Minarchism

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In civics, minarchism, sometimes called minimal statism, or small government, is the belief that the size, role and influence of government should be limited. As they are contractarians, they believe that a state is necessary, but should be minimal enough to protect the liberty and property of each individual.

The term was coined in 1970 or 1971 by Samuel Edward Konkin III, an agorist.^[1]^[2] Many minarchists consider themselves also as libertarians. The term is perhaps most often used to differentiate libertarians who believe it is possible to have a state that protects individual liberty without violating it itself, from the market anarchists who believe that any state is inherently a violation of individual liberty.

1 Ideology
2 Notable minarchists
3 Criticism
4 References
5 See also
6 External links

[edit] Ideology

Minarchists agree that the guiding principle in determining what should or should not fall into the domain of the government is the maximization of individual liberty. They hold a belief in contractarianism that states that a minimal government is necessary to prevent chaos. Minarchists are generally opposed to government programs that either transfer wealth^{[citation needed]} and economic regulations of certain sectors of the economy. However, most minarchists support some level of government funding, including perhaps taxation in some limited cases, as long as individual liberty and the non-aggression principle are not compromised.^[3]

Some minarchists use utilitarian arguments, as they compromise the non-aggression principle by taxation. They might use theoretical economic arguments, like Ludwig von Mises's contribution to Austrian economics, or statistical economic research, like the Indices of Economic Freedom. Other arguments for minarchism are natural rights, contractarianism and egalitarianism.

Minarchists often disagree on exactly how to accomplish this. They are more likely in favoring reforms such as voting instead of the counter-economic strategies advocated by market anarchists. ^[4]

Minarchists tend to favor a democratic republic collectively controlled state instead of one single controller. In addition, they oppose multiple competing juristictions and private defense agencies in a geographical territory. They believe that monarchists would abuse their powers.

Some minarchists favor the administration and funding of government services in a small jurisdiction, (like a city or county) over a larger jurisdiction like the federal government. This is favored because decisions are presumed to be more efficient when the decision-makers are more local. This also leaves individuals who wish to avoid living or working under a municipality to move to another municipality. Thus, this is reducing the likelihood of government oppression and corruption due to competing municipalities. They tend to support federalism over a unified government. ^[5] ^[6]

[edit] Notable minarchists

The distinction between minarchism and big government is not clear-cut, and often there is a spectrum of minarchism.

Prominent minarchists include Benjamin Constant^{[citation needed]}, Herbert Spencer, Leonard Read, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, James M. Buchanan, Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand, John Hospers, Robert Nozick and George Reisman.

Objectivists are minarchists, who support a night watchman state for the enforcement of contracts. Additionally, Objectivists advocate some form of protection of intellectual property. ^[7]

Some minarchists, such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Independent Institute, view that the government should be limited to the management of roads, education vouchers, intellectual property and money.^[8] ^[9]

Even more moderate minarchists such as the Cato Institute and the Chicago School view that government should also intervene in a numerous quantity of regulations including the negative income tax, carbon tax and the Iraq War.

Other organizations with minarchist members and supporters include the Reason Foundation^{[citation needed]}, International Society for Individual Liberty^[10] and Bureaucrash.

[edit] Criticism

Some libertarians argue that anarcho-capitalism is the only logically consistent form of libertarian belief. It is also contradictory to state that violence is immoral, yet still maintain violence in the form of a government. Such views are often voiced by "rights libertarians", though consequentialist libertarians may argue that minarchism is more compatible with utilitarian values (in the manner of von Mises or Milton Friedman)

But supporters of minarchism counter that a government could survive on private donations and the creation of trust funds without any form of taxation whatsoever. Even if a government could be voluntarily funded, then it still amounts to an authority with a monopoly of force over a given area, and as such would dictate and control. Additionally, some argue that voluntary donations are not enough to support a government to prevent a foreign invasion. The mere existence of government, irrespective of how it is funded, undermines one's self-ownership, since to govern is to control. Minarchists, however, depart here from anarcho-capitalists in philosophical beliefs, believing that the government should indeed be the sole arbiter of force in law and military matters, on the premise that competing law systems would inevitably lead to chaos, where no libertarian principles could possibly reign. However, market anarchists had argued that the sole arbitrator can just be the society itself, instead of a government that is separate from the society.^[11]

Also, some libertarians believe that the concept of "constitutionally limited government" is a fallacy. They argue that the American Founding Fathers' approach of limiting the inherent force linked with government (in respect to the United States Constitution) has not worked. They claimed that states would inevitable become corrupt.

A number of minarchists state that human beings naturally gravitate towards leaders, hence making anarchism untenable and not viable.^{[citation needed]} As such, they believe that the existence of government is inevitable, and people should only be concerned with limiting the size and scope of the state, rather than opposing its existence. Murray Rothbard denouced this claim by citing that it often took hundreds years for aristocrats to set up a state out of anarchy.^[12]

More to the point, even if anarchy were in some way commensurate with individual liberties, minarchists often argue that anarchy would be highly inefficient at providing for a stable means of repelling organized aggression from foreign armies. As such anarchies would quickly be replaced by whatever government happened to assert its will via military means. However, Murray Rothbard argued that in anarchy, it would be much harder for foreign invasion to set up a government because there would not be an existing central entity to take control over.^[12]

Some minarchists believe their approach to be more pragmatic. However, Hans Hermann Hoppe has argued that the only form of state that can pragmatically be restrained from expanding is a monarchical (privately owned) state.^[13]

Murray Rothbard was a prominent critic of minarchism. As an anarcho-capitalist, he argued that government defence is inefficient. He criticized libertarian centralists,^[12] who are laissez-faire activists for supporting geographically large, minarchist states. In his book Power and Market, he argued that libertarian centralists support a unified minarchist world monopoly government.^[14]