The Probability Broach, chapter 21

Chapter 21 of TPB begins with another fictional quote, this one attributed to “Rosalie Wilderlane” (a reference to real-life libertarian author Rose Wilder Lane, who was also the daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder):

The source of every human misery, the cause of every war, the great issue before every society for six thousand years has been the question, “Who shall have the power?” The significance of the Whiskey Rebellion is that, for the first time in history, individuals created a civilization in which the answer to that question is “Nobody!”

Impossible.

As I’ve observed before, power is like water. It can’t be squeezed out of existence; it will always take the shape of the society it exists within. In a democracy, power rests with the will of the majority. In capitalism, it’s held by those who have the most money, which they can convert into material resources or into influence to compel others to do their bidding.

Smith clearly doesn’t believe that no one in this society has power. He’s shown massive skyscrapers, road networks, irrigation projects, and other monumental works. The creation of these logically requires some person or group of people with the ability to control and coordinate the labor of thousands or millions of others. That’s what power is. If it’s literally impossible to have war or oppression because no one can exert any control over anyone else, it should also be impossible to build roads, bridges and skyscrapers.

In the last chapter, Madison’s turncoat ally Freeman K. Bertram gave Ed and Lucy a clue to where their friends Ed and Clarissa are being held hostage. For some reason (because the main characters do everything), rather than calling local security to handle it, they’re going themselves. They’re taking the fastest means of transport available in the North American Confederacy, a vehicle used only in emergencies:

Attendants hustled us out of the hoverbuggy toward a stubby metal cylinder the size of a Volkswagen bus. The nose was sandblasted and missing paint, the stern scorched and blistered. Between them was an oval hatch, and the legend Columbiad. Then we were through the six-inch hull, being belted into deeply cushioned seats. The machine’s interior was almost featureless: two couches in tandem facing a Telecom screen, no windows, and, when the door slammed shut like a coffin lid, dimly lit by a few instrument pilots.

Smith tells us that this method of transit is called a “cannonball”. It consists of a tunnel with the air pumped out to create a vacuum, and liquid hydrogen and oxygen poured in behind the vessel and ignited to accelerate it to immense speed. Win quips, “Now I knew what a rifle shell feels like.”

As the vehicle began moving ponderously, a man appeared in the screen, head and shoulders, wearing coveralls like the attendants who’d sealed us in. “Columbiad, Traffic Control. We’ll have you chambered in a moment. Please don’t touch any controls, keep your arms and legs within the couches. You’ll be pulling close to six G’s. Questions?”

The vehicle slanted downward ominously, rocking from side to side. “Where will this frammis dump us out?” Lucy asked unperturbed.

The controller glanced down at his keyboard. “Right now you’re simply routed for LAP. You have a specific destination in mind?”

“How about eighty-nine Tucker Circle?” I asked sarcastically, trying to ignore my heartbeat. He punched his console, paused, punched some more, then looked up.

“We’ll shunt you into the underground system, to the south-east corner of that block. Be prepared to exit quickly—I could only get a thirteen-second window between two scheduled trains. Your restraints will release when you drop below five mph, door-releases to your left will be illuminated. Good luck. Keep your hands and feet inside the couches.”

This may be a nitpick, but I have to say it: Did no one ask Win and Lucy to sign liability releases before getting into this contraption?

The text itself compares this mode of transport to being shot out of a giant cannon. Even if nothing goes wrong and the vessel doesn’t explode catastrophically, or miss its target and splatter them across the landscape, the immense G-force could certainly cause a fatal heart attack or a stroke in someone who’s in poor health. And to cap it all off, when they land, they only have thirteen seconds to get out—presumably before they get hit by a train!

I don’t care how advanced the NAC is, this must be an incredibly dangerous way to travel. Even if they have no laws governing whether this or any other form of transportation can exist, we know they have civil liability suits against the makers of harmful products. Smith brought this up himself as a solution to how an anarcho-capitalist society could put a stop to pollution. If one of these cannonballs blows up, shouldn’t the passengers’ next of kin sue this company out of existence?

An invisible hippopotamus suddenly draped its full weight the length of my body. I tried screaming, but couldn’t even breathe. My bruised arm began burning; I couldn’t move to see whether it hung over the edge of the couch. Too late anyway, I figured. I found myself wishing I’d taken time to arrange certain private parts a little more carefully. I was going to have bruises in some strange places.

…Another sudden lurch and the deceleration eased off. Suddenly we were in an ordinary subway tunnel. We rocked, gasping and screeching, to a halt. I let the belts fall from me, saw Lucy hit the door, and followed her into the coolness of a shopping center, up the escalator as fast as our elbows could push us, and out, blinking in the sunlight.

I’d left my coat in North Dakota. I wondered who was paying for the ride.

I’m assuming L. Neil Smith just put this part in because he thought it was cool, but it says a lot about how his anarcho-capitalist society manages risk. Namely, it doesn’t.

Libertarians are supposed to be against initiating force. In any vaguely rational society, that should include not subjecting your neighbors to unreasonable risk of harm. If you build a shooting range on your property, you should have to build walls and backstops, and not just assume that no stray bullet will ever miss the target and crash through the windows of the kindergarten next door.

The NAC as Smith depicts it is a far wilder and more chaotic place. It’s a society where anyone can do anything, regardless of the danger it poses to others. Individual freedom reigns supreme, to the extent that you can swing your fist regardless of whether someone else’s face is in the way.

We saw this in the chapter about highway safety, or rather the lack thereof. You can drive a car powered by nuclear reactors, speed at hundreds of miles an hour, or drive drunk without a problem. But this chapter makes the problem even more glaringly obvious.

I mentioned the personal liability of the travelers who willingly board these vehicles, but there’s also the collective risk imposed on everyone by a means of transport that amounts to firing giant artillery shells across continental distances. What if one of these cannonballs misses its target and comes crashing through your roof? What if they collide with one of those big fancy zeppelins? You think people complain about the noise and hazards of living near an airport—imagine what it would do to your property values to live underneath their firing trajectory!

Who on earth built this? How did they test it? How did they fend off the inevitable onslaught of complaints and objections, in a society where every angry NIMBY is armed and has the power to take justice into their own hands? Smith neglects these questions for the sake of cool, which only highlights how deeply unrealistic his utopia is.

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Other posts in this series:

• The Probability Broach