The Myth of Authority

“Civilizations are not mandated by authorities, nor are they the products of systemic planning. People did not get together and say to one another “hey, let’s start a civilization!” Such cultures have been, rather, the unintended consequences arising from the interplay of creative forces that sustain and enhance life. The variability and cross-fertilization of ideas and techniques that can arise in pluralistic settings conducive to diversity and spontaneity, have been indispensable to the life of modern civilization. In much the same way that “brainstorming” sessions provide synergistic opportunities for individuals to come together to produce solutions to problems that none could have brought about on their own, a culture supportive of individuality can generate values and systems at exponential levels of creativity.”

– Butler Shaffer “The Wizards of Ozymandias”

What exactly is authority? According to Merriam Webster the definition is: power to influence or command thought, opinion, or behavior. For the purpose of this essay I will not address authority derived from voluntary interactions such as employer to employee relationships. Instead I will only address “authority” as perpetuated and assumed by government institutions.

Does the use of authority provide those which it is enacted on a benefit? Is there a value to authority? If societies did not grant authority to a group of individuals would this society collapse into chaos? If you were to ask the State the answer to these questions they would be answered with an undeniable Yes.

I’d like to challenge the paradigm of dependency on authority firstly by asking this question; from where is the State’s authority derived? Many people will refer to Hobbes or Locke or Rousseau in reference to something called the “Social Contract” which is a belief in the natural rights of citizens governed by an entity, be it Monarchy, Democracy, Republic, et al., and the authority granted to that government by the citizens to protect these natural rights. Recently people will have a tendency to also refer to the “Social Contract” as an agreement that all individuals in a society must abide by in order to have clean drinking water, roads, traffic lights, and all of the other amenities that government claims to provide. The reason I use the phrase, “claims to provide” is a simple one; does government actually build roads or water treatment facilities? No, government issues a government contract to a private company or group of individuals and those private entities build these things with the money that government gives them, your tax dollars.

The State only acts as a middle man in “providing” services. Additionally, because they are usually the sole purchaser of these services, an actual “market price” derived by supply and demand, does not exist. This leads to a multitude of inefficiencies, one of which is that government almost always over pays. The pentagon is infamous for paying thousands of dollars for a hammer, or toilet seat, or how about $998,798.00 for two, yes two .19 cent washers. For the purpose of keeping this essay under 500 pages, I will not go into great detail about the unrelenting torrent that is government spending. One only need look at the 16 trillion dollars of debt that Uncle Sam has racked up in your great grandchildren’s names to realize the horrid ineptitudes of government financial and economical knowledge.

So, we, as a people, who find ourselves subject to this “social contract” that none of us actually agreed upon, are coerced with the threat of violence and imprisonment, to hand over the fruits of our labor to an institution with a proven track record of corruption and incompetence, in order for this institution to “protect us” by invading other countries and “furnish basic amenities” by grossly overpaying for them, all the while using our labor as their interminable resource. Moreover, if we challenge this monolith of institutionalized cronyism we are met with disdain by the State and the masses alike. We are called things like “un-American” and told that if we don’t like it we can “move to Somalia.”

Unfortunately this conviction of a reliance on the State is hard to overcome. I believe in a very simple truth of self-ownership, you own you and I own me. There is no room in self-ownership for violent coercion. While self-ownership is a simple truth, on the other side is the convoluted misconception of the necessity of the State; decades of dependency have left us with the inability to contemplate life without the State; or if we do think of a Stateless society we imagine a world similar to the Mad Max movies, due to the negative connotation of words like, anarchy. Anarchy is not the absence of rule; it is the absence of rulers, its practice is quite the opposite of Mel Gibson fighting off gangs of sadist bikers. The founders, or at least the “anti-federalists,” knew the benefits of a Stateless society. Had it not been for men like Patrick Henry and Samuel Adams, who stood against the federalists, those in favor of a strong central government, we would not have even had the basic Bill of Rights.

Antifederalist papers Number 6, pontificates on the battle between those that wished to give power immediately to a small group of would-be tyrants for their “safety” and those that knew the detriments of such actions. Under the pseudonym, “CENTINEL,” the antifederalists penned this conundrum quite well, “The evils of anarchy have been portrayed with all the imagery of language in the growing colors of eloquence; the affrighted mind is thence led to clasp the new Constitution as the instrument of deliverance, as the only avenue to safety and happiness. To avoid the possible and transitory evils of one extreme, it is seduced into the certain and permanent misery necessarily attendant on the other.” We would have slipped back into despotism in a matter of decades had it not been for the antifederalists as they were the ones with the basic knowledge to not agree to a Constitution without trying to explicitly limit the power of government.

The antifederalists’ Bill of Rights acted as temporary shield against government coercion. This allowed for creativity, self-direction, and free exchange amongst the people; and over the course of the next century and a half we would see some of the most amazing innovations mankind has ever witnessed, all of it, in spite of a centrally planned economy, and because of voluntary interactions between free people, otherwise known as anarchy. Now the Bill of Rights is nothing more than a parchment speed bump for the despots in D.C. that serves to temporarily slow them down before they enforce their will upon the masses.

