Lord Keynes follows up on his post about degrees of laissez-faire, with the Rothbardian system being postulated as the most liberal.
Social Democracy For The 21St Century
Rothbard on Private Protection Agencies and Justice in his Libertarian World
Lord Keynes
In a laissez-faire economic system, monopolies and oligopolies will emerge owing to collusion and economies of scale, eventually favoring wealth. Thus, a power hierarchy will emerge along neo-feudal lines. Those who are not able to afford the security and legal system will be shut out of it, and those who can afford it will be out-competed by those able to afford more skilled, hence more costly, representation. Since there is not overarching legal system, there is no way to prevent bribery either, or even to define it when the basis of the system is "money talks."
In the absence of an overarching rule of law that is definitive on some institutional basis and which applies equally to all, law and justice would be arbitrary and result in imposition of settlement terms by a power elite determined by wealth.
Any ideology that doesn't sufficiently take into account the will to power and institutions based on power, however, it arises, is doomed to failure — unless its objective is to justify a particular power elite.
Rothbard's system the justification of a system of power based on economic power rather than military power or political power. The result will be essentially the same.
In fact, it is likely to result in a great many people have no recourse but to sell themselves and their posterity into slavery, which is permitted by the system since this is voluntary and individuals are sovereign and can dispose of themselves and their production as they wish.
It is not a curious fact that such a proposal is novel. No one in the history of political thought has had the temerity to propose such a thing, for the simple reason that it is ridiculously ill-conceived in light of humanity's development.
The only way that such a proposal seems credible at all is by abstracting from personal dispositions and habits, as well as culture and institutions, as the basis for human relationships.
Human societies are neither aggregates of individuals irrespective of their relationships, nor collectives in which relationships are determined by nature as is the case with a hive. Rather, human societies are complex systems resulting from the interaction of individuals based on personal disposition and habit and social rituals and institutions.
In a laissez-faire economic system, monopolies and oligopolies will emerge owing to collusion and economies of scale, eventually favoring wealth. Thus, a power hierarchy will emerge along neo-feudal lines. Those who are not able to afford the security and legal system will be shut out of it, and those who can afford it will be out-competed by those able to afford more skilled, hence more costly, representation. Since there is not overarching legal system, there is no way to prevent bribery either, or even to define it when the basis of the system is "money talks."
In the absence of an overarching rule of law that is definitive on some institutional basis and which applies equally to all, law and justice would be arbitrary and result in imposition of settlement terms by a power elite determined by wealth.
Any ideology that doesn't sufficiently take into account the will to power and institutions based on power, however, it arises, is doomed to failure — unless its objective is to justify a particular power elite.
Rothbard's system the justification of a system of power based on economic power rather than military power or political power. The result will be essentially the same.
In fact, it is likely to result in a great many people have no recourse but to sell themselves and their posterity into slavery, which is permitted by the system since this is voluntary and individuals are sovereign and can dispose of themselves and their production as they wish.
It is not a curious fact that such a proposal is novel. No one in the history of political thought has had the temerity to propose such a thing, for the simple reason that it is ridiculously ill-conceived in light of humanity's development.
The only way that such a proposal seems credible at all is by abstracting from personal dispositions and habits, as well as culture and institutions, as the basis for human relationships.
Human societies are neither aggregates of individuals irrespective of their relationships, nor collectives in which relationships are determined by nature as is the case with a hive. Rather, human societies are complex systems resulting from the interaction of individuals based on personal disposition and habit and social rituals and institutions.
28 comments:
It is, we must realize, impossible to blueprint the exact institutional conditions of any market in advance, just as it would have been impossible 50 years ago to predict the exact structure of the television industry today.
As Rothbard said, speculating about the forms of future businesses is basically futile (as I always point out regarding “free banking” under true laissez faire). That’s why I tend to ignore Rothbard’s speculations on the form of future businesses, which, of course, are not binding on me or anyone else.
The fact is that libertarianism is not and does not pretend to be a complete moral, or aesthetic theory; it is only a POLITICAL theory, that is, the important subset of moral theory that deals with the proper role of violence in social life. Political theory deals with what is proper or improper for government to do, and government is distinguished from every other group in society as being the institution of organized violence. Libertarianism holds that the only proper role of violence is to defend person and property against violence, that any use of violence that goes beyond such just defense is itself aggressive, unjust, and criminal.
