Almost every libertarian has been confronted with such exclamations as, “But surely we need government to provide “X”!
Inspired by such fearless thinkers as Walter Block (especially his great book Defending the Undefendable), LvMI Forum members do not shy away from confronting such issues head-on. Here are some threads where some of the thorniest topics are grappled with.
- Norbert Klamann asks, “How can a free economy build roads and railways?“
- Vienna Sausage brings up vaccination in “Free markets, Policy, and H1N1“
- Mickanomics asks, “Can street cleaners evolve in a free market?“
- TelfordUS raises the issue of “Cartels in an anarcho-capitalist society“
- In related threads, Eric considers Defense in anarchy” and Democracy for Breakfast asks, “What would prevent warfare… in Rothbard’s Anarcho-Capitalist society?”
- Scott F asks if libertarians should make an exception for the post office (boy, is that one a softball!).
- Capitalist wonders how a theoretical anti-semitic neighbor would be dealt with in a free society.
- And Alimentarius inquires into the issue of Death threats in a libertarian society.
Have a “stumper” for informed libertarians? Have a “Blockean” insight to add to the mix? Either way, sign up, log in, and join the fray!
{ 30 comments }
Sounds like a party!
Yes, the street cleaners thread. Also knows as the “why don’t free market roads work in a non-free market?” thread. Or, as the “a polka dot express way to the moon does not exist, therefore, the free market fails” thread. Finally, as “the difference between rape and non-rape is a matter of degree” thread. Brings back memories.
Here’s a “new idea,” at least new when first presented to the Austrian School, over thirty years ago, and with which Walter Block himself expressed “agreement and congratulations.”
Taking from the rich to give to the poor can not reduce but only increase income inequality.
For the reasoning behind it, see
http://econotrashtalk.org/#The_Forbidden_Theory_of_Redistribution
A major impediment to me being a Libertarian concerns the environmental/sociological changes that have occurred between 1800 and now. As an introduction to my concerns; Fredrick Jackson Turner declared the Western Frontier “closed” in the late 1800s. Briefly, what this mean was that people could no longer migrate into “new” land. The ability of people to migrate out of population centers into the “new” lands “solved” many sociological issues. Also low population densities at that time meant that many environmental issues, such as pollution, were “fixed” by mother nature and not through human action, which is now required.
I will have to admit, that I am not well versed, in Libertarian thought as presented in this blog; but in my casual reads by other Libertarians it appears that Libertarian thought has not adapted to the the growth of environmental/population issues resulting from the west being “Closed”.
Let me try to explain very briefly. First, growing population uses greater (limited) resources. Second, more and more people in limited space creates issues with managing them. To keep society functioning an entity of some sort must step-in to manage the resources and even (gasp) how people interact.
From my point of view, this has to be the government since private enterprise really wouldn’t be interested in establishing speed limits on roads, building codes, or resolving disputes between neighbors.
Like everyone, I would like to see limited government, but I have not read what I would consider a reasonable presentation of how a Libertarian based society would handle massive numbers of people competing for limited resources. What I have typically read, simply references a mysterious and amorphous black-box that triggers the private sector to valiantly step in when it becomes economic. Black box “solutions” just don’t cut it for me. When the need becomes evident, the reality is that it will be too late for the private sector to step in. We need a proactive not reactive approach to the environment and population.
Isn’t the ‘anti-Semitic neighbour’ a non-issue? It’s his property and he can do what likes.
Steve,
Welcome to LvMI.
“From my point of view, this has to be the government since private enterprise really wouldn’t be interested in establishing speed limits on roads, building codes, or resolving disputes between neighbors.”
Wrong. Wrong. And Wrong.
If you owned a road, why wouldn’t you, Steve R, be interested in establishing speed limits? What if your customers demanded it? What if another road operater implemented it and was driving you out of business? Fact is, we don’t know. Maybe your customers won’t demand it. I think they will. Most people don’t speed and find it frightening and dangerous. (It may not be, but that’s beside the point.) If the people want speed limtis, you will have to deliver them or lose business.
The same logic applies to building codes and disputes between neighbors. If the people demand services, the market always provides them. You will have to find out, has there ever been a service that a great number of people wanted that the market failed to provide for so long that the government was forced to take action? I contend that there is no such thing. Either the government had made it illegal or impossible before stepping in, or the people simply didn’t demand it.
I recommend Block and Hoppe as good sources of infomation on these matters, but there are tons of resources here at LvMI.
Steve R.,
Apparently, most contributors in this blog have are deeply hostile to the environmental movement, which I find unfortunate, because there’s no contradiction between environmental concerns and private property. On the contrary, I’d say they go hand in hand.
