Michael J Green in the Why Capitalism? thread:De Jasay's great metaphor - that the state's interventions cause the muscles of voluntary capabilities of society to atrophy - supports Danny's point that people are largely interested in increasing their material wealth. Without the state, this requires cooperation, possibly a strong family structure, etc. With a welfare state, (non-political) voluntary associations become less important, the family structure is less useful, etc., because people believe they can profit more through the redistributive arm of the state. Without the state, a mother is incentivized to marry a man for financial assistance; with the state providing assistance to single mothers, this incentive is diminished and the traditional family structure offers less utility.
To me this suggests that the state is most usefully viewed as a disease of society, not as something external to it. Under this conception, we analyze society as a doctor or epidemiologist, seeing that the individual cells (people) are each more and less unhealthy (have misguided views and bad incentives, partly due to the continuing effects of the disease as de Jasay mentions), leading to a more or less advanced case of statism.
The extent of capitalism as clarified by Danny Sanchez in Why Capitalism? is the extent of society's health, and fully unhampered capitalism would be full recovery from the disease. As someone said recently, even the Soviet Union was capitalist insofar as it functioned at all; likewise a person can only live at all insofar as his bodily systems are at least minimally functional.
Taking this disease metaphor further, the LvMI is like a nutrient supplement or holistic treatment, attempting to nourish as many cells as possible (curing their misguided conception of how to serve their own interests) so that the disease condition is alleviated and eventually disappears. Actually it's more like a DNA information war or something, because the nourished cells can go on and nourish other cells and so on without additional "vitamins." (There's more about this in the link in my sig.)
Hayekian spontaneous order and Hasnasian conceptions of common/customary law are like biological analysis of effectively running bodily systems and explain why, for instance, the immune system fights disease so well all by itself, without any drugs needed. It says the cancer of the state is not a benefit but a harm, not an improvement by a worsening of the natural order of the cells in their associations and interconnections.
Also with this understanding we can see that it makes no real sense to place blame and get morally righteous about things, as we are all part of this. None of us can help but to feed the disease even as we work to cure it, as we all pay taxes at least. This is not alarming, and it does not mean we cannot do far more to cure the disease than to worsen it; it is simply something one must acknowledge if one wishes to avoid pitfalls that make libertarian arguments fall easy prey to attack.
This last part is ranting, but: to see the state as a mere "gang of bandits" as is sometimes fashionable among libertarians is again something of a noble lie, I would say. It is not quite accurate. It is an indulgence I might allow myself in a moment of ire, but in the political conversation such feel-good denunciations become weaknesses that state apologists will gleefully exploit.
NOTE: This post is in no way meant to imply anything about society as a collective, as socialists might have it. The action is at the individual cell level, although the disease can and does pervade the whole system.
Why anarchy fails
A couple comments.
AJ:To me this suggests that the state is most usefully viewed as a disease of society, not as something external to it. Under this conception, we analyze society as a doctor or epidemiologist, seeing that the individual cells (people) are each more and less unhealthy (have misguided views and bad incentives, partly due to the continuing effects of the disease as de Jasay mentions), leading to a more or less advanced case of statism. The extent of capitalism as clarified by Danny Sanchez in Why Capitalism? is the extent of society's health, and fully unhampered capitalism would be full recovery from the disease. As someone said recently, even the Soviet Union was capitalist insofar as it functioned at all; likewise a person can only live at all insofar as his bodily systems are at least minimally functional. Taking this disease metaphor further, the LvMI is like a nutrient supplement or holistic treatment, attempting to nourish as many cells as possible (curing their misguided conception of how to serve their own interests) so that the disease condition is alleviated and eventually disappears. Actually it's more like a DNA information war or something, because the nourished cells can go on and nourish other cells and so on without additional "vitamins." (There's more about this in the link in my sig.) Hayekian spontaneous order and Hasnasian conceptions of common/customary law are like biological analysis of effectively running bodily systems and explain why, for instance, the immune system fights disease so well all by itself, without any drugs needed. It says the cancer of the state is not a benefit but a harm, not an improvement by a worsening of the natural order of the cells in their associations and interconnections..
