Hans Hoppe has found the answer. In his outstanding book, Democracy—The God That Failed, he shows that democracy is the cause of these modern ills. This is a very bold claim, given democracy’s current status as a secular religion. But Hoppe’s careful theoretical reasoning is airtight—this is a paradigm-shifting book.

The process of civilization

To understand how democracy destroys civilization, we must first understand how civilization comes about. Civilization is the outcome of saving and investment, in other words: capital accumulation. As people save and invest in capital goods (e.g., tools and machines), the production of goods increases—they become wealthier. With more resources at their disposal, saving becomes less costly, and people can invest even more in capital goods. This again results in greater production and a corresponding drop in the cost of saving and investing. This self-reinforcing cycle of capital accumulation is known as the process of civilization.

As Hoppe explains in Chapter 1, people’s time preferences—their degree of present- or future-mindedness—determine the amount of saving and thus the rate of capital accumulation. A high time preference denotes a high premium on the present over the future: the cost of foregoing consumption in favor of saving is higher. Alternately, a low time preference denotes a low premium on the present over the future: the cost of foregoing consumption in favor of saving is lower. To illustrate, a person with a high time preference would engage in activities that pay out in the present (and even at the expense of the future), such as impulse spending, eating junk food, promiscuity, drunkenness, drug abuse, etc. A person with a low time preference would take on activities that pay out in the long term, such as saving and investing, maintaining good health, improving skills or education, developing a good reputation, etc.

The process of civilization is characterized by a fall in the time preference of society. As people become wealthier from the increased production of capital goods, the cost of saving (foregoing consumption) falls—their time preference falls. As this process unfolds, people become ever wealthier and more farsighted.

The decivilization effect of democracy

The existence of government weakens the process of capital accumulation. Under democratic rule, this weakening effect is considerably enhanced. Unless it is stopped, democracy will eventually raise time preferences to the point of capital consumption, and a self-reinforcing process of decivilization will be set in motion—ultimately leading towards the destruction of society.

There are many ways that democracy destroys civilization; the most significant being taxation, war, legislation, and redistribution. These effects are further amplified because public resistance to government is systematically weakened under democracy.

Taxation

Any and all taxation falls directly on producers—taxation is a penalty on production. As a result of taxation, the rate of return on investment is diminished. Saving to invest becomes less lucrative, so people consume more and save less than they otherwise would have. People become more present-minded and the process of civilization is impeded. The amount of taxation determines how significant this effect will be.

If the government is privately owned (i.e., a monarchy), then this effect will be limited. Since the government is his personal property, a monarch has an interest in both the present tax revenues and the long-term capital value of his kingdom. His incentive is to tax moderately, so as not to diminish the future productivity of his subjects, and hence his future tax revenues. On the other hand, if the government is publicly owned (i.e., a democracy), then this effect will be significantly more prominent. Since elected rulers are only temporary caretakers, not owners, of government property, their time horizons are very short—they’re very present-minded. They have no interest in the long term value of the government. Rather, their incentive is to maximize their own benefits while they are in power. Accordingly, democratic rulers tend to tax (and inflate the currency) as much as politically possible, even if it decreases the productivity of private citizens and hence future tax revenues. But this should come as no surprise, as public government, like all public property, is plagued by the tragedy of the commons.

Consider the analogy of public farming. Imagine a farmer who is given the use of some land to grow crops on, but he doesn’t own the land and only gets to use it for four years. His incentive will be to maximize his benefit over the four year term, without regard for the soil quality after the fourth year. Because he can’t reap the benefits of maintaining good soil quality after his term ends, his incentive is to deplete the soil to squeeze out as much benefit from it as possible before he loses its use—in other words, he engages in capital consumption. The same incentives are at work under public government. Without private property ownership, there can be no long-term economic planning.

War

While all governments can externalize the costs of war, a public government will be much more warlike than a private one. A king personally owns the resources that pay for the war and thus his incentive is to keep warfare limited (war is outrageously expensive) and pursue his foreign policy through peaceful means, such as contractual acquisitions of territory and intermarriage with other ruling families. Democratic rulers have no such interest in saving money—it’s not their money to begin with and they can’t privately pocket the funds if they don’t go to war. Consequently, democracies lack a major deterrent to engaging in warfare.

Democratic warfare is also excessively brutal. Once again, because the rulers have no incentive to save money, war spending is much higher, resulting in larger wars. And because the government is public, the government’s wars are the public’s wars: nationalist fervor sweeps the people and support for the war becomes the unquestioned norm. Wars also become open-ended ideological wars (e.g., “making the world safe for democracy” or the “war on terror”). The entire populace becomes part of the war machine, resulting in total war: domestic tyranny (extreme taxation and regulation), conscription, enormous war expenditures, mass destruction, and mass murder of both militants and civilians.

Legislation

Since the kingdom is the private property of the king, he has a strong incentive to uphold the integrity of private property law (the validity of his ownership of the kingdom depends upon it). The king also has an incentive to uphold economically beneficial law—private property law—to increase value of his kingdom. Democratic rulers have no private ownership stake in the government and thus have no incentive to uphold the integrity of private property law. Nor do they have an incentive to maintain economically beneficial law. On the contrary, they can benefit by creating artificial laws—legislation—that serve to undermine private property law for their own benefit. Under democracy, mountains of legislation erode private property law: property owners become increasingly restricted in what they can do with their property. As private property law is continually weakened, long-term planning becomes more and more uncertain and people become more and more present-minded.

