History
One of the first individuals to propose the concept of market protection of individual liberty and property was France's Jakob Mauvillon in the 18th century. Later, in the 1840s, Julius Faucher and Gustave de Molinari advocated the same. Molinari, in his essay The Production of Security, argued, "No government should have the right to prevent another government from going into competition with it, or to require consumers of security to come exclusively to it for this commodity." Molinari argued that the monopoly on security causes high prices and low quality. He says in Les Soirées: "The monopoly of government is no better than any other. One does not govern well and, especially not cheaply, when one has no competition to fear, when the ruled are deprived of the right of freely choosing their rulers...The production of security inevitably becomes costly and bad when it is organized as a monopoly." The brunt of Molinari's argument for free-market anarchism is based in economics rather than on moral opposition to the state.
In the 19th century, Benjamin Tucker in the United States theorized free-market anarchism: "defense is a service like any other service; that it is labor both useful and desired, and therefore an economic commodity subject to the law of supply and demand; that in a free market this commodity would be furnished at the cost of production; that, competition prevailing, patronage would go to those who furnished the best article at the lowest price; that the production and sale of this commodity are now monopolized by the State; and that the State, like almost all monopolists, charges exorbitant prices." He noted that the anarchism he proposed would include prisons and military. Later, in the mid 20th century, free-market anarchism was revived by Murray Rothbard. David D. Friedman proposes a form of free-market anarchism where in addition to security being provided by the market, the law itself is produced by the market.
Read more about this topic: Free-market Anarchists
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Perhaps universal history is the history of the diverse intonation of some metaphors.”
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986)
“Three million of such stones would be needed before the work was done. Three million stones of an average weight of 5,000 pounds, every stone cut precisely to fit into its destined place in the great pyramid. From the quarries they pulled the stones across the desert to the banks of the Nile. Never in the history of the world had so great a task been performed. Their faith gave them strength, and their joy gave them song.”
—William Faulkner (1897–1962)
“If man is reduced to being nothing but a character in history, he has no other choice but to subside into the sound and fury of a completely irrational history or to endow history with the form of human reason.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)