Anarchy, degradation, and extremism!
The Journal of Libertarian Studies continues to bring you exciting cutting-edge scholarship in libertarian theory. Here’s what you’ll find in issue 20.3:
- One of the most popular contemporary arguments for the state comes from game theorists, who tend to model interaction without the state as a coordination problem which can be solved only by centrally imposed governmental force. But in “Fallacies in the Theories of the Emergence of the State,” Bertrand Lemennicier argues that such game-theoretic arguments routinely disregard the variety of ways in which, once the participants of a coordination problem recognize the payoff structure of the situation they are in, they have a clear incentive to take advantage of a number of available means of altering that situation. Lemennicier’s analysis makes the case for a far more optimistic view of the prospects for successful cooperation in the absence of the state.
- The common assumption that the state is necessary for national defense has been criticized by free-market anarchists, who often point to the possibility of market provision of military protection. But, notes Carl Watner, these anarchist critics have too often neglected the possibility of modes of protection that are not only nonstate but also nonmilitary and nonviolent. In “Without Firing a Shot: Societal Defense and Voluntaryist Resistance,” Watner draws on libertarian theory, civilian defense theory, and historical examples to argue that nonviolent mass disobedience can be far more effective in resisting an invader than is generally recognized, inasmuch as such resistance exploits the fact that governmental power depends crucially on the acquiescence of those it subjugates.
- Barry D. Simpson sets out to show how the work of nineteenth-century educational theorist Robert Lewis Dabney anticipates and complements, in certain respects, contemporary libertarian economist Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s critique of democracy. In “The Cultural Degradation of Universal Education: The Educational Views of Robert Lewis Dabney,” Simpson explains Dabney’s arguments that state-mandated universal education tends, not to bring the least educated up to the level of the best educated, but rather the reverse; that by awakening aspirations without providing the means of satisfying them, it tends to an increase in crime and incivility; and that insofar as it is administered by the state, education will inevitably have its content dictated by the power struggles of special interests rather than by the desires of parents or the needs of children.
- Some nine years ago Walter Block and the late Milton Friedman exchanged a number of letters debating the roles of moderation and gradualism versus radical extremism in making the case for liberty, with Friedman, often a free-market extremist in the eyes of the economic profession generally, playing the moderate relative to Block’s more radical libertarianism. A few months ago Dr. Friedman graciously granted permission for this exchange to be published in the JLS; as this issue went to press, we could not have known that its publication would coincide with Friedman’s death, but the unexpected timing gives the journal a fitting opportunity to pay tribute to a great champion of liberty. “Fanatical, Not Reasonable: A Short Correspondence Between Walter Block and Milton Friedman” may thus be said to represent both, excitingly, Friedman’s first publication in the JLS, and, sadly, his last publication during his lifetime.
- David Conway has argued that classical liberals should defend nationalism against the claims of supranational entities like the European Union on the one hand, and against the decentralist arguments of secessionists and anarchists on the other. J. C. Lester, in a review of Conway’s book In Defence of the Realm: The Place of Nations in Classical Liberalism, takes issue with Conway’s position from an anarcho-libertarian perspective, discussing issues ranging from immigration and cultural group rights to 9/11 and the Israel-Palestine conflict.
- Jacob T. Levy has maintained that the primary case for multiculturalist legislation lies in its potential to block the oppression of some cultures by others. In a review of Levy’s book The Multiculturalism of Fear, Marcus Verhaegh worries that Levy’s approach manifests an uneasy tension between suspicion of particularist identities on the one hand and suspicion of attempts to suppress such identities on the other; Verhaegh suggests that a more positive appreciation for particularist identities can be reconciled with the kind of protection from oppression that Levy seeks by embracing a more decentralist, libertarian vision.
- Andrew P. Napolitano represents a perhaps surprising combination: former Superior Court judge, chief legal analyst for Fox News, and natural-law libertarian theorist. William L. Anderson reviews Napolitano’s book Constitutional Chaos: What Happens When the Government Breaks Its Own Laws, which details the myriad ways in which the U.S. government routinely abuses its power in defiance of the limited-government strictures embodied in the Constitution.
Comments (64)
National defence is a so called private good and not a so called public good.
Why would individuals, in a pure free market, want to spend money on national defence?
As people in a free market would want to protect themselves (life and property) against aggression (physical violence and theft), for example, through insurers (or other protection agencies), risks against warfare would, also, be included in the insurance premium.
Warfare is only aggression or physical violence of a greater magnitude, but is still the implementation of physical violence.
Aggressors prefer to aggress against people in densely populated and market valuable areas than unpopulated and worthless areas.
The more heavily populated an area is, the more valuable properties are and the more threatened people are in a certain area, the more incentive they will have to protect themselves against aggressions and therefore, also, the more recourses would they allocate to fulfil that need.
As named areas are risky places, property values are therefore also lower than what they would be if those risks did not exist. People have an incentive to invest and live in other, less risky areas.
Insurers and protection agencies have incentives to cooperate against the intruder and pinpoint retaliation against them. That would reduce risks and increase property values, wages and prosperity.
The government apparatus is clumsy machinery against free market institutions. Producing consumer goods and services by government owned organizations and through taxation, does not stand a chance in their effectiveness of the utilization of resources and in their quality of output compared to free market institutions.
Thanks to Hans-Hermann Hoppe, a so called public good has been transformed to be a so called private good.
As teachers of economics in our universities are objective and true, this will be common knowledge among economists in a few years time. Honesty and truthfulness are their lodestar (joke).
A more difficult question to analyze and to answer would instead be: Didn’t their mammies teach them to be honest and truthful, so why aren’t they?
Björn Lundahl
Göteborg, Sweden
Published: November 28, 2006 6:07 PM
If private defense alternatives are superior, why are states everywhere? Shouldn't there already be someone I can hire to drive away the tax man? The usual libertarian response that they don't exist because the state prevents them is the whole point. I cannot take anarchists seriously until they can answer that.
I bet the people writing about voluntaryist resistance have never heard of the Turko-Mongolian strategy (not that something that extreme would likely be necessary). Libertarians tend to be hopelessly out of their element when it comes to issues like this because they cherish their morals and here we are talking about the most refined practices of immorality encountered in life.
Published: November 28, 2006 9:24 PM
“If private defense alternatives are superior, why are states everywhere? Shouldn't there already be someone I can hire to drive away the tax man? The usual libertarian response that they don't exist because the state prevents them is the whole point. I cannot take anarchists seriously until they can answer that”.
If private enterprise is superior to government owned businesses, why where the so few of them in the former Soviet Union?
If democracy is superior to dictatorship, why is there no democracy in China?
The answer is, of course, a matter of power.
The US government could ban all private security guard services providers.
In a pure free market, a “government security guard services provider would be banned too”.
Björn Lundahl
Published: November 29, 2006 2:04 AM
Sounds like a great issue! How long until the articles are put online?
Published: November 29, 2006 5:08 AM
Bjorn, you answered just as I stated I would expect you to. Private defense agencies don't exist because they cannot compete with the government. You've cherry-picked two countries (and I'm surprised to see someone claiming democracy is good at this site given the popularity of Hoppe!), which says nothing about the near universality of Weberian states. We logically had anarchy, since it is the absence of government and before government ever existed there must have been none, there is no anarchy now except in international waters or the south pole (and those probably don't really qualify either) because public "defense" beats private.
Published: November 29, 2006 8:55 AM
From Bjorn: The answer is, of course, a matter of power.
Exactly! States will always have more power than purely private, voluntary organizations. Anarchy can only survive so long as everyone is anarchic. This is why I consider true anarchy to be nonsensical.
Published: November 29, 2006 9:42 AM
TGGP -
By your logic, the fact that almost every state in the world today is largely socialist would then prove that socialism (government provision of services or government intervention in the market provision of services) is in fact superior to free markets.
Irrefutably so, under your logic. Hmmm. Maybe there is something else at work here?
Published: November 29, 2006 10:32 AM
"Anarchy can only survive so long as everyone is anarchic. This is why I consider true anarchy to be nonsensical."
Limited government can only survive so long as everyone believes in limited government. This is why I consider limited government to be nonsensical.