You know, nuclear incidents, air pollution, gargantuan projects which destroy habitats and force people to migrate, are more typical of reckless communist governments than greedy capitalist corporations.
What no-one owns, no-one cares about. The best way to preserve the environment is to have most of it reasonably shared out (privatized) and develop some form of worldwide tort law. Alternatively, some natural resources could be co-owned by all humanity, and some use rules could be agreed upon. That’s no vindication of collectivism or the State, it’s just a matter of fencing policies. Equitable exploitation rules would be a kind of virtual fences.
In any case, don’t confuse having laws to having a State, that is, a group of people who claim a monopoly on law creation and enforcement. That’s much of the gist of anarcho-capitalist thought.
Laws are necessary for civilization, but they must result from agreements between all the parties involved. That means top-level legislation would naturally tend to be as minimalistic as international legislation is nowadays. The more detailed regulations (admissible local levels of noise and pollution, arms control policy, freedom of speech, dress codes and so on) would be internal by-laws of private communities people would freely join and leave.
I’m getting into the habit of commenting around here, and I’m not of a libertarian mindset, so perhaps I’ll help fill a role.
LRC and Mises.org are what got me started thinking about society and politics in a serious way. I’m up on the Misesian/Rothbardian rubric and I respect it.
For now, it will have to be “Respectively Disagree”. In fact, I need to research how my beliefs that the free market will not solve many environmental/social problems is legitimate. But then the topic here is “Confronting the “Unconfrontable”. So far I have not heard from the Libertarian side what I believe to be appropriate “proof” that a Libertarian based society could resolve environmental/social problems associate with a post industrial mass society. Convince me. I look forward to reading this blog.
The idea of a nation-state will have to tossed out of the window in this anarcho capitalist society.how many of us are comfortable with no USA existing except as a cultural entity?
Lilburne is right–many fascinating threads in the Mises forum. One that I find of interest is
Estoppel – Argumentation Ethics – Aggression, started by “liberty student”.
Martin OB: “Apparently, most contributors in this blog have are deeply hostile to the environmental movement…â€
That’s not true. Most of us are opposed to junk science promoted as concern for the environment and the methodology of always increasing state power to solve environmental problems.
Martin OB: “The best way to preserve the environment is to have most of it reasonably shared out (privatized) and develop some form of worldwide tort law. Alternatively, some natural resources could be co-owned by all humanity, and some use rules could be agreed upon.â€
I agree. I think the oceans and fishing present an interesting problem. I would appreciate any links to libertarian solutions to that.
Steven R.: “So far I have not heard from the Libertarian side what I believe to be appropriate “proof” that a Libertarian based society could resolve environmental/social problems associate with a post industrial mass society.â€
This site and FEE.org have some excellent articles on that subject. Just search for “environment†on those sites. Libertarians may not be able to offer proof. That depends on how reasonable you are. Libertarians can only provide evidence which we think is proof beyond reasonable doubt, but that is not enough for most environmentalists. There is evidence that the libertarian method of using the courts to protect property owners from damage caused by pollution was effective before the creation of the EPA. FEE has a good article on that.
To Mises, “to take from one group to give to another†was “the essence of the interventionist policy.â€
Human Action, Pp 855-8
And, to Hayek, “It would disingenuous to avoid discussing this issue.”
The Constitution of Liberty, P 306
Is anyone here interested in discussing it?
I don’t see how the environmental movement can go hand in hand with libertarianism. The environmental movement wants to expand the state to stop the industrialists from polluting and to ignore private property rights. The libertarian movement wants to decrease the state and to provide a system in which private property rights can be enforced and retribution can be sought when a polluter violates the private property rights of another.
fundamentalist: At the risk of getting into trouble over the word “All”; all philosophical positions, such as Libertarianism and my point-of-view, depend on certain fundamental principles. For Libertarians, one fundamental premises is “private property”.
However, based on what I have casually read, the concept of “private property” has been taken by some Libertarians to an illogical extreme. Not only that, but it appears that the private sector is entitled to seize (homestead) unclaimed (natural) resources.
My fundamental belief (natural) resources belong to the State. (However, that does not preclude the State from leasing them to the private sector and operating the resource in an economic manner.)
I am sure that the following example has probably been analyzed by the Mises Institute. You have a hypothetical school of fish that migrate from the southern tip of South America to Greenland every year. I fail to understand how this resource can be privatized (homesteaded). Even if privatization occurred, what would stop the owner from simply selling the resource to the point that the fish population vaporizes?
Yes, some owners would operate the fishery on a sustainable yield basis, but others are not so enlightened. Take the money and run.
