Answering Critics

by Jessica Geary

There are arguments flying within the liberty community, especially amongst anarchists. Part of the problem is linguistic, people poorly define terminologies and will even bend definitions into pretzels in order to fit their views together if they do not naturally mesh.

Let’s start with definitions. Government: a group of people who, supposedly, have the sanction of its citizens to use force to provide for a common defense and protection of its citizens rights. State: an area where people live under a common governmental system or the system itself. Private sector: the sphere of society which is productive and is non governmental, the citizenry of a state and their means of production. Public sector: the sphere of society that encapsulates the government bureaucracies and their employees who “control” the private sector. Socialism: an economic system based on public ownership of all resources and methods of production.  Capitalism: an economic system based on private control over resources and the methods of production. These are the definitions I, myself, work from.

For all those who advocate socialism I have been wondering, what world do you people live in? Do you honestly think your ideas will lead to anarchism? How? Are you going to destroy all those who disagree with you? Most people believe they have the right to their possessions and to deny human nature will just end with failure. People aren’t going to change their natures simply because you think it’s wrong. Why not base the idea of anarchy on what exists, self interest, instead of all the fantasy land ideology? Your idea of destroying all hierarchy leads to an even worse one, complete subjugation of the individual to the collective. In a stateless society how will you ensure compliance to such an idea? What is your alternative?

Now my idea of the employer employee relationship is that it’s mutually beneficial, I’ve been called naive for this. As far as being naive, I have worked and been on my own since I was a teenager, that’s 18 yrs now. I’ve worked in a lot of different places, I’ve worked off the books and on, that includes certain gray to black market gigs, I’ve lived in 7 states, all kinds of housing and apartments including  squats, I overcame a drug problem and I’m raising 3 girls, at this point any naivetè I possess is minimal at best.

I also considered myself a socialist for years. The thing is, the more I saw of the results of my ideas, such as public housing, the more I saw them failing. As far as the people who supposedly believed the same things, the more socialists I met the more I realized that most of them were from upper middle class backgrounds and they just hated their parents.  More often than not it was their way of rebelling against them. Sometimes, more simply, they hated themselves and turned that against the world.

I come from a blue collar background, my experience with the actual proletariat leads me to believe that their idealization by the socialist community is completely undeserved. You seem to believe that being a worker equals goodness. Those “poor workers” are just as greedy as their bosses and many times they are just as nasty. The truth is that there are good people in all classes and bad people in all classes.

And guess what, those poor workers don’t want pity from a bunch nannies who think that they need to be taken care of. They couldn’t care less about you socialists who think they need you to free them. They don’t think they are slaves, but they will take advantage of your ideas to get more for themselves. The something for nothing syndrome. Hence human nature wins again. Maybe you guys don’t know it, but there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. The piper must always be paid and I’d rather pay cash than pay with my freedom. That’s just me, I’m stubborn that way.