Libertarianism, therefore, is a theory which states that everyone should be free of violent invasion, should he free to do as he sees fit except invade the person or property of another. What a person does with his or her life is vital and important, but is simply irrelevant to libertarianism.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard12.html
I would predict that various subdivisions would have their own police “agency” keeping in mind that with the roads being private, the inhabitants could exclude whomever they wanted. I see no reason why people could not and would not provide free services to the poor as that is done now. I see no reason why Township X and Township Y could not/would not have an extradition agreement and/or why each community would not want a form of contractual subpoena power so that people living or entering an area could decide to submit to such a subpoena as the case may be.
Everything remains the same except that you may not INITIATE force or violence. However, absent a contractual agreement, you can ostracize to your heart’s content. If Township Y refuses an extradition agreement, people in Township X can refuse to trade with them or allow Y citizens into Township X. That would make perfect sense because dealing with people from Y could be dangerous in that you would not have a forum for peaceful and pre-established resolution of disputes with them.
This isn’t that complicated. Rothbard’s musings on possible future arrangements do not change the nature of the non-aggression principle or its applications, which are infinite so long as one does not initiate force against your fellow human beings.
I see no reason why people could not and would not provide free services to the poor as that is done now.
Huh?
In other words, capitalism following the elimination of states simply results in the re-emergence of the state system, with corporate security and policing systems, as the natural result of the rough and tumble struggle for power and control over resources and people. The only difference is that the states that will emerge are corporate states governed entirely from the top via a strictly hierarchical command and control system, just as corporations already are today.
Huh?
I fail to understand why people who adopt the non-aggression principle will suddenly become less charitable than they were before. Indeed, by eschewing violence this would suggest that such people are more respectful of their fellow men and women.
As Warren Mosler explained, it's you MMTers whose "philosophy" is based upon thugs pulling out 9 mm handguns.
The only difference is that the states that will emerge are corporate states governed entirely from the top via a strictly hierarchical command and control system, just as corporations already are today.
What total crap. NO. The rich and strong are FORBIDDEN from initiating force upon the weakest and poorest. Go watch the film "Avatar". The corporate thugs are FORBIDDEN from stealing the land of the forest people. End of story.
http://archive.mises.org/11295/avatar-is-great-and-libertarian/
Again, why would people who adopt the non-aggression principle suddenly, inexplicably and simultaneously become aggressive and violate it as your smearing suggests? There's no trick here.
You MMTers are shameless in your propensity for distortions. It's especially outrageous with you all being part of Mosler's 9 mm assault team.
"see no reason why Township X and Township Y could not/would not have an extradition agreement and/or why each community would not want a form of contractual subpoena power so that people living or entering an area could decide to submit to such a subpoena as the case may be. "
So already Rothbard's ethical ideas must be thrown out the window!:
"Jones is invited to defend himself against the charges, although there can be no subpoena power, since any sort of force used against a man not yet convicted of a crime is itself an invasive and criminal act that could not be consonant with the free society we have been postulating"
Rothbard's ethics is not a pick and choice system!
Either you accept it in its entirety or your society is coercive and unjust, according to Rothbard.
It's no surprise roddis already has to run away from it, because even he sees its unworkable rubbish.
"Again, why would people who adopt the non-aggression principle suddenly, inexplicably and simultaneously become aggressive and violate it as your smearing suggests?
It's only your idiot assumption that all people in a libertarian society would "adopt the non-aggression principle" and adhere to it.
Roddis is basically telling us that all propensities to violence and crime will magically disappear
in Rothbardtopia.
Maybe magical dancing unicorns will fly out of his *ss on a daily basis too!
we recently had a scandal were private jails paid judges for juvenile inmates.
privatizing water around the world has lead to contaminated water at a higher costs. Like in Cochabamba, But I guess tripling water prices on already impoverished people isn't considered an act of"violence" for sociopaths.
Similar results in Chicago's infamous private parking meter .
The privatization of the London tube was so bad that the it was unprivatized.
it may work in a world where people and the corporations are all benevolent. If you find a place like this. let me know.
Bob, the "Huh?" was in response to your I see no reason why people could not and would not provide free services to the poor as that is done now.
Maybe we inhabit different worlds, but I don't see a lot of free services being provided to the poor now other than by govt programs that would presumably disappear under laissez-faire unless through voluntary charitable contributions. That such would be forthcoming seems to me to be to be a huge assumption.