There have also been calls for privatizing the radio spectrum. First, if we accept that the radio spectrum can be privatized, it then already belongs to the underlying landowner. Second, to take this to a logical extreme – if the radio spectrum can be privatized, by logical extension someone could claim ownership of the sunlight that falls on the earth!
As an aside: Stephan Kinsella had a really good post where he discussed the value of property. In that post he made a very clear distinction between the value of your lot (by itself) and its perceived value based on certain external factors.
This is a very major nuance to the private property debate, that I have observed in action. Many people assert “property rights” that they simply do not possess. For example, what a neighbor does on his property is within his prerogative, but we have some people who seek to manipulate what the neighbor does on their property by claiming that it diminishes owner’s property value.
For example, the property has a coastal view of the ocean, but the neighbor allows a tree to grow in the viewshed. The property owner then demands that the tree be cut down to restore the coastal view from owners’ property. The property owner does NOT have a right to force that neighbor to cut down the tree in order to “protect” the value of owner’s property.
Steve R. “My fundamental belief (natural) resources belong to the State.”
Interesting. On what grounds?
I understand your position on the oceans and fishing. I don’t see a good way to privatize the oceans. Do any libertarians have links to any solutions?
would someone please post the link for hoppe’s seminar on private law on youtube. it’s the best source for information concerning hypothetically what rule of law would look like in an anarchy that i’ve found to date. it would tie nicely into the first couple of comments.
@ the latter part of the thread:
austrian economics offers an alternative to the environmentalist solutions for the environment “problem”. As a side note, dissolving the federal government would rid the world of one of the largest polluters. That’s not saying that the resources freed by this process would not be allocated to other pollutants, but it might lessen the impact somewhat. there is no real conflict between austrian economics and the environment per se because property ownership incentivizes sustainability.
@steve
the em spectrum is privatized in ranges such as 97.2-97.4 on the dial and is owned by radio stations.
the air above private properties which radio waves pass are not owned by the owner of the underlying property because the radio waves don’t affect enjoyment of use of their property, and the first use principle applies to the original transmitter on a given frequency in a given area.
owning the oceans would preserve fish populations by the incentive for future profits of course. people that would “take the money and run” would probably have higher time preferences such as homosexual ffishermen (a rarity these days).
I’m impressed! You’ve mangade the almost impossible.
Steve R,
I have to compliment you on finding some “soft spots” in anarcho-capitalist theory.
1. Unknowned resources.
2. Oceans and fishing.
3. EM spectrum rights.
4. Ownership of a view.
Of the four topics you mentioned, 1,3 and 4 have been analysed and have pretty good counter-arguments demonstrating that they aren’t really a problem. I’ll let others try to answer those (I don’t have time right now).
Topic 2, the difficulties created by oceans and fishing, really is a bit of a hole in anarcho-capitalism. To my knowledge there currently is no really good counter-argument to your concerns. I certainly hope someone can chime in and prove me wrong on this one.
When I get time I’ll have a dig around and see what I can find on the subject. I might even have a crack at solving it myself.
Thanks for the thought-provoking discussion Steve
My fundamental belief (natural) resources belong to the State.
The State is nothing more than a bunch of individuals claiming, by force, a bunch of special privileges for themselves. There’s nothing special about them. Certainly nothing special about them that means they get to have rights that you and I do not.
fundamentalist: I wrote: “My fundamental belief (natural) resources belong to the State.” and you asked “On what grounds?” The short answer is that it is a fundamental corner stone of my thought process whereas the Libertarian position would assert that the State would not be entitled to such a property right.
Matskralc: The State may be nothing more than a bunch of individuals claiming, by force, the ability to rule (manipulate) others. Nevertheless, I have a major problem with some Libertarians (not on this website) who seem to advocate that private entities (corporations) have a “right” to control those that lack economic power. Essentially, they seem to assert that those who have economic power can make the rules and are entitled to the same privileges as the State!
Greenspan even provided an apology for this type of corporate excess. Basically, I have an extreme adverse reaction to what I perceive as a train of thought eventually leading to “corporatism”.
Libertarianism like many philosophies is Utopian. There is the hope that everyone will act rationally in a Libertarian manner. My utopian shortcoming is that the State will act for the benefit of society. However, as our Nation is currently progressing, our non-representing representatives are not making decisions based on what is best for this country. Nevertheless, I try to build my philosophical utopian model. The more debate, the better our respective arguments become.
Libertarianism, at least of the anarchist type, is absolutely not utopian. I believe it to be the most realistic.