Published: November 29, 2006 10:34 AM
quasibill,
You and Yancey are both right. The purely voluntary society will always be a utopian ideal since even if you abolished all government overnight, the next thing people--even purported anarchists--would start doing is coalescing into relatively homogenous groups and drawing up rules to protect their perceived interests.
And, of course, the prerequisite to free markets and the rule of law is people who believe in free markets and the rule of law. Most people don't and never will.
Published: November 29, 2006 10:51 AM
quasibill,
That first part you wrote may not have to be true, but I fear that you are correct. Our (the United States) experiment in limited government, the best ever devised in my opinion, is on course for failure. However, the point is that limited government is not nonsense, just difficult to maintain for multiple generations.
The problem I have with anarchists is that they attempt to solve the problem of limiting the scope of state power by trying to define the state out of existence altogether. Their attempts, for the most part, are not really anarchy, but rather, very limited states themselves; thus they still have the problem of limiting state power. So, if limited government is nonsense, then we are doomed to be slaves forever.
Published: November 29, 2006 11:07 AM
The power of ideas.
” . . . the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas. Not, indeed, immediately, but after a certain interval; for in the field of economic and political philosophy there are not many who are influenced by new theories after they are twenty-five or thirty years of age, so that the ideas which civil servants and politicians and even agitators apply to current events are not likely to be the newest. But, soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.”
The last half of the last paragraph in John Maynard Keynes’s book General Theory of Employment Interest and Money.
That ideas rule the world is one of the very few correct ideas that John Maynard Keynes probably ever had.
“Human history is in essence a history of ideas.” (H.G. Wells)
“In every great time there is some one idea at work which is more powerful than any other, and which shapes the events of the time and determines their ultimate issues.” - Francis Bacon
Therefore we can conclude:
If an “enough” amount of people supports the state, the state will be powerful.
If an “enough” amount of people supports democratic principles, democratic principles will be powerful.
If an “enough” amount of people supports communism, communism will be powerful.
If an “enough” amount of people supports religion, religion will be powerful.
If an “enough” amount of people supports libertarian ethics, libertarian ethics will be powerful.
Björn Lundahl
Göteborg, Sweden
Published: November 29, 2006 1:38 PM
"The answer is, of course, a matter of power."
This is why classical liberals aren´t anarchists.
Published: November 29, 2006 1:49 PM
quasibill: Private car manufacturers do a better job of manufacturing cars than state-owned ones. Private farmers and grocery stores do a better job of feeding people than governments. Given a public defense agency (those near-universal things Weber calls states) you can switch from government provision of the goods I mentioned to markets and it will be clear improvement. You cannot do the same for defense because private defense providers (whose job it is to protect us from aggressors, as is not the case with manufacturers, farmers and retailers) cannot compete with states. If they could, they would have.
Bjorn: You are correct to a certain extent, but some ideas can never really be implemented. Marx thought the state would wither, but no matter how dedicated the revolutionaries are that's never going to be the result of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Published: November 29, 2006 2:28 PM
Yancey:
"However, the point is that limited government is not nonsense, just difficult to maintain for multiple generations. "
1. The point is that "limited government" contains the seeds of its own demise - namely, that if you get enough people to agree with you that something is objectively valuable, you can suspend the normal rules of morality that act to restrain individual behavior. Once you allow this exception, it becomes a quibble over what things are sufficiently objectively valuable to allow for the application of immoral force - this is an argument that will always allow for the expansion of government over time, for the reasons the "public choice" people have well documented.
2. However, the point is that anarchy is not nonsense (it has existed, and been stable, in history), just difficult to maintain for multiple generations.
TGGP:
"Given a public defense agency (those near-universal things Weber calls states) you can switch from government provision of the goods I mentioned to markets and it will be clear improvement."
Tell me where I can do this switch without encountering immediate aggression against me, and I'll concede your point. Otherwise, you are arguing a straw man.
"You cannot do the same for defense because private defense providers (whose job it is to protect us from aggressors, as is not the case with manufacturers, farmers and retailers) cannot compete with states. If they could, they would have."
You have failed to prove this in any way, and again, by your logic, if a true free market produced better results, it would have competed with our current socialist states and established itself. There is another dynamic at work that you are either ignoring or can't recognize.
Just to be clear about my position, I'm actually fairly close to "reactionary" - I don't think anything approaching true anarchy could ever arise given the state of our culture(s) today. Much more likely, and achievable, is extreme decentralization. However, that does not change the fact that anarchy is the ideal that should be the prize, even if we can never achieve it in practice.
Published: November 29, 2006 3:00 PM
“You cannot do the same for defense because private defense providers (whose job it is to protect us from aggressors, as is not the case with manufacturers, farmers and retailers) cannot compete with states. If they could, they would have”.
This is ridiculous. They are not allowed to compete! Anyone can understand that. If the state bans foreign cars, the US auto industry will sell more cars too. This doesn’t prove that the US auto industry is more competitive, quite the opposite. This is quite funny! What is this? Some kind of joke?
Hey! If you want to have more fun, try incrediMail. An old fashioned butler will, on the desktop, deliver your mails. You will find a lot of funny stuff! It is free! Go to:
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Björn Lundahl
Published: November 29, 2006 4:03 PM
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http://www.download.com/Cactus-Spam-Filter/3000-2382_4-10545523.html?tag=lst-0-1
Björn Lundahl
Published: November 29, 2006 4:17 PM
Am I missing something about anarchy here? ...
Anarchy means there is no government. Therefore, there is no laws, and no police.
Therefore anyone can shoot you in the head at any time for any reason or for no reason.
Therefore either a) some group of people will realize that they can get guns and start shooting everyone who does not do as they say and enslave/kill everyone else. Most likely several such groups will arise, some will merge, others will fight each other, and in time they will create small dictatorships in which they live as parasites on the locals who have chosen to give over whatever the killers demand in exchange for not dying or b) to prevent case a, people will set up and hire some form of "defense agency" to protect them. In time this defense agency will have power similar to the groups in group a. They can charge whatever costs they want and require whatever behaviors they want from their "employers" as terms of their contract, and even resort to violence against everyone who is not under their coverage. After all, if there is not enough outside violence to drive up "demand" for their "service", they can always make their own. At best, multiple such firms might co-exist, granting the population some benefits from competition, and living with an agreement not to hurt those people protected by each other.
This is, obviously, a cynical worst case scenario, but human power structures naturally tend to devolve toward the worst case scenario: eventually a corrupt power-hungry individual takes on whatever role of power is available and uses it corruptly to increase their own power. And in the end it is those who have the dominant violent force that can make the rules.
To have a society that is not dominated by violence requires that a non-violent ideology control the wielders of violence which are required to prevent individual acts of violence. In other words, police / military are needed to prevent individuals and private groups from using violence to dominate otherwise free people, and those police / military need checks and balances to keep them from using their power to establish authoritarian control themselves.
However, once government has established it's necessary function as a protector against violence, said government inevitably strives to claim ever greater levels of control. As widely demonstrated, this government overreach creates considerable dead-weight loss due to the constraints it places on its citizens. The US Constitution was a good attempt at limiting this tendancy by government, since many of the areas where such overreach was possible was limited to state governments which were placed in natural competition due to the free flow of citizenry and capital from one state to another. However, in time politicians have found ways to use complicit supreme courts to create sufficient precedent to make for an effectively unlimited federal government. Oh well, it was nice while it lasted.
Published: November 29, 2006 5:18 PM
Daniel wrote: "Am I missing something about anarchy here? ...
Anarchy means there is no government. Therefore, there is no laws, and no police."
Yes, you are and that argument is a nonsequitur.
Published: November 29, 2006 5:34 PM
Daniel, maybe these two texts are a decent antidote for the views you hold:
http://www.amazon.com/Structure-Liberty-Justice-Rule-Law/dp/0198297297/
http://www.mises.org/store/The-Enterprise-of-Law-Justice-without-the-State-P297C0.aspx
Benson's text has some history too (along with massive bibliography), so that should really help.
Published: November 29, 2006 9:14 PM
quasibill: "Tell me where I can do this switch without encountering immediate aggression against me, and I'll concede your point. Otherwise, you are arguing a straw man." It's called privatization. It's not a new concept and it isn't untried.
"You have failed to prove this in any way, and again, by your logic, if a true free market produced better results, it would have competed with our current socialist states and established itself." That's just my point, a free market is not superior to socialist states when it comes to the use of violence.
