Thank You from the Future! Stefan Molyneux speaks at the 2011 Porcupine Freedom Festival

\”thank you from the future!\” by Stefan Molyneux

Do you guys want a short speech? I mean I know it’s kind of late, I can either do it tonight or I can do it for the closing ceremony…

 

[crowd: "speech, speech”]

 

Speech? Speech? OK, all right… I feel loose, babies!

 

All right – so one of the things that I’ve felt my whole life is that – gratitude from the culture that we live in can sometimes be a little – short, you know, and one of the things that I think is that we are all philosophers. Everybody who works from first principles, everyone who talks about nonviolence, we all are philosophers – and the one thing that’s very true about philosophers is that they don’t get a lot of ‘sugar,’ they don’t get a lot of love in their own time. [woman yells] It’s true – well OK, except for you, absolutely – you’re handing it out like candy and that’s nice!

 

But we don’t get a lot of that juice, don’t get a lot of that love. Socrates got some hemlock, Spinoza was kicked out of his – everywhere… I mean – Ayn Rand, even now after being right for sixty years in a row, she still gets spat on by the main culture, so it is hard! Wouldn’t you say? I mean look, we’ve all faced it, you’ve all had difficulties at work, you’ve had difficulties in your relationships because of your commitment to ideals. That’s a hard thing to live with.

 

So – the one place that I go, when I sort of need to feel replenished and strengthened – I mean we have each other, for those of you who have people around (this is the beautiful thing about what’s happening here) – but I kind of go into the future in my mind, because I think the world are trying to build, the world that we want to create, the world that we’re laying the foundations for that we may never live to see… I mean, I don’t think that we’ll live to see it, maybe those of you who had great sex last night, there’s an egg and a sperm in there who may live to see it – maybe – but I don’t think we’re going to live to see exactly the kind of world that we want – a world of statelessness, a world without war, a world without incarceration, a world without violence… I don’t think we’re going to live to see it – but that’s all the more heroic I think for us to try to build it even though we’re not going to live to see it.

 

So I go to the future. I think – I am so happy to live in a world without slavery in the way that it used to exist – I’m so happy to live in that world – and the first people who started talking about there being no slavery, were like us… And the first people who started talking about “women should be equal to men” were kind of like us, and they faced a lot of opposition, they faced a lot of skepticism – I mean the first guy who came up and said, “Blacks should be equal to whites,” was not a popular man or woman, and he faced a lot of opposition from everyone around him and the general culture spat on him a lot, and people thought he was crazy or mad or evil or bad – but we all take that stuff for granted now, and it’s so impossible – you know – like moral change in the world, you stand below it and it looks like a cliff, it’s so high, a mountain so high that you can’t get over it, you can get through it, you feel like you’re going to beat your head against the wall for the rest of your life and never make a dent…

 

But then a weird thing happens when the change occurs – when people get over that wall or they walk through that wall and then they look back, and it’s like there’s nothing there! It’s really strange…

 

Before the end of slavery, people said (and we’ve all heard these arguments before, right?) – people said: “You know, there’s never been a society without slavery, so… You point to me a society without slavery – you can’t do it! You point to me a society where there’s equality for women, you can do it! You point to me a society where there is no government, and you can’t do it!” That’s all we hear!

 

[cheers, applause]

 

Well because we can see it, it will be here! It will be here!

 

[cheers, applause]

 

Because the vision is everything!

 

Without the vision there is no moral growth. We can’t get over that mountain unless we see it so passionately and so powerfully that we can walk through that wall as if it is not even there – and then people will see that it isn’t there – that the barrier is only in the mind!

 

So if you go to the future – which is where I go to – I think of the people, 100 years, 150 years from now, and they’re going to look back at this gathering… Can you imagine how they’re going to look back at this gathering?

 

“So those crazy motherf*ckers, what the hell were they thinking? I mean – they have couple of hundred people and a microphone… Some drinks… And what are they looking at? They’re looking at nuclear weapons and prison systems and aircraft carriers and police and military… What are they thinking? What are they thinking, those crazy brave motherf*ckers – what are they thinking? How can they imagine taking it on? How could they imagine taking it on?”