Not in the sense of achieving a society free of a far reaching, all encompassing, organized form of plunder, enslavement and murder (state), but in the sense of recognizing that people don’t automatically become wise benevolent altruists who ceaselessly work day and night to achieve the “public good”, once they become an official of the state.
Any worldview that rests on giving the power of life and death to a self selected group of people, where the only prerequisite is that they must be world class liars able to order the murder of babies and still sleep at night, is very utopian.
How hard is it to grasp that politicians are self interested individuals like everyone else and only care about getting reelected. Never mind bureaucrats.
Democracy or not. ALL government is coercion.
And even worse it is coercion by gangsters out to plunder and enrich themselves and their friends.
There is no other form of government. That is government.
Does anyone feel comfortable with people like that “protecting” you, or “conserving” the environment.
The only way that Libertarian/Anarchism can be utopian is in talk of strategy or actually achieving anarchy in any of our lifetimes. But as far as the theory, it is the least utopian of all philosophies that are not just lies and propaganda to conceal true motivations.
Randian/Objectivist/Constitutionalist limited government is utopian.
It is based on the premise that with the right laws, men will be moral. That with the right founding document, government and its agents will be moral.
What it overlooks, even if it was possible (it is not) to make men moral by law, is that without consent, the government cannot be a legitimate moral authority.
And it is impossible to expect permanent and transferable (through birth) consent for a social contract. If I cannot withdraw my consent from a government who acts against what I believe is my best interest, then I am a slave.
So whether you like government, you think we need government, or whether government can be made better, the minute you force your government on me without my consent, you are violating liberty.
And to dispute that, Constitutionalists have to reject the Declaration of Independence, and Randians/Objectivists, the notion of a Galt’s Gulch.
Steve R wrote:
“Libertarianism like many philosophies is Utopian. There is the hope that everyone will act rationally in a Libertarian manner.”
I don’t see it this way at all. It has nothing to do with “hope”.
The logical consequences that can be deduced from the action axiom demonstrate that a free society must lead to human cooperation and the maximisation of the satisfactions of the individuals in society. Furthermore, any restrictions on the freedom of individuals must lower the satisfaction of society’s participants.
Libertarians do not envision human beings changing themselves into more moral creatures in order for their “utopian” society to function. Libertarians believe their “utopian” society will function because of the very nature of humans.
Those who advocate the State believe that human nature is fundamentally flawed and that human cooperation cannot exist in a natural setting. This has been completely refuted in my mind, by the logical conclusions deduced from the action axiom.
what about the fact the this anarcho libertarian society still doesnt exist?. and if did get created somewhere ,then the neighboring state/society wouldnt stop short of attacking and conquering it.human beings seem to abhor a power vacuum.isnt the biggest tyrant always going to win?
Utopia is not under the slightest obligation to produce results: its sole function is to allow its devotees to condemn what exists in the name of what does not. – Jean-Francois Revel
I’m tolerant of libertarianism to the extent that it acts as an organizing force to get stuff done, creating problems for my enemies. As an overall mental habit, though, I find it hard to sustain.
Concerning Libertarians and anarcho-capitalists and the idea that they strive for Utopia, Rothbard addressed this decisively.:
http://mises.org/daily/2616#5
Myth #5: Libertarians are utopians who believe that all people are good, and that therefore state control is not necessary.
Conservatives tend to add that since human nature is either partially or wholly evil, strong state regulation is therefore necessary for society.
This is a very common belief about libertarians, yet it is difficult to know the source of this misconception. Rousseau, the locus classicus of the idea that man is good but is corrupted by his institutions, was scarcely a libertarian. Apart from the romantic writings of a few anarcho-communists, whom I would not consider libertarians in any case, I know of no libertarian or classical liberal writers who have held this view.
On the contrary, most libertarian writers hold that man is a mixture of good and evil and therefore that it is important for social institutions to encourage the good and discourage the bad. The state is the only social institution which is able to extract its income and wealth by coercion; all others must obtain revenue either by selling a product or service to customers or by receiving voluntary gifts. And the state is the only institution which can use the revenue from this organized theft to presume to control and regulate people’s lives and property. Hence, the institution of the state establishes a socially legitimatized and sanctified channel for bad people to do bad things, to commit regularized theft and to wield dictatorial power.
Statism therefore encourages the bad, or at least the criminal elements of human nature. As Frank H. Knight trenchantly put it: “The probability of the people in power being individuals who would dislike the possession and exercise of power is on a level with the probability that an extremely tenderhearted person would get the job of whipping master in a slave plantation.”[10]
A free society, by not establishing such a legitimated channel for theft and tyranny, discourages the criminal tendencies of human nature and encourages the peaceful and the voluntary. Liberty and the free market discourage aggression and compulsion, and encourage the harmony and mutual benefit of voluntary interpersonal exchanges, economic, social, and cultural.