"There is another dynamic at work that you are either ignoring or can't recognize." What is that dynamic?
Bjorn: "This is ridiculous. They are not allowed to compete! Anyone can understand that. If the state bans foreign cars, the US auto industry will sell more cars too. This doesn’t prove that the US auto industry is more competitive, quite the opposite. This is quite funny! What is this? Some kind of joke?" And the Iraqi government didn't allow the US government to take over the country, right? Well, the US government outcompeted them, just like it did the Confederate, Mexican, Spanish, Hawaiian, German, Italian, Japanese and Afghan governments in the past. When do governments compete in the same manner as businesses? The idea of a government permitting a private defense agency to compete with it (and I'm not talking about brinks security or rent-a-cops) is what is silly.
Published: November 29, 2006 11:27 PM
From the book “For a New Liberty”, by Murray Rothbard:
The Law and the Courts
“It is now clear that there will have to be a legal code in the libertarian society. How? How can there be a legal code, a system of law without a government to promulgate it, an appointed system of judges, or a legislature to vote on statutes? To begin with, is a legal code consistent with libertarian principles?
To answer the last question first, it should be clear that a legal code is necessary to lay down precise guidelines for the private courts. If, for example, Court A decides that all redheads are inherently evil and must be punished, it is clear that such decisions are the reverse of libertarian, that such a law would constitute an invasion of the rights of redheads. Hence, any such decision would be illegal in terms of libertarian principle, and could not be upheld by the rest of society. It then becomes necessary to have a legal code which would be generally accepted, and which the courts would pledge themselves to follow. The legal code, simply, would insist on the libertarian principle of no aggression against person or property, define property rights in accordance with libertarian principle, set up rules of evidence (such as currently apply) in deciding who are the wrongdoers in any dispute, and set up a code of maximum punishment for any particular crime. Within the framework of such a code, the particular courts would compete on the most efficient procedures, and the market would then decide whether judges, juries, etc., are the most efficient methods of providing judicial services.
Are such stable and consistent law codes possible, with only competing judges to develop and apply them, and without government or legislature? Not only are they possible, but over the years the best and most successful parts of our legal system were developed precisely in this manner. Legislatures, as well as kings, have been capricious, invasive, and inconsistent. They have only introduced anomalies and despotism into the legal system. In fact, the government is no more qualified to develop and apply law than it is to provide any other service; and just as religion has been separated from the State, and the economy can be separated from the State, so can every other State function, including police, courts, and the law itself!
As indicated above, for example, the entire law merchant was developed, not by the State or in State courts, but by private merchant courts. It was only much later that government took over mercantile law from its development in merchants' courts. The same occurred with admiralty law, the entire structure of the law of the sea, shipping, salvages, etc. Here again, the State was not interested, and its jurisdiction did not apply to the high seas; so the shippers themselves took on the task of not only applying, but working out the whole structure of admiralty law in their own private courts. Again, it was only later that the government appropriated admiralty law into its own courts.
Finally, the major body of Anglo-Saxon law, the justly celebrated common law, was developed over the centuries by competing judges applying time-honored principles rather than the shifting decrees of the State. These principles were not decided upon arbitrarily by any king or legislature; they grew up over centuries by applying rational and very often libertarian—principles to the cases before them. The idea of following precedent was developed, not as a blind service to the past, but because all the judges of the past had made their decisions in applying the generally accepted common law principles to specific cases and problems. For it was universally held that the judge did not make law (as he often does today); the judge's task, his expertise, was in finding the law in accepted common law principles, and then applying that law to specific cases or to new technological or institutional conditions. The glory of the centuries-long development of the common law is testimony to their success.
The common law judges, furthermore, functioned very much like private arbitrators, as experts in the law to whom private parties went with their disputes. There was no arbitrarily imposed "supreme court" whose decision would be binding, nor was precedent, though honored, considered as automatically binding either.”
http://www.mises.org/rothbard/newliberty11.asp
Björn Lundahl,
Göteborg, Sweden
Published: November 29, 2006 11:28 PM
T.G.G.P
You are entirely missing the point!
T.G.G.P “And the Iraqi government didn't allow the US government to take over the country, right? Well, the US government outcompeted them, just like it did the Confederate, Mexican, Spanish, Hawaiian, German, Italian, Japanese and Afghan governments in the past. When do governments compete in the same manner as businesses? The idea of a government permitting a private defense agency to compete with it (and I'm not talking about brinks security or rent-a-cops) is what is silly.”
Björn I have already answered this. I will repeat:
You do not seem to know the difference between power and efficiency. As I wrote:
If an “enough” amount of people supports the state, the state will be powerful.
If an “enough” amount of people supports democratic principles, democratic principles will be powerful.
If an “enough” amount of people supports communism, communism will be powerful.
If an “enough” amount of people supports religion, religion will be powerful.
If an “enough” amount of people supports libertarian ethics, libertarian ethics will be powerful.
Well, if an “enough” amount of people would support libertarian ethics, libertarian ethics would be powerful and government “security guard services providers” would also, therefore, be banned.
If ten persons kill one person, it is not a matter of efficiency, but of power.
For example, if General Motors was allowed to use force (use of physical violence) to brutally hinder Ford from producing cars, this would not mean that General Motors, therefore, “was more efficient in producing cars than Ford and therefore out competed Ford”. It only would mean that General Motors, in this hypothetical example, was a criminal and destructive organization with the “right” and therefore had the power to use physical violence against Ford (i.e. if an “enough” amount of people in society would support General Motors in exercising physical violence against Ford).
In other words, if we want protection agencies that are efficient businesses they, naturally, should not be allowed to aggress against each other.
The state, of course, does not fulfil that requirement.
Björn Lundahl,
Göteborg, Sweden
Published: November 30, 2006 1:36 AM
There are economies of scale in production of defence. That is reason why territorial nation states or large empires can survive long time until changes in technology undermine old rules and practises.
I remember when reading Robert Nozick's book I started thinking that his voluntary protection agencies are just rationalistic day dreams and his theory which is based on natural rights rests on very unstable foundation.
Earlier I have suggested that Vilfredo Pareto's social cycle theory of elite's can be most promising point of view to the problem of states and elite's. T.G.G.P wrote about how more powerfull state can conquer less powerfull one and impose it will on those who are weaker. But most often state and elite's arise endogenously: they are not outside conquerors but they are members of the same body of people.
So anarchy is not possible: there are always those who rule and those who are ruled. Elite's just circulate and change their position in an eternal cycle. But that means also that there is no class war since rulers just change.
Published: November 30, 2006 3:20 AM
Adi” There are economies of scale in production of defence”.
Björn Yes, that might be so and this is a reason why we need a free market to find out.
Adi“I remember when reading Robert Nozick's book I started thinking that his voluntary protection agencies are just rationalistic day dreams and his theory which is based on natural rights rests on very unstable foundation”.
Björn Yes I remember that too and I agree that his theory is based on a very unstable foundation.
Adi “So anarchy is not possible: there are always those who rule and those who are ruled”.
Björn Yes, if people believe in such an idea, the outcomes and final results will also correspond to that idea.
It is better if people believe in libertarian ethics; Justice and power will also correspond to that idea.
Björn Lundahl
Göteborg, Sweden
Published: November 30, 2006 6:27 AM
TGGP, you might want to read one of adi's points (though adi doesn't seem to have internalized it fully either):
"But most often state and elite's arise endogenously: they are not outside conquerors but they are members of the same body of people."
This is directly relevant to your argument that somehow states have out-competed private defense in provision of services.
Until people understand that TANSTAAFL, states will arise, and often, the first free lunch they will offer will be (mafia, anyone? How about the militias in Iraq?) free defense services.
Again, once you accept that morality is subject to the "but I REALLY want it!" exception, you've already started the process in motion.
Published: November 30, 2006 7:19 AM
"It's called privatization. It's not a new concept and it isn't untried."
Soooo, I can declare that I no longer pay taxes to the Feds, the state, county, and city, and claim that I'll provide my own security, thank you very much? Let me see, the last people to try that ended up either in jail or dead. Yep, sound like "privatization" to me.
"That's just my point, a free market is not superior to socialist states when it comes to the use of violence."