Redistribution

Because of the electoral nature of democracies, special interest politics becomes the name of the game. In order to win an election, politicians must compete for the support of interest groups. The largest and most lucrative interest group (most votes) is the “have-nots”, and politicians can cater to them with wealth redistribution policies. Thus, democracies take on a redistributionist role: the welfare state is born. As basic economic reasoning tells us, if you tax productivity and subsidize non-productivity, you will end up with less producers and more nonproducers. A destructive cycle sets in: as producing becomes less and less lucrative and nonproducing becomes more and more so, welfare spending increases while production and thus taxable income decreases. Thus, welfare policies only exacerbate the problems they intend to cure. They reward present-mindedness and discourage future-mindedness and, if left to run their course, will inevitably lead to a Soviet-style economic collapse.

Public resistance

It’s worth noting that democracy’s tendency towards big government is significantly helped along by its public image. Any government ultimately rests on the consent of the governed, and democracy can more easily secure such consent. By fostering the illusion of self-rule (i.e., “We are the government”, “We are doing it to ourselves”), democracy systematically weakens public resistance to government interventions. Under monarchy, one has no hope of joining the ruling family and benefiting from the state’s activities. Under democracy, however, one has the opportunity to be part of a majority or even to become one of the rulers, and so can potentially benefit from state activities. Thus, monarchical subjects tend to be more resistant to government than citizens of democratic states. This acceptance allows democracies to become much larger and much more interventionist without igniting revolutionary sentiment.

Evidence

The devastation of democracy is clearly evident in the historical record. As Hoppe writes:

Let’s take a closer look at the historical evidence concerning taxation, war, legislation and redistribution under monarchy and democracy (discussed by Hoppe in Chapter 2):

Taxation

• Monarchy: 5-8% of national income; no inflation (commodity money).
• Democracy: Over 50% of national income; plus paper-money inflation. Remarks Hoppe: “Now, year in and year out the American government expropriates more than 40 percent of the incomes of private producers, making even the economic burden imposed on slaves and serfs seem moderate in comparison.” (pp. 243)

War

• Monarchy: Limited wars for settling territorial disputes. Battles fought by hired mercenaries with minimal bloodshed. Civilian life was unaffected by wars.
• Democracy: Total wars fought for ideological goals (“Liberty”, “Democracy”, “fighting terrorism”, etc.) and thus open-ended and grotesquely brutal. Civilian life is heavily disrupted by wars, not only because of domestic burdens (taxation, regulation and conscription), but because civilians are no longer considered “off limits” to combatants.

Legislation

• Monarchy: Kings were considered judges, not legislators. Law was considered fixed and immutable (and the king’s own property rights rested on its validity). Legislation was unheard of.
• Democracy: Rulers rise above the law, they become judges and lawmakers. Vast mountains of legislation regulate virtually every aspect of private life. This is effectively totalitarian power.

Redistribution

• Monarchy: Consumption state—wealth redistributed from subject to sovereign.
• Democracy: Welfare state—wealth redistributed not only from citizen to state, but between citizens. Public welfare spending typically amounts to 25% of the national product.

Ideological progress

Was the change from monarchy to democracy a step backwards? In practical terms, there is no question: democracy has had tremendously bad effects compared to monarchy. But in terms of ideological progress, democracy has been a (confused and pathetic) step towards more justice. While monarchy and democracy are both forms of unjust political rule, monarchy is exclusive rule by accident of birth while democratic rule is open to anyone. Democracy is fairer in the sense that the opportunity to rule is universal, whereas monarchy only allows for arbitrary family rule. In other words, if there must be rulers, then it’s more just that the rulers are selected through open competition than by arbitrary heredity. But this was the fateful error of the classical liberals: to see exclusivity rather than privilege as the problem. They merely replaced personal privileges (of the king) with functional privileges (of the democratic ruler). Of course, the real solution is to remove the privilege of ruling altogether, so that there is no ruler-ruled distinction.

To be sure, when democracy is rejected as illegitimate, we won’t be headed back to monarchy. Democracy will join monarchy as laughable and politically unthinkable. Given the natural human inclination to justice, we will move towards something perceived to be right and just. Anarchy, a society without rulers, is the pinnacle of this progress in political ideology. Once it dawns on the public that democracy is the dead-end sign on the road of statism, we will have a stateless society. Then the process of civilization will take off and humanity will prosper like never before.

The downside is that, until democracy is delegitimized in the public eye, we should expect an accelerating decivilization, and even the ultimate destruction of society through complete economic disintegration. Chances are that it won’t get that far, because the failures of democracy will become ever more apparent and people will eventually be forced to recognize their error if they want to maintain modern living standards. The sooner people realize that democracy is a social death wish, the less devastation we will have to endure. What we need then, is an ideological revolution to make the world safe from democracy! Democracy is insane—it ought to be called democrazy!

Conclusion

While all of this may seem no more than an intellectual curiosity, it has extremely important ramifications for the general public, as well as for minarchists. What better way of delegitimizing democracy than to show people that democracy is the destroyer of civilization and even worse than monarchy? People in democratic countries are deeply indoctrinated with a quasi-religious faith in democracy, so this is an explosive subject, but if used carefully it could ruin democracy forever in many minds. Democracy is the last remaining bastion of statism, and by attacking democracy we strike at the very heart of statism.

