Freedom

I was listening to a YouTube video arguing against Anarchism.  The argument seemed directed at Anarcho-capitalism in particular.  Since I am not an Anarcho-capitalist I see no need to go through the arguments point by point.  What I wanted to touch on was the subject of freedom in general.

Capitalists are likely to seek freedom from what they see as excessive government.  People on the left, on the other hand, are more likely to see government as necessary in order to counter the power of large corporations.  Do governments or corporations do more to limit our choices?  Capitalists might see this as a false dichotomy.  It is possible for big business and big government to support each other.  Even if it were the case that business did more to limit our choices, unless it was the case that big government would be an appropriate remedy to this situation, we would still not favor larger government.

In what is typically called the free world we always have choices.  If we don't like the company we are working for, we can quit and work elsewhere.  If we don't like our landlord, we can move.  If we don't like the companies we are dealing with we can take our business elsewhere.  If we don't like our government, we can move to another state or country or try to get them voted out of office.  Each of these courses of action will carry some cost, but none of them need involve violent action.

It is noteworthy that people consider political freedom to be the collective right of the people to vote the current government out of office instead of the individual right to move to a different country.  Moving to a different country is very expensive.  In addition to this we are limited to about two hundred countries.  There are far more than two hundred companies you can work for or do business with.  Thus I would say that the potential for government to limit our choices is much greater than that of business.

The reason why I don't support Anarchy is because there are some things that the government must do that I think should not be given to private companies.  Anarchists have countered that private companies could actually do those things, but they are unable to show an attractive historical example that shows them doing so.  In any case, I consider such a discussion pointless.  There are so few anarchists that it makes little sense putting too much effort into arguing the issue one way or the other.

In any case, if we are interested in freedom, then we will want to come up with ways of expanding the options that people have.  We would want to make it easier for people to change their government individually and collectively.  There are many ways that we could do this.

We can shift more of the functions of government to the local level.  This will reduce the cost for the individual to change their government.  If more of the functions of government are handled at the local level, then individuals will have more individual control over their government.  It is cheaper to move a short distance and countries have traditionally restricted immigration while local communities have not.  In addition to this there are more local communities than there are countries.  The more local the community, the more of such communities there will be in the world.  Another thing we could do in this regard is to make it easier for people to change countries.

There is much that the government does to discourage people from replacing those in office.  In a previous post, I pointed out how the existing system favored incumbents.  The people in each district that the legislature serves are forced to choose between sending the incumbent back to represent them and electing a new guy who will be the low man on the totem pole.  Because the government is given much control over the allocation of resources between districts, voters in each district will have an incentive to re-elect the incumbent.  Power within the legislature is assigned on the basis of seniority.

I pointed out that if we were to select people at random from the population at large, perhaps requiring a minimum score on some qualifying examination, we wouldn't have this problem.  We could continue to hold them accountable by allowing the people to decide how many legislators should be replaced, and then removing the appropriate number of legislators at random.  The system that we now have enables the vast, overwhelming proportion of legislators to be re-elected in spite of the fact that an overwhelming majority of the public disapproves of the legislature's performance.