 

[cheers, applause]

 

But the imagination is everything…

 

And they look back to us, and they’re gonna say – and this is what you need to hear, and this is what you need to remember, coming down from the future:

 

“THANK YOU!”

 

[cheers, applause]

 

This is what we need to remember every morning when it gets hard, when we get tired, when we read the newspaper, and it’s like: nothing is f*cking changing… We need to remember that rolling down from the future, from the people who will live in the world that we’re only beginning to build – they are saying (as we say to everyone who came before us who built the world that we love to live in):

 

“THANK YOU, EVERYBODY!”

 

[cheers, applause]

 

[interruption from host]

 

You want me to keep going, or should I stop?

 

[cheers, applause]

 

All right. So I’m going to tell you what I think they’re going to thank you for – and you need to remember this, because this is what I see… They’re going to thank you – the future is going to thank you – for your courage! Your courage – it is hard, hard, hard work – raising the moral standards of mankind is a hard f*cking slog, and it takes a lot of courage! It takes a lot of courage, because there’s a lot of criticism, there’s a lot of misunderstanding, there’s a lot of fear that we face in those around us. When we shake the foundations of the moral universe that people live in, they freak out! They get frightened, they attack – and it takes a lot of courage, you know – we are all wired for social approval. We all want social approval, because if you didn’t have social approval in the Stone Age, you couldn’t even survive.

 

Studies have shown, you know, that people who experience social disapproval, it’s almost indistinguishable from physical pain, within the brain.

 

That’s what I mean by courage: that we have to fight against the natural conformity of our biological natures, to go against the tribe, against our immediate short-term interests for the sake of a beautiful world to come. That takes courage, and people are going to say, looking down through the lens of time, to this few, we few, we happy f*cking few:

 

“THANK YOU FOR YOUR COURAGE! EVERYBODY WHO STANDS WITH US! THANK YOU FOR BUILDING THIS WORLD THAT WE LOVE!!”

 

[cheers, applause]

 

They’re gonna say – I think, they’re gonna say, “Thank you, for your love. For your love.”

 

Because, you know, there’s a cheap kind of love in the world… And the cheap kind of love is like – welfare from the government. “Oh, there’s poor people! Let’s shovel some money at them”, “Oh, there’s some people we think should be better educated, let’s shovel some schools at them.” That’s cheap love. That is pseudo-love. That is fake love.

 

The REAL love, is to stand for principles of non-violence, voluntary cooperation, and to love humanity enough, to KNOW, that if we set humanity free, the world can be BEAUTIFUL, the world can be a paradise, the world can be utopia!

 

WE DON’T NEED THE F*CKING GUNS TO MAKE THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE! THE GUNS WILL MAKE IT WORSE, ALWAYS!

 

[cheers, applause]

 

People think that if you stop pointing guns at people, everything gets worse. But we know; we have a love of humanity, a trust in the soul and nature of man, that if we put down the guns, humanity… rises.

 

People think you put down the guns, humanity attacks. No! You put down the guns, people are liberated. They come up. They flower! Into beautiful, peaceful, wonderful communities.

 

Like this – like this!

 

So, they will say, “Thank you, for your true love of humanity enough to trust that if you put down the weapons, everybody will be beautiful.”

 

It’s true! They will thank us for our integrity. They will thank you for your integrity. That even though it’s hard, that even though you face criticisms, even though people will REJECT you for what it is you’re doing, that you’re still holding true to the ideals of the north star… of non-aggression!

 

So simple! So simple! Stop using violence to get things done. It’s so simple and so hard! They will thank us for our integrity!

 

[cheers, applause]

 

Because – what we’re doing, is brick by brick. So like brick by brick, we’re just puttin’ down these bricks. And the bricks are every time we have a conversation, every time we send someone to material that is valuable, every time we stand up to a bully, every time we stand up to an abuser, every time we help somebody who’s been ground down – help them rediscover their humanity.

