Comments (13)

• Brainpolice

  Rothbard states: "An even greater danger of a similar sort is posed by the idea of many libertarians of setting forth a comprehensive and planned program of transition to total liberty, e.g., that in Year 1 law A should be repealed, law B modified, tax C be cut by 20 percent, etc.; in Year 2 law D be repealed, tax C cut by a further 10 percent, etc. The comprehensive plan is far more misleading than the simple budget cut, because it strongly implies that, for example, law D should not be repealed until the second year of this planned program. Hence, the trap of philosophic gradualism, of gradualism-in-theory, would be fallen into on a massive scale. The would-be libertarian planners would be virtually falling into a position, or seeming to, of opposing a faster pace toward liberty."

  Does this not apply to those libertarians who declare that, while "open borders" (or more correctly stated, no political borders) is the proper stance, the welfare state must be eliminated first? That, in effect, immigration restrictionism and borders must be enthusiastically enforced until the welfare state is done away with, then when the welfare state is done away with we can finally start relaxing immigration restrictions?

  Published: December 8, 2007 1:24 AM

• a Duoist

  There are 26,000 professional philosophers in the world; a few of them are self-described libertarians. But not one academic PhD philosopher, anywhere, lists 'liberty' or 'freedom' or 'libertarianism' or 'pluralism' as one of their philosophical specializations.

  Published: December 8, 2007 4:08 AM

• Paul Marks

  I am often critical of the late Murry Rothbard, but I do not join the snearing at writings such as this.

  For although Murry Rothbard was mistaken in the short term, i.e. the size and scope of government did not decline, I believe he will be proved correct in the long term

  I am certain that Rothbard's point that the present size and scope of government is too big to be sustained will be proved correct in the long term.

  The Welfare States (including the one that in the United States, and the United States certainly does have government health, education and welfare spending of Welfare State size) are doomed. As are the credit bubble financial systems.

  Perhaps not next year or the year after - but they will fall.

  The question is will there be a orderly move away from mega government - or will there be a collapse into chaos?

  We must remember that chaos is also an enemy of liberty. At least of civil society type liberty - i.e. liberty that respects the bodies and goods of others.

  Published: December 8, 2007 7:17 AM

• jeffrey

  That's right Paul. What if a Soviet economist in 1970 had written: "This whole crazy communist system is coming down, crushed by its own failures and inner contradictions." No one would say he was wrong because it didn't happen for another 20 years.
  

  Published: December 8, 2007 10:25 AM

• Mark Humphrey

  Murray Rothbard strove tirelessly to create a libertarian movement that would topple the state and install a regime of individual liberty. Aside from differences and questions I harbor about Rothbard's anarchism, I applaud Rothbard's love of liberty and his carefully reasoned economics.

  But Rothbard's outlook contained a major weakness, which he partly understood and tried, but failed, to correct. This weakness is his moral agnosticism. True, Rothbard wrote a book, The Ethics of Liberty, in which he attempted to prove ethical-political principles. But whether or not one thinks he succeeded in proving
  "ethical axioms", one fact stands: Rothbard wanted to establish the moral value of individual liberty without addressing the issue of what morality is and why people need it.

  For Rothbard's discussion of "libertarian ethics" explicitly disavows interest in moral philosophy--a study of the source and nature of moral values. About this subject, as concerning some other areas of philosophy, Rothbard was agnostic.
  That is, he either believed that moral philosophy was outside the province of rational understanding, or he didn't understand it, or
  he thought that it wasn't relevant to a rational defense of indivdual liberty.

  But moral philosophy is not tangental or irrelevant to a good defense of liberty; it is essential. For liberty is the freedom to act peacefully. But why should one favor freedom
  for individuals to act? Well, because free markets produce a great outpouring of material abundance and release people from material and spiritual deprivation. But why should one seek prosperity? And of what, exactly, do spiritual values consist? For what values should individuals strive? These are questions that concern moral philosophy.

  To illustrate why moral philosophy is essential to defending individualism, consider the ethos of hard core Greens that is sweeping the world today. The Greens believe, usually implicitly but at times openly, that man's activites are somehow unnatural and morally benighted. Thus, the less impact man has on his surroundings, the more he strives to Live "in harmony" with his environment, the less depraved is his existence. Austrian economics and Rothbard's ethical-political axioms about the wrongness of initiating force do not refute the ideas of hard-core environmentalists, who reject the value of prosperity, who implicitly or openly dislike human beings and human choice, who long to constrict and censor human life as a moral disvalue. Only good ideas from moral philosophy can demonstrate the moral depravity of
  hard-core green philosophy that has come to dominate thinking in the West today.

