Dissecting the Mad Max scenario

Article by Colonel Nogov on Aug. 14, 2015

Sooner or later when talking with a statist they’ll put forward the Mad Max scenario as their imagined version of anarchy.  This is extremely amusing to me because what they’re putting forward is what exists today, calling it anarchy, and denouncing it as horrible.  And not seeing the irony.

In the Mad Max scenarios, there’s always some catastrophic event that’s happened.  Often times the collapse of a socialist state, but whatever the event, all the sudden resources are extremely scarce.  It’s never a scenario where resources are abundant and people are sitting around fat and happy.  Which is what would happen if markets were left free and there wasn’t a gang of people called government who taxed (extorted) the rest.

So, apparently because resources are now extremely scarce and people are fighting over them, this is somehow what anarchy looks like.  As if nation states never go to war over resources.  In the Mad Max scenario, it’s always one group fighting with another group.  But within the groups there is cooperation.  This sound almost like …hmm…. one nation state fighting another nation state.  They just refuse to recognize it as such.

If Anarchy, in the minds of statists, equals violence and chaos and man against man, dog eat dog, survival of the fittest, why isn’t that what’s taking place in their imagined scenario?  They’re obviously not describing an anarchistic society, they’re just describing the world as it exists today on a micro scale.

If resources are as extremely scarce, as portrayed in the Mad Max scenarios, people are going to fight over them.  No amount of government or non-government is going to stop that.

What anarchists are putting forward is that these scenarios will become non-existent over time.  Free markets and free people will create an abundance of food and products and services.  The increase in prosperity will end the need for people to fight over resources.  Resources will always be finite, but that doesn’t mean scarcity.  The evidence for the power of free markets is overwhelming at this point, if you refuse to see it, that’s just willful ignorance.  Government is a destroyer of free markets.  Government is a destroyer of resources.  Government is nothing but a drag on civilization not the glue that holds it together.  We’ll get along much better without it.

roadwarrior