As for minarchists, if they are truly interested in limited government, then they must grapple with the fact that public government is prone to cancerous growth and that private government is the only sustainable form of limited government. Since they generally believe that democracy is legitimate while monarchy isn’t, this forces them into an awkward choice: either limited government through private government ownership (i.e., monarchy); or democracy (i.e., constitutional republic) and its inevitable big government. The cognitive dissonance is delicious!

Perhaps most importantly, Hoppe’s insight is the key to understanding and interpreting the 20th century. We now have the answer to the previously baffling question of why civilization is in decline despite enormous scientific and technological progress. It is public government that causes a vicious cycle of rising time preference, and is responsible for the accelerating destruction of society. It is public government that inexorably pushes mankind from civilization back to the jungle. Practically all social ills can be traced back to the effects of the democratic state, from war and poverty to dysfunctional families and widespread bad health. Happily, we also have the solution to this problem: a market anarchist society based on universal private property rights. Only by abandoning democracy and statism will we be able to reap the enormous increases in prosperity that we should expect from such incredible progress in science and technology.

Further reading

For more on this topic, see Democracy—The God That Failed, especially chapter 1. Chapter 2 contains a highly informative historical analysis of monarchy and democracy.

The thing is, they also consider the principles of liberty to be important. Constitutionalists believe that markets are better than central planning, but that government is necessary to protect liberty—that government is a necessary evil. This contradictory position mainly exists because they lack the understanding of the logical conclusion of the principles of liberty: the stateless society. But rather than just rejecting them as statists, we should reach out to them as potential libertarians in the spirit of gain orientation. Fortunately, an open mind and a little education are all that’s needed to arrive at a consistent pro-liberty position.

On practical grounds, Austrian economics is quite clear: the market always beats the State. Competition always beats monopoly. Why leave the government with any role at all if the market can provide us with everything we want? If the market is better than government in every other area, why would it fail in the so-called “essential roles of government”: national defense, police and courts? The functions of both national defense and police could be produced more efficiently by entrepreneurs selling protection services. Private courts would easily provide better, speedier and more affordable justice than government courts. Security and justice are extremely important, all the more reason not to leave them in the hands of a coercive socialist monopoly. There is no place for the state in a free society; anything the government can do, the market can do better.

The state is also incompatible with basic moral principles. For instance, it is morally wrong to initiate violence against another person. Yet this is all the State can ever do, using “the strong arm of the law”. Taxation is a perfect example, since a government couldn’t exist without it. Taxes are not voluntary, they must be enforced with coercion. Government can only tax you because it has the overwhelming power to force you to pay. If it didn’t have so much power, you could try to defend yourself. However, most people choose to pay because of this threat of violence (which, in any other scenario, would be recognized as extortion or robbery). If you don’t pay, and insist on not paying, you will eventually be staring down the barrel of a government gun. After your non-compliance with their written requests, they will initiate violence against you by arresting you and putting you in jail (otherwise known as kidnapping). If you resist their efforts and attempt to defend yourself, you will be shot (murdered). Notice that the government is the aggressor—it initiates the violence. The person who refuses to pay does no more than defend himself from their attacks.

The State is a destructive parasite that is inherently immoral. Government is socialism—even the smallest one. Les Antman nailed it when he wrote that “limited government is the theory that free market capitalism is best protected by a socialist monopoly.” There’s no way around it: the State must go.

Most constitutionalists have a healthy anti-government attitude. They just don’t realize that a society without government is both possible and desirable. They’re ripe for becoming full-blown libertarians.

To learn about the workings of a stateless society, I recommend reading Chaos Theory (only ~50 pages) [pdf version] or The Market For Liberty [also in pdf and audio-book]. Another excellent short introduction is Roderick Long’s Libertarian Anarchism: Responses to Ten Objections.

“The true test, then, of the radical spirit, is the button-pushing test: if we could push the button for instantaneous abolition of unjust invasions of liberty, would we do it? If we would not do it, we could scarcely call ourselves libertarians, and most of us would only do it if primarily guided by a passion for justice. The genuine libertarian, then, is, in all senses of the word, an “abolitionist”; he would, if he could, abolish instantaneously all invasions of liberty, whether it be, in the original coining of the term, slavery, or whether it be the manifold other instances of State oppression. He would, in the words of another libertarian in a similar connection, ‘blister my thumb pushing that button!’” – Murray N. Rothbard, “Why Be Libertarian?“

The button-pushing question is the test of radicalism and consistency. Being an abolitionist is what it means to be a libertarian. As libertarians we must advocate the instantaneous abolition of injustice, because any form of gradualism in theory means legitimizing the continuation of injustice.

But some have objected that pushing the button would be a mistake. If people still believe government is necessary, they argue, then another government will simply take over, and the resulting chaos will negate any possible gains. For example, Wilt Alston writes:

“I’ve argued that pushing the button and ending the State would result in a lose-lose situation. Certainly, if one stopped the current state from functioning with some instantaneous bolt of lightning, that would be positive in the short run. However, in the long run, if the people, the citizenry, the proletariat, were not educated sufficiently by the time of the button-pushing, i.e., their pre-existing beliefs were not replaced sufficiently, then another state, possibly more coercive than the first, would soon arise. In the interim, we’d be faced with all manner of chaos as people nurtured on the sweet teat of the State struggled to fend for themselves!”