Hayekian spontaneous order and Hasnasian conceptions of common/customary law are like biological analysis of effectively running bodily systems and explain why, for instance, the immune system fights disease so well all by itself, without any drugs needed. It says the cancer of the state is not a benefit but a harm, not an improvement by a worsening of the natural order of the cells in their associations and interconnections..
Beautiful.
AJ:Also with this understanding we can see that it makes no real sense to place blame and get morally righteous about things, as we are all part of this.
I'm not so sure about this. Am I really a part of the mass murder and genocide in this world? Am I really a part of the institutional looting and property destruction? I sure as heck don't endorse it, approve of it or desire it in any form. I don't think that conflating human action with nature, like "we're all part of this continent" or "we're all receiving sunlight" is the same as "we're all part of the war on drugs".
AJ:it is simply something one must acknowledge if one wishes to avoid pitfalls that make libertarian arguments fall easy prey to attack.
But is that really the case? What is the weakness in the argument that murder or theft is wrong? And is our ability to argue a point more important than the value of the premise? I am very good at arguing without making declarative statements, and so have pretty good arguments, but is that really advancing ideas and challenging the status quo?
AJ:This last part is ranting, but: to see the state as a mere "gang of bandits" as is sometimes fashionable among libertarians is again something of a noble lie, I would say.
Is it really a noble lie? Is their activity really just because "that's how things are" and not deliberately destructive?
I'm not too fond of the way the gang of thieves thing gets thrown around sometimes, but to free pass that behavior as ignorance rather than intent, well that seems very suspect to me.
AJ:It is an indulgence I might allow myself in a moment of ire, but in the political conversation such feel-good denunciations become weaknesses that state apologists will gleefully exploit.
Isn't that a superficial reason to avoid a particular line of reasoning?
NOTE: This post is in no way meant to imply anything about society as a collective, as socialists might have it. The action is at the individual cell level, although the disease can and does pervade the whole system
How about, the body would not exist without enough healthy cells, and we (liberals) take the body to be a desirable given.
I like the comparison, but I don't like what you are using it for. If your preference is for a less straightforward and radical vocabulary and mannerism that is fine, but it is a preference. There isn't any knowledge out there that proves it is more coherent and sensible than a different approach.
Also with this understanding we can see that it makes no real sense to place blame and get morally righteous about things, as we are all part of this. None of us can help but to feed the disease even as we work to cure it, as we all pay taxes at least.
But the tax resistors get to be morally indignant?
Or are they denied the license to be radicals as well?
"The state is nothing but a gang of bandits!" = BAD? "The state is a cancer on society!" = GOOD? I don't think the scaremongers would have an easier time latching onto one statement over the other.
liberty student:Am I really a part of the mass murder and genocide in this world? Am I really a part of the institutional looting and property destruction? I sure as heck don't endorse it, approve of it or desire it in any form.
By "we are part of this" I mean only that we cannot help but feed the system even as we fight it. I fund murder with my tax dollars, and the only way I could not do so is by being a tax protester, which may be counterproductive as well. I go along with the TSA inspections at the airport, thereby encouraging others to do the same. And then I must ask what is so different between me and the TSA officer. He needed a job, has a family to feed, and the conditions were better than any other job on offer.
What I would like to avoid is the notion or way of thinking that makes a sharp dividing line between me - an ordinary civilian - and the TSA officer who is "a part of the state." I am saying that blaming people leaves libertarians open to attack, because by the same logic we would all be to blame. I prefer to think that no one is "to blame" for the condition in general, though that does not mean there aren't some really "bad dudes" out there on the state's direct payroll (but also in the civilian population).
liberty student:What is the weakness in the argument that murder or theft is wrong?
One of several weaknesses in arguing that the state is wrong because it is engaging in murder and theft, is we are also funding that, and we could avoid or mitigate that by being hermits or something. I mean, it's all down to how you define the morals, but it seems that that is the result of taking many people's moralistic thinking about the state to its logical conclusion. Another bigger problem, as Sanchez pointed out, is that the statist can turn around and play the utility card, saying that the injustice is a small price to pay for (what they will say is) vastly improved material wellbeing and security. It leaves the libertarian looking like the romantic, the utopian, the one will to defend abstract morals even if it means poverty, death, and slavery for the vast portion of the population. This is already a pervasive argumentation trope in libertarian vs. statist debates.
liberty student:And is our ability to argue a point more important than the value of the premise?