 

These are little “brick-by-bricks.” It’s hard to see the whole cathedral of the future, that we’re building. But it is a beautiful place that we are building. And, I would love – wouldn’t you love – to just go forward 150 years, or a 100 years, and just SEE; SEE this world?

 

I see it in my mind’s eye, it’s so clear, I really do. I really do. A world – ah, dammit! A world without WAR! The eternal dream of humanity! Without WAR! Because we KNOW – we KNOW FOR A FACT – those of us who understand all of this (and everybody in this room is in that number) – we know that when you have no state, you have no war.

 

[cheers, applause]

 

A world without prisons. A world without prisons! A world where people can interact in a peaceful way without fear of jail. A world where you can just walk up to a f*ckin’ plane… and get on it! A plane!

 

[cheers, applause]

 

A world where the money in your pocket today, is gonna be the money in your pocket tomorrow, and not some f*ckin’ toilet paper you’re embarrassed about!

 

[cheers, applause]

 

So, I just wanted to point that out. This is something that I use. Because people sort of say to me, “Well, how can you remain so optimistic?” And, it’s because I don’t view the world around me as the standard of value that I’m bringing to the world. Because people, they don’t want to be confronted with this stuff. Even if society slides into an ultimate shit-hole, they still don’t want to be reminded of this stuff. It’s like everyone would rather just go into that shit-hole, rather than wake up and see the basic reality of the society that they live in!

 

But I go – and I hope that you’ll think about doing it too – I go to the future. And I think of everyone that I look back at, and admire, who has helped to build a world where what we’re doing is even POSSIBLE! That’s an incredible advancement, that what we’re doing is even possible!

 

And so, think about the people in the future. The people whose peaceful, sunlit, happy, STATELESS, GUNLESS WORLD – and I mean “gunless” in terms of the STATIST guns – the world that we’re building for these people, which we won’t get to LIVE in, but is gonna be the most beautiful thing in the world, and it will never, ever go back! It will NEVER go back! We’re not gonna have slavery back in the way that it used to be! Women are never gonna be subjugated in the way that they used to be, and once we get rid of the STATE, IT’S DONE!! FOREVER!!

 

[cheers, applause]

 

This shit is not going to regrow! It is not going to come back! That’s how IMPORTANT what it is we’re doing! We’re putting a NAIL in the COFFIN, a STAKE in the HEART of the greatest vampiric predator the world has ever known! That TAKES GUTS, AND WE’VE GOT IT!!!

 

[cheers, applause]

 

And, this fight has been fought for thousands of years. But it is not gonna be thousands of years to come, because we’re all together, we all know each other, we can all communicate with each other, the information can go out in a way that has never occurred before.

 

It took thousands of years to get here, but it’s only dozens more to go. I genuinely believe that. And, for those of us who have kids, we know how important it is that we build a world that they can live in without the fears that we all grew up with; the fears of nuclear war, the fears of environmental depredations, so funded and driven by the state.

 

And this has been going on for a long time, this battle. We have an incredible propulsion mechanism in the communities, and the communications technology that we have at the moment, which is an incredible gift for us, as liberty activists.

 

I’m just gonna finish up by reminding you to visit the future, and to get the accolades that roll down from the future to us. They will! They will! Everybody in this room is gonna have a f*ckin’ FREE PRIVATE SCHOOL NAMED AFTER THEM IN THE FUTURE!

 

[cheers, applause]

 

So, I’m going to just end up by saying that – yeah, this battle’s been going on for a long time. And it is a battle of good versus evil, there’s no doubt about it. And – I’m going to close with a line from one of my favorite speeches in a movie – Morpheus:

“It has been a long time coming, but we are going to win. Because WE ARE STILL HERE!!!!”