This view is muddled. The point of the button-pushing question is not to stop “the current state from functioning,” but to abolish it altogether. The State is not just a collection of buildings and people in suits, but a hegemonic relationship between individuals. The only way to count as abolishing the State is to abolish those hegemonic relationships.  Just interrupting the workings of government does not count as abolishing government. As Gustav Landauer wrote: “The state is a relationship between human beings, a way by which people relate to one another; and one destroys it by entering into other relationships, by behaving differently to one another.” Alston is wrong to think that merely stopping the current state from functioning constitutes “ending the State.”

To see the absurdity here, let us plug Alston’s definition into the button-pushing question:
If you could push a button that would temporarily stop the State from functioning, would you do it?

The key fallacy appears to lie in neglecting Boetié’s insight: that the power of government rests, not on force, but on public opinion. Thus, to abolish government we need to change public opinion. If government really rested on force alone, all that would be necessary to achieve anarchy would be to kill off the politicians and bureaucrats, or to blow up the Parliament building à la Guy Fawkes. But Alston recognizes this. He points out that we need to educate people so they can change their relationships. The only way to abolish government is to abolish the belief that government is necessary. But for some reason Alston does not think pushing the button will abolish this belief.

Alston’s error is creating two methods of abolishing the State: the “superficial” method and the “real” method. The former involves stopping the State from functioning. As we have seen, this does not count as abolishing the State. The latter involves abolishing the belief that government is necessary, i.e. educating the population, and hence would actually abolish the State. Now, the pushing the button causes the “instantaneous abolition of unjust invasions of liberty”. Why, then, does Alston believe pushing the button would result in the superficial method and not the real method?

Obviously, if pushing the button abolished the belief that government is necessary, then there would be nothing to worry about because people would be educated sufficiently. Society would not fall into chaos and a new State would not arise, because public opinion would have shifted to anarchism. But this is all the button-pushing question has ever said!  Pushing the button means abolishing the belief that government is necessary, not just dismantling the visible apparatus of government. The non-button-pushers have created a debate where none exists by misinterpreting the question.

To avoid this misinterpretation, the button-pushing question should be reworded to read:

If you could abolish government by pushing a button that would immediately convince everyone that government is unnecessary (which is the only way to abolish government), would you do it?

Democracy is universally held up as the sacred political ideal. In fact, it is no exaggeration to say that democracy is a secular religion. Observe: We fight wars for it (“Making the world safe for democracy”). We are implored to blindly participate in it (“It doesn’t matter who you vote for, just vote”). And most tellingly, it is taboo to question it. Anyone who claims that democracy is bad is likely to be labeled a Nazi. (Even though Hitler was democratically elected and much of Nazism was promoted with democratic rhetoric.)

Nevertheless, I will attempt to prove that democracy is one of the worst political ideologies, on par with dictatorship and communism. My argument is three pronged. First, democracy is founded on initiatory violence. It is thus no more acceptable than murder or rape. Second, it can be refuted by a reductio ad absurdum; namely, that while we accept democracy for government, we would never accept it applied consistently in our lives. Third, democracy is unnecessary. What is there to vote on? All essential functions of society can be provided voluntarily and competitively on the market. Programs like the minimum wage and rent control are actually counter-productive, and can be eliminated altogether. There are many other problems with democracy: its ineffectiveness, its corruption, its total war, and its decivilization effect; but I will not address these here (see Hoppe). Last, I will address two strategies to undermine and weaken democracy: not voting and secession.

Democracy is immoral

Let us start with a definition. The root word definition of democracy gives us “demos” = “people” and “cracy” = “rule”. Essentially, democracy means rule by the people, or more commonly, rule by majority.

With this definition we can come to my first point. Democracy is a rule by majority over a minority. This means that the majority must threaten or initiate violence against the minority in order to rule. Aggression, invasion, and hegemony are at the very root of democracy.

Assume the majority wishes to levy a tax while the minority dissents. The majority must initiate coercion or threaten punishment against the minority to enforce payment. They are literally robbing the minority of private property. If the minority were not compelled to pay, it would not be a democracy. In other words, democracy could only be voluntarily if all decisions were unanimous. But, then it would cease to be majority rule. So, the inescapable problem of democracy is that it replaces voluntary interaction with initiatory coercion.

Moreover, democracy relies on a prohibition of secession. A democracy must initiate violence against seceding minorities in order to maintain majority rule. “If every dissident minority secedes after every opposed decision, then there is no democratic regime.” Thus, “those who advocate democracy are also logically advocating, that at some point secession be suppressed. And almost inevitably, that implies the use of force – military force. You can not be a democrat unless you are prepared to kill.” (source) Democracy, as it must initiate violence against minorities and secessionists, is the moral equivalent of a fascist dictatorship. Democracy is a lynch mob writ large.

One may object that democracy is not pure majority rule, but involves some individual rights. However, this does not obtain. For if some individual rights are respected, the logical conclusion is that all rights are respected, in which case democracy would not exist. The majority could not initiate violence against the minority, or violently suppress secession movements. Such acts would be rights violations. The other logical conclusion is that all rights are actually just privileges granted by the majority, and are subject to the majority’s whim, in which case we have democracy. There can be no justification for holding an inconsistent middle ground.

Democracy is absurd

My second argument is a reductio ad absurdum. Democracy, as rule by majority, does not recognize individual rights. All property is subject to the will of the majority. But why settle for majority rule only in roads, police, courts, schools, libraries, regulations, etc.? If it is right and just for a majority to rule over a minority, why not apply this principle consistently and take it to its logical conclusion: if democracy applies to 1,000,000 people ruling over 10,000; then it must also apply to any scenario where two people rule over one.