“But who would make the laws?” The dependency on the State for this perceived order also blinds people to the reality of law. Law is not a top down command that the State wields over the populace. With some basic research of the history of Common Law we can see that localized disputes between individuals and the steep costliness of violence to resolve those disputes have led to privatized arbitration instead of brute force in order to solve problems.

Eventually “Common” disputes on a local level happen so often that they are easily resolved by referencing outcomes of prior arbitration; this resolution based on a previous outcome can be referred to as a law. Over time these “laws” become common knowledge within localized areas and as most people know the outcome of disputes, they will tend to avoid being involved in the dispute as they know that the resolution will not favor them based on repetitive past rulings. Order is an organic and dynamic process and the natural evolution of any group of humans coming together in a communal way; we would never even have a community if this were false; for liberty is the mother of order, not the daughter. It is only in the last century and a half that we have allowed government to take control of arbitration and create Federal, State, and Local Courts. Even in spite of government control of the court system anarchy shines through as the Supreme Court even acknowledged in New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann, 285 U.S. 262, 311 (1932) (Brandeis, J., dissenting). They proclaimed that the only reason the US laws can claim any superiority over other nations, is due to the “laboratory of the states,” and that localized interactions teach us the rules which most efficiently resolve disputes.

We are surrounded by anarchy/voluntaryism yet people are still unable to see it. Walk into a store and purchase a product that you choose and you have just participated in anarchy; the voluntary exchanges between different parties for a mutual benefit. The only factors that the State adds to this voluntary exchange are hurdles for those who wish to conduct these peaceful processes. Remove the State, and the peaceful process stays the same, the only thing eliminated is the ability for these businesses to use the force of the State to mandate that you purchase their products and or make illegal the products that compete with theirs.

Government also adds one more crucial benefit for itself and the monopolies that it represents and that is the ability to privatize their gains while collectivizing their losses amongst the populace via taxation. Imagine the incentive that is created by this process of being able to partake in enormous risk and pass the failure of that venture on to the citizens of the State. The Orwellian nature of the State will convince the masses that the abhorrent looting of their grandchildren is a necessity as these pillars of our order have become so crucial to the survival of mankind that they have been deemed, “Too Big to Fail.”

We have reached a critical apex in which all empires eventually find themselves. We have forgotten the benefits and enlightenment that stem from a dynamic society and instead rely on a solipsistic institution that forces assimilation through coercion and violence. We have created in our own imaginations this utopian vision of a father like figure that will dole out justice and equality with its infallible, virtuous, and omnipresent hand of enlightenment; all the while we remain oblivious to the sheer antithesis of the aforementioned setting.

We now worship the institutions that purport their grandiose provisions. Instead of using the rule of law and dynamically interacting on an individual basis we have created an ends out of the very institutions that arose from this dynamic interaction. We no longer rely on the outcome of interactions but instead rely on the institutions themselves. These institutions that we have created now act in the interest of solely preserving themselves regardless of ethical or moral decree. We have let truth become a commodity to be negotiated as long as it serves the collective interest of institution.

We are witnessing a decline of empire. Rest assured that the Empire will not fall without a fight however. Those of us that will refuse to participate in this inexorable collective collapse will be deemed enemies of the State as the institution grasps the tassels of the self-created iron curtains and draws them shut as a last attempt to keep the masses ignorant and docile.

I will welcome this collapse, as chaos, while unpredictable, has given us the essence of ingenuity and enlightenment. Humanity will once again be thrust into the dynamic interactions that produce great minds and innovations. The only question is that will we be able to resist societal entropy this time around? Will we recognize the myth of authority? Will we not be so complacent and apathetic as to hand over our wellbeing to an inescapably venal group of snake oil salesman that promise us security for our servitude?

My outlook remains optimistic. With the massive exchange of information and ideas that we are witnessing via the internet and the rate at which people are realizing the irrelevance of assimilation into an inept monopoly of violence, I remain heartened. It is up to us. It is up to the ones who can see the State for what it is, a succubus of intellect and accountability, to incite this paradigm shift.

We are wrapped in an archetype of consumption and subservience holding this false belief of the unattainable “greater good.” We, as humans, tend to be self-interested in nature. It is this self-interest of the individual that allows for free expression, the creation of personal boundaries that define peace and the inviolability of private property that lead to cooperation of individuals for a mutual ends. We are already surrounded by this voluntary interaction and we need only to realize the futility of violent institutions and their tendencies to organize towards despotism. Civilizations are not the product of a central authority or directives handed down from the enlightened overlords. They happen from the spontaneous, peaceful, and voluntary exchanges of creativity and inventive and life sustaining processes. I owe nobody that which I have not voluntarily agreed to give, I owe you only non-aggression.