 

[cheers, applause]

Freedomain Radio…

Freedomain Radio – An Introduction

Powerful ideas for all lovers of the logic of personal and political freedom – Freedomain Radio is one of the highest-rated podcasts on PodFeed. Topics range from politics to philosophy to psychology to economics to relationships to religion – and how to achieve real freedom in your life. Passionate, articulate, funny and irreverent, Freedomain Radio is a libertarian podcast that shines a bold light on old topics, and invents a few new ones to boot! Click here for a narrated introduction…

The Stateless Society: An Examination of Alternatives

If the Twentieth Century proved anything, it is that the single greatest danger to human life are the thugs of the centralized political State, who extinguished more than 170 million souls during the bloodiest rampage in recorded history. By any rational standard, modern States are the last and greatest remaining predators – and that the danger has not abated with the demise of communism and fascism. All Western democracies currently face vast and accelerating escalations of State power and centralized control over economic and civic life. In almost all Western democracies, the State chooses:
· where children go to school, and how they will be educated
· the interest rate citizens can borrow at
· the value of currency
· how employees can be hired and fired
· how more than 50% of their citizens’ time and money are disposed of
· who a citizen’s doctor is
· what kinds of medical procedures can be received – and when
· when to go to war
· who can live in the country
· …just to touch on a few.

Most of these amazing intrusions into personal liberty have occurred over the past 90 years, since the introduction of the income tax. They have been accepted by a population helpless to challenge the endless expansions of State power – and yet, even though most citizens have received endless pro-State propaganda in government schools, a growing rebellion is brewing. State predations are now so intrusive that they have effectively arrested the forward momentum of society, which now hangs before a fall. Children are poorly educated, young people are unable to get ahead, couples with children fall ever-further into debt, and the elderly are finding State medical systems collapsing under the weight of their growing needs – and State debts continue to grow.

Thus, these early years of the twenty-first century are the end of an era, a collapse of mythology comparable to the fall of fascism, communism, monarchy, or political Christianity. The idea that the State is capable of solving social problems is now viewed with great skepticism – which foretells a coming change. As soon as skepticism is applied to the State, the State falls, since it fails at everything except increasing its power, and so can only survive on propaganda, which relies on unquestioning faith.

Yet while most people are comfortable with the idea of reducing the size and power of the State, they become distinctly uncomfortable with the idea of getting rid of it completely. To use a medical metaphor, if the State is a cancer, they prefer medicating it into an unstable remission, rather than eliminating it completely.

This can never work. A central lesson of history is that States are parasites which always expand until they destroy their host population. Because the State uses violence to achieve its ends – and there is no rational end to the expansion of violence – States grow until they destroy civilized interaction through the corruption of money, contracts, honesty, family, and self-reliance. As such, the cancerous metaphor is not misplaced. People who believe that the State can somehow be contained have not accepted the fact that no State in history has ever been contained.

Even the rare reductions are merely temporary. The United States was founded on the principle of limited government; it took little more than a century for the State to break the bonds of the Constitution, implement the income tax, take control of the money supply and the educational system, and begin its catastrophic expansion. There is no example in history of a State being permanently reduced in size. All that happens during a tax or civil revolt is that the State retrenches, figures out what it did wrong, and plans its expansion again. Or provokes a war, which silences all but fringe dissenters.

Given these well-known historical facts, why do still people believe that such a deadly predator can be tamed? Surely it can only be because they consider a slow strangulation in the grip of an expanding State somehow better than the quick death of a society bereft of a State.

Why, then, do most people believe that a society will crumble without a coercive and monopolistic social agency at its core? There are a number of answers to this question, but generally they tend to revolve around three central points:
· dispute resolution;
· collective services; and,
· pollution.

Dispute Resolution
The fact that people still cling to the belief that the State is requires to resolve disputes is amazing, since modern courts are out of the reach of all but the most wealthy and patient, and are primarily used to shield the powerful from competition or criticism. In this writer’s experience, to take a dispute with a stockbroker to the court system would have cost more than a quarter of a million dollars and taken from five to ten years – however, a private mediator settled the matter within a few months for very little money. In the realm of marital dissolution, private mediators are commonplace. Unions use grievance processes, and a plethora of other specialists in dispute resolution have sprung up to fill in the void left by a ridiculously lengthy, expensive and incompetent State court system.