No, your logic (if it can be called that) also would demonstrate that the free market is not superior to socialist states when it comes to providing anything that they currently do (for example, health care) - because most states today are socialized. If free market economies were superior, they would have supplanted the socialized economies by now, going by your "logic".
Published: November 30, 2006 7:26 AM
As Mises wrote:
"Where there is no government, everybody is at the mercy of his stronger neighbour. Liberty can be realized only within an established state ready to prevent a gangster from killing and robbing his weaker fellows. But it is the rule of law alone which hinders the rulers from turning themselves into the worst gangsters."
Published: November 30, 2006 12:09 PM
Naturally, Mises successor, Murray Rothbard, has developed Mises ideas further.
A quote from The Ethics of Liberty:
But, in addition to the historical inaccuracy of the view that the State is needed for the development of law, Randy Barnett has brilliantly pointed out that the State by its very nature cannot obey its own legal rules. But if the State cannot obey its own legal rules, then it is necessarily deficient and self-contradictory as a maker of law. In an exegesis and critique of Lon L. Fuller’s seminal work The Morality of Law, Barnett notes that Professor Fuller sees in the current thinking of legal positivism a persistent error: “the assumption that law should be viewed as a . . . one-way projection of authority, originating with government and imposing itself upon the citizen.” Fuller points out that law is not simply “vertical”—a command from above from the State to its citizens, but also “horizontal,” arising from among the people themselves and applied to each other. Fuller points to international law, tribal law, private rules, etc. as pervasive examples of such “reciprocal” and non-State law. Fuller sees the positivist error as stemming from failure to recognize a crucial principle of proper law, namely that the lawmaker should itself obey its own rules that it lays down for its citizens, or, in Fuller’s words, “that enacted law itself presupposes a commitment by the government authority to abide by its own rules in dealing with its subjects.”
http://www.mises.org/rothbard/ethics/twentythree.asp
Björn Lundahl
Published: November 30, 2006 4:15 PM
The power vs efficiency distinction does not apply to states. The whole point of a state is to obtain power. The possession of power by a state indicates its effectiveness at obtaining power.
About states rising endogenously: It tends to happen as a reaction to an exogenous threat. The Iroquois Confederation and the unification of Germany are good examples. Of course Germany and the rest of Europe was also already conquered by foreign powers. The Indo-Aryan languages (which include the latin and germanic ones, but not those of the Basques) did not originate in Europe. Similarly, the native americans were conquered by other foreign powers like the english and spanish. In the past land itself was of prime value so the indigenous people could simply be exterminated. Today human capital is generally more important than land though.
quasibill: "Soooo, I can declare that I no longer pay taxes to the Feds, the state, county, and city, and claim that I'll provide my own security, thank you very much? Let me see, the last people to try that ended up either in jail or dead. Yep, sound like "privatization" to me." That just proves the superiority of states at wielding violence to obtain power. If you want to compete you'll have to have at least a fledgeling state to back you up.
"No, your logic (if it can be called that) also would demonstrate that the free market is not superior to socialist states when it comes to providing anything that they currently do (for example, health care) - because most states today are socialized. If free market economies were superior, they would have supplanted the socialized economies by now, going by your "logic"." No, that's just the superiority of states at wielding violence to obtain power again. There are plenty of examples of a public service being switched for a private one with superior results. None of those examples are replacements of the state's monopoly on violence.
Published: November 30, 2006 5:39 PM
The state is not a ghost living in a vacuum. That is voodoo thoughts.
The people can break state power at any time. It can be done instantly. If people at once stop to obey state “laws”, the state does not have any power. If people obey a libertarian ethic in the same way as they obeyed state “laws”, that ethic would be powerful and the state would be powerless.
Björn Lundahl
Published: November 30, 2006 6:41 PM
If men were angels there would be no need to govern them, nor any need to place restrictions on a government they made up. If Marx had been correct, the Soviet state would have withered of its own accord. If wishes were wings, pigs would fly. If my aunt had balls, she'd be my uncle. The state is not powerless. Refuse to pay taxes and it will lock you in jail. Can "the libertarian ethic" do that? Why would a statist choose to obey it? You state that this magical change could happen in an instant. What reason is there to believe that? Has it ever happened? I know of numerous cases with one state replacing another, but never that.
Published: November 30, 2006 11:24 PM
T.G.G.P
Brainwashed, government schools?
“The state is not powerless. Refuse to pay taxes and it will lock you in jail. Can "the libertarian ethic" do that? Why would a statist choose to obey it? You state that this magical change could happen in an instant. What reason is there to believe that? Has it ever happened? I know of numerous cases with one state replacing another, but never that”.
You are making a great mistake when you do not understand that state power exist because people passively and actively supports the state. Without this support the state is powerless.
You should not get confused of what we can not do individually and what we can do collectively.
The meaning, that I wanted to point out, of an “enough amount of people supporting” the state or libertarian principles are an enough amount of people “needed” in the process of making the state powerful or an enough amount of people “needed” in the process of making libertarian ethics powerful.
Yes of course, a statist would have to obey libertarian laws in a pure libertarian society. Otherwise he would be punished. He might get punished quite severely, as he is a statist and thereby a very dangerous criminal who has this “belief” that people should support criminality, clearly, a very mixed-up person.
Any person violating the law would be punished in a libertarian society because the laws are powerful and the people are supporting them.
This magical change will, naturally, not occur if people believe in ideas which you are supporting.
Take a look in the mirror and you will see a person who supports state power.
I hereby quote from the book “The Ethics of Liberty”, by Murray Rothbard:
“Ideology has always been vital to the continued existence of the State, as attested by the systematic use of ideology since the ancient Oriental empires. The specific content of the ideology has, of course, changed over time, in accordance with changing conditions and cultures. In the Oriental despotisms, the Emperor was often held by the Church to be himself divine; in our more secular age, the argument runs more to “the public good” and the “general welfare.” But the purpose is always the same: to convince the public that what the State does is not, as one might think, crime on a gigantic scale, but something necessary and vital that must be supported and obeyed. The reason that ideology is so vital to the State is that it always rests, in essence, on the support of the majority of the public. This support obtains whether the State is a “democracy,” a dictatorship, or an absolute monarchy. For the support rests in the willingness of the majority (not, to repeat, of every individual) to go along with the system: to pay the taxes, to go without much complaint to fight the State’s wars, to obey the State’s rules and decrees. This support need not be active enthusiasm to be effective; it can just as well be passive resignation. But support there must be. For if the bulk of the public were really convinced of the illegitimacy of the State, if it were convinced that the State is nothing more nor less than a bandit gang writ large, then the State would soon collapse to take on no more status or breadth of existence than another Mafia gang. Hence the necessity of the State’s employment of ideologists; and hence the necessity of the State’s age-old alliance with the Court Intellectuals who weave the apologia for State rule”.
http://www.mises.org/rothbard/ethics/twentytwo.asp
Björn Lundahl
Göteborg, Sweden
Published: December 1, 2006 2:28 AM
It's wonder that Rothbard's theory which Björn cited sounds so much like Antonio Gramsci's theory about role of idea's in society and those who spread them. Gramsci wrote in his Prison Book's how group of people (hegemons) have ability to influence general public to believe that some idea's are universal and self-evident. Being Marxian, Gramsci probably wanted to blame some intellectual's of his day as spreading false capitalistic ideas.
Has old Murray been Marxian himself?
T.G.G.P, you claimed that the state arise as outside force takes control of some area (force being marauding horde of mongols or something like that) or as a response to that threat. But I might wonder who is going to do all this organizing againts external threat? I'm sympathetic to your view, but to understand founding of state it's important to know how elite's of society are formed and how they change over time. Aggression is one method of changing government, but there are others as well.
Published: December 1, 2006 4:19 AM
Adi
I haven’t heard of any political debates which there aren’t any agitation of ideas. I wonder how a debate would be accomplished without any debate. You have quite openly suggested some ideas yourself.
There wouldn’t be any point in agitating and expressing opinions if they could not ever have any significance at all.
That would be a contradiction.
You, yourself, by expressing opinions, have proved by these very acts that you believe in the power of ideas.