  There should be no doubt that hard-core Green misanthropic ideas hold the western world in its grip. Consider the "consensus" about anthropological global warming--an intellectual tapestry riddled with anomolies and contradictions--that is driving the US and Europe toward the Kyoto restrictions. Consider the artificial scarcity of petroleum due in large part to the influence of the environmental movement in declaring huge areas in Alaska, the Rocky Mountain West, and off shore areas as sacred temples of nature. Our living standards will no doubt decline substantially in the years to come, and oil prices may rise to hundreds of dollars per barrel. But the suffering and deprivation imposed on Amercians and Europeans by this irrationality won't inspire much of a revolt. People willingly and meekly suffer when they believe their suffering is morally proper.

  Tibor Machan wrote a great book about the moral agnosticism that dominates Austrian and Chicago free market economics--the frontline defense of contemporary libertarianism--and why that agnosticism weakens our cause. His book is entitled "Capitalism and Individualism: Reframing the Argument for a Free Society."

  Published: December 8, 2007 3:28 PM

• Parrotocacy

  Hello Mark Humphrey,

  Greens, by your description, join the endless list of groups claiming to be ‘so absolutely correct’ that they have a right to use coercive means to get their way. You are right to say that morality is inherently necessary to determining what is wrong with Greens et al, and that without this moral basis, libertarians have no compass. Yet, is Rothbard, as you posit, really morally agnostic in his libertarianism? He does write:

  “It should be clear from this work that, first and foremost, liberty is a moral principle, grounded in the nature of man. In particular, it is a principle of justice, of the abolition of aggressive violence in the affairs of men.”

  Rothbard, indeed, realized the need for a deeper basis for measure than listing every particular human action. In order to honor liberty as a moral necessary the following statement comes naturally: Political means is immoral. Without liberty how can one choose to act morally in the first place? In this way the range of action available to man remains open ended, but still curtailed by higher morality. Actions are judged by the means employed, not merely just by the ends sought.

  In returning to the problem of the Greens one could ask: Are Greens any different than entities that are not so crusading but nonetheless use coercion to get what they want? A corporation using government to smash competition is one example. Can we know before hand which, between the Greens and corporations, will do the most damage to humanity? Not at all.

  Do you mean something different by 'agnosticism'?
  

  Published: December 9, 2007 7:06 AM

• Nick

  --
  There should be no doubt that hard-core Green misanthropic ideas hold the western world in its grip. Consider the "consensus" about anthropological global warming--an intellectual tapestry riddled with anomolies and contradictions--that is driving the US and Europe toward the Kyoto restrictions.
  --
  Science, Mark. We call that 'science'. But I am always staggered with the number of libertarians who just happen to have a hobby in climatology and concidentally have reviewed the evidence and come to an alternate conclusion from the scientific consensus. Not because the fact of climate change is inconvenient mind you, just you know, by coincidence.

  But I disagree with your claim above. When hard-core Green ideas "hold the western world in their grip" you will see a radically different world, not a tepid response to a timid climate change agreement

  Published: December 9, 2007 12:37 PM

• Mark Humphrey

  Hi Parratocracy:

  Your point that Murray Rothbard emphasized the crucial importance of a rational ethical defense of individual liberty is right on target. In fact, it was Rothbard's writing about this issue that first alerted me to its importance years ago, when as a college kid I immersed myself in Austrian economics. In fact, Rothbard's clear insight that good free market economic theory, by itself, could not prove to other people that they ought to favor free markets and individual freedom motivated me to do a lot of reading and thinking about ethics over the years.

  Rothbard's political-ethical moral axiom that people ought to refrain from initiating force, as explained in his book The Ethics of Liberty, and as briefly discussed in Man Economy and State, may be valid. I have been skeptical in the past that it is a good argument, (even though I agree that individual natural rights are real and important) mainly because I question whether or not political-ethical principles can be proven without first logically establishing their foundations in moral philosophy. In other words, first one must explain what moral values are, why people need them, and why they are objectively true for all people, including those who don't understand or favor them. Then one can move on to derive ethical principles that apply to dealings between people, which takes one to the realm of politics.

  Perhaps my skepticism about Rothbard's moral axioms reflects a lack of understanding on my part. Perhaps he devised a "shortcut" that demonstrates the contradiction in initiating force. If Rothbard was right, then when environmentalists resort to force to reach their goals, they are morally wrong. I'll just have to reread his book and try to figure it out.

  However, I do think that the Green movement is misanthropic and dangerous. Of course, socialism is also misanthropic--with its utopian desire to reshape man in the mode of Modern Socialist. The point I wanted to emphasize is that to the extent that naive well-meaning people uncritically absorb environmentalist notions about the "intrinsic value" of "untrammeled nature", they'll feel that diminishing living standards and even impoverishment are appropriate morally. People live by the application of their intelligence; they live by changing their environment to realize their needs. But if unchanged nature is an "intrinsic value" (of value to no valuer, just somehow "valuable"), then anything man does to live is morally tainted.

  Hi Nick: I realize you don't like what I think, which I cheerfully accept. But in fact, you don't understand my thinking; you have refuted and ridiculed a strawman.