Walter Block provides one such example: Two robbers break into your house and steal your TV. You catch them, but as philosophical robbers, they point out that they are two and you are only one. As a majority following democratic principles, the robbers can rightly take your TV. Or imagine a single mother living with her three children. When she refuses to feed them ice cream for breakfast, the children, as a majority, could legitimately vote her out of the house. Or imagine a democratic organ clinic. A group of renegade surgeons could grab any person walking alone down the street, and as a majority, harvest the pedestrian’s organs. The democratic principle means that any minority must always submit to the rule of any majority.

The ultimate result of democracy carried to its logical conclusion reads like a dystopian nightmare: people would roam the streets in packs, mugging and looting any minority they could find. People would never leave their house alone, for fear of encountering any group of more than two people. Humanity would regress to some bizarre tribal warfare, where mobs would squabble desperately over who is more numerous. The larger mob—the majority—would then pillage and rob the smaller—the minority.  In fact, there could not even be laws, because law could be determined at random by any majority, such as Block’s TV robbers. Such a scenario is truly absurd.

Democracy is unnecessary

My last argument is that democracy is totally unnecessary. There is no conceivable reason to have a democratic government, because any government function can be provided voluntarily and competitively on the market. Because interactions on the market are always voluntary, we can avoid the moral problem inherent in democracy of using initiatory violence against innocent people. Through market competition, these services will be more efficient, because entrepreneurs must earn their income from customers and must compete with one another to provide the best service. Moreover, instead of investing power in a centralized government, the market decentralizes power into the hands of individuals. Rather than having some bureaucrat in Washington running everyone’s lives, the free market allows people to be responsible, self-reliant adults.

Abraham Lincoln wrote that

A majority, held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it does of necessity fly to anarchy or despotism. Unanimity is impossible; the rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible; so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy or despotism in some form is all that is left.” (emphasis added)

However, Lincoln was wrong. Unanimity is possible. A totally voluntary society is possible where all government functions are provided on the market. A society by consensus replaces the coercive relations of majority rule with mutual, voluntary, market relations. Lincoln’s division between democracy and anarchy/despotism is a false dichotomy. Unanimous rule is possible.

Thus, private roads would be run by profit seeking road companies, eager to satisfy customers. (Note that, historically, the first roads were privately owned.) They might collect payment from tolls, monthly subscriptions, or use road sensors that detect magnetically encoded stickers on your car. They might offer free service for commercial districts, or charge forbidding prices to through-traffic on residential streets. They could reduce road congestion through peak load pricing: charging high prices during rush hour and lower prices any other time, thus evening out the traffic flow. Importantly, road deaths would incur costs to road owners, both in repairs and reputation, in turn creating a financial incentive to provide safe, orderly roads. In comparison, democratic government roads are chaotic, ill maintained death traps: over 40,000 people die each year on roads in the U.S. alone.

So, there is no need to vote for politicians to provide roads, because the market can do a better job, and voluntarily to boot.

Private courts and police would likely be provided by insurance companies. As every exchange is a contract, people will buy contract insurance to resolve potential disputes. The insurance companies would have to indemnify victims, and would thus have a financial incentive to provide fair and efficient arbitration services. Insurance companies would stipulate in their contracts exactly how disputes would be resolved, leaving no problem of having to agree on an arbitrator after the fact. Competition would weed out corrupt companies and serve to keep premiums low.

In terms of police, note that protection from coercion is an economic good. Like contract insurance, people would buy protection insurance. Again, insurance companies must indemnify victims, and so have a financial incentive to eliminate crime. They would also stipulate in their contracts how justice would be meted out – mainly by restitution to the victim – and competition would keep them honest. Protection could also be provided by private property owners. For example, roads, malls, and office buildings can better serve customers by employing security guards, as is the case now.

Contrast government police and courts. Police are notorious for not preventing crime, and are increasingly becoming criminals themselves (e.g. taser murders). Government courts, as a monopoly industry, are bureaucratic, inefficient, and agonizingly slow. Government provision of justice is actually government perversion of justice.

There is no need to vote on police and courts, because they can be provided non-coercively on the market.

Lastly, there is no need to vote on such price control programs as the minimum wage or rent control, because they simply do not work. In fact, they are actually counter-productive: instead of helping, they hurt the poor.

For instance, the minimum wage coercively increases the price of labor, thus decreasing the income of employers. With increased labor costs, employers must demand less workers, and do so by laying off marginal workers and creating less new jobs. The minimum wage is an unemployment law. It hurts poor, marginal workers the most.

Likewise with rent control. By coercively lowering the price of housing, the incomes of landlords are reduced. With less income, landlords cannot afford to maintain their current supply of housing, and so will reduce the supply and/or reduce the quality. The effect is double: reducing the supply causes a shortage, and reducing the quality leads to widespread slum housing. Rent control is the primary cause of slums. Again, it is poor and marginal tenants who are hurt the most. Rent control is a homelessness law.

There is no need to vote on price controls, because they do not even work.

Strategy

But if democracy is morally revolting, illogical, and destructive, we are still presented with the fact that most countries are democratic, or at least subscribe to its rhetoric. Keeping in mind our goal of a totally voluntary, unanimous society, how can we delegitimize and expose democracy as the fraud it is?