Björn Lundahl
Published: December 1, 2006 7:13 AM
Adi,
There are Gramscian tactics and strategy that can be employed by any ideology. Substantively, anarchism and Marxism are comrades-in-arms in the following respects:
1. Anarchist theory fails to account for human nature, since the first thing self-interested human beings do in anarchy is coalesce into relatively homogenous groups and erect institutions to maintain their favored position. So the anarchist attempts to deconstruct human nature and erect the New Anarchist (cf. Soviet) Man, a being whose highest loyalty is to the market process itself.
2. Closely related to 1, any form of human organization above the level of the individual will eventually result in coercion, so the anarchist, to be pure to his creed, must be a perpetual leveller of organic society.
This is painting with a rather broad brush. I would except people like Hans-Herman Hoppe from this description, but in my opinion he's more accurately described as a minarchist. I have had anarchists tell me that so long as you remain free to pick up your ball and go home, so to speak, any such society would qualify as anarchist. That strikes me as a possible and workable synthesis of conservative and anarchist views.
Published: December 1, 2006 11:32 AM
"I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas."
Keynes is right that ideas are powerful, but wrong to view vested interests as somehow being independent of ideas. The vested interests are very good at promoting the ideas that support them.
Published: December 1, 2006 4:26 PM
The power of ideas.
Human Action:
“The nineteenth-century success of free trade ideas was effected by the theories of classical economics. The prestige of these ideas was so great that those whose selfish class interests they hurt could not hinder their endorsements by public opinion and their realization by legislative measures. It is ideas that make history, and not history that makes ideas.”
Ludwig von Mises
http://www.mises.org/humanaction/chap3sec3.asp#p84
Björn Lundahl
Göteborg, Sweden
Published: December 1, 2006 7:01 PM
Adi
In above post you will find another Marxist. His name was Ludwig von Mises.
Björn Lundahl
Published: December 1, 2006 7:15 PM
Bjorn: Yes, like most Americans I attended government schools. In my defense, I did my best to bring in books from home and not pay attention during class!
You can wait around all you want for people to support or follow the libertarian ethic rather than the state, but it's not going to happen. The state has a mechanism by which it compels obedience, and that mechanism is coercion. The defining feature of libertarianism to decry coercion. I contend that this is why states are universal and anarchy is nowhere but the south pole and international waters.
"You should not get confused of what we can not do individually and what we can do collectively." That's funny, it has always been statists who tell me I'm wrong for reducing everything to the individual and forgetting that collectives are more than the sum of their parts! Out of respect for Lachmann I won't try to reduce everything further to neurons.
adi: "Aggression is one method of changing government, but there are others as well." Sounds like a good topic to elaborate on. I've long felt that the greatest thing about democracy is that it is essentially measuring how many people will be on each side in a fight, and then not bothering to have the fight.
Bjorn: "There wouldn’t be any point in agitating and expressing opinions if they could not ever have any significance at all.
That would be a contradiction.
You, yourself, by expressing opinions, have proved by these very acts that you believe in the power of ideas." I do not think I am going to accomplish anything. I merely enjoy the act of discussion. Kind of like Caplan's theory of rational irrationality with regard to voting, except my awareness of my irrelevance does not diminish my utility (ordinal in the standard Austrian sense of course!).
Reactionary: I agree. I definitely see shades of the "new socialist man". A plan that requires something like that is no plan at all.
Published: December 2, 2006 12:15 AM
T.G.G.P ”You can wait around all you want for people to support or follow the libertarian ethic rather than the state, but it's not going to happen. The state has a mechanism by which it compels obedience, and that mechanism is coercion. The defining feature of libertarianism to decry coercion. I contend that this is why states are universal and anarchy is nowhere but the south pole and international waters.”
Björn I have already answered this. In a society where libertarian ethics is generally supported with the same intensity as the state is today, libertarian ethics will have a mechanism against every individual, groups, organizations etc and this is that they are constrained by force to respect each other i.e. the law and libertarian ethics. They would be as powerless to violate the law as they are powerless today in violating paper laws made by the state.
Björn You should not get confused of what we can not do individually and what we can do collectively.
T.G.G.P ”That's funny, it has always been statists who tell me I'm wrong for reducing everything to the individual and forgetting that collectives are more than the sum of their parts! Out of respect for Lachmann I won't try to reduce everything further to neurons.”
Björn It is always very important to; at least, try to analyze propositions that great men do and have done. Ludwig Lachmann was, of course, right.
Well, please follow his advice and do that then. Reduce the state to the individual and you might not find a powerful ghost living in a vacuum, but a very aggressive individual that should be constrained by libertarian laws. Actually, it is here you have made your mistake for not reducing the state to the individual and therefore not seeing clearly what this is all about. The very idea in reducing everything to the individual is to easier comprehend and with no illusions what the whole thing is all about.
It is, therefore, very wrong in reducing “randomly” only one side of the equation to the individual while forgetting the other side, and it will only increase confusion instead of reducing it. The very meaning of Lachmann´s proposition is therefore counteracted by randomly reducing only something to the individual while forgetting the rest and the “conclusions” derived from this error, would, not be more valid than in reducing everything or something to neurons.
Björn There wouldn’t be any point in agitating and expressing opinions if they could not ever have any significance at all. That would be a contradiction. You, yourself, by expressing opinions, have proved by these very acts that you believe in the power of ideas.
T.G.G.P "I do not think I am going to accomplish anything. I merely enjoy the act of discussion. Kind of like Caplan's theory of rational irrationality with regard to voting, except my awareness of my irrelevance does not diminish my utility (ordinal in the standard Austrian sense of course!)".
Björn You do believe that there exist, at least, a little hope in expression arguments that the arguments are capable of convincing someone, no less than to a certain degree.
It is also true that you, at least believe, that you will receive some satisfaction (removal of uneasiness) if you express arguments.
Björn Lundahl,
Göteborg(Gothenburg), Sweden
Published: December 2, 2006 6:35 AM
I mainly wanted to point out that intellectuals of all colours of political spectrum have expressed opinions which often sounds similar. Conclusions may be quite different and even contrary (like market anarchists and socialist anarchists). I like to read books by von Mises since he appears so uncompromising and knows what's the final result of certain collectivist ideologies.
Very fact of reading too much seems to make one quite cynical and all idealistic thought experiments makes one wonder where the hopes of people are originating. Mises as a economist and Mises as a social philopher advocating for liberal order are still different even if the man is same.
Published: December 2, 2006 9:00 AM
I was brainwashed by government schools!
In the very early 80s I adored Milton Friedman and Monetarism. I ordered many books from the Laissez Faire books store in New York (which I also visited in 1989).
I received a flyer from the store and saw the book For a New Liberty, by Murray Rothbard, and read some information about it. Then I ordered it. When I had received and read it, a new world had appeared for me.
It is not an easy task to become a libertarian in a country like Sweden. One of the subjects in school was called “Samhällskunskap” which means “knowledge about society” and you might already guess what that “knowledge” was all about. It was some kind of information about the welfare state, democracy, parliament, “social problems” etc. In the end of the schoolbook also called “Samhällskunskap” there was a chapter about the USA and a chapter about the Soviet Union. Actually, I was quite good in that subject!
Our television was controlled by the government and in the late 60s we had two channels (TV 1 & TV 2). I learned a lot and I am still learning a lot about societal problems through public broadcasting (joke).
During the 80s the government was more and more unable to completely control the television, because of competition from cable TV networks. Before every Swedish guy bought a parabola antenna the government was very quick to allow a commercial TV station and a channel (TV 4). The government regulated the channel through a “contract” which expires, I believe, after something like 5 years. This so called contract or lease regulates in detail what TV 4 shall be allowed to broadcast. If TV 4 does not meet the government’s criterions the lease will not be extended. So, nowadays, we here in Sweden get taught in “samhällskunskap” also through TV 4´s broadcasting. By allowing TV 4 before the cable network was extended, TV 4 grew large and could reap most of the incomes from commercials and gain a large market share, and in that way hinder the development of the cable channels. For the government was unable to regulate the cable stations as they broadcasts from abroad. Quite clever and impressive! Still, the market broke the monopoly power of the government and we have, nowadays a lot of cable channels to choose from.
Well, in this environment it is quite difficult and hard to learn and comprehend libertarianism. There is always a psychological barrier to conquer, the barrier which I was brought up with. Later on in life, it was nearly impossible to understand that it was, for example, not the market but the government that was the very cause of the business cycles. I was always taught the opposite! I just couldn’t believe it!
