Many people accuse market anarchists of being Utopians; of assuming that everyone will become angels once the government is abolished. However, this is simply not true. Criminals will likely always exist. Market anarchy is the best way to punish criminality and reward voluntary, cooperative behavior.
Here is an example of a Utopian communist-anarchist, Osho:
Man has not come to the point where governments can be dissolved. Anarchists like Kropotkin have been against the government, the law. He wanted to dissolve them. I am also an anarchist, but in a totally opposite way to Kropotkin.
I want to raise the consciousness of human beings to the point where government becomes futile, courts remain empty, nobody is murdered, nobody is raped, nobody is tortured of harassed. Do you see the difference? Kropotkin’s emphasis is to dissolve to the governments. My emphasis is to raise the consciousness of human beings to the point where governments become, of their own accord, useless; to the point that courts start closing, that police start disappearing because there is no work and judges are told, “Find some other job.” I am an anarchist from a very different dimension. First let people be ready, and governments will disappear on their own. I am not in favour of destroying governments; they are fulfilling a certain need. Man is so barbarous, so ugly, that if he is not prevented by force, the whole society will be in chaos.
I am not in favour of chaos. I wants human society to become a harmonious whole, a vast commune all around the world: People meditating, people without guilt, people with great serenity, silence; people rejoicing, dancing, singing; people who have no desire to compete with anyone; people who have dropped the very idea that they are special and have to prove it by becoming the president of America; people who are no longer suffering from any inferiority complex, so nobody wants to be superior, no body brags about greatness.
Governments will evaporate like dewdrops in the early morning sun. But that is a totally different story, a totally different approach. Till that moment comes, governments are needed.
Clearly, Osho wants to achieve the truly Utopian goal of a mental evolution of all mankind, where no one will even commit crimes. But his error is to believe that government is the only way to prevent chaos. He is ignorant of the market anarchist insight that justice and protection can be provided more efficiently and voluntarily by the market.
The practical anarchist solution is the one presented in The Market for Liberty (also in pdf), by the Tannehills:
We are not envisioning any Utopia, in which no man ever tries to victimize another. As long as men are human, they will be free to choose to act in an irrational and immoral manner against their fellows, and there will probably always be some who act as brutes, inflicting their will upon others by force. What we are proposing is a system for dealing with such men which is far superior to our present governmental one—a system which makes the violation of human liberty far more difficult and less rewarding for all who want to live as brutes, and downright impossible for those who want to be politicians.
This is the goal of market anarchists: to sweep away the chaos of government and allow the order of a voluntary market society to flourish. We, too, do not favor chaos. We want the most moral, rational, and just society – the stateless society.
Wild applause. The thing I don't get with the argument that Osho and others advance is the idea that if people are generally so corrupt or of such low consciousness that they can't handle anarchy, then necessarily some of them must be selected to be endowed with a monopoly of corruption… and that somehow then the state will one day "wither away".
[...] Osho, Steve thinks that positive change can only come about through a mental evolution, a raising of [...]
Oh bless the internet. The only place in the world where you can come into a conversation months after it started.
Osho's argument is completely invalid. Simply, the brute barbarous people he is so concerned with desire money and the power that stems from it. A simple question to ask is, where is the most power and money to be gained?
Why, the simple, obvious and correct answer is – In the Government.
So long as he believes that man is this barbarous creature that needs to be controlled, his support for Government is ridiculous. These people will FLOCK into Government work where the initiation of force is not only encouraged but REQUIRED. It is the fundamental concept that Government, The State, is built on – a group of people claiming the legal right to initiate force. Of course, any thinking person knows this is absolutely ridiculous, immoral and unethical.
Plus, if Government is an entity of men which has certain powers delegated to them by the masses then they can have no power that those masses do not themselves possess.
NO HUMAN BEING has the right to initiate force. Therefore, they could not have delegated that power to "Government" which leads us, finally, to the realization that The State, in any form, is an illegitimate mafia.
They exist and thrive because they implicitly, and often explicitly, state that if you do not obey us you will be murdered.
Aaaaahhh, what a wonderful institution protecting us against the ravages of those bloodthirsty barbarous humans.
Wait, he is scared that, without a government, he will be robbed and murdered if he refuses. Well, that's what will happen with the Government.
He's afraid that he will be enslaved and raped without a Government. Well, the government will lock you up in a work camp where you are almost surely going to be raped. Of course, people joke about THAT kind of rape so it must no be as bad.
The argument falls flat on its face because, so long as there is a government, it will be full of the most insane, evil, power hungry, greedy, lying bastards that nature can produce.
I'm not worried about the crackhead who will run at the first sight of my 1911 – I'm worried about the black clad ninja stormtroopers who will open fire with their automatic weapons (which they are blessed by the government and allowed to possess) at the first sight of my 1911.
what osho says has importance because if to dissolve all the governments now, do u think it ll help humanity??? no i dont think so, because there is an importance of transformation of a vast number of people..he has not said that humans are barbarous, we know that there are people who cant even understand communism, and how on earth would they understand anarchism??. and when there is no private property in anarchism so people must not be selfish either, telll me how many are there u knw are nt selfish… consciousness of man has to be raised to higher level so that he is nt selfish any more, that he has no neeed for a set of rules or morality to guide him any more but everything he does defines morality, that he love his fellow men and see each other with no divisions of religion ,caste and creed….. and ultimately so free that he wants no government or any authority over him… meditation will certainly help… but yes i agree that i dont know how to bring the entire world to meditate and raise their consciousness ..
Evolutionary psychology tells us that human nature is here to stay. So we must accept humans as they are and create institutions that can handle it. Market anarchism is a very promising system.
market anarchism? jajaj the whole phrase sounds like a joke, you guys are capitalists, you´re not anarchists, you dont have a clue about what solidarity means
Yup, we are capitalists (in the sense of free markets). Solidarity is lame monopolistic collectivism. Learn economics.