The first step is to stop voting. The politicians’ credibility and legitimacy depend on the support of the masses. As de la Boétie and Hume have shown, the government rests, not on force, but on the public opinion of the citizenry. By abstaining from voting, we can lower voter turnout to the point where the winning government is supported by only a small minority, say 20% of the population. For example, if total voter turnout is 45%, and the election is very close, say 23% to 22%, that means that only 23% of the population is running the country. Suddenly people realize that democracy no longer means majority rule; it is now minority rule. Moreover, why do politicians beg us to vote, telling us “It doesn’t matter who you vote for, just vote”? The answer is that politicians feel very nervous without mass public support. Knowing that only a small minority supports them, they must be very moderate with their policies lest the people revolt. Thus, not voting is a strong way to destabilize and threaten democracy.

Next, it is essential to realize that any internal governmental reform is near impossible. The politicians and bureaucrats are enjoying their position as leaders of a protection racket, and are not going to give it up voluntarily. Governmental reform is akin to trying to infiltrate and bring down the Mafia from the inside—it’s not going to happen.

Thus, our second strategy is secession. “Democracy relies on a prohibition of secession. A democratic regime assumes a ‘demos’—a unit of political decision-making which is constant between decisions. If every dissident minority secedes after every opposed decision, then there is no democratic regime.” (source) In other words, “secession allows the democratic process to be circumvented or evaded, without a direct attack on the government. In a secession, the existing government is not overthrown, the nation is not colonized, the people are not murdered or enslaved.” (source) Peaceful secession is a nonviolent expression of the right to free association.

Secession is like punching democracy in the gut. Secession subverts and undermines the democratic process. The integrity of majority rule is violated when a minority threatens to secede rather than obey majority decisions. As Abraham Lincoln wrote: “The principle [of secession] itself is one of disintegration, and upon which no government can possibly endure”. Further, once the legitimacy of secession is granted, it opens up a Pandora’s Box of secessionist claims that cannot be rejected. Secession would have an exponential, snowball effect: Once Vermont secedes, Quebec’s secession will progress more smoothly, New York will become a free independent city, and on and on! This is why governments fear secession so much: once it starts, it can’t stop. Once one secession is granted, entire nation-states will crumble apart. Finally, the principle of secession must lead to secession of the individual, at which point the ideal of the totally voluntary society has been reached.

Conclusion

I have attempted to show that democracy is undeserving of its status as the ultimate political structure. Democracy is based on aggression, not voluntarism, and thus is morally repulsive. Taken to its logical conclusion, democracy leads to absurdity. No rational person would accept democracy if it was applied to every aspect of their lives. Finally, democracy is wholly unnecessary – there is nothing that needs to be voted on. Further, our strategy to smash the sacred cow of democracy must be rooted in nonaggression. If we aggress or initiate violence we are no better than the democrats. Not voting and secession allow us to maintain the moral high ground, while effectively challenging the moronic democratic philosophy. And so, democracy is immoral, irrational, and unnecessary. It should be torn down from its revered pedestal and tossed onto the intellectual junk pile of history.

With his 1979 article “Do we really ever get out of anarchy?” Alfred Cuzán provides us with a wonderful insight: “Anarchy, like matter, never disappears – it only changes form.” Cuzán argues that anarchy, defined as the absence of a third party territorial monopolist of ultimate jurisdiction, is omnipresent: Regardless of what political system we live under, there will always be anarchic relationships, namely those between the actual members of government. James Ostrowski, in his article “The Myth of Democratic Peace”, extends this argument to show that there are four more anarchic relationships in current society. The omnipresence of anarchy is undeniable. However, there are problems with this analysis. It is not compatible with the root word definition of anarchy as “no rulers”, nor does it incorporate such governmental (non-anarchic) relationships as taxation and regulation. Happily, the analysis can be repaired by applying Murray Rothbard’s “typology of intervention” and creating a corresponding “typology of anarchy”.

My plan is to have this published in the Journal of Libertarian Studies. Academia, here I come!

First off, let’s be generous and assume that the government actually has the intention to help the poor. That is, the government is genuinely working to reduce poverty and not just padding the bank accounts of state-allied business (note that most politicians are also businessmen). However, we all know a certain road that is paved with good intentions. They key is to look at the effects of government programs, not just the intentions. Do they really help the poor?

Minimum wage

Let’s start with the minimum wage. It is widely praised as the savior of unskilled and minority workers. But what are the actual effects? The minimum wage forces employers to pay workers no less than $X/hour. So, the employer must now pay a higher price for labor. At the higher wage, more employees seek work. But employers, whose incomes are now reduced, desire less workers because they cost more. As a result, there is a reduced supply of jobs and at the same time an increased demand. Thus, there is a shortage of jobs, or, in other words, more unemployment than there would have been without the minimum wage.

Skilled, unionized workers who remain employed do benefit, but only because they have less competition in a smaller labor market. They benefit at the expense of the marginal workers; this is why unions support the minimum wage. By increasing the competition for jobs, the minimum wage hurts marginal workers the most.  In a free market, they could actually work for lower wages; with a minimum wage they cannot work at all. Truly, the minimum wage is compulsory unemployment.

Moreover, employers, knowing they will never have trouble finding workers, can afford to engage in discrimination. They can hire only friends or people they know, or discriminate against minorities and women. The workers must put up with anything, because they can’t afford to lose their job.