Milton Friedman was easier to understand, because he blamed the Federal Reserve for not “doing their job properly” during the depression, but if his monetary “theory” was correct it was, really, the market that was to blame for the great depression as there was a need for a Federal Reserve “doing its job properly” in the first place.
Well, at last, I broke all the barriers and this because of an intellectual giant called Murray Rothbard.
http://www.answers.com/topic/laissez-faire-books
Björn Lundahl
Göteborg, Sweden
Published: December 2, 2006 12:35 PM
Herr Lundahl,
Glädjande med ytterligare en svensk frände. :)
Med frihetliga hälsningar,
Carl Johan Petrus Ridenfeldt
Uppsala, Sverige
Published: December 2, 2006 1:27 PM
Herr Ridenfeldt
Tack själv! Ja, det är alltid trevligt med en svensk vän.
Hälsningar
Björn Lundahl
Göteborg, Sverige
Published: December 2, 2006 3:43 PM
In all seriousness,
Are there any good svensk to English web-based translators/ translating programs (software)?
also, that leads to the Q: Why doesn't vMI have a "translate here" button, on the site(mises.org)?
Published: December 2, 2006 4:13 PM
Mr. Hoffer,
Not that I know of. (By the way, the Swedish-language term for the Swedish language itself is "svenska", not "svensk".)
You could do a Google search on, e. g., "'Swedish to English' + translator"; two of the hits that I got led to this and this, respectively. I tried them both on my and Mr. Lundahl's posts above, but the results were quite awful (even though you would get the basic gist of our exchange).
Yours in Liberty,
Carl Johan Petrus Ridenfeldt
Published: December 3, 2006 1:27 AM
Ridenfeldt
In my search I missed those translators.
I also wanted to help Mr. Hoffer. It is nice that you gave him assistance!
Björn Lundahl
Published: December 3, 2006 3:13 AM
Herr Ridenfeldt,
Thank you very much for your efforts. I was hoping that native speakers might know more, about what I was asking, than GOOG.
The only thing I did understand, from the context of your comments, in Svenska, was that Svensk was the term for a native of Sverige, as opposed to the the name of the language itself.
Something tells me that if the Navajos had somehow failed in their task in the Pacific, during WWII, the next option would have been to utilize Svensk(s). [Ref. See: Code Talkers]
Thereby, my use of the modifier "good", in my original Q: "Are there any good svensk to English web-based translators/ translating programs (software)?"
Apparently, not really. :)
Please, under no circumstance, do not infer that I am asking, in a roundabout way, for you to translate your comments. My main point is that of 'translation(s)', in general. And, seeing how mises.org is broadly read, how to make it more accessible to the seeking.
Published: December 3, 2006 11:58 AM
Bjorn,
Sorry for not being explicit in my, above, post, though, certainly, I appreciate the efforts you extended, as well.
Published: December 3, 2006 7:02 PM
M E Hoffer
Thank you.
I use Microsoft Office Word 2003 and usually I have a clue about which word to write and Microsoft Word checks the spelling. I also use a dictionary named Pardon. It is a software which I have installed in my laptop. It can translate words to many different languages.
http://www.softbear.no/
1-click Answers is also a very useful. I just click on a word and I receive all the information about it. Why not install it! You might like it! It is free!
http://www.answers.com/main/download_answers_win.jsp
I also use online Wiktionary and a dictionary named More Words.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Main_Page
http://www.morewords.com/
Best regards
Björn Lundahl
Published: December 4, 2006 2:30 AM
Forgive my relative ignorance. I have other priorities that are higher than my desire to learn about anarchist and libertarian theories, and time is a scarce resource for me as it is for everyone else. I do not have time to keep up with my current commitments, let alone read books, however much I might enjoy them.
Bjorn, in this theoretical anarchist society in which all are governed by the libertarian law in the absence of a state...
Who enforces that law? Whomever happens to be handy and have superior force to overwhelm the violators? Or would there be some people who are charged with that task? And what is to be done when the enforcers inevitably break the law they are entrusted with enforcing? (I say inevitably not to impune all such enforces, but because in the whole of any human society there will be some.) How can such a law be enforced without effectively violating said law, or at least acting through an exception. What happens when someone mistakenly takes a person enforcing the law to be violating it and tries to enforce it upon the first enforcer, perhaps because the violator decieves the newcomer into 'rescuing' him? Or in turn, what happens when a person 'enforces' the law against someone who had not actually violated it as a means to coerce illegitimately through deceit.
Ultimately it would seem that some arbiter is necessary to settle such disputes as would arise from whatever form of enforcement is in place. However, arbiters are human and may be corrupt or biased, or falsely accused of corruption or bias. Thus one side may refuse a particular arbiter, seeing him as untrustworthy, while the other side may refuse a particular arbiter because they fear the trustworthiness of that arbiter will lead to their own punishment, and hide thier reasons in lies. If, ultimately, there is some arbiter who cannot be refused, are they not a de facto state? And if there is no arbiter who cannot be refused, how can someone be held accountable?
It seems as though the best one could hope for as a stable state would be a State which sees its role as only that of enforcing a few simple rules and whose individual enforcers believe in libertarian principles above their own power, and on that basis are willing to fight if necessary to keep one another in check. I'm guessing you could count me as a 'minarchist', but only if I am correctly guessing the meaning of that term.
I hope that you will debate my humble inquiries without accusations of non sequitorism, despite the fact that they pertain to anarchy and the question of the necessity of a state in the role of defense, rather than online translations.
Irrelevantly yours,
Daniel
Published: December 5, 2006 7:38 PM
The power of ideas:
I have just found, on the internet, a proposition that Hans-Hermann Hoppe has made:
"States, as powerful and invincible as they might seem, ultimately owe their existence to ideas and, since ideas can in principle change instantaneously, states can be brought down and crumble practically overnight."
http://www.freelythinking.com/quotes.htm
Björn Lundahl
Göteborg, Sweden
Published: December 6, 2006 4:35 AM
Daniel
Hi, the main point is that if people supports libertarian ethics as they today supports the state there will be real law and order. The laws will be powerful and the aggressors weak because they belong to a small minority.
States are inherently aggressive since states do not bear the costs themselves of the aggressions they always make. That is, for instance, one reason for all the wars which states causes. Individuals in a society are not allowed to aggress against each other and if they do and get caught they will have to, at least, bear some of the cost themselves. In a libertarian society they would have to fully bear the costs for the crimes which they have made.
For a New Liberty, by Murray Rothbard:
“Every consumer, every buyer of police protection, would wish above all for protection that is efficient and quiet, with no conflicts or disturbances. Every police agency would be fully aware of this vital fact. To assume that police would continually clash and battle with each other is absurd, for it ignores the devastating effect that this chaotic "anarchy" would have on the business of all the police companies. To put it bluntly, such wars and conflicts would be bad—very bad—for business. Therefore, on the free market, the police agencies would all see to it that there would be no clashes between them, and that all conflicts of opinion would be ironed out in private courts, decided by private judges or arbitrators”.
http://www.mises.org/rothbard/newliberty11.asp
Hans-Hermann Hoppe has argued that insurance companies, would play a prominent role as providers of security and protection in a natural order (a pure free market).
Democracy, The God That Failed, by Hans-Hermann Hoppe:
“Furthermore, the relationship between insurer and client is contractual. The rules of the game are mutually accepted and fixed. An insurer cannot "legislate," or unilaterally change the terms of the contract. In particular, if an insurer wants to attract a voluntarily paying clientele, it must provide for the foreseeable contingency of conflict in its contracts, not only between its own clients but especially with clients of other insurers. The only provision satisfactorily covering the latter contingency is for an insurer to bind itself contractually to independent third-party arbitration. However, not just any arbitration will do. The conflicting insurers must agree on the arbitrator or arbitration agency, and in order to be agreeable to insurers, an arbitrator must produce a product (of legal procedure and substantive judgment) that embodies the widest possible moral consensus among insurers and clients alike. Thus, contrary to statist conditions, a natural order is characterized by stable and predictable law and increased legal harmony”.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/hoppe/hoppe4.html
Best regards Daniel!
Björn Lundahl
Göteborg, Sweden
Published: December 6, 2006 3:18 PM
I want to add to my post “National defence is a so called private good and not a so called public good”:
To occupy unpopulated and worthless land would be aggressions against people wanting, in the future, to visit or to make use of those areas.
