The Probability Broach, chapter 24

In the final chapter of TPB, L. Neil Smith is still wrapping up loose ends. He says that the scientists are mass-producing their Probability Broach jammer, selling the device everywhere to block future incursions from unfriendly universes.

Because it seems like a point against his ideal anarcho-capitalist society that it was helpless to defend itself and was only saved by accident, he has Win Bear offer another last-minute saving throw: even if the villains had enacted their invasion plot, they still would have failed in the end.

But even if Madison had gotten everything he wanted from SecPol, I now think he would have lost anyway. Most Confederates would have taken to the hills, fought for centuries if necessary, rather than surrender to tyranny. And nobody in this crazy quilt of a country has the authority to surrender. Nobody. Eventually that would have driven Madison or his successors nuts. As it is, the few hypothetical surviving Federalists have other problems: their leaders are dead. People like Federalists need leaders. Confederates don’t. That’s why they’ll always win.

Well, if it makes you feel better to tell yourself that. Personally, it strikes me as a hollow consolation to say, “We wouldn’t really have lost the war. We just would have had all our major cities nuked, most of our territory conquered, and the ragged, irradiated bands of survivors would have fled into the wilderness to scratch out a meager existence while waging a centuries-long guerrilla struggle against their tyrannical oppressors!”

In another wrap-up paragraph, Win sorrowfully relates that Ed Bear, who he’s come to think of as a brother, is leaving Earth for good.

Win says it only belatedly occurred to him to wonder why Lucy, even at 136 years old, “was the only gray-haired little old lady” he’s met in this world. It turns out that she used to be an asteroid engineer, “jockeying rocks like Ceres and the Martian moons into locations and shapes that people prefer”—until an accident in space caused her to be blasted with a near-fatal dose of radiation.

Advanced medical technology saved her life, but she had to postpone anti-aging treatment for several years. In that time, she moved to Earth, met Ed, and fell in love. Once she’s young again, she and Ed are going back to the stars together: “toward a million ice-cold rocks just waiting to be turned into gold mines”.

And I’ll miss Lucy, for all her ridiculous advice and uncalled-for opinions. Just this afternoon, she was at it again.

“But Lucy,” I said, exasperated as usual, “you can’t call Americans warlike, exactly. We went to all kinds of trouble to avoid war. More, sometimes, than we should have.”

“And still managed ten or eleven real good ones!” she snorted. “That, plus all your rules and regulations, put you a hundred years behind us and at about three percent of our standard of living.” She rolled a cigar in her fingers, listening to the tobacco. “Anyway, I never said your people are warlike, Winnie. People don’t cause wars, governments do. Eliminate governments—hell, just eliminate conscription and taxation—and you eliminate war. Simple as that!”

“Bullshit!… You anarchists managed plenty of wars on your own. Look at the War in Europe, or the one with the Czar.”

“Whoa there, boy! The last war we fought as a nation was in Mexico, and we were still the old United States, then. The Confederacy ain’t a nation, and it doesn’t fight wars.”

“Oh? Well, who does, then?”

“Governments, son, like I said. ‘Twas a Prussian government decided to gobble up Europe. Same with the Czar in Antarctica. Every fight we’ve stumbled into has been that way, from the Revolution to this silly thing with the Hamiltonians: individuals tryin’ to stop what some damn fool government started.”

This sounds like a noble aspiration—peace on earth, no more war, no more killing—except that Smith’s own plot shows it’s false.

As you may remember, the North American Confederacy did get involved in this world’s version of World War 1. They assembled a force called the “Thousand Airship Flight” to invade Europe, defeating the Prussian army using advanced weapons such as “Goddard rockets”.

Later on, the NAC also engaged in a war with the Russian Czar, first fighting his forces in Antarctica, then winning a naval battle at the Bering Strait. Even at the Continental Congress, we heard from a faction called the “Neoimperialists“, who want the NAC to mobilize to destroy any governments left in the world.

Heavily-armed volunteer legions? Air forces firing missiles? Naval fleets defending the seas? First strikes to overthrow unfriendly states? All that sure sounds like war to me. But Lucy denies it, based on a semantic sleight of hand: only governments fight wars, so if you abolish government, you get rid of war. Even if it looks like war and sounds like war, it’s not, because her definition says so!

That may satisfy a staunch anarcho-capitalist, but it’s not likely to convince anyone who doesn’t already share the author’s premises. Even Win (for once) points out the fallacy of it.

Smith, through Lucy, insists that only governments have a reason to fight wars. This ignores the many instances through history where private entities unleashed organized violence: whether it’s imperialist trading companies who colonized other lands in the name of profit, or drug cartels who fight street battles over turf, or religious crusaders who set off to conquer the infidels in the name of faith, or capitalist business owners who hire armed thugs to kill striking workers.

Did any of these human-rights outrages happen in the NAC’s alternate history? How could they not, if there’s no government and no law to prevent them? What would stop a robber baron from hiring mercenaries to just take some land he wanted for himself? Or out-of-work mercenary firms from looting a city or turning to piracy?

It’s true that governments often go to war for bad reasons (as we’ve repeatedly seen under Republican presidents), and we should deplore that. But you can’t just stop there and conclude that governments increase the net amount of violence in the world. You also have to ask what conflicts didn’t happen because states compelled aggrieved parties to come to the bargaining table, whereas a power vacuum might have led to an armed conflict. (A list of U.N. peacekeeping missions might be a good place to start looking.)

Smith doesn’t want to engage in this kind of nuanced analysis. His ideology is strictly one-dimensional: Whatever the other side does is war, and therefore bad; whatever we do is not war, and therefore good. Ironically, this kind of uncritical black-and-white thinking has led to more wars than anything else.

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Other posts in this series:

• The Probability Broach