A transcription of the talk by Roderick T. Long is now available in the Study Guide. The audio version is available in Mises Media.
Source link: http://blog.mises.org/2368/libertarian-anarchism-responses-to-ten-objections/
Libertarian Anarchism: Responses to Ten Objections
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Thanks to the transcriber, Revi N. Nair, for what looks like an excellent job on this excellent talk. This is one for the ages!
I have a few problems on a fundamental level with his presentation:
1. He doesn’t define government, or it happens to be the current bogeyman of his current arguemnt – he assumes all government is bad, so doesn’t define it in such a way it has any possibility of being good. Is government that which causes peace? A monopoly on violence? What?
2. He does not offer argument or evidence that arbitration is less expensive than violence (at least for the immediate parties). I have serious doubts, especially when there is no agreement on law, otherwise he is admitting 10 – you get a defacto government.
3. His idea about the “Law” itself seems to be assumed and my ideas are fundamentally different. (philosopher-)Legislatures or Kings discover positive law from the natural law, much like markets discover prices. If there is one Law (the Tao in the appendix of CS Lewis’s The Abolition of Man), then it is a matter akin to science or mathematics. Not the weekly fad.
(at length)
Government is not a good like shoes. I don’t see him suggesting trading it on an exchange and writing puts and calls on the price of government, nor do I see how you can buy little government and I can buy more. If you consider a function of government such as justice, it ceases being justice when it is a matter of the highest bidder. Peace is also a state of being – I’m not giving into extortion, I’m just purchasing peace?
I cut down a tree near the edge of my lot. You say I had no right to do that because it was on your side. We have a dispute. How is it resolved? If I was wrong, what are proper forms of damages? We cannot agree on the simple geometry of a property line (you don’t believe in Pythagoras), but somehow we can find a common arbiter? This is not a final arbiter, but a starting point.
Another assumption in #4 (which seems falsified by the Iraqi example and Afghanistan before the Taliban – or the Mob) is that arbitration is cheaper than violence. If I can blow you up, your case probably goes with you. Even if someone else can now go to an arbiter for wrongful death (how many procedural niceties? Do they have to establish any level of guilt first?), if it is more economically efficient to maim or kill the enforcers then first the pay for the arbitrate-first agency would be HIGHER than for the violence-first agency.
Further, disputes would be resolved more efficiently via violence than with a more indirect process (and if you get a judgement, and I don’t play along, violence will eventually become necessary). The greater efficiency of arbitration over violence is assumed, but I cannot find an example or any evidence – any arbitration system that flourished for a while were destroyed by barbarians more willing to use violence. I didn’t see any argument for his assumption from other areas either.
On “final arbiters”, a certain amount of common sense applies. If you are trying to amend the constitution to call “red” “green”, there might be a process to allow you to try, but it is absurd. Close cases might be difficult, but would be resolved on the facts and the law shouldn’t change if it is right reason. PI is a constant, though we can calculate digits indefinitely. A Legislature cannot make it 3.0, though they can declare it to be so and they do this with positive law. If the legislature erred in synchronizing the positive with the natural law they should fix their mistake just like a miscalculation of the total on an invoice. If Law is more than mere opinion (individual or collective) and exists as a theorem or set of values to be discovered or in a platonic form, then any anarchical system that implements anything different would be equally tyranical to a government that does the same, and in exactly the same magnitude as the error.
Consider a wealthy and well-armed group of racists that declares the poorer and unarmed other races as second class. Arbitration comes from wealth and the means of violence is in the same place. SA appears worse off for “doing the right thing”. But in this case, look at the Law before and after. When was it more conformed to something Aquinas would approve of?
You could argue that the market – the market arbitration agencies – could discover the natural law better than government (how to get philosopher-rulers is a problem, but a different than which would be better), and that such a discovery process would lead to a minimally violent outcome, but that is outside the arguments he is using. I think it would be interesting to look down this road. And I might even have to switch to the anarchist camp. But no one has argued along this line yet.
I will also throw in my usual Linux / Opensource / Groklaw “third way” model. There are more optioins than just Reno/Ashcroft and Wal-Mart. And that should also be included in such a discussion as the best answer might lie there.
Libertarianism is anarchy and conflicts with capitalism because there is no constitutional government to protect individual rights via the police, defense force or a legal system based on a rational morality and facts. This being the sole legitimate task of government.
In a libertarian system there would be mob rule.
It is irrational.
Government is not a good like shoes.
Of course it is. It’s proper fuctions supported by most minarchists included the scarce economics goods of security, law enforcement, and adjudication. These are economic goods.
I don’t see him suggesting trading it on an exchange and writing puts and calls on the price of government, nor do I see how you can buy little government and I can buy more.