Björn Lundahl
Published: December 8, 2006 6:41 AM
Daniel,
Bjorn listed a chapter from Rothbard's book, For a New Liberty (Chapter 11). It was this link,
http://www.mises.org/rothbard/newliberty11.asp
and I highly recommend that you at least read this one part of his book. It'll probably take only a half an hour or so to read, and it answers just about every common objection to anarchism. I'm not betting on a conversion to anarchism based solely on that, but it will give you the material that you are looking for, I think.
Perhaps a libertarian should make a FAQ with the most relevant Rothbard, Mises, Hoppe, Block, Reisman, Rockwell, Bastiat, etc. quotes for those without enough time or interest to read entire books! The common questions such as "How will you protect against corruption of private judges and protection services?; If the roads are privatized. . .how will that work?; Who will take care of the poor?" would be easy to cover in a comprehensive list.
Published: December 8, 2006 6:54 AM
Mark Humphrey “I don't want to precipitate trench warfare with devoted Rothbardians, but I strongly suspect that Rothbard owed his insight about "life as the standard of moral value" to Ayn Rand. I can't prove this, of course. Sadly, in "The Ethics of Liberty", (published in the early Eighties) Rothbard chose to, in a sense, blacklist Rand by claiming that NO ONE, other than himself, in the libertarian movement was working to develope a system of rationally defensible ethics. (Maybe Rothbard meant "at the moment I am writing this statement".)”
Björn That life is an axiomatic value and functions “as the standard of moral value” in an ethical system, Rothbard could, alternatively for example, have gotten this insight from Mises himself through analyzing his statement in his book, “Human Action”, page 11:
“We may say that action is the manifestation of a man's will.”
http://www.mises.org/humanaction/chap1sec1.asp
I am not saying that Rothbard did get his insight from Mises; I am only saying that it was possible. Surely, many other possibilities exist which we do not know anything about.
Mark Humphrey “It has been awhile since I've read Hoppe, and Rothbard; but I suspect Hoppe's reasoning goes: either we all own ourselves, or everyone owns everyone else. Since the first proposition is clearly more defensible than the latter absurd proposition, one can affirm self ownership as valid. But if this is the argument, it fails. For that argument assumes that which it sets out to prove, namely that an ethical concept, "ownership", exists. But on this basis, ownership remains unproven, so that one could just as well assert: "no one owns anything, and anything goes."”
Björn Self-ownership is a natural fact, since a man in his very nature controls his own mind and body (natural disposition), that is, he is a natural self-owner of his own will and person (having a free will) and if this was not true, neither could he effectively control any property and, therefore, not own it. In other words; “nothing could control and own something”.
Naturally, praxeology the science of human action, by itself logically confirms the natural fact of self-ownership, since praxeology is based upon “the acting man consciously intending to improve his own satisfaction” and I quote from answers.com:
“From praxeology Mises derived the idea that every conscious action is intended to improve a person's satisfaction. He was careful to stress that praxeology is not concerned with the individual's definition of end satisfaction, just the way he sought that satisfaction. The way in which a person will increase his satisfaction is by removing a source of dissatisfaction. As the future is uncertain so every action is speculative.
An acting man is defined as one capable of logical thought — to be otherwise would be to make one a mere creature who simply reacts to stimuli by instinct. Similarly an acting man must have a source of dissatisfaction which he believes capable of removing, otherwise he cannot act.
Another conclusion that Mises reached was that decisions are made on an ordinal basis. That is, it is impossible to carry out more than one action at once, the conscious mind being only capable of one decision at a time — even if those decisions can be made in rapid order. Thus man will act to remove the most pressing source of dissatisfaction first and then move to the next most pressing source of dissatisfaction.
As a person satisfies his first most important goal and after that his second most important goal then his second most important goal is always less important than his first most important goal. Thus, for every further goal reached, his satisfaction, or utility, is lessened from the preceding goal. This is the rule of diminishing marginal utility.
In human society many actions will be trading activities where one person regards a possession of another person as more desirable than one of his own possessions, and the other person has a similar higher regard for his colleague's possession than he does for his own. This subject of praxeology is known as catallactics, and is the more commonly accepted realm of economics.”
http://www.answers.com/Praxeology?gwp=11&ver=2.0.1.458&method=3
Further:
The Ethics of Liberty, page 45:
Footnote:
“[1]Professor George Mavrodes, of the department of philosophy of the University of Michigan, objects that there is another logical alternative: namely, “that no one owns anybody, either himself or anyone else, nor any share of anybody.” However, since ownership signifies range of control, this would mean that no one would be able to do anything, and the human race would quickly vanish.”
http://www.mises.org/rothbard/ethics/eight.asp
Or in my own words from the essay “Normative principles”:
“Why must anybody own anything?
In accordance with our objective test to find out if something is a condition for something else, we grasp a state of things where the following principle is none existent anywhere and at all:
“Everybody owns themselves and their Justly owned property rights”.
Nobody would be able to do anything, since nobody has the right to control anything. Not even themselves (see below about property rights in your own person).
This question is not only a contradiction it is also silly. You ask a question which means that you control yourselves (natural disposition), that is owning yourself (see below the excellent writing of Hans-Hermann Hoppe). The other contradiction is that if nobody would own anything, nobody would be able to hinder anyone to own anything either since they would otherwise have an invalid control (having the disposition to) of everyone else, that is having an invalid ownership to everybody else (see below about valid property rights in your own person).
Ownership itself is, therefore, an objective condition for the preservation of human life.”
http://normativeprinciples.blogspot.com/2006/12/normative-principles-pure-free-market_10.html
Björn Lundahl
Göteborg, Sweden
Published: December 30, 2006 12:22 PM
Daniel: ask all of your questions above of the state! What you're doing here is the same thing others often do (cf, Roger M): insist that unless anarchy can be proved to be perfect, it can't work, while utterly ignoring the fact that "archy" isn't perfect either! Roger is fond of saying "unless you can solve this problem X, I can't support you", where problem X is an existing problem not solved by the status quo which he supports instead! That is just ridiculous.
Also, to ask "how would anarchy handle situation Y", aside from the imprecise language imputing intent and behavior to a concept, supposes that anarchy is centrally planned :) Various people may be able to give you ideas about how Y might be handled, but these ideas need to be tested and ironed out in practice; maybe better solutions will only be apparent then. If you lived in a world in which food and clothing were provided by government, and someone suggested that they could be better produced privately, would anyone be able to answer your questions as to how that would be done? Where precisely will factories be built? Who will pay for it? Who will work there? How will they know how much of what to produce? Etc. Nobody could say. But private production of food and clothing works much better than government production of food and clothing (ask anyone who lived in a communist state!)
Published: December 30, 2006 7:23 PM
National defense in Libertopia provided by some sort of insurance company?! Pleeeease. Doesn't that mean people getting paid forever waiting for an invasion? Understandable in a Big Bad Statist society but in a happy free-market Libertarian society? I don't think so. I'd say the more reasonable alternative has been the other suggestion: allow individual to self-arm and hope an invader is either easily repelled or gets stuck in a quagmire like Iraq.
Published: December 30, 2006 10:51 PM
Oh, BTW, what are the are those examples of successful anarchic societies? Clans? Tribes? That Icelandic example and, um, er, well ?
Published: December 30, 2006 10:59 PM
“Doesn't that mean people getting paid forever waiting for an invasion?”
I have already answered this as I wrote; “as people in a free market would want to protect themselves (life and property) against aggression (physical violence and theft), for example, through insurers (or other protection agencies), risks against warfare would, also, be included in the insurance premium.
Warfare is only aggression or physical violence of a greater magnitude, but is still the implementation of physical violence.”
I do not believe that the insurance companies themselves want to bear the costs.
Björn Lundahl
Published: January 3, 2007 4:38 PM
The idea is that if people support a libertarian ethic just as much as they used to support the state, everything will work much better than today. Protection agencies, insurers etc will cooperate peacefully. Minorities including minor “protection agencies” that violate the law will be as weak as minorities are today when they violate state laws.
If such a society would not be a success and people started to beat each other up, it would not prove that this statement was wrong, it would only prove that people did not support libertarian laws as much as they once did support the state and its laws.