Thus the belief that the State is required for dispute resolution is obviously false, since the court apparatus is unavailable to the vast majority of the population, who resolve their disputes either privately or through agreed-upon mediators.

How can the free market deal with the problem of dispute resolution? Outside the realm of organized crime, very few people are comfortable with armed confrontations, and so generally prefer to delegate that task to others. Let’s assume that people’s need for such representatives produces Dispute Resolution Organizations (DROs), which promise to resolve disputes on their behalf.

Thus, if Stan is hired by Bob, they both sign a document specifying which DRO they both accept as an authority in dispute resolution. If they disagree about something, and are unable to resolve it between themselves, they submit their case to the DRO, and agree to abide by that DRO’s decision.

So far so good. However, what if Stan decides he doesn’t want to abide by the DRO’s decision? Well, several options arise.

First of all, when Stan signed the DRO agreement, it is likely that he would have agreed to property confiscation if he did not abide by the DRO’s decision.[1] Thus the DRO would be entirely within its right to go and remove property from Stan – by force if necessary – to pay for his side of the dispute.

It is at this point that people generally throw up their arms and dismiss the idea of DROs by claiming that society would descend into civil war within a few days.

Everyone, of course, realizes that civil war is a rather bad situation, and so it seems likely that the DROs would consider alternatives to armed combat.

What other options could be pursued? To take a current example, small debts which are not worth pursuing legally are still regularly paid off – and why? Because a group of companies produce credit ratings on individuals, and the inconvenience of a lowered credit rating is usually greater than the inconvenience of paying off a small debt. Thus, in the absence of any recourse to force, small debts are usually settled. This is one example of how desired behaviour can be elicited without pulling out a gun or kicking in a door.

Picture for a moment the infinite complexity of modern economic life. Most individuals bind themselves to dozens of contracts, from car loans and mortgages to cell phone contracts, gym membership, condo agreements and so on. To flourish in a free market, a man must honour his contracts. A reputation for honest dealing is the foundation of a successful economic life. Now, few DROs will want to represent a man who regularly breaks contracts, or associates with difficult and litigious people.[2] (For instance, this writer once refrained from entering into a business partnership because the potential partner revealed that he had sued two previous partners.)

Thus if Stan refuses to abide by his DRO’s ruling, the DRO has to barely lift a finger to punish him. All the DRO has to do is report Stan’s non-compliance to the local contract rating company, who will enter his name into a database of contract violators. Stan’s DRO will also probably drop him, or raise his rates considerably.

And so, from an economic standpoint, Stan has just shot himself in the foot. He is now universally known as a man who rejects legitimate DRO rulings that he agreed to accept in advance. What happens when he goes for his next job? What if he decides to eschew employment and start his own company, what happens when he applies for his first lease? Or tries to hire his first employee? Or rent a car, or buy an airline ticket? Or enter into a contract with his first customer? No, in almost every situation, Stan would be far better off to abide by the decision of the DRO. Whatever he has to pay, it is far cheaper than facing the barriers of existing without access to a DRO, or with a record of rejecting a legitimate ruling.

But let’s push the theory to the max, to see if it holds. To examine a worst-case scenario, imagine that Stan’s employer is an evil man who bribes the DRO to rule in his favour, and the DRO imposes an unconscionable fine – say, one million dollars – on Stan.

First of all, this is such an obvious problem that DROs, to get any business at all, would have to deal with this danger up front. An appeal process to a different­ DRO would have to be part of the contract. DROs would also rigorously vet their own employees for any unexplained income. And, of course, any DRO mediator who corrupted the process would receive perhaps the lowest contract rating on the planet, lose his job, and be liable for damages. He would lose everything, and be an economic pariah.

However, to go to the extreme, perhaps the worst has occurred and Stan has been unjustly fined a million dollars due to DRO corruption. Well, he has three alternatives. He can choose not to pay the fine, drop off the DRO map, and work for cash without contracts. Become part of the grey market, in other words. A perfectly respectable choice, if he has been treated unjustly.

