Libertarian Party of Jefferson County, Colorado

“If men were angels, no government would be necessary,” wrote James Madison. “If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.” From this basic insight, Madison then went on help forge a Constitution whose “checks and balances” would, he believed, effectively curb potential abuses of government power.

In his latest paper, Independent Institute Senior Fellow Robert Higgs examines some of the key assumptions that underlie Madison’s analysis. Unlike Madison, philosopher John Locke, and the late economist Mancur Olson, however, Higgs is skeptical that a limited government, protective of individual liberty, is sustainable.

Higgs’s argument, however, never lapses into the utopian assertion that a stateless society would be without problems. Rather, he argues, a stateless society—or, to put it in positive terms, a society of self-government—would have fewer problems than a society under a state. There are two basic reasons behind his argument. “[F]irst, the most vicious people in society will tend to gain control of the state,” Higgs writes, “and, second, by virtue of this control over the state’s powerful engines of death and destruction. They will wreak vastly more harm than they ever could have caused outside the state.”

“My arguments in support of self-government, as opposed to society under a state, may have little point, of course: if people do not choose the state, but as I think, simply have it imposed on them, then it makes no practical difference that the state is unnecessary to solve nay particular kind of problem and that life without the state would be superior,” Higgs continues. “Here, however, I have tried only to show how we may think more clearly about the choice between a society under the state and a society composed of self-governing individuals. Assuming that we really had such a choice,” he concludes, “the better option seems to me fairly obvious.”

“If Men Were Angles: The Basic Analytics of the State versus Self-government,” by Robert Higgs (7/11/07)

Neither Liberty nor Safety: Fear, Ideology, and the Growth of Government, by Robert Higgs

Anarchy and the Law: The Political Economy of Choice, edited by Edward P. Stringham

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