To argue that this is not so etc will, also, only legitimate the state and therefore the support of the state. I think it is very wise to be careful with what we say.”
Björn Lundahl
Published: January 3, 2007 4:44 PM
Actually yes, Björn Lundahl, how does the proverbial insurance companies actually protect against invaders unless they have a standing army? To say 'give everyone a gun and we now a have non-standing militia army' isn't really an answer as I don't why we'd need insurance companies for that.
Published: January 3, 2007 10:57 PM
Sam
“Actually yes, Björn Lundahl, how does the proverbial insurance companies actually protect against invaders unless they have a standing army? To say 'give everyone a gun and we now a have non-standing militia army' isn't really an answer as I don't why we'd need insurance companies for that.”
I do not know the most technological and economical way to counterattack state aggressions. Only the market can decide. They might use highly efficient intelligence services and high tech to locate and to wipe out those at the top. That might be an efficient way to stop an aggression. There might be other more efficient ways which we do not know anything about.
In Friedrich Hayek’s own words:
“Many of the greatest things man has achieved are not the result of consciously directed thought, and still less the product of a deliberately coordinated effort of many individuals, but of a process in which the individual plays a part which he can never fully understand.”
“It is, indeed, part of the liberal attitude to assume that, especially in the economic field, the self-regulating forces of the market will somehow bring about the required adjustments to new conditions, although no one can foretell how they will do this in a particular instance. There is perhaps no single factor contributing so much to people's frequent reluctance to let the market work as their inability to conceive how some necessary balance, between demand and supply, between exports and imports, or the like, will be brought about without deliberate control.”
http://homepage.eircom.net/~odyssey/Politics/Liberty/Hayek.html
“Compared with the totality of knowledge which is continually utilized in the evolution of a dynamic civilization, the difference between the knowledge that the wisest and that which the most ignorant individual can deliberately employ is comparatively insignificant.”
“Human reason can neither predict nor deliberately shape its own future. Its advances consist in finding out where it has been wrong.”
“The part of our social order which can or ought to be made a conscious product of human reason is only a small part of all the forces of society.”
“Many of the greatest things man has achieved are not the result of consciously directed thought, and still less the product of a deliberately co-ordinated effort of many individuals, but of a process in which the individual plays a part which he can never fully understand.”
“We are only beginning to understand on how subtle a communication system the functioning of an advanced industrial society is based - a communications system which we call the market and which turns out to be a more efficient mechanism for digesting dispersed information than any that man has deliberately designed.”
“... the case for individual freedom rests largely on the recognition of the inevitable and universal ignorance of all of us concerning a great many of the factors on which the achievements of our ends and welfare depend.”
“...the argument for liberty is not an argument against organization, which is one of the most powerful tools human reason can employ, but an argument against all exclusive, privileged, monopolistic organization, against the use of coercion to prevent others from doing better.”
“..it is largely because civilization enables us constantly to profit from knowledge which we individually do not possess and because each individual's use of his particular knowledge may serve to assist others unknown to him in achieving their ends that men as members of civilized society can pursue their individual ends so much more successfully than they could alone.”
http://www.adamsmith.org/index.php/main/heroes_more/hayek_quotes/
Björn Lundahl
Göteborg, Sweden
Published: January 4, 2007 2:42 PM
I will post this again since I do believe that my comment regarding none existence of any property rights is here presented more clearly and logically than in my above post.
Life and self-ownership
Mark Humphrey “I don't want to precipitate trench warfare with devoted Rothbardians, but I strongly suspect that Rothbard owed his insight about "life as the standard of moral value" to Ayn Rand. I can't prove this, of course. Sadly, in "The Ethics of Liberty", (published in the early Eighties) Rothbard chose to, in a sense, blacklist Rand by claiming that NO ONE, other than himself, in the libertarian movement was working to develope a system of rationally defensible ethics. (Maybe Rothbard meant "at the moment I am writing this statement".)”
Björn That life is an axiomatic value and functions “as the standard of moral value” in an ethical system, Rothbard could, alternatively for example, have gotten this insight from Mises himself through analyzing his statement in his book, “Human Action”, page 11:
“We may say that action is the manifestation of a man's will.”
http://www.mises.org/humanaction/chap1sec1.asp
I am not saying that Rothbard did get his insight from Mises; I am only saying that it was possible. Surely, many other possibilities exist which we do not know anything about.
Mark Humphrey “It has been awhile since I've read Hoppe, and Rothbard; but I suspect Hoppe's reasoning goes: either we all own ourselves, or everyone owns everyone else. Since the first proposition is clearly more defensible than the latter absurd proposition, one can affirm self ownership as valid. But if this is the argument, it fails. For that argument assumes that which it sets out to prove, namely that an ethical concept, "ownership", exists. But on this basis, ownership remains unproven, so that one could just as well assert: "no one owns anything, and anything goes."”
Björn Self-ownership is a natural fact, since a man in his very nature controls his own mind and body (natural disposition), that is, he is a natural self-owner of his own will and person (having a free will) and if this was not true, neither could he effectively control any property and, therefore, not own it. In other words; “nothing could control and own something”.
Naturally, praxeology the science of human action, by itself logically confirms the natural fact of self-ownership, since praxeology is based upon “the acting man consciously intending to improve his own satisfaction” and I quote from answers.com:
“From praxeology Mises derived the idea that every conscious action is intended to improve a person's satisfaction. He was careful to stress that praxeology is not concerned with the individual's definition of end satisfaction, just the way he sought that satisfaction. The way in which a person will increase his satisfaction is by removing a source of dissatisfaction. As the future is uncertain so every action is speculative.
An acting man is defined as one capable of logical thought — to be otherwise would be to make one a mere creature who simply reacts to stimuli by instinct. Similarly an acting man must have a source of dissatisfaction which he believes capable of removing, otherwise he cannot act.
Another conclusion that Mises reached was that decisions are made on an ordinal basis. That is, it is impossible to carry out more than one action at once, the conscious mind being only capable of one decision at a time — even if those decisions can be made in rapid order. Thus man will act to remove the most pressing source of dissatisfaction first and then move to the next most pressing source of dissatisfaction.
As a person satisfies his first most important goal and after that his second most important goal then his second most important goal is always less important than his first most important goal. Thus, for every further goal reached, his satisfaction, or utility, is lessened from the preceding goal. This is the rule of diminishing marginal utility.
In human society many actions will be trading activities where one person regards a possession of another person as more desirable than one of his own possessions, and the other person has a similar higher regard for his colleague's possession than he does for his own. This subject of praxeology is known as catallactics, and is the more commonly accepted realm of economics.”
http://www.answers.com/Praxeology?gwp=11&ver=2.0.1.458&method=3
Further:
The Ethics of Liberty, page 45:
Footnote:
“[1]Professor George Mavrodes, of the department of philosophy of the University of Michigan, objects that there is another logical alternative: namely, “that no one owns anybody, either himself or anyone else, nor any share of anybody.” However, since ownership signifies range of control, this would mean that no one would be able to do anything, and the human race would quickly vanish.”
http://www.mises.org/rothbard/ethics/eight.asp
Or in my own words:
Why must anybody own anything?
In accordance with our objective test to find out if something is a condition for something else, we grasp a state of things where the following principle is none existent anywhere and at all:
“The existence of property rights”:
In a world without any property rights nobody would be able to do anything, since nobody has the right to control anything. Not even themselves (see below about property rights in your own person).
This question is not only a contradiction it is also silly. You ask a question which means that you control yourselves (natural disposition), that is owning yourself (see below the excellent writing of Hans-Hermann Hoppe). The other contradiction is that if nobody would own anything, nobody would be able to hinder anyone to own anything either since they would otherwise have an invalid control (having the disposition to) of everyone else, that is having an invalid ownership to everybody else (see below about valid property rights in your own person).
Ownership itself is, therefore, an objective condition for the preservation of human life.
Please read some of Hans-Hermann Hoppe´s excellent writing from the book “The Ethics and Economics of Private Property”:
http://www.mises.org/etexts/hoppe5.pdf
And to:
ON THE ULTIMATE JUSTIFICATION OF THE ETHICS OF PRIVATE PROPERTY:
http://www.hanshoppe.com/publications/econ-ethics-10.pdf
Björn Lundahl
Published: March 15, 2007 3:42 PM