Self-governance absent force is a pipe dream. I said it.
Everyone that touts it, me included at one point, understands full well that the majority still prefers using force to (however ironically) live in harmony with others. The argument is that we shouldn't enslave those who are responsible and CAN self-govern for the sake of those who can't.
The hard, real-life lessons for me over the past 4 years has been to see that most humans can't self-govern harmoniously. Like prior to Covid, I thought most people get along peacefully absent force. Ha! Then came Covid.
Even in places where there was zero institutionalized, government mandated, Covid related force, people delighted in hurting others throughout the pandemic. Blame government, but people, average people, enjoyed abusing their neighbors. It was a pretty scary wake up call for me. Then to ask, why? Why now all of a sudden have people just decided to be assholes? What injustices of society have I been blind to that lead to this mass outrage? My personal life situation the last year and a half has been painfully answering that question for me. We live in a society where the law favors the lawless. Worse, the culture favors the malevolent and ignorant. People are pissed as heck about it. Many have been exploited, trampled and abused.
Most people after the fact of how they behaved during the pandemic want to blame government for their bad behaviors. "I just went along with it because I thought I had to." Don't encourage people to do this. People do bad all by themselves. If you don't feel that government should take responsibility for people acting good on their own, don't start believing in the illusion of government now that people are misbehaving on their own. You must be consistent to be taken seriously. The government is merely the latest "devil made me do it" alibi.
Most people don't WANT to self-govern. They don't want to be responsible for their behaviors good or bad, and it doesn't help that the current government is set up to encourage violence and abuse and discourage morality. But to suggest that governance doesn't ebb and flow, and to not recognize that politics follow culture is self-blindness. Don't call your blinders "self-governance." Your head in the sand about your position in the culture is not your alibi for your behavior in the culture.
Most painfully I've learned that most of the people who claim they can self-govern are really people that prefer having no rules. They are pretty clueless about how their alleged "non-violent behaviors" could (and often do) hurt others. It's not very encouraging that most anarchists are a bunch of degenerates who like to drive way over the speed limit and complain about being pulled over, or worse, complain when others drive cautiously. Many drink and drive and complain about DUIs. A majority wouldn't know a safe following distance on the road if it rear-ended them. Many take advantage of their landlords or their tenants with an outlook of "I'll screw you before you screw me." An awful lot of anarchists engage in embarrassingly exploitative sexual congress under the guise of "responsible, free love" (oxymoron, anyone?). So many have excessive drug dependency issues that it could be the calling card for voluntaryism. A lot who should be ejected from the community live socially herein as users, losers and grifters. We’re not the same ratio of good and bad as the rest of society. We are the exceptionally rule breaker grouping, even when the rules are legitimate.
You don't live in a vacuum. We can all see and hear each other. We see YOU. Did you think the series "The Anarchists" was just a fluke? I know at first I fought the message of that series because I really wanted to believe it was a misrepresentative sample. Every anarchist kept telling me it was not. I tried really hard to live in my optimistic bubble, imagining most anarchists to be the health freedom, entrepreneurial, home birthing, homesteading, monogamous, responsible families with homeschooled kids group that I attracted. Like attracted like. It was my echochamber talking. But mine was the small, unrepresentative sample and many of my people were barely even anarchists. Whether they voted or not in local community elections, living as they did, hardly mattered in the larger scheme of our shared values.
This is some of what I have learned. If we can't even entice our own voluntaryists to engage in voluntaryism, and to the world, anarchists and voluntaryists look like examples of chaos and ruin, how can we recommend other people should try it? How can we say that anarchy means "no rulers, and not, no rules" when most anarchists are looking for every excuse to skirt the rules and live a life of debauchery?
What I'm really saying is that if your only moral exercise is to avoid voting and calling the police, and you beat others over the head with how much more virtuous you are than the statist whose only immoral act is to vote, you are a shit example for morality. That's all I'm saying.
I don't want government, but I think after all I've seen recently inside and outside of anarchy that rules/law are necessary, and law doesn't work without enforcement. We need some really benevolent and extremely insightful and intelligent (less educated) people to craft them. Being altruistic will not cut it. We need people with the harsh expertise of human nature to make these decisions. Once we get those rules in place, (I think the opportunity to do so is coming sooner than later as I’m keeping my eye on that ebb and flow) you're probably going to have to come up with some sort of order for whichever society you choose to live in, whatever you call it. You will have to pick a part in that organization. Hopefully, you pick your society based on shared values rather than the default of shared location.
I think people screaming, "I shouldn't have to live with your government just because I live in this neighborhood of people that have totally different values than I do" is done. You sound retarded, truly the definition of retardation in the most literal sense if you think your chosen community shouldn't determine how you live with them. You can move. Just as you can get a different job, you can move to a society with shared values. If a society of shared values doesn’t welcome you or doesn’t exist, it’s a good sign your value system and theirs is likely shit. Start rethinking that order.
In any society, the incentive to cut corners and in so doing hurt others is too high. There's too much incentive to cheat (and human nature looks for short cuts, even or maybe especially anarchists) not to have an order of law instituted to keep that exploitation and violence at bay. This is the reality that has always been since humanity began living in groups. How you believe you can live on your own has almost no bearing on the conversation about how people (even you and me) can live in community with others. That's what we all must contend with.
You are not an island, unless you are, somehow, out in Alaska or in the tundra somewhere on your own, and then, this message has nothing to do with you.
But the rest of you, know who you are, heed this message.
There is a common misconception that "anarchy" = no force. And maybe there is some version of anarchy for which that is true. But the predominant libertarian version of anarchy - anarchocapitalism - is not one of them. Literally no anarchocapitalist is proposing a world with no law, no enforcement, or no force.
And yes, there are absolute jerks in the libertarian anarchist community. Just like there are absolute jerks in every single community on earth. The difference though, between a jerk in an anarchist society and a jerk in a position of power in a statist society is that the former does not have the ability to violently enforce their jerkiness on others without consequence.
In fact, the world we live in now could be described as "lawless". Those who are part of the monopoly on force are, in reality, above the law. They are free to violate the rights of everyone else without fear of any consequences for themselves.
The foundational idea of anarcho capitalism is not the elimination of force, or of law, but the elimination of the MONOPOLY on force. The whole point is to have a society where EVERYONE is accountable for their actions, and their crimes. Not just the lowly serfs.
I spoke at length about all of this with anarchocapitalist economist Bob Murphy, in a recent interview. You might be interested:
https://bit.ly/3Semn69
"We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion."