So I’ve been thinking about my own political ideology lately. Sure, I’ve discussed it on one of my custom pages for this blog, but I’ve been wondering: am I an anarchist?
More specifically, do I lean closer to the anarcho-capitalist side of things or am I a minarchist. The difference is subtle. The minarchist allows room for some government, but usually related to matters of justice and foreign defense. The anarcho-capitalist believes that no government is necessary, as any evil is not necessary.
As for what I believe, I currently believe that government is optional. What I mean is that I believe that there are plenty of alternatives for what the government currently does. Sure, those options are not easy and many of them require you to make personal sacrifices, but personal sacrifices are sometimes worth it when the payoff is liberty.
So where does this place me? It’s not exactly minarchist, because I don’t think government is necessary, but it probably isn’t anarchist either since I’m OK with government so long as the people voluntarily accept the institution.
Maybe I’m not clearly defining the term government. To me, a government is any ruling authority with the ability to use legal force. I’m sure if I were able to study up a bit more, I could submit a more coherent definition, but I guess that’ll do for now.
So again, given that definition and my belief that people are allowed to create and/or submit to a government of some kind but such a thing is optional, where does that leave me. From what I’ve read about anarchism, and granted it’s hasn’t been as much as I’d like, it seems that any ruling authority besides the sovereign individual is wrong.
I don’t know, it’s all too confusing and I guess it’s hard to pigeonhole my beliefs. I guess I’m over thinking the whole thing and should probably just call myself a radical liberty-minded individual. At least there isn’t an ‘ism’ on the end of that.
Related articles
- The Nature of the State and Why Libertarians Hate It (stephankinsella.com)
- Boaz on Libertarianism and "Government" (stephankinsella.com)