Jonah Goldberg attempted to dismiss libertarianism once again in his column last Friday, but I believe that a careful analysis, like those done by Murphy, Greenhut, and others, demonstrates how a citizen can really help that friend of his, and further, avoid unintended consequences, by delegating responsibility for the suicide intervention to private parties rather than the State. Though what I wrote below does not very much venture to delve beyond minarchy to anarchy, I find that the characteristics of the State make such a position the more tenable one (although I admit to insufficiently understanding the possible mechanisms of an anarchist society). While Goldberg didn't make me an anarchist, technically, I am just starting to understand better how anarchy makes the supposedly dogmatically rigid non-aggression axiom more flexible, yet principled nonetheless (without saying too much, I believe Goldberg has a point in his slippery slope argument as applied to the state, but not as applied to private actions). Either way, though, Goldberg failed to make libertarians fall into an immoral/inconsistent dichotomy.

1. Premise: A society generally considers it as a moral obligation to seek to prevent at least certain suicides, if need be by the use of force.
2. If there is a GENERAL BELIEF amongst the people that society as a whole is responsible for preventing suicides, numerous consequences typically seen as undesirable will result:

1. The belief will necessitate an agent to act for society and the people will find it by permitting an organized apparatus of compulsion to metamorphose into a geographical monopoly on force ("the STATE") by excluding competitors. The State will use compulsion to attempt to solve the initial problem of suicide.
2. An EXPANSION OF POWER will be justified as new tools are deemed necessary to solve the initial (and subsequent) problem(s). Pressure groups will arise in support for material gain (both governmental – e.g., police unions – and private – e.g., industries and interests protected by the restrictions [initially, perhaps, the psychologists]) as well as ideological gain in the form of their supporters, the two of which will merge in the form of the punditry, the media, the academy, community groups or associations, and think tanks, said merger resulting in a class interested in influencing the masses; and politicians will cooperate for material (bribes, salary, perks, speaking fees), ideological, and political (publicity, re-election) purposes. A possible governmental path follows, and while the path may be slower and strewn with far more intermediary interventions, it remains possible as long as ideology can be shaped to accept it:

   Stopping the suicides from taking action will require curing their mental illness and hence also concern for their physical well-being, and thus censorship of the inputs to the mentally ill [art, music, literature, television, friends, family, implements, food, clothing]; then penalties to enforce barriers to trade with the suicides, and regulation of enterprise done to facilitate the restriction of the suicide's inputs to the safe and healthy, resulting in de jure and de facto monopoly; then penalties for money laundering to combat illegal trade, as well as anti-trust law, and wars between illegal suppliers as well as the monopolists' state-protectors; then civil liberties infringements like suspension of habeas corpus and declaration of martial law and intrustions into privacy to maintain order; then violence against fundamental natural rights such as to bear arms, criticize the state, or peaceably assemble.

3. The means used will involve AUTISTIC INTERVENTION (e.g., censorship of suicides' inputs).
4. The means used will involve BINARY INTERVENTION (e.g., as the suicide becomes a ward of the state and has his property transferred to the state, and as tax-payers are sought for funds).
5. The means used will involve TRIANGULAR INTERVENTION (e.g., smuggling "dangerous" goods to the suicide becomes criminal).
6. The intervention will result in SPILLOVER (e.g., the police will raid the wrong house, arrest someone else for another state-manufactured crime such as drug-selling).
7. Intervention will result in PSYCHIC LOSSES as a consequence of forced action, proportional to the size and scope of the interventions (e.g., the suicide may become angry, paranoid, depressed, lonely, bored, afraid, etc., due to the restrictions on his liberty and on others' to assist him as they see fit).
8. BLOWBACK, or reaction to the state and attempts to circumvene it or mitigate its effects, will ensue (e.g., with protest, rally, smuggling, with assassination, civil war, secession and terrorism eventually).
9. J) The expansion of power will lead necessarily to a PERMANENT intervention and potentially a TOTALITARIAN one.
1. Further attributes of the State follow:

