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.Once you grasp this fundamental shift in thinking in understanding then you can flip over tothe other side of the table and use your real creative mojo to start solving the problem.In this way, you can ask yourself, If I really wanted to sell collective defense services to a group,how could I best address and alleviate their fears that I would turn into some kind of localdictator? What do you think? If you could personally make $10 million a year by solving this problem, whatwould you come up with? How would you address and alleviate people s fears that you would taketheir money, go buy an army, and rule over them?There are as many creative and productive answers as there are people interested in the problem here s one that occurs to me, just off the top of my head&I would deposit $5 million in a third-party bank account, and offer it as free payment to anyone whocould prove that I was not fulfilling my contract with my customers to the letter.I would publish myaccounts and inventory as widely as possible, and give free access to anyone who wanted to come byand inspect my business and its holdings.In this way, people could rest assured that I was not amassing some secret army of blackhelicopters and men in robot suits. Ah, you may say, but what if no one wanted to come forward and perform these kinds ofinspections? Again, that is easy to solve.I would just pay an organization $1 million a year to audit my business and promise them that if they ever found me accumulating any kind of secret army or weaponry,then I would then pay them the $5 million in the third party bank account.In this way, externalaudits would be certain to be performed, and those auditors would have every incentive to turnover every filing cabinet in search of a miniature robot army. Ah, you may say, but what if you were secretly paying this auditing organization $2 million a yearto only pretend to audit your business? Well, here we are starting to get into some very strange economic territory, which would be utterlyunsustainable in a free market, because my company would then be out $5 million up front, bepaying $1 million for an auditing company, and then a further $2 million to produce fake audits such a company would never be able to offer competitive rates relative to a company that operatedon the up and up.35 | P a g e But even if this were possible, it would still be an easy problem to solve, by simply paying fivecompanies to perform audits if necessary paying $5 million a year out of a profit of $10 million ayear still leaves you $5 million ahead! Ah, but what if.? We all know that this game can go on for forever and a day the mindset that I strongly urge you totry and get yourself into, however, is that you do not have to contract with anyone who is not willingto satisfy your desires!RELATIVE RISKWhat happens if no entrepreneur is able to offer you a deal that successfully calms your fears?Why, then you do not have to take any deal at all. Ah, you may then say, but then I am leaving myself open to the risk of foreign invasion! Well, that is very true, but clearly, if you reject all offers from entrepreneurs who want to protectyou, because you feel that their protection carries too much risk, then clearly you prefer the risk ofinvasion to the risk of protection.With that in mind, you may well choose one entrepreneur s scheme not because it is risk-free, butrather because it is less risky than the risk of invasion.If you wish to be presented with a risk-free choice, then unfortunately you wish to be presentedwith a different kind of universe than the one we inhabit, since risk is an inevitable and natural partof life.With that in mind, let us turn to one of the first great objections to the idea of a stateless society,which is collective defense, to provide an example of the methodologies we will use in this book.COLLECTIVE DEFENSE: AN EXAMPLE OF METHODOLOGYIdeally, invasions should be prevented rather than repelled, just as illnesses should be preventedrather than cured.The strongest conceivable case for anarchism is that a stateless society would by its very natureprevent invasion, rather than merely possess the ability to violently repel it.So first, before we figure out how to repel an invasion, let us look at what an invasion is actuallydesigned to achieve.36 | P a g e WHY INVADE?Let us imagine a land where there are two farms, owned by Bob and Jim respectively.Bob is arapacious and nasty fellow, who wishes to expand his farm and make more money.To the east of Bob is Jim s farm, which is tidy, efficient, and productive, with a wide variety of cowsand chickens and neatly-planted fields.To the west of Bob is an untamed wilderness full of bears and wolves and coyotes and mosquitoesand swamps and all other sorts of unpleasant and dangerous things.From the standpoint of mere practical considerations, how can Bob most efficiently expand his farmand increase his income?Surely it would be to invest in a few guns, head east, and take over Jim s farm.For a very smallinvestment, Bob ends up with a functioning and productive farm, ready to provide him with milk,eggs and crops.On the other hand, Bob could choose to go west, into the untamed wilderness, and try to cull anumber of dangerous predators, drain the swamps, hack down and uproot all the embedded treesand bushes.After a year or two of backbreaking labor, he may have carved out a few additionalacres for himself an investment that would scarcely seem worth it.If Bob wants to expand, and cares little about ethics, he will invade Jim s farm and take it over,because he will be taking command of an already-existing system of exploitation and production.Thus, we can see that the act of invading a neighboring territory is primarily motivated by thedesire to take over an existing productive system.If that productive system is not in place, then themotivation for invasion evaporates
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