However, if Stan is an intelligent and even vaguely entrepreneurial man, he will see the corruption of the DRO as a prime opportunity to start his own, competing DRO, and will write into its base contract clauses to ensure that what happened to him will never happen to anyone who signs on with his new DRO.[3]

Stan’s third option is to appeal to the contract rating agency. Contract rating agencies need to be as accurate as possible, since they are attempting to assess real risk. If they believe that the DRO ruled unjustly against Stan, they will lower that DRO’s contract rating and restore Stan’s.

Thus it is inconceivable that violence would be required to enforce all but the most extreme contract violations, since all parties gain the most long-term value by acting honestly. This resolves the problem of instant descent into civil war.

Two other problems exist, however, which must be resolved before the DRO theory starts to becomes truly tenable.

The first is the challenge of reciprocity, or geography. If Bob has a contract with Jeff, and Jeff moves to a new location not covered by their mutual DRO, what happens? Again, this is such an obvious problem that it would be solved by any competent DRO. People who travel prefer cell phones with the greatest geographical coverage, and so cell phone companies have developed reciprocal agreements for charging competitors. Just as a person’s credit rating is available anywhere in the world, so their contract rating will also be available, and so there will be no place to hide from a broken contract save by going ‘off the grid’ completely, which would be economically crippling.

The second problem is the fear that a particular DRO will grow in size and stature to the point where it takes on all the features and properties of a new State.

This is a superstitious fear, because there is no historical example of a private company replacing a political State. While it is true that companies regularly use State coercion to enforce trading restrictions, high tariffs, cartels and other mercantilist tricks, surely this reinforces the danger of the State, not the inevitability of companies growing into States. All States destroy societies. No company has ever destroyed a society without the aid of the State. Thus the fear that a private company can somehow grow into a State is utterly unfounded in fact, experience, logic and history.

If society becomes frightened of a particular DRO, then it can simply stop doing business with it, which will cause it to collapse. If that DRO, as it collapses, somehow transforms itself from a group of secretaries, statisticians, accountants and contract lawyers into a ruthless domestic militia and successfully takes over society – and how unlikely is that! – then such a State will then be imposed on the general population. However, there are two problems even with this most unlikely scare scenario. First of all, if any DRO can take over society and impose itself as a new State, why only a DRO? Why not the Rotary Club? Why not a union? Why not the Mafia? The YMCA? The SPCA? Is society to then ban all groups with more than a hundred members? Clearly that is not a feasible solution, and so society must live with the risk of a brutal coup by ninja accountants as much as from any other group.

And, in the final analysis, if society is so terrified of a single group seizing a monopoly of political power, what does that say about the existing States? They have a monopoly of political power. If a DRO should never achieve this kind of control, why should existing States continue to wield theirs?

Collective Services
Roads, sewage, water and electricity and so on are also cited as reasons why a State must exist. How roads could be privately paid for remains such an impenetrable mystery that most people are willing to support the State – and so ensure the eventual and utter destruction of civil society – rather than cede that this problem just might be solvable. There are many ways to pay for roads, such as electronic or cash tolls, GPS charges, roads maintained by the businesses they lead to, communal organizations and so on. And if none of those work? Why, then personal flying machines will hit the market!

The problem that a water company might build plumbing to a community, and then charge exorbitant fees for supplying it, is equally easy to counter. A truck could deliver bottled water, or the community could invest in a water tower, a competing company could built alternate pipes and so on. None of these problems touch the central rationale for a State. They are ex post facto justifications made to avoid the need for critical examination or, heaven forbid, political action. The argument that voluntary free-market monopolies are bad – and that the only way to combat them is to impose compulsory monopolies – is obviously foolish. If voluntary monopolies are bad, then how can coercive monopolies be better?

Due to countless examples of free market solutions to the problem of ‘carrier costs’, this argument no longer holds the kind of water it used to, so it must be elsewhere that people must turn to justify the continued existence of the State.

