Social Justice in a Stateless Society

While I support the abolition or severe curbing of states, I don't see where you constructed a single viable means of individuals achieving social justice without some institution or entity which would supplant the state. And what is social justice, exactly? For me, it is the right of individuals to determine for themselves what is appropriate for their lives, their bodies, and their capital; together with bearing the consequences of the decisions they make where lives, bodies, and capital are concerned.

We must also consider what a stateless society (or a society in which the state is severely curbed) will mean for those who lack the capacity to form consent over their lives, bodies, and capital. I speak of children and the mentally ill. In a society where individual responsibility is the premium standard, how are we to deal with those who are incapable of exercising responsibility and therefore face exploitation? How much freedom and self-determination is possible for a child or a mentally ill or handicapped individual? Moreover, when does freedom and self-determination become possible for a child or a mentally handicapped individual? When do they reach the requisite capacity to determine for their lives, bodies, and capital what is good and wise in relation to their actions where lives, bodies, and capital are concerned?

I enjoy what you write on many levels, but there is a common pattern I see throughout your writing: broadstrokes without concrete specifics. I also detect a reliance on advocacy organizations who would assume the mantle of the state in the event of the abolition of the state. I don't want the NAACP advocating for reciprocity to repair the sins of the past, and that's exactly what affirmative action is when you pare down the rhetoric and hot air.

Moreover, I don't want the ACLU telling me that my 12 year old is capable of forming consent for sexual intercourse or an abortion. As a parent, I will determine what I teach my child and who they are allowed to consort with so long as they exist under my roof and under the conditions that I provide for them as a parent who works. It's none of the state's business, and it damn sure isn't the business of the ACLU. So long as I am not molesting my child or physically beating them into oblivion, it's none of the state's business and it certainly isn't the business of private advocacy groups.

When my child reaches the capacity to move out of my house and provide for himself or herself, they can do as they damn well please. I have a pistol on my nightstand for anyone who tries to tell me otherwise, and a belt around my waist for any child of mine who attempts to prematurely assert autonomy. That's my role as a parent: to make the decisions for my child that they aren't capable of making. I have no problem with a free market of morality for adults, but to say that a child possesses the capacity to form consent or understand the implications of their decisions when they aren't physiologically complete until their early twenties is bullshit. I will prepare my child for adulthood, and that's my responsibility as an adult. That responsibility isn't foisted on me by the state; it's my personal belief and conviction. It damn sure won't be defined by any private advocacy group of do-gooder autocrats.

For those parents who don't do the right thing, they suck, but it's none of the state's business to step in and educate or prepare a child. That's life. It's not fair, and it isn't always right, but it's the way things work. Part of the reason why we have children living at home into their twenties and thirties is because statist interference has promoted a perpetual immaturity. From tax incentives to insurance regulations which will now allow a child to stay on their parent's insurance until their late twenties, we incentivize co-dependency. We incentivize failure and coddling.

Moreover, the state's economic policies, failed as they obviously are, have essentially closed off economic opportunities to individuals meeting young adulthood as potential employees. I see no reason to believe that a private entity like the ACLU, the Cato Institute, or the NAACP has any answer for this problem that will not inevitably fail like statist intervention in markets has. The problem isn't a lack of social justice, Shane. Each of these institutions bears one thing in common with the state: a professed commitment to social justice that entails overriding individual prerogatives in order to assure outcomes. Additionally, they have a common outcome in that each attempt at social justice fails.

Sexual education increased rates of venereal disease transmission, teen pregnancy, and the deterioration of the family unit if you consider statistical consequences to be evidence of causality. All of this in the name of some abstract concept of sexual empowerment and justice which would render equitable outcomes…and yet it didn't. Our sexual norms have changed, but the stated intentions and goals were never arrived at, were they?

Two New Deals, a New Frontier, and a Great Society failed to usher in greater capital empowerment for Americans. The perverse outcome of the New Deal was that with 15% unemployment at the beginning of WWII, we arrived at the close of WWII with…15% unemployment. Additionally, the government told individuals that they couldn't grow crops for their own use without usurping the government's power to regulate prices under the Commerce Clause. Imagine: you can't grow your own food in order to avoid fixed prices in an artificial state-controlled marketplace. You have to surrender your own interest where your very sustenance is concerned! This, in a society founded by agrarian interests and individuals who hunted and farmed for their own keep!

Poverty actually grew worse under decades of welfare, because as we all know by now, no individual rises from poverty to middle class status off of the dole. They simply fall from the misery of lack to the misery of reliance on a fickle and feckless state that encourages their dependency one moment only to boot them off of the welfare rolls the next. Social justice, huh?

How about individual empowerment, and the power to shoot a bigot who transgresses against your life, your liberty, or your property? The only good racist is a dead racist, especially if that racist employs coercion or aggression. You want to ensure social justice? Allow the previously powerless who have been conditioned to dial 911 to pick up a gun and shoot the bastard or bastards who accost them on the street with threats of violence on the basis of race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation. It's called self-defense, and it's the only legitimate reason to take another human life. It isn't the abdication of law; it's the fulfillment of law. Life is preeminent reason for the law to exist: we wish to protect our own and that of our loved ones and to provide a framework for how to legally and equitably do so in an ordered way. Far from being a savage means of ordering society, it's the means by which ordered societies are secured. When individuals abdicate the ability to defend their own lives to the state in the name of civilization or some amorphous justification thereof like social justice, they have effectively ensured barbarity's rise in place of civilization. Imagine armed communities of former slaves who knew how to shoot when the Klan came riding through.

Social justice from a private organization, Shane?! Really?! How about from an individual with a gun and some marksmanship skills? Or an individual with property of his own, actual wealth which he can use to enforce the observance of his rights and prerogatives by others who would abuse or threaten his life, liberty, or property. And for those who lack the means to defend their own lives for whatever reason, how ab
out establishing that individuals who come to their aid in order to defend their lives, their liberties, and their property are exempt from liability under the law due to their good faith effort to preserve their neighbors and fellow men and women from a threat to said life, liberty, and property?

Organizations, like states, can be captured by narrow interests who deploy the state or the organization against the wider interest in order to defeat democracy and individual rights. But free individuals acting in their own interests according to common principles are not for sale. They will rise up to beat back the threats to those common principles, and when the thugs of the Aryan Nation, Nation of Islam, or Christian Identity groups come through, they'll mow the bastards down with their AK-47s and have a barbeque after the fact.

Nothing and no one above the individual. That's what I'm talking about.