Rent control

Rent control is another program supposedly aimed at helping the poor. Look more closely: by forcing landlords to charge lower rents, the cost of providing housing rises, thus lowering the income of landlords. Now that providing housing is less profitable, less people will become landlords. The primary effect of rent control is to reduce the supply of housing. Secondary effects include reducing the quality of housing: landlords, trying to maintain their income, cut back on service. Thus, rent control is the main cause of slums. What good is it having cheap rents if it is impossible to find housing, or if the only option is very low quality housing? Like the minimum wage causing a shortage of jobs, rent control causes a shortage of housing. One creates unemployment and the other homelessness. Both directly injure the poor.

Inflation

One of the most pernicious causes of poverty is inflation. When the government creates new money, whether by printing press, purchasing bonds, or manipulating the interest rate, those who use the new money first benefit at the expense of the last users. Consider: they get to spend it before prices are bid up by the increased money supply. The first-users have an increased purchasing power. Who are the first-users? Usually state-allied big business: Lockheed Martin, Halliburton, Wall Street; definitely not the poor.

The new money works its way around the economy, raising the price level (this is price inflation). When the new money reaches the poor, the prices have already risen, and so the poor gain nothing in purchasing power. In fact, they lose: wages are often the last price to respond to inflation. This means the poor and people on fixed incomes must pay higher prices at the same wages, and when their wages do catch up, they must contend with new inflation and yet higher prices, as the cycle begins again. The primary result of inflation is destroying 5-10% of the value of money. This means 5-10% less real income, every year, than it otherwise would have been. Thus, inflation inexorably whittles away the income of the poor, while the government and state-allied big business benefit from the increased purchasing power of the new money.

Higher education

Another great example of a wealth transfer from poor to rich is higher education. Universities and colleges receive massive funding from the government, via taxpayers. But who actually goes to university to benefit from this money? Among the rich, attending university is customary, part of the culture. Among the poor, it is a rare occurrence. Yet both rich and poor pay taxes for higher education. This is a classic wealth transfer. Both rich and poor pay for it, but only the rich use it. Does the government really have the poor in its best interest?

Barriers to entry

But wait, there’s more! If the poor are soaked by the minimum wage, rent control, inflation, and higher education, at least the government doesn’t stop them from earning a living, right? Wrong. The government imposes myriad barriers to entry preventing the poor from entering the workforce: permits, zoning laws, licenses, regulations, endless bureaucracy, red tape, etc. Someone rich like Bill Gates has no problem with such matters. He can just hire a team of lawyers to take care of it. But for the poor, first time entrepreneur, these barriers, coupled with indecipherable legal mumbo-jumbo, present an intimidating obstacle to earning an honest income. Thus, by stamping out potential competition from small businesses, government protects and enriches Big Business. Just another way the government keeps the poor unemployed and mired in poverty.

Bargaining power

I could go on all day, but I will end with bargaining power. Consider: In a free society, if someone wants to accomplish a million dollar task, they must spend a million dollars. But if there’s a government, they can bribe a politician, say, $10,000 and have the project funded with taxpayer money. Thus, the government grants privileges to and passes legislation for its business allies. What is the result? Businesses not already enjoying a monopoly will take on oligopoly status. Industries will become entrenched, bloated, and insulated against competition. Capital accumulation is heavily distorted in favor of those in cahoots with the state. The end result is that the employer has much, much more bargaining power than the employee. Bossism becomes rampant, and poor workers living paycheck to paycheck must bend over for whatever carpet-baggery their obnoxious boss comes up with. Truly, at the bargaining table it is the government and businesses against the workers.

Government against everyone

These are the ways in which government benefits some groups at the expense of the poor. But there are also the government programs which hurt everyone. Taxes – income, payroll, property, sales, gasoline – obviously reduce wealth. The death toll on government roads numbers 40,000 each year, and road congestion wastes tremendous amounts of time and money. Government schools miseducate or don’t educate children. Government health care causes either obscene prices or literally deadly inefficiency. Drug prohibition causes crime and gang wars. Finally, government monopolization of courts and police means that security is haphazard and justice is corrupted.

Solution: Anarchy

Now that we’ve established that the government is the worst enemy of the poor, how does a stateless society help the poor? First of all, there is no directly harmful action against them. The minimum wage and rent control would be recognized as unnecessary evils, and abolished. With no central bank or government monopoly on money, the free market would voluntarily provide sound money subject to the least inflation possible. And with no government to subsidize higher education, the poor would not be mulcted to benefit the rich. Government imposed barriers to entry would be eliminated, allowing the poor to start their own business, be their own boss, and vigorously outcompete overstuffed, top-heavy, corporatist Big Business. Lastly, bargaining power would side squarely with workers. A higher demand for workers would allow them to bargain with employers, and not just be a disposable tool.

Private charity

At this point I usually get one last objection: What about welfare? Won’t it be abolished?

First, I should point out that government welfare is problematic. You tend to get more of what you subsidize, and subsidizing poverty will beget more poverty. Government welfare creates incentives for people to become poor, and fosters a culture of dependency. After all, if you can get a check for doing nothing, what incentive do you have to find employment? Second, government welfare has perverse incentives. All of the workers in the vast welfare bureaucracy have an incentive to sustain poverty: if poverty were eliminated, they would be out of a job. Third, welfare would not be abolished, it would be privatized. This private voluntary welfare, like all things free market, would be much more efficient than the coercive state variety.