Could you rephrase that?
liberty student: AJ:This last part is ranting, but: to see the state as a mere "gang of bandits" as is sometimes fashionable among libertarians is again something of a noble lie, I would say. Is it really a noble lie? Is their activity really just because "that's how things are" and not deliberately destructive?
They are people looking after their self-interest. Calling them a gang of robbers obscures the systemic aspects de Jasay talks about, especially that this gang has the approval (variously outspoken, tacit, quasi-, or grudging approval) of most of the population. Another way to put it is that a gang of bandits, after fully indoctrinating the legitimacy of their banditry in the eyes of the people, is no longer most usefully viewed as a gang of bandits, but as a symptom of a disease that has overtaken society.
That Ron Paul takes the base congressional pay (as far as I know) would then make him a bandit, or we could call him a pretend bandit that still goes about and plunders a little bit but has a good heart and tries to convince the other bandits not to. But that would be kind of silly. There are certainly many people I find disgusting in the state, and the state mechanism attracts such people, and they definitely do a lot of damage, but so do cancer cells. Ron Paul is like part of a tumor, part of the blood vessels that have been diverted to supply it, but he is also working to cure it. Most parts of the tumor only work to perpetuate it, as does most of the rest of the body just by operating at all. So I am just saying that it appears cleaner and more efficient to view the state as a disease condition. I think this would avoid some of the objections of the self-proclaimed "leftists" as well as nullify some statist ammo. (I need to flesh out more why this is, but maybe some can already see some of what I am talking about in the recent leftism threads.)
liberty student: AJ:It is an indulgence I might allow myself in a moment of ire, but in the political conversation such feel-good denunciations become weaknesses that state apologists will gleefully exploit. Isn't that a superficial reason to avoid a particular line of reasoning?
I mean exploit as in use to poke holes in our arguments. Every inaccuracy I allow myself for its perceived extra rhetorical oomph becomes another inch of rope my opponents can hang me with, another bit of flawedness that can be pointed to in order to "prove libertarianism wrong." Now whether I have actually identified any important inaccuracies in this post is up for debate, but I hope that last point doesn't get lost.
William:How about, the body would not exist without enough healthy cells, and we (liberals) take the body to be a desirable given.
I think everyone takes the body to be a desirable given, just in their ignorance of how it works they mistake the cancer for the cure. If we just assume for the sake of argument that alternative health gurus are right about how cancer is a systemic disease and that chemo and radiation just make it worse in the mid- to long-term, and that the solution is to increase a person's total health as much as possible through diet, exercise, etc., then that paradigm makes a near-perfect analogy to my view of the state and its cure. The LvMI would be the improved diet and exercise. Fox News would be junk food...
Marko:But the tax resistors get to be morally indignant?
I find moral indignation kind of useless in all cases, but sure the tax resistors might get to enjoy bragging rights among libertarians whose moral positions lead them believe that, say, funding war is wrong if there was any way they could avoid it. (But I don't think that.)
Marko:"The state is nothing but a gang of bandits!" = BAD? "The state is a cancer on society!" = GOOD? I don't think the scaremongers would have an easier time latching onto one statement over the other.
My issue with "gang of bandits" is not that it is scaremongering, but that it is not as useful a way to view or analyze the situation.
I was actually thinking about primitivism, any form of feudalism (think some left anarchists, and some conservativism), "sparta" or "conan the barbarian" types of supporters (think loopy right), theocrates/universalists, racialists, etc. This is, while perhaps a minority, is not an insignificant number of people. And being that our position is really not in the mainstream, we may come across more "alternative" politics. I mean we really don't have that much dialogue with these people. I think to say that the basic outline of cosmopoltin bourgoise life is sort of "the body".
That said, yes, a scientific socialist, etc have the same desired end
Oh I see, yeah that makes sense. They don't even want the "body" around, because the body means the capitalist division of labor and all other social cooperation.