  I DO think the anthropological global warming
  "consensus" is riddled with contradictions. I'll point out just one, although there are a great many others that I could describe. Breathless blonde newscasters report melting ice cover on Greenland and the North Pole, complete with video of forlorn polar bears and amplified sounds of dripping water. (I'll skip over the issue of whether or not those ice caps are melting merely around the fringes, adjacent to the seas, while growing thicker inland, over a larger expanse.)All of this terrible melting is said to be the result of man's nefarious productive activity--driving cars, building factories, growing food, creating medical drugs, enjoying restaurants and vacations, you know---living. This Great Melting is due, the official line goes, to heightened greenhouse gases that are supposed to warm temperatures most noticeably at the two poles.

  However, the ice cap at the South Pole--with the exception of a peninsula on its northern edge that constitutes about 1% of the total South polar land mass--is growing thicker! This claim is not controversial. But herein lies a contradiction. For the Green hypothesis holds greenhouse gases should warm both poles, but the South Pole is getting cooler while ice accumulates!

  There is a good explanation for this phenomena, explained and largely proven in "The Chilling Stars" by Svensmark and Calder. Svensmark's careful science, based on experiments rather than arbitary guesswork and "modeling", explains why the climate has been warming for a few hundred years, and refutes anthropological global warming so beloved of environmentalists.

  However, even if the Green fairy tale about man wrecking the climate were true, (sometimes we're told he is heating then planet; other times threatening ice age), it wouldn't alter my thinking about the viciousness of the fundamental values that animate the environmental movement. For if the climate were warming OR cooling due to man's productive achievements, the solution would be to adjust through market innovations.

  Published: December 9, 2007 4:16 PM

• Peter

  Mozart was a red!

  Published: December 9, 2007 6:29 PM

• Artisan

  @ Mark Humphrey
  Probably my knowledge of Rothbard is not as broad as yours, but I do not at all agree with your line of thought. To me, ultimately, it is the moral and ethical aspect that convinced me in the first place when reading free-market philosophy, certainly not the hope for a wealthier future.

  I will certainly check the book you mentioned though.

  To assume that the concept of freedom lacks the notion of morality… is quite a funny thought. Can it be that you really doubt that?

  Agnosticism is a philosophy that respects religious thinking, but doesn’t acknowledge higher individual rights for particular humans because of alleged ties between God and them.
  

  Published: December 10, 2007 7:53 AM

• Anthony

  My guess is that Mark - and along with him anyone schooled in the Aristotelean branch of moral thought - is not satisfied with Rothbard's approach because it is not as comprehensive as he'd like it to be, i.e. it does not go into the nature of morality and why we should value liberty, and so on. This is commonly an objection put forward by Aristotelean Austrians, and I am inclined to agree with them. Am I correct, Mark?

  Published: December 10, 2007 8:26 AM

• Artisan

  I'll try a simple answer:

  you cannot define humanity without defining the idea of liberty i.e. free-will. Questioning free-will is reducing humans to instruments, that cannot question themselves...

  On the other hand you cannot assume humanity is morally "evil" because you are human yourself. This would annihilate the idea of the good and evil duality.

  To say it even clearer: we have no choice as to assume that humanity IS good.

  Published: December 10, 2007 1:34 PM

• David Spellman

  I think the most crucial concept is that despotism no longer will work in the modern world like it used to. I think Rothbard's comment "State planning, operation, controls, high and crippling taxation, and paper-money inflation must all inevitably lead to the collapse of the statist economic system" is true, but unfortunately the end result will be global disaster.

  The forces of statism are pushing back liberty in an effort to return to the good old days of despotism. But despotism reduces the people to serfdom at subsistence level. That would reduce the carrying capacity of the world dramatically--to a level far below the population of the world. If that happens, billions could die in just one year of starvation accompanied disease and warfare over the few resources.

  Yes, I am seriously proposing that the break down of society could result in a precipitous destruction of billions of people. The "greens" alluded to by other bloggers are aware of this and have expressed their approval (and are actively pursuing it with the intention of blaming us for being alive). The socialists are inadvertently accomplishing it by destroying the market engine of free commerce which reduces production. The statists are engendering it by monetary expansion and taxation to transfer wealth from the productive to the parasitic. In the end, civilization will collapse and billions will be without the means to support themselves.

  Woe unto the world when there is a widespread infrastructural failure. I am a Cassandra who will be caught up in the mess, but it will prove to be very messy. It is true that ingenuity and invention can solve all problems--and I am sure civilization will be rebuilt by those who survive. The crux of my thesis is that it only takes one world wide growing season failure to starve most of the world to death. We have seen millions starve in localized famines despite the availability of food in the rest of the world. If there is a lack of food in all the world, billions will die with alacrity.

  Wait and see...

  Published: December 10, 2007 2:10 PM