If you haven't read it already, here's part two.
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Amendments
Prescript: The author's opinion on the ethical case against government has changed since the construction of the series's first part- although it should be noted that, as an objective description not, per se, of the author's opinions, but of the opinions of Anarcho Capitalists generally, the ethical case portrayed is not an inaccurate representation of relevant and widely-held beliefs. That said, with regard to the NAP, there are at least two major schools of thought within the Anarcho Capitalist community, and being that one of them was omitted- indeed, the one to which the author himself now ascribes- it will be described briefly here, and then annexed to part one. The author keeps in mind that, despite its length, this is intended as a simplified description of complex ideas, which will be tailored to an audience largely unfamiliar with libertarianism as a whole, and Anarcho Capitalism specifically.
The reader may recall that explained in part one was the Non-Agression Principle (NAP), a central characteristic of the ethical case against government. However, the validity of this claim is dependent on the partisan's acceptance of ethical norms. According to- as Anarcho Capitalist Murray Rothbard once labeled them- "natural rightsers" (himself a natural rightser), it is unethical to violate certain rights- framed in the context of property rights- with which all human beings are naturally endowed. According to the theory- mostly derived from a Lockean interpretation of ethics- people have ownership over themselves, and things that they homestead, i.e., unowned land that they work, or unowned resources that they use- given selective definitions of "work" and "use" upon which we will not elaborate here. By this standard, members of government cannot claim to ethically own a country whose economic elements they themselves did not make productive, and, as no government has ever done so, it is therefore unethical for government to tax (or likewise support itself and exist).
Those who do not ascribe to this theory- that is, the non-natural rightsers- tend to be ethical consequentialists of some form, usually egoist or utilitarian. In either case, these partisans are concerned only with the ultimate effect of a given action on the welfare of people. So, if government "steals", we cannot claim- by these ethics- that it does so in an inherently unethical manner, as it is only unethical if the result, on net, hurts people. Thus, the Anarcho Capitalist consequentialist maintains that government should be disposed of because its actions have a net-negative effect on human welfare. Consequentialists may still maintain a rule-of-thumb closely resembling the NAP, i.e., they may conclude that actions which violate the NAP tend to be unethical. That said, the economic argument against government adequately describes- in and of itself- the entirety of the consequentialist position.
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A continuation of 'Why roles that shouldn't exist shouldn't exist'
Sub-category: Corporate Regulation
Minimum Wage
To familiarize the readership with the arguments to follow, we must first acknowledge how minimum wage is established as "corporate regulation": it is law imposed on employers which demands that the people they hire are to be paid nothing less than x. Intended- at least, by the virtuous- to serve as an aid to low-skill employees, the minimum wage tends to hurt, among others, precisely those it means to serve. Government's declaration that workers are to be paid at a fixed rate does not, in and of itself, make said workers any more valuable to employers. If an employer values a given individual at $5/hour, but he can lawfully hire for no less than $7/hour, the individual will not be hired- and in this way the minimum wage leaves low-skill labor unemployed.
Suppose an employer values an employee at $7.50/hour- and pays him such- but a new machine can do the individual's job for $6.50/hour. Without a minimum wage, the individual would be offered the option to retain the job, working for something less than $6.50/hour, but if such an option is made illegal by the minimum wage, the individual will be fired immediately and replaced by the machine. Employers can also outsource needed labor to foreign countries where minimum wage is either lower or non-existent, and potential domestic workers who must be paid at a higher minimum wage will be unable to compete. In this way, the minimum wage is a restriction on the unemployed, as they are unable to offer their services at a price that would employ them.
An easy illustration of the problem is to conceive of a ridiculous scenario where the minimum wage was $7 million/hour. Rather than resulting in a large and contended mob of rich workers, we'd have an entire country of people without work, save the self-employed and perhaps those of extreme expertise. Be it $7 or $7 million, the problem is the same and for the same reasons, differing only in terms of scale.
Gun Control
Imagine a society where it is illegal to carry any sort of weapon on your person at any time- to remain lawful in this society, unless you're an enforcement officer, you must remain entirely defenseless (save perhaps your fists). A given thief in this society- a criminal who chooses to disobey the law, and thus carries, say, a handgun- has an incentive 'x' to refrain from mugging passerby's equal to the likelihood that he is caught by police as result of his crime. He has an incentive 'y' to mug passerby's equal to the expected reward he gains for doing so. He will mug a passerby when y>x. Dependent on the adequacy of the police force in our society, x will vary.
Now imagine the same society where it is legal to carry only a pointed stick. If a given thief is considering whether to mug passerby's, he now must also consider the odds that the to-be-mugged repels the attack with a stick, say z. Now the mugger will mug when y>x + z, z being dependent on the skill of the thief, the effectiveness of a handgun, the expected skill of the passerby, the likelihood of the passerby carrying a stick, and the effectiveness a pointed stick.
From here, we can conceive many other examples that would change the values of y, x and z. If the society became richer, y would increase, if the society's police force were to become more efficient, x would increase, if citizens were lawfully allowed to carry handguns, z would increase, etc.
First, we should acknowledge that it is very difficult to increase x for the sort of mugging in which z is relevant. Muggings where at least one weapon is involved tend to be very short, and the mugger almost certainly remains anonymous throughout. Little, if any, evidence is left of the conflict. If we increase the effectiveness of our police force, we are multiplying their usefulness by that probability that the mugger is reasonably catchable whatsoever, which seems, more often than not, to be very small (readers may dispute this point if they wish, though the author believes it to be generally accepted.).
Second, it seems plain that it is very easy to increase z, as the likelihood of repelling an attack on the spot need not increase drastically to heavily raise z relative to y. This is because "repelling an attack" when guns are involved usually means a dead thief. If, as result of removing a gun ban, each time the thief mugs a passerby his chance of dying by gunshot just increased from 0% to 2%, slight as that change may be, it may easily cause him to abandon the profession entirely. It's easy to imagine that any job where 1 in 50 days of showing up for work resulted in your imminent death is highly unattractive.
One argument for gun control is that it increases the cost of becoming a thief in the first place, as, by restricting the supply of guns, it becomes more difficult to obtain a weapon. One problem with this argument is that it fails to account for those criminals already in possession of firearms. A much bigger problem arises from an easy realization that the start-up cost for becoming a professional thief is relatively insignificant. If all one needs is one firearm to earn an income for the next 5 or 10 years, whether the cost of said firearm increases by a factor of 2 or 5 or 10 will almost certainly not decide whether engaging in thievery is a cost-effective operation.
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