Abolitionists and Anarchists

200 years ago, slavery was widely assumed to be a necessary and healthy part of a modern economy, and abolitionists were crackpots who dared imagine that Africans were capable of administering their own affairs without the supervision of their benevolent white overseers. As the growing criminal conspiracy of the Underground Railroad blatantly violated state and federal laws to steal slaves and funnel them north, drapetomania was hypothesized as a mental illness affecting runaway slaves. They had food, shelter, clothing, and medicine provided for free, all for just the slight inconvenience of being chattel property. Such ingrates!

Now, governments are widely assumed to be a necessary and healthy part of a modern society, and anarchists are crackpots who dare imagine people of any race, creed, or color can administer their own lives without benevolent political overseers. It's not a perfect parallel, but the arguments are disturbingly similar in defense of slavery and the State. Never mind the rampant corruption, abuse, arbitrary prohibitions, onerous regulation, and destruction accompanying all exercise of political power, anarchists are just ungrateful for the benefits afforded by the State. After all, who would build the roads?

I can observe how society functions best where people have the most autonomy and capacity to consent, while the worst problems exist where there is the most coercion, plunder, and monopolistic control through politics. I conclude that anarchism is the rational extrapolation from my observations. I see more peace and prosperity where people have more relative liberty, and less peace and prosperity where we have more government coercion, despite the enrichment of a few through political plunder, and the veneer of benevolence covering the control schemes of welfare programs.

I also observe the destructive economic and social incentives of monopolies and centralized power. There is an economic calculation problem and moral hazard distorting the choices of even the most honest and idealistic functionaries, not to mention the simple allure power has for those already corrupt at heart.

I suggest we need to eliminate then political class and political plunder altogether. We need to work toward autonomy. I am told I live in a fantasy world by people who believe democracy works as advertised, and politicians care about us more than they care about increasing their own power and wealth at our expense. Who has their head in the clouds, though?