I realize there is an argument that many people don't give or limit their giving since they believe that govt is addressing the issues, and they would take up the slack if govt were not doing this. However, if history is any guide that is a baseless assumption.
Bob, I just don't get it. First of all, Warren is just describing what's going on. Don't shoot the messenger. And are you really going to let opposition to taxes, in general, block you from endorsing Warren's full FICA payroll tax cut?
Why would you want the currency issuing monopolist you hate to overtax the private sector?
The corporate thugs are FORBIDDEN from stealing the land of the forest people. End of story.
NOT "the end of the story." Some people sell their land and others buy it. Over time, some people own most of the land and others have to rent it from them on their terms. Just like feudalism.
But because everything was voluntary this is supposed to result in a well-functioning society in which all remain free?
What has happened in the past operating under this type of system is that people sold themselves and their posterity into slavery, which they were "free" to do to pay debt and secure subsistence.
LK Roddis is basically telling us that all propensities to violence and crime will magically disappear in Rothbardtopia.
This is my point about the general level of consciousness, also called the level of collective consciousness.
This level determines the cultural traits and rituals and the social, political and economic institutions that grow from personal dispositions and habits interacting in a social system. One can judge the level of consciousness of the a society by examining its culture and institutions. This is standard fare for historians, anthropologists, and sociologists.
These disciplines have attempted to develop criteria for assessing the advancement of different societies. One of the basic criteria is the level of universality that is exhibited in aggregate, e.g., measuring acts of benevolence and malevolence, and also collectively, e.g., the legal structure, the application of justice.
The notion that a nation is presently advanced enough for a libertarian society is not borne out in evidence.
Even on a small scale is is extremely difficult to implement a libertarian model due to the level of many people that self-select to become involved in such experiments.
Moreover, I don't know of any such experiments with full-on laissez-faire that have managed to persist for very long and that satisfied everyone, but, of course, people were free to leave. Unfortunately, there is often an associated Gresham dynamic rather than a pruning effect.
I am not opposed to the libertarian project and in fact look forward to the day when humanity will be able to be as free as possible given material limitations.
But in my estimation Rothbard's approach to it is naive and intellectual, especially as a proposal to be put into effect under existing conditions. Moreover, I also think it fails as a thought experiment for reasons such as we are considering. These are not just details to be "worked out" if the thought experiment's conditions are to be preserved. There are nitty gritty issues.
Roddis is basically telling us that all propensities to violence and crime will magically disappear in Rothbardtopia.
Nothing magical is ever going to happen. I propose that people adopt the non-aggression principle. I suspect that people will not adopt it and civilization will continue to implode. However, if a significant plurality adopts the NAP, THOSE PEOPLE WILL HAVE ESCHEWED CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR IN ALL OF ITS VARIOUS APPLICATIONS. There’s nothing magical about that if it were to happen. Further, it is preposterous to suggest that once those people have IN FACT adopted the NAP that they are going to be simultaneously inclined to grossly violate it.
You know, there’s nothing to stop a majority of people on the planet by majority vote, or even super majority vote from deciding to kill and eat all black people on the planet.
Read Gabriel Kolko’s “The Triumph of Conservatism”. The rich do not become monopolists on a free market. They need the government to maintain it for them. The NAP eliminates that mechanism.
The rich and strong are FORBIDDEN from initiating force upon the weakest and poorest.
Forbidden by whom? Do you think the people who own and operate large corporate enterprises give a damn about Bob Roddis and his merry band of libertarian moral reformers? What are you going to do, put your THOU SHALT NOTs on some stone tablets and expect the world to heed them?
Any viable political and economic prospect has to be built on human nature as best we understand it from observing it in action in own society, from history, and from empirical study.
Bob,
As noble as your goals may be, I'm afraid there needs to be an enforcement mechanism at this time... this has to involve some sort of penalty for now... until humans reach as Tom here describes a higher collective consciousness...
This enforcement mechanism is best operated by the most righteous among us... perhaps to your overall point these are not the people we have in positions of authority right now and looks like not for a loooooong time (if ever)...
rsp,
Honestly, I don't see any point in debating Rothbardians and Mises types. I've been reading these guys comments and blog posts for years making the same points over and over and over again and I've come to the conclusion that it's a total waste of time UNLESS you are arguing from a pure classical anarchist or anarchy-syndicalist perspective. At that point it's a completely theoretical or philosophical debate from two sides that are far out from anything based in reality. It's interesting intellectually, but not for anything based in reality.