Pollution
This is perhaps the greatest problem faced by free-market theorists. It’s worth spending a little time on outlining the worst possible scenario, and see how a voluntary system could solve it. However, it’s important to first dispel the notion that the State currently deals effectively with pollution. Firstly, the most polluted resources on the planet are State-owned, because State personnel do not personally profit from retaining the value of State property (witness the destruction of the Canadian cod industry through blatant vote-buying). Secondly, the distribution of mineral, lumber and drilling rights is directly skewed towards bribery and corruption, because States rarely sell the land, but rather just the resource rights. A lumber company cannot buy woodlands from the State, just the right to harvest trees. Thus the State gets a renewable source of income, and can further coerce lumber companies by enforcing re-seeding. This, of course, tends to promote bribery, corruption and the creation of ‘fly-by-night’ lumber companies which strip the land bare, but vanish when it comes time to re-seed. Auctioning State land to a private market easily solves this problem, because a company which re-seeded would reap the greatest long-term profits from woodland, and so would be able to bid the most for the land.

Also, it should be remembered that, in the realm of air pollution, governments created the problem in the first place. In 19th century England, when industrial smokestacks began belching fumes into the orchards of apple farmers, the farmers took the factory-owners to court, citing the common-law tradition of restitution for property damage. Naturally, the capitalists had gotten to the State courts first, and had more money to bribe with, employed more voting workers, and contributed more tax revenue than the farmers – and so the farmers’ cases were thrown out of court. The judge argued that the ‘common good’ of the factories took precedence over the ‘private need’ of the farmers. The free market did not fail to solve the problem of air pollution – it was forcibly prevented from doing so through State corruption.

The State, then, is no friend of the environment – but how would the free market handle it? One egregious example often cited is a group of houses downwind from a new factory which works day and night to coat them in soot.

When a man buys a new house, isn’t it important to him to ensure that it won’t be subjected with someone else’s pollution? People’s desire for a clean and safe environment is so strong that it’s a clear invitation for enterprising capitalists to sweat bullets figuring out how to provide it.

Fortunately, since we have already talked about DROs and their role in a free market, the problem of air pollution can be solved quite easily.

If the aforementioned group of homeowners is afraid of pollution, the first thing they will do is buy pollution insurance, which is a natural response to a situation where costs cannot be predicted but consequences are dire. Let’s say that a homeowner named Achmed buys pollution insurance which pays him two million dollars if the air around or in his house becomes polluted in some predefined manner.[4] In other words, as long as Achmed’s air remains clean, the insurance company makes money.

One day, a plot of land upwind of Achmed’s house comes up for sale. Naturally, his insurance company would be very interested in this, and would monitor the sale. If the purchaser is some private school, all is well (assuming Achmed has not bought an excess of noise pollution insurance!). If, however, the insurance company discovers that Sally’s House of Polluting Paint Production is interested in purchasing the plot of land, then it will likely spring into action, taking one of the following actions:
· buying the land itself, then selling it to a non-polluting buyer;
· getting assurances from Sally that her company will not pollute;
· paying Sally to enter into a non-polluting contract.

If, however, someone at the insurance company is asleep at the wheel, and Sally buys the land and puts up her polluting factory, what happens then?

Well, then the insurance company is on the hook for $2M to Achmed (assuming for the moment that only Achmed bought pollution insurance). Thus, it can afford to pay Sally up to $2M to reduce her pollution and still be cash-positive. This payment could take many forms, from the installation of pollution-control equipment to a buy-out to a subsidy for under-production and so on.

If the $2M is not enough to solve the problem, then the insurance company pays Achmed the $2M and he goes and buys a new house in an unpolluted neighbourhood. However, this scenario is highly unlikely, since the insurance company would be unlikely to insure only one single person in a neighbourhood against air pollution – and a single person probably could not afford it!

So, that is the view from Achmed’s air-pollution insurance company. What about the view from Sally’s House of Polluting Paint Production? She, also, must be covered by a DRO in order to buy land, borrow money and hire employees. How does that DRO view her tendency to pollute?

