My main question is: how can one be so confident that our criminal society is better than the potential society of law? Also, hasn't our criminal society simply institutionalized the very things that many people currently fear about anarchy? Is it somehow preferential to at least know that the most likely source of criminal behavior is the state? Is that the draw of supporting criminal statism?
http://mises.org/daily/4125But in fact, it is not madness at all. For the only difference between the recognized-as-a-criminal burglar and the not-recognized-as-a-criminal member of the public is that the burglar does his own dirty work. He does not obtain his television sets, stereos and jewelry through that form of theft called "public policy." Instead of recruiting his local politicians and bureaucrats to steal your property for his own use, he saves them the trouble and goes and gets it himself.
In doing so, he is not able to fall back on rationalizations for his crimes on the grounds of democratic process, political mandates, and other statist notions. He may of course have his own rationalizations, but they are far more half-hearted than the zealous lust for the unearned that is exhibited in the political realm by lobbyists, politicians, and statist media commentators. In any case, it is hardly surprising that he feels entitled to take property that does not belong to him. This is the least of his differences with ordinary, "law-abiding" members of society.
The most common rationalization for those crimes committed under "public policies" is the notion that these policies are the "will of the people" expressed through their elected representatives. But even if some aggregated expression of will could indeed be established by this process — and this is extremely dubious — there can be no such thing as the capacity of a group of people to change the content of law or vote away the rights of people. Here we can again turn to Spooner, who notes that:
"if justice be a natural principle, then it is necessarily an immutable one; and can no more be changed — by any power inferior to that which established it — than can the law of gravitation, the laws of light, the principles of mathematics, or any other natural law or principle whatever; and all attempts or assumptions, on the part of any man or body of men — whether calling themselves governments, or by any other name — to set up their own commands, wills, pleasure, or discretion, in the place of justice, as a rule of conduct for any human being, are as much an absurdity, an usurpation, and a tyranny, as would be their attempts to set up their own commands, wills, pleasure, or discretion, in the place of any and all the physical, mental, and moral laws of the universe."