Post Keynesians would be spending their time much more usefully debating the mainstream neo-classicals and also the Schumpeterians or pragmatic Austrians like John Carney. Those are productive debates that at least have a basis in reality. Debates with Rothbardians are totally useless to the real world because the debate had zero relationship with reality. Therefore, their symmetrical equivalent are classical anarchists and Bakunin types. It can be a fascinating theoretical debate between those two sides. Post Keynsians can engage elsewhere
"The corporate thugs are FORBIDDEN from stealing the land of the forest people"
Ha ha. Who's going to stop them? The corporate thugs are the "government" in 'Avatar'.
Ha ha. Who's going to stop them? The corporate thugs are the "government" in 'Avatar'.
Obviously, the thugs would have had to have adopted the NAP themselves. But if they had, such adoption itself would not and could not have been the CAUSE of them violating it.
Further, and most importantly, the basic excuse for the universal “legal” violation of the NAP in the modern world is the claim that government economic regulation by the government of third parties is essential and necessary. That is the opening that allows for the legalization of ANY AND ALL REGULATION, especially completely BS laws that facilitate corporate looting. So, you “progressives” are the CAUSE of that. See Kolko.
Forbidden by whom?
For now, I'd be pleased if the government simply enforced the "privileges and immunities" clause of the 14th amendment. Those rights are the rights to be free of external interference in one's person and property.
Again, the Grand Opening for corporate looting is the abolition of those "privileges and immunities" under the law - - all for the purpose of "progressive" regulation. And all to solve problems that do not exist and to cause the ones that do exist.
Obviously, the thugs would have had to have adopted the NAP themselves
That was an intentional softball, a piece of raw meat for the Keynesian MMT 9 mm gang of thugs.
As I also pointed out, the 14th amendment provides what in essence is the NAP for freed slaves and thus everyone else. It didn't self execute, did it? So, having a "government" and a big ass law (an Amendment) didn't self execute it, right?
I reiterate that it is the belief in the need for "regulation" that obliterates the protections of the NAP and the "privileges and immunities" to which people are entitled. Once "regulation" is allowed to be instituted by the legislature, the courts are simply not going to rule on what is actually helpful or what, in fact, is nothing but a looting scam for the elite. In fact, that Keynesianism policy by the government is presently permitted by the courts is the opening that allows for the police state and corporate looting. And, of course, the purpose of the Fed was all along nothing but a looting scam by and for the elite. Keynes later merely gave it pseduo-intellectual credence.
http://mikenormaneconomics.blogspot.com/2013/06/steven-rosenfeld-10-things-americans.html
Quote: "Nothing magical is ever going to happen. I propose that people adopt the non-aggression principle. I suspect that people will not adopt it and civilization will continue to implode. However, if a significant plurality adopts the NAP, THOSE PEOPLE WILL HAVE ESCHEWED CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR IN ALL OF ITS VARIOUS APPLICATIONS. There’s nothing magical about that if it were to happen. "
Bob Roddis just admitted that his entire worldview is based on what is called the Just World Fallacy
Bob is simply being irrational, he's giving up on being truly human in his behavior in order to defend some psychological need to believe his delusion.
Bob is a sick individual and so the question is whether or not his sickness constitutes a threat to others. I believe it does and thus when we develop medication for Bob's condition (and we will) would it ethical to force Bob to take the medicine before Bob's delusions cause harm to others?
I believe that rational answer is clearly yes. So the we can clearly see that the non-aggression principle or rather non-aggression delusion fails to produce a good society and will inherently be a society that endangers humanity by promoting dangerous delusional
behaviors to point that it will not function.
There is a reason evolution developed the capacity for aggression in our species and most others.
Bob is simply a apriori creationist who rejects the fact that evolution has rejected his religious delusion that a non-aggression species is the one that has the highest chance of survival.
If that were the case then why wasn't hasn't evolution already selected for that non-aggression trait?
There reason why because the physical nature of the universal doesn't allow for Bob's version of animal behavior as such an order would almost certainly be reproductively maladaptive as it is to restrictive. It wouldn't produce the necessary behavior range needed for survival i.e. it would "crowd out" creative adaptive responses by creating a lack of uniformity of behavior i.e. highly effective reproductive behaviors wouldn't be allowed.