“Most libertarian writers hold that man is a mixture of good and evil and therefore that it is important for social institutions to encourage the good and discourage the bad.”
Since a system of liberty would encourage the voluntary and discourage the criminal, and would remove the only legitimated channel for crime and aggression, we could expect that a free society would indeed suffer less from violent crime and aggression than we do now, though there is no warrant for assuming that they would disappear completely. That is not utopianism, but a common-sense implication of the change in what is considered socially legitimate, and in the reward-and-penalty structure in society.
We can approach our thesis from another angle. If all men were good and none had criminal tendencies, then there would indeed be no need for a state, as conservatives concede. But if on the other hand all men were evil, then the case for the state is just as shaky, since why should anyone assume that those men who form the government and obtain all the guns and the power to coerce others, should be magically exempt from the badness of all the other persons outside the government?
Tom Paine, a classical libertarian often considered to be naively optimistic about human nature, rebutted the conservative evil-human-nature argument for a strong state as follows: “If all human nature be corrupt, it is needless to strengthen the corruption by establishing a succession of kings, who be they ever so base, are still to be obeyed…” Paine added that “NO man since the fall hath ever been equal to the trust of being given power over all.”[11]
And as the libertarian F.A. Harper once wrote:
Still using the same principle that political rulership should be employed to the extent of the evil in man, we would then have a society in which complete political rulership of all the affairs of everybody would be called for…. One man would rule all. But who would serve as the dictator? However he were to be selected and affixed to the political throne, he would surely be a totally evil person, since all men are evil. And this society would then be ruled by a totally evil dictator possessed of total political power. And how, in the name of logic, could anything short of total evil be its consequence? How could it be better than having no political rulership at all in that society?[12]
Finally, since, as we have seen, men are actually a mixture of good and evil, a regime of liberty serves to encourage the good and discourage the bad, at least in the sense that the voluntary and mutually beneficial are good and the criminal is bad. In no theory of human nature, then, whether it be goodness, badness, or a mixture of the two, can statism be justified.
In the course of denying the notion that he is a conservative, the classical liberal F.A. Hayek pointed out: “The main merit of individualism [which Adam Smith and his contemporaries advocated] is that it is a system under which bad men can do least harm. It is a social system which does not depend for its functioning on our finding good men for running it, or on all men becoming better than they now are, but which makes use of men in all their given variety and complexity…”[13]
“Libertarianism does not set out to remold human nature.”
It is important to note what differentiates libertarians from utopians in the pejorative sense. Libertarianism does not set out to remold human nature. One of socialism’s major goals is to create, which in practice means by totalitarian methods, a New Socialist Man, an individual whose major goal will be to work diligently and altruistically for the collective.
Libertarianism is a political philosophy which says: Given any existent human nature, liberty is the only moral and the most effective political system.
Obviously, libertarianism — as well as any other social system — will work better the more individuals are peaceful and the less they are criminal or aggressive. And libertarians, along with most other people, would like to attain a world where more individuals are “good” and fewer are criminals. But this is not the doctrine of libertarianism per se, which says that whatever the mix of man’s nature may be at any given time, liberty is best.
All post must come to an eventual end. I don’t mean to keep this going, but snargles made a couple of points that I believe to be common misconceptions about the RF spectrum.
Snargles wrote: “the em spectrum is privatized in ranges such as 97.2-97.4 on the dial and is owned by radio stations. The air above private properties which radio waves pass are not owned by the owner of the underlying property because the radio waves don’t affect enjoyment of use of their property, and the first use principle applies to the original transmitter on a given frequency in a given area.”.
First, frequencies such as the those in the ranges of 97.2-97.4 on the dial are leased by the FCC to the radio stations. Having a lease confers a degree of property right, but the radio stations do NOT own the spectrum.
Second, there is the claim that ownership of the radio spectrum can be be divorced from the underlying land on the claim that use of the spectrum will not interfere with the ownership of the physical real estate. The fact is that we use, in our homes, many devices that use portions of the RF spectrum such as Wi_Fi routers, cordless phones, microwave ovens, garage door openers, Key chain bobs to open/close/turn on your car, and infrared controllers. So people external to your property can potentially interfere with your right to use these devices.
And just to go to a ridiculous extreme for purposes of illustration, the lights (a part of the RF spectrum) in our house. Given the current ridiculousness of the current state of so-called intellectual property, could you imagine having to pay an RF licensing fee, on top of the electric fee, to use the lights in your own house! There are logical limits to the the extreme position that everything is subject to privatization.
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