for financial loss.
Now, both the husband and wife have chosen to live without DROs, in a state of nature, and thus face all the problems involved in getting food, shelter, money and so on.
So, what about something slightly more complicated, like stalking?
Let's say some woman becomes obsessed with a man, and starts calling him at all hours, and following him around, perhaps boils a bunny or two.
Well, if the man has bought insurance against stalking, his DRO will leap into action.
It calls the woman's DRO and says, stop stalking this man or we'll drop you.
And how does her DRO know whether she has really given up her stalking?
Well, the man stops reporting it.
And if there is a dispute, she just wears an ankle bracelet for a while to make sure.
And remember, since there is no public property, she can be ordered off any property such as sidewalks, streets, parks, and so on.
And if the man has not bought insurance against stalking, no problem.
It's just a little more expensive to buy with a pre-existing condition.
Now, although they may seem unfamiliar to you, DROs are not a new concept.
They're as ancient as civilization itself, but they've been sort of shouldered aside by the constant escalation of state power over the last century or so.
In the past, undesirable social behavior was punished through ostracism.
and risks ameliorated through voluntary friendly societies.
A man who left his wife and children, for instance, or a woman who got pregnant out of wedlock was more or less no longer welcome in decent society.
DROs just take this concept one step further by making all the information formally known by the local community available to the world as a whole, just as credit reports do.
There are really no limits to the benefits that DROs can confer upon a free society.
Theoretically, insurance could be created for such things as, let's say, a man's wife giving birth to a child that is not his own, a daughter getting pregnant out of wedlock, fertility problems for a married couple, I mean, just about anything.
All of the above insurance policies would require DROs to take active steps to prevent such behaviors.
The mind just boggles at all the preventative steps that could be taken.
The important thing to remember, though, is that all such contracts are voluntary and so do not violate the moral absolute of non-compliance.
And DROs, in order to be successful, will have to make themselves as unobtrusive as possible.
So we're not going to have 8 million forms to fill out and 50 cards to carry.
The invisible DRO will be the most successful DRO.
So, in conclusion, How does the stateless society deal with violent criminals?
In a word, brilliantly.
In a stateless society there are fewer criminals, more prevention, greater sanctions, and instant forewarning of those aiming at a life of crime by their withdrawal from the DRO system.
There are more incentives to work, fewer incentives for a life of crime, no place to hide for rogues, and general social rejection of those who decide to operate outside of the civilized worlds of contract, mutual protection, and general security.
And remember, states in the 20th century caused more than 170 million deaths.
Are we really that worried about hold-ups and jewelry thefts in the face of those kinds of numbers?
There is, of course, no system that will replace faulty men with perfect angels.
But the stateless society, by rewarding goodness and punishing evil, will at least ensure that all devils are visible, instead of cloaking them in the current deadly fog of power, politics, and propaganda.
Thank you so much for making it to the end of my podcast.
I hope you've enjoyed it.
Feel free to have a look at my blog, freedomain.blogspot.com.
And I wish you all the best.
If you have any questions, my email again, s.m-o-l-y n-e-u-x at rogers.com.
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