Libertarianism is a physically impossible delusion. It is not to be debated. It is to be smashed before it kills us all which it is already well on it's way to doing given our ecological situation.
Belief in the non-agression principle is a dangerous evolutionarily maladaptive disorder in the human memenom. It must be smashed.
septeus7: Thanks for the advice. Thanks to you, I now understand that non-violence is a sickness. Further, thanks to Warren Mosler, I can now understand that threatening people with 9mm handguns is good, proper, essential and normal.
Belief in the non-agression principle is a dangerous evolutionarily maladaptive disorder in the human memenom. It must be smashed.
I'm bookmarking this one.
Yes. Violence uber alles! The lines of moral demarcation are clear!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bob_roddis/8525140770/
I come down between extreme optimism and extreme pessimism on the issue of non-violence. It seems to me that humanity has come a long way from its animal origins but still has a long way to go to achieve the maturity that universal non-violence involves.
It also seems to me that in most circumstances, most people tend to follow the principle of non-violence. The issue is largely to do with the minority that are aggressive and sociopathic, as well as the nuances involved in the use of violence. See for instance Meher Baba on violence and non-violence. There is no simple rule or criterion for distinguishing legitimate uses violence from agression at the boundary. This is a reason that the law of torts is supplemented with trial by jury.
It is well-known that one of the chief Buddhist precepts is non-violence. Non-violence is also the first of the "yamas" or regulations of life in Patanjali's Yoga Sutras. What is less known is that ultra-orthodox Jains practice an extreme form of non-violence, to the degree that they wear face masks to prevent accidentally breathing insects and they sweep the path in front of them so they won't step on a living being. In short, there are cultures that take non-violence very seriously and have for centuries, if not millennia. M. K. Gandhi was not an innovator when he preached non-violence as a way of life.
These are fundamental issues of both ethics and liberalism. I think that it is worthwhile discussing these matters in order to clarify the issues and distinguish among proposals that are potentially feasible, infeasible and not well thought out. That involves both analysis and evidence.
Mr. Hickey:
To be clear, I'm not a pacifist.
Bob Murphy has announced that he is a pacifist. For whatever that is worth.
I assume that you disagree with the allegation that "Belief in the non-aggression principle is a dangerous evolutionarily maladaptive disorder".
I assume that you disagree with the allegation that "Belief in the non-aggression principle is a dangerous evolutionarily maladaptive disorder".
Would that everyone held the non-aggression principle, but they don't, and as a result it is infeasible to base a complex social system on it at this point in human development.
Moreover, I think that the non-aggression alone is insufficient to construct a complex social system that would remain liberal — at least not as Rothbard proposes it.
I also don't think that the liberalism based on individualism proposed by Mises, Rand or Friedman is a basis for lasting liberalism either. Liberalism degenerates with accumulation of power associated with asymmetry of wealth.
My reasoning is several fold. First, it would require a global setting to work, which is not in the offing, it seems. Secondly, individualism assumes a simplistic view of being human. Thirdly, there is no awareness of human social systems, let alone complex adaptive systems characterized by feedback, and therefore emergence. A good part of this objection is the Libertarian assumption that what we call "society" is an aggregate rather than a system in which relationships are as significant to the functioning of the system as the elements.
It's not like this is new thinking. The controversy extends back to the ancient Greeks in the West, and there is also considerable non-Western thought, too.
What is different is a lot of new information from the life and social science that was not previously available, and of which Rothbard, Mises, Rand, and Friedman seem to be unaware.
So my conclusion is that while Rothbard, Mises, Rand, and Friedman — and others like Walter Lippmann — are significant in the development of contemporary liberalism, they are rather amateurish in their approach, having seemingly spun it out of their heads rather than engaging in a millennia old debate over key issues involving ontology, epistemology, ethics, and social and political thought, and more recently life science, social science and systems theory. This puts them on the fringe, along with others that haven't sufficiently thought things through or engaged with others.
If people like me seem dismissive, this is the reason. It's the extreme individualism that many find untenable both as an assumption and owing to the consequences that follow from it.
On another note, a basic problem I see with Rothbard's privatize everything proposal is the ignoring of transaction cost. This is a a significant economic factor that his passed over in silence.
Associated with this is the issue that transaction cost favors wealth, so that ability to handle transaction cost biases the system toward the wealthy.
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