Excerpted from:

Turtles All The Way Down

By Stefan Molyneux

According to an apocryphal story, a well-known scientist was describing to an audience how the Earth orbits the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits the centre of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of his lecture, a little old lady got up and said: “This is all nonsense. Everybody knows that the world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant turtle.”

The scientist smiled and said, “I see. Can you tell, me, then, what is the turtle standing on?”

“You’re very clever, young man,” replied the old lady with a prim smile. “But it’s turtles all the way down!”

This story neatly captures the logical foolishness of the “Infinite Regression.” It is a tale pregnant with meaning for Libertarians, for we face some version of it almost every time we open our mouths.

The appeal to political authority in all its forms is really an attempt to bypass the black hole of Infinite Regression.

Here’s a pro-state argument we are all intimately familiar with:

Bad people like to use force to prey on good people.
Good people require a government to protect them from bad people.
This government, in order to be the final arbiter, must possess overwhelming force.

The logical madness is clear. Since bad people like using force to prey on good people, and the government is the greatest concentration of force in society, it stands to inevitable reason that bad people will use the government to prey on good people.

This is the central problem of Infinite Regression: who will watch the watchers? There is, of course, no rational or political answer.

The appeal to political authority in all its forms is really an attempt to bypass the black hole of Infinite Regression.

Here’s a pro-state argument we are all intimately familiar with:

Bad people like to use force to prey on good people.
Good people require a government to protect them from bad people.
This government, in order to be the final arbiter, must possess overwhelming force.

The logical madness is clear. Since bad people like using force to prey on good people, and the government is the greatest concentration of force in society, it stands to inevitable reason that bad people will use the government to prey on good people.

This is the central problem of Infinite Regression: who will watch the watchers? There is, of course, no rational or political answer.

Rejecting all “arguments” based on the Infinite Regression fallacy can unleash prodigious creativity. What has been sometimes called the single greatest idea in the history of the world arose from Darwin’s failure to be impressed by the Infinite Regression paradoxes of creationism. Free markets – and economics in general – arose from the failure of Ricardo and Smith to be impressed by the Infinite Regression argument that the nobility should manage resources on behalf of everyone else.

In the realm of morality, the problems of Infinite Regression are, literally, genocidal. The fantasy that a minority of men can justly force obedience from everyone else is responsible for more deaths than any other single delusion. In the realm of morality and the use of force, there is simply no solution to the problems of Infinite Regression. A stateless society is the only answer.

Any fundamentally rational philosophy must reject arguments that pass anywhere near the black hole of Infinite Regression. Appeals to the “virtuous violence” of the state instantly self-destruct, because of Infinite Regression. Demands for “obedience to gods” instantly self-destruct, since there must then be an infinite chain of more powerful gods, all obeying the “god above,” which would instantly result in a truly bureaucratic cosmic paralysis. Even merely mortal parents who attempt to justify their commandments through appeals to power, biology or position fall into the gravity well of Infinite Regression.

The three traditional power centers – politicians, priests and most parents – all justify their authority based on Infinite Regression fantasies. If mankind continues to believe in any moral authority except logical consistency and evidence, we will continue to sail blithely over the edge of the old lady’s imaginary plate, falling forever.

As the turtles descend, so do we.