The Probability Broach, chapter 20

The Continental Congress is at a stalemate. Win and Lucy know that John Jay Madison and the Hamiltonians have kidnapped their friends, but they have no proof of it.

However, there’s a bigger plot afoot. The Hamiltonians are planning to invade the North American Confederacy with armies from Win’s world, using nuclear bombs to wipe out any resistance. The good guys have presented reams of evidence for the plot. Surely, the congressional delegates will rise as one to confront this grave threat!

Or not:

Madison smiled nastily. “As you will, sir. Permit me to make a number of salient points, though. First, accepting only for the sake of discussion that all these accusations are correct, I’m afraid there is still nothing you could do about them.”

Jenny looked startled. “Why do you say that? You saw the films!”

He nodded, grinning even more. “Which, in theory, were criminally removed from my possession. However, forget that. If I intended to import foreign soldiers, by your own arguments I’ve done nothing wrong: you are attempting to restrict immigration!” He laughed while the rest of the room buzzed in confusion.

This is an obvious point, and it just makes the good guys look stupid that it didn’t occur to any of them until now.

As we’ve seen in previous chapters, Win and his friends put a huge amount of effort into convincing Congress to meet, so they could bring the Hamiltonian threat to the assembled delegates’ attention. But after all that work, they had no plan for what the next step was supposed to be. When asked if they were advocating a declaration of war, President Jenny Smythe floundered in confusion.

What was the plan, exactly? What were they hoping to persuade Congress to do? In an anarcho-capitalist society with no borders, no standing army, and no means to create either, what defense could you raise against an invasion, even theoretically?

Madison’s next argument further demonstrates the protagonists’ hypocrisy:

Madison affected a sweeping bow. “I’m getting to the meat, sir, but another illustration first: suppose I do intend to use atomic bombs. Who in this room will be the first to move against importation or possession of arms? I remind you that, pistols or nuclear weapons, the principle involved is precisely the same!”

There was even greater commotion; it took longer for Olongo to quiet them down. “Your point, Mr. Madison?”

This is an argument I made earlier, in fact: L. Neil Smith treats nuclear weapons as unthinkable horrors, but he’s a fanatical supporter of the right to bear all other kinds of weapons. There’s no explanation in the text for why he draws this distinction. Now the villain is pointing out his own author’s inconsistency, and no one is able to muster a reply.

I can only assume that Smith couldn’t think of a principled reason to treat nukes differently from other weapons, so he was attempting a rhetorical rugpull. By putting the pro-nuclear-weapons position in the mouth of his villain, he was hoping that readers would reflexively reject it without giving it any further thought.

The Hamiltonian was beaming. “Ah. I simply want you all to remember, over the coming weeks, that this highly-principled anarchism you’re so proud of renders you helpless to deter even threats of the most desperate nature. A more rational social order will have no such problems. That is why, in the end, we will triumph.”

…Congress died with a whimper. There was nothing else it could do. Weeping openly, Jenny declared, “Individual rights are sacred. We can’t touch you, John Jay Madison, without destroying everything we believe. Perhaps, in the end, you will destroy us, but let it be said that we refrained from murdering the Confederacy ourselves… I will hear a motion to adjourn.”

Philosophical debates are standard for utopian political novels of all stripes. (I had one in mine, too.) But it was a bold choice to have a debate that the villain wins.

This book was supposed to persuade readers that anarchy is the superior choice. That was Smith’s reason for writing it. Yet the villain announces that the NAC’s system is fatally flawed… and the text, apparently, agrees that this is correct.

Despite knowing exactly what Madison’s plan is, the North American Confederacy proves helpless to defend itself. No one tries to do anything; no one even has a suggestion about what to do. An earlier passage mentioned that one-fourth of the Continental Congress is sapient apes, a group which the Hamiltonians believe should be enslaved or killed. Yet even they sit passively in the face of a looming Hamiltonian invasion.

One supposes Smith wanted this to be seen as praiseworthy. The NAC’s inhabitants are so steadfast in their devotion to individual rights, they won’t try to restrict what the villain does, even if it means their own destruction.

But, to approach the question from a different angle: What’s the point of rights if they can’t be defended against people who would violate them? If the NAC nobly refuses to fight for its own existence, and thereby ends up being bombed into rubble and conquered, ushering in a thousand years of slavery and oppression for all their descendants… is that a good result?

There’s a lesson here about why nation-states exist, a lesson that L. Neil Smith refuses to admit even though he has his villain state it succinctly. Nation-states are the means for people to pool their resources and coordinate their efforts, to provide public goods which no individual can supply on their own, but which everyone benefits from.

Infrastructure is the classic example—roads, bridges, tunnels. Another one is collective defense. Going back to the dawn of civilization, nation-states have hired police and raised armies to enforce laws and protect their people from crime and violence. Without that capability, you’re helpless against any gang of power-hungry thugs that comes along. This could be an outside invasion from a more ruthlessly authoritarian society, or it could be a homegrown group of criminals that decides to get organized and seize power over their neighbors. Either way, it works out to the same thing.

Smith makes a big deal of how his citizens go armed to protect themselves, but two guys with guns beat one guy with a gun. Any invading force that has better organization and bigger weapons will roll right over them. The NAC’s only recourse is to just hope that no such force ever shows up.

In other words, a free society without any kind of government is an unstable equilibrium. Either pick a government that you can live with, perhaps by instituting democracy and imposing constitutional limits on its power—or refuse to do so and risk being conquered, ending up with a much worse government than you would have chosen for yourself.

Even though he thought he was writing a novel to extol the virtues of anarchy, Smith’s story demonstrates that point to perfection. If not for a convenient deus ex machina which will arrive shortly, his peaceful and prosperous North American Confederacy would have been conquered and subjugated by the first horde of barbarians that shows up at the gates.

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Other posts in this series:

• The Probability Broach