It happens all the time. Unions buy more govt than you in the form of minimum wage laws, mandatory vacations, etc. Corporations buy more govt in the way of subsidies, tariffs, etc. Uninformed voters buy govt in the form of anti-gouging laws. People buy govt all the time, and it goes to the highest bidder in a all-or-none proposition.
You could argue that the market – the market arbitration agencies – could discover the natural law better than government (how to get philosopher-rulers is a problem, but a different than which would be better), and that such a discovery process would lead to a minimally violent outcome, but that is outside the arguments he is using. I think it would be interesting to look down this road. And I might even have to switch to the anarchist camp. But no one has argued along this line yet.
No offense, but every time you argue against market anarchism, you sound more and more ignorant. This is precisely the argument made by people like Randy Barnett and David Friedman – that private adjudication would distribute the scarce resource of legal rules creation to its most urgently demanded uses, much like the market distributes other goods.
David, where is the support for your assertion? Decrying how “there must be government or there will be chaos” doesn’t win converts, it only shows that you are afraid of other peoples freedom.
It would be very easy to convince me to be a minarchist. Just show why the power to initiate force against people with impunity must exist. That’s all.
“Libertarians” will go on with voluntary interaction and contracts, private property and respect for others. Capitalism.
If there is no government, then who will protect individual rights? There would be no objective body.
What would stop various factions forming their own militias to “carry out justice”? Who would decide arbitration?
I am not afraid of another’s freedom. I am afraid of another’s force.
There has to be a centralized body to objectively take care of defense, crime and justice. This, under a constitution based on the only right that there is, the right of the individual to his or her life. This is vital.
The United States started out on the right path, but loopholes in the Constitution soon allowed statist and collectivist forces to rise to the point where we are today.
David is right about the need for government. Human nature dictates this need. Man is not basically good(look around), therefore he cannot live with other men without constraints(laws/government).
The argumnents against government are contradictory at best. They argue against government because it infringes on man’s freedom. What this argument fails to ackowledge is that government is man made and operated. It takes on the character of those who are in power. Government is not the problem, man is and this is exactly why government is necessary. Men have to be restrained. However, while government is necessary, it is also dangerous as those who argue against it rightly address. It too, has to be restrained.
Our Founder’s were keenly aware of the problems with government due to human nature, particularly democracy(majority rule). That is why they gave us a constitutional republic. The US Constituion is actually a restraint on government. It acknowledges the fact that men will abuse power and therefore it severely limited the ability of our representatives to do so.
The only requirement for our system to work properly is that our citizens must remain informed and responsible. This was the case for a while. Our wealth and prosperity are evidence of such. However, as society has become more and more relativistic and irresponsible, we have allowed some of our elected and unelected officials to ignore and abuse our laws to their benefit and our potential demise.
I have to reiterate, government is not the problem, man is and this is exactly why we need government. We can’t live together without restraints. Look around. Our local police departments spend most of their time and resources protecting us from the lawless(anarchists). These lawless(“free”) live in filth, are drunks and drug addicts and prey on our families, unrestrained by the rules and laws that willingly restrain us. They may get arrested once in a while, but they don’t care and largely go unpunished, simply to go on living the wonderful life of lawlessness. However, this apparent anarchy proves itself a myth as these “lawless” actually do have a ghetto government. It is a government of fear and intimidation. Those willing to be the most brutal are in charge and they gain the monopoly on violence. They are the defacto government. They make the rules. Their “constituents” have no say in this government, but they are bound by it or they suffer the consequences.
There is no such animal as a society without government. Knowing this then, we have to decide what kind of government we want. As our governments in the US move further and further away from their Christian roots and sink deeper and deeper into relativistic humanism, we get closer and closer to the anarchy of the ghetto, which we have proven is actually not anarchy at all, but tyranny. Fear of tyranny is what started this thread and something all those commenting have in common.
Don’t misunderstand what I am saying. “Christians” have to be restrained as well. They need government as much as anyone else, as they suffer from the same fallen nature as all mankind.
Our Christian Forefathers understood this all too well, and to their credit they constructed systems based on God’s Law rather than man’s ever changing relativism. Because God’s Law does not change as does man’s relativism, these systems(governments)were fairly consistent and gave all, not just Christians the same protections. Chattel slavery being the obvious exception, but as I mentioned earlier government is of men and cannot be perfect. This problem was fixed and the ancestors of these slaves, as do all who live in the US, now benefit from the system of government of the most prosperous and most free nation in history.
As a side note, to those who will become insensed and chastise me to the “fact” that our Founders were merely deists, please go to the link below and read some of their quotes.
http://www.chuckbaldwinlive.com/founding.html(Link)
Chad Bull (Link)
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