1. The subjects of the State will demonstrate LOW LEVELS OF SPECIFIC POLICY SUPPORT (in comparison to the level of abstract support for the scope of the State). They will not only not know the policy specifics (out of a rational ignorance, since their education will have little impact on political outcome), but their diversity of values will mean a diversity of norms, and their self-interest in the realization of any particular outcome will often be negligible, inclining them to an underlying predisposition to nullify state action, despite the dedication in the abstract to the State's goal (e.g., a Californian may not care whether a New Yorker kills himself, at least not enough to voluntarily contribute "tax" dollars or other resources to prevention, although he still believes in the State's interest in mental health).
2. The agents of the state will have little to NO PERSONAL STAKE in making what would be the most rational decisions for private property owners (not only do they not own the full and eternal profits from tangible assets, but similarly, they are strangers to their subjects for the most part and as such lack a stake in their psychic well being). Results:
   1. MOTIVATION: Their interests do not align with the natural property owners' interest due to above.
   2. KNOWLEDGE: They do not have the circumstances and inside information unique to the natural stake-holders. As, ceteris paribus, the State tends to centralize, and local control is diminished, the knowledge problem becomes more pronounced.
   3. CALCULATION: Even with the proper motivation and knowledge, agents of the state could not make the most rational decisions since its interventions create islands of economic chaos in which capital allocation cannot be accomplished.
3. The ideology (2) is premised on will be preserved by the agents of the state by what is considered dishonorable behavior – lying, using "national greatness" / "will of the people" flowery rhetoric, stirrings of xenophobia and racism and classism, and generally the DESTRUCTION OF all COMMUNITIES and intermediary private institutions but that between State and individual.
4. Statism prevents the attainment of PSYCHIC MORAL BENEFITS. Neither the forced benefactors – not desiring to make such donations and thus not capable of pride in making the correct choices – nor the intended beneficiaries – not having the pride of perseverence and achievement or the gratitude of a voluntary recipient, nor even the State's agents themselves (e.g., police, social workers, doctors) – since their sense of self worth will derive from an imperceptibly corrupted Weltanschauung emphasizing power over market – will enjoy the self-esteem of moral men insofar as power infilitrates the market.

1. Absent the general belief of (2), people will believe in INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY for prevention of the suicide (not necessarily that individuals must act alone, but that individuals must choose to take steps to prevent the suicide on their own, rather than yield responsibility to the supposed agent of "society", the State). A state of anarchy or minarchy will follow, characterized by the following:

1. CONTESTABLE MARKETS: The market for psychological assistance will be open to all who are willing to venture their time and other resources and can procure consent, either before the act, or after, in which case consent takes the form of forgiveness or restitution.
2. NON-COERCIVE RESTITUTION: To the extent that a person uses coercion in his fight to prevent a suicide, his identity as a private agent makes restitution possible without an equal taking from a third party, as the intervenor is able to make non-coercive production with which to compensate the victim. Similarly, restitution is not coerced for those situations in which the suicide is grateful for intervention, since the option of bringing suit lies with him alone.
3. STABLE EQUILIBRIUM: If anarchy is the outcome of the change in ideology, the tendency towards an expansion of power of an organized apparatus of coercion no longer exists.
4. A MORE EQUAL DISTRIBUTION OF POTENTIAL POWER: Initially, the concentration of pure firepower distributes ("God created man, but Sam Colt made him equal"), and secondarily the fluidity of class in a non-caste structure effects a more even wealth distribution, while finally, if anarchy, the equilibrium of a legal order which adjusts itself organically to the legal order most suited to man's nature ("natural law") helps usher in a true rule of law above and beyond the power of men, more level though that may also be.

1. Thus, a strict enforcement of private property rights solves the apparent paradox of the moral yet consistent libertarian, while a seemingly innocuous intervention is fraught with many dangers, actual and potential. In an apparent mirror-image imitation of Abraham's bidding down the number of good men necessary in the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to prevent their destruction, Goldberg basically asks "what if 1000 men held down your friend?" Even without an understanding of the state, clearly, a mob of 1000 people who do not know the suicide will not do what is in the best interests of the suicide, and yet their intervention is supposed to be equivalent to a best friend intervening? I for one would probably curse such a modern day statist Sodom to perdition in a second, if I believed in collective justice.

July 2, 2001