To begin with, private charities would have much more incentive to actually help the poor get jobs and become productive members of society. Because they would receive funding directly from voluntary donations and not indirectly from violent taxation, charities would have to satisfy donors in order to continue future donations. With government welfare, people cannot stop donating if they are unsatisfied with the results. A voluntary welfare system means that charities actually have to achieve something to receive funding. Bogus charities would soon be bankrupt. Furthermore, donors would want to see the poor climbing out of poverty, not just being “welfare bums”. Thus, the focus would not be just on handing out money, but on rehabilitation and actual job training.

One might object that private welfare has the same perverse incentives as government welfare. Perhaps, but they would be significantly weaker, if they existed at all. This is because private charities must constantly respond to the desires of their customers, the donors. A voluntary welfare system means that charities must compete with each other to see who can reduce poverty the most. This competitive aspect would weed out inefficient and fraudulent charities. Government, monopoly welfare, on the other hand, is checked only periodically by the voters. As long as the government welfare bureaucracy isn’t so wasteful as to incite a voter revolution, it will not be in danger. Coupled with the lack of competition, government welfare has very weak incentives to reduce poverty. After all, they can always rationalize their failures by pleading that “poverty has always existed, why do you expect it to be eliminated now?” Private charities have no such luxuries; they have to earn their money.

There are three more reasons why voluntary charities are better than violent ones. First, because voluntary charities must compete to satisfy donors, their operations would be more efficient; a higher percentage of donations would reach the intended recipients. Charities would not be bogged down with government bureaucracy and red tape, and would have to compete with other charities to see who can best help the poor. Second, donors would have more money to give. A free society will create a freer, richer economy. With higher employment, negligible inflation (or deflation) and no taxation, personal incomes will soar. Lastly, for the same reasons, there will be fewer poor to need charity.

“What about the poor?”

Thus, it is unfounded for statists to ask anarchists “What about the poor?” Truly, the government is the greatest enemy of the poor and downtrodden. They will be significantly better off in a free society, one without a government. In fact, our only hope in eliminating poverty lies in a free society. So when someone advocates government involvement in our lives, it is us anarchists who should rightly ask: “But what about the poor?”

However, in 2008 we do not live in a free society. There are governments that murder, steal, and enslave innocent people. They prevent voluntary interaction and impose coercive relationships. Suffice to say, the present conditions are not at all close to those of a free society. Then, given that we live in an unfree society, are employees the victims of wage slavery?

The answer must be no. Employees still voluntarily exchange their labor for wages, and they are not coerced into staying at their job. They have the freedom to leave and pursue other work. (Please note that I am not talking about sweatshops where workers are enslaved; such a case is criminal and unjust.)

But, some will object, workers are still in a tough spot. Just because we do not see a gun or a politician directly involved, does not mean that the situation is completely free. There could be indirect effects of government action that alter the worker/boss relationship from what it would be in a truly free society.
For example, a minimum wage causes unemployment. The result is workers not being able to find work. Or they might be out of work because of the jobs that never came into existence, which is caused by government restrictions on business and technology. Or they might be unable to start their own business due to myriad barriers to entry coercively imposed by government: permits, licenses, taxes, fees, mandates, building codes, zoning restrictions, etc. These are all cases where government action harms the worker.

But that’s not all. There is also, as Brad Spangler points out, “the role of the state in artificially concentrating capital in the hands of state-allied big business – giving statist plutocrats far more bargaining power in the labor market than is their natural due.” Thus, the boss typically has much more power than the average worker, something we can expect to be minimized with the abolition of government.

Essentially, this is just another case of “what is seen and what is not seen”, as Bastiat put it. We see a worker voluntarily entering into an exchange with an employer. As such, we conclude that it is perfectly legitimate. But we do not see the results of government action: the jobs that are never created, the increased bargaining power of employers, or the obstacles workers face in setting up their own business. Thus, the prosperity, innovations, and increases in quality of life that workers would experience in a free society are violently ripped away by government interference.

Clearly, there is a strong libertarian case that, in our unfree society, workers are oppressed, or at least maligned by the effects of the government. What can we call this phenomenon? I’ve already ruled out the term “wage slavery”. We know that employees are not coerced into working. I think a more appropriate term would be “wage exploitation”: to use workers selfishly for one’s own profit. And yet, I think that this term is also too strong. For it assumes that it is the employers who are causing the workers harm. But their actions are entirely just: trying to maximize profits. Reducing costs, including labor, to satisfy customers is a part of business. We cannot blame the employers for trying to make a living. (However, while the bosses’ actions are just, i.e. not a rights violation, they might not be virtuous.)

No, it is not the bosses, but the government that is the problem. This fact is central. It is the negative effects resulting from government action that cause the worker to be so powerless compared to the boss. Moreover, it would be absurd to expect employers to pay higher wages and give workers more bargaining power simply out of benevolence. And we all know what Adam Smith had to say about benevolence.

What, then, is the proper term for this phenomenon? To quote Brad Spangler again, he points out that the right term must be one “that doesn’t fail to distinguish between a completely free agreement and an agreement that has been shaped by a context of statist privilege granted to only one of the two parties” of the exchange.

The proper term for this wronging of workers is, I believe, “wage injustice”. Truly, the government action harming employees is unjust: after all, all government acts are, by necessity, criminal. Such acts must be funded and carried out by initiating violence against innocents. The term “wage injustice” lets us know that workers are the victims of criminal government interference in the market; it lets us know that workers, along with everyone else, will enjoy a much better life in a stateless society.

Thus, workers are the victims of injustice – an injustice that is not the fault of employers, but of government. An injustice that would be righted by abolishing the government and allowing a free society to emerge.