Absolute freedom of speech seems essential in an anarcho-capitalist society. But is this really the case?

In an anarcho-capitalist society not just the initiation of violence is forbidden but also the threat thereof. The state necessarily initiates violence and threatens to do so, and clearly this is not compatible with a free society.

If you then live in a free anarcho-capitalist society and at the same time advocate and campaign for say the welfare state , for example by teaching it in schools, by writing and having published articles, books and so on, then by exercising this freedom of speech you are essentially threatening the initiation of violence: ‘Once I have the chance, once I have enough sympathizers, then I will rob all you guys.’ (so I presuppose here that these advocates would not just want to establish a welfare state with like-minded people but would want to force others to live under it as well)

So the paradox is that an exercise of your freedom of speech (namely to advocate the welfare state) should be forbidden because it in fact is the threat of the initiation of violence in the long run. If this is the case then only books, articles and so on that advocate anarcho-capitalism are allowed and anything that goes against these principles should be forbidden.

This would include the works of nearly all political and social philosophers, (novelists etc. might be an exception because they can say that it is just the characters in the book that advocate non-anarcho-capitalism, or it is the interpretation of the reader that sees non-anarcho-capitalist thoughts in the story)

Anyway, this seems pretty totalitarian and since totalitarianism is pretty much the last thing you would think about when it comes to a free society, there seems to be a paradox here, an apparent contradiction.

But where is the flaw in the argument that gives rise to the paradox? Is advocating and campaigning for a welfare state in fact a case of threatening the initiation of violence? If not, then one of the premises of the argument fails to obtain and the paradox would not arise.

There seem to be two extremes here when it comes to seeing spoken or written words as (threaths of) violence: on the one extreme there is the idea that even indirect threats such as those used for example by political philosophers who advocate a welfare state and campaign for it are seen as wrong from tthe standpoint of he non-aggression principle. If so then their works should be forbidden, which invokes memories of book burning and so on and sounds at least at first sight wrong and paradoxical.

And on the other extreme we have the idea that we can only call something (a threat of) the initiation of violence if the person himself is directly physically threatening the use of violence against another: but this would seem to absolve people like Hitler and George W. Bush, as well as people who pay others to murder their wives, since they likely never physically threatened anybody.

But intuitively at least they do seem to be criminals and thus letting them go free seems like an absurd conclusion as well. But at least the latter option would prevent the paradox of anarcho-capitalist totalitarianism from arising. If we take the former, there still seems to be a way out of the paradox.

Could it be the case that the paradox arises because we are simply not yet used to seeing state violence (and the threat thereof) as in essence the same thing as the (threat of the initiation of) violence of private criminals like robbers, murderers and so on? In this case, while we would know intellectually that there is no relevant distinction, we simply don’t experience it that way yet.

If this is the case, then it seems natural that while we would immediately agree about forbidding the threat of the initiation of violence by private criminals, we still are not used to seeing the threat of the initiation of state violence in the same way and thus to us forbidding books that advocate the welfare state sounds quite totalitarian but in fact is not. It is the logical conclusion of our principles and we just have to take time to emotionally accept and adjust to it, to the idea that the morality of anarcho-capitalism is an Absolute one: it is the only correct morality and it is of supreme importance. If so, then the paradox disappears because once we are used to the idea it no longer sounds totalitarian.

The threat of violence (not violence itself) is a very thin line, and I think you have blurred it.

Quote:

If you then live in a free anarcho-capitalist society and at the same time advocate and campaign for say the welfare state , for example by teaching it in schools, by writing and having published articles, books and so on, then by exercising this freedom of speech you are essentially threatening the initiation of violence

There is no paradox here. If you *think* that you are going to rob people (i.e., welfare state via coercion), there is no crime (i.e., no victim). If you talk about it, there is no crime. If you *do* it, there is a crime. No, where does "threat" come in? In a free society, each person will have to prove that they were threatened (or that a threat of force existed). If Joe is standing on a street corner shouting to passers-by, "We need to initiate forced taxes to support welfare!" then Jane has to prove (to her DRO, to her private security firm, to an arbitrator, to her community, etc.) that indeed Joe has threatened to use force. Perhaps his speech does threaten force - it will be up to the community to decide. If Joe writes articles and gives lectures and teaches at schools, all the while promoting his welfare message, Jane might have an easier time convincing her DRO/security/community that a threat exists - it will still be up to the community to decide.

The idea behind liberty in a social environment (i.e., where there is more than one human) is that each human can do whatever they want so long as they don't infringe upon the same right of anyone else. There is no paradox here, yet this is identical to the free speech quandary: if I am not free to kill my neighbor, then I am not free; if I am not free to talk about ideas involving coercion, then I am not free. I say that in both cases you are free, by the definition of "free" which has to be limited only enough to assure that everyone is free.

Does that make sense?