Pollution brings damage claims against Sally, because pollution is by definition damage to persons or property. Thus Sally’s DRO would take a dim view of her polluting activities, since it would be on the hook for any property damage her factory causes. In fact, it would be most unlikely that Sally’s DRO would insure her against damages unless she were able to prove that she would be able to operate her factory without harming the property of those around her. And without access to a DRO, of course, she would be hard-pressed to start her factory, borrow money, hire employees etc.

It’s important to remember that DROs, much like cell phone companies and Internet providers, only prosper if they cooperate. Sally’s DRO only makes money if Sally does not pollute. Achmed’s insurer also only makes money if Sally does not pollute. Thus the two companies share a common goal, which fosters cooperation.

Finally, even if Achmed is not insured against air pollution, he can use his and/or Sally’s DRO to gain restitution for the damage her pollution is causing to his property. Both Sally and Achmed’s DROs would have reciprocity agreements, since Achmed wants to be protected against Sally’s actions, and Sally wants to be protected against Achmed’s actions. Because of this desire for mutual protection, they would choose DROs which had the widest reciprocity agreements.

Thus, in a truly free market, there are many levels and agencies actively working against pollution. Achmed’s insurer will be actively scanning the surroundings looking for polluters it can forestall. Sally will be unable to build her paint factory without proving that she will not pollute. Mutual or independent DROs will resolve any disputes regarding property damage caused by Sally’s pollution.

There are other benefits as well, which are almost unsolvable in the current system. Imagine that Sally’s smokestacks are so high that her air pollution sails over Achmed’s house and lands on Reginald’s house, a hundred miles away. Reginald then complains to his DRO that his property is being damaged. His DRO will examine the air contents and wind currents, then trace the pollution back to its source and resolve the dispute with Sally’s DRO. If the air pollution is particularly complicated, then Reginald’s DRO will place non-volatile compounds into Sally’s smokestacks and follow them to where they land. This can be used in a situation where a number of different factories may be contributing pollutants.

The problem of inter-country air pollution may seem to be a sticky one, but it’s easily solvable. Obviously, a Canadian living along the Canada/US border, for instance, will not choose a DRO which refuses to cover air pollution emanating from the US[5]. Thus the DRO will have to have reciprocity agreements with the DROs across the border. If the US DROs refuse to have reciprocity agreements with the Canadian DROs – inconceivable, since the pollution can go both ways – then the Canadian DRO will simply start a US branch and compete.

The difference is that international DROs actually profit from cooperation, in a way that governments do not. For instance, a State government on the Canada/US border has little motivation to impose pollution costs on local factories, as long as the pollution generally goes north. For DROs, quite the opposite would be true.

Finally, one other advantage to DRO’s can be termed the ‘Scrabble-Challenge Benefit’. In Scrabble, an accuser loses his turn if he challenges another player’s word and the challenge fails. Given the costs of resolving disputes, DROs would be very careful to ensure that those bringing false accusations would be punished through their own premiums, their contract ratings and by also assuming the entire cost of the dispute. This would greatly reduce the number of frivolous lawsuits, to the great benefit of all.

The idea that society can only survive in the absence of a centralized State is the greatest lesson that the grisly years of the Twentieth Century can teach us. Our choice is not between the free market and the State, but between life and death. Whatever the risks involved in dissolving the central State, they are far less than the certain destruction which will result from its inevitable escalation. Like a cancer patient facing certain demise, we must open our minds and reach for whatever medicine shows the most promise, and not wait until it is too late.

[1] For the sake of simplicity, the assumption is that there is no appeal process, which is admittedly highly unlikely.
[2] More accurately, DRO’s will be happy to deal with such people – just as car insurance companies will insure even terrible drivers – but the cost of representation will be very high.
[3] This is also why existing DRO’s will be so vigilant in rooting out corruption. Faster than any other single factor, corruption will breed competition.
[4] Naturally, the insurance company would have to deal with the problem that it is cheaper for Achmed’s neighbour to let Achmed buy the insurance, which could be dealt with by descending group rates and so on.
[5] Of course, the idea of ‘countries’ may be somewhat anachronistic by this time…