If Hobbes was right, then that means the state is completely necessary. It also means that, in some ways, we would be just out of the jungle without a "state" or government. How do we know, or why do you think, he was wrong?
But what if David Icke is right and Reptilians rule this world?
What if James Cameron is right and terminators and T1000s are going through time?
There is no reason to think what if. Unless there is an actual way to know what if.
As far as I know, Hobbes never solved the problem of multiple states. Which has precisely the same problem.
It seems that Hobbeseans will slowly work toward world government. Then they'll be shocked that will be crap, because there is no incentive for a monopoly to deliver rights and no check on power. It will just be like Pax Americana. And then it'll be lights out for that theory. And hello anarchy!
Plus frankly trying to square Hobbeseanism with the current ideology of liberal democracy is a bit too much anyway, given the former's revulsion toward the latter. Mostly Hobbes is believed in bad faith, not knowing what it entails. Which is the evisceration of what most people think are political rights.
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So what, woudl that be any reason not to argue for less statism and/or tyranny?
In States a fresh law is looked upon as a remedy for evil. Instead of themselves altering what is bad, people begin by demanding a law to alter it. ... In short, a law everywhere and for everything!
~Peter Kropotkin
Comparing Hobbes to David Icke is a bit much, isn't it? Hobbes simply has an assumption about human nature and the human condition. That it, without some centralized power, man would kill each other for whatever they needed. One might argue, for example, that this might be true to some extent until man realizes that economic cooperation is more beneficial to him than just killing or taking whatever he wants or needs. However, how does one know that, without the state, that would ever happen? Just something I'm trying to work out.
I think statism, in any form, has at its heart at least some Hobbesian assumptions. Liberal democracies aren't any different. How do you account for so many of the calls for more government in every sector of life? I guess my question is, how does one falsify Hobbes? How does one falsify anarachism? In other words, is there the possibility of really showing one or the other to be false and, thus, to show one or the other to be true?
Aggression is destructive and exploitative. It's that simple. It's not surprising that the human animal until now didn't understand economics. Most humans haven't even figured out that there's a difference between reality and their imagination. So there's still a lot to learn. But there's no reason to think humanity cannot learn these things.
I would suggest listening to this talk from last years ASC: Hobbes, Minarchism, and Anarchy
How do you falsify Hobbes?
This is what I mean, actually. There is no reason to believe it until we can come up with an answer to this. It's the same as any wild claim or what if.
Anarchism can be seen and tested in the various aspects of the world which exist anarchistically. For instance, much of life exists without the state or coercion. Somehow things get done. It's like magic! And even governments exist in a state of anarchy with each other. We are simply in a state of broken anarchy.
People experience anarchy all the time. But I don't think there is any way around it. The best thing is to create an ethical anarchism and convince people of its suitability. Which I think liberal democracy sort of gets. Moreso than Hobbes. I think liberal democracy tends to think they are in control, which is the only reason they support it. But I would say that they should only support a real system in which they are free. Not a phoney one.
What I say about liberal democracy being different is that few people today will agree to the idea that a centralized ruler should have absolute power. And that any check on power, parliament or personal, should be a challenge to it. I think people today are influenced more by Locke. That people have certain rights. And there are to be checks and balances instead of a monopoly. Which is where I think the current system actually gets in trouble: by claiming this, but knowing it is impossible at the same time.
collaboration
Thanks Joe-
To sum it up, then, Hobbes is self-refuting. That is, it's self-refuting when one recognizes the nature of the state. However, I do have another question. The subjective perception that the state brings about security from the state of nature is powerful, I think. This actually just came up in another thread where someone pointed out that levels of violence are actually lower now than they ever were in the past. I personally find that hard to believe and would question the methodology of that study if for no other reason than the population of the world is vastly larger than it was even 100 years ago. Even if it were true, however, picking out cause and effect from the historical record is sometimes fairly difficult given the variables involved. I suppose one could say that the violence imposed by the state might cancel out any benefits in security it may have provided to some. How could we measure that objectively?
Something else I thought of while listening to Krogh was that history is almost exclusively a Hobbesian history. When you read about Sumer or India or any other ancient civilization it's almost always about a king bringing order to chaos, etc. For example if you look at this http://personal.carthage.edu/jlochtefeld/picturepages/udayagiri.html you will see on the second picture an image of the Boar Avatar of Vishnu at Udayagiri in India. He is shown saving the Earth. It was actually dedicated to Chandra Gupta II and Varaha (Vishnu) represents Gupta as bringing order to chaos, i.e. India was in chaos and Gupta brought order. You see this kind of thing all over the place. Is it possible to show the other side of this coin and show the costs of these "benevolent" rulers and their various public works, or is that impossible now with the passage of time and lack of written records that aren't court records, so to speak?
He was right about everything but his game theory. Read Oakshotte's Hobbes on Civil Government; Hobbes, like Machiavelli, is a demythologizer; taking the mystical and moralizing elements.
Thanks Moore II-
I found it on the Liberty Fund and will read although it's called Hobbes on Civil Association. That's what you meant, correct?
Phaedros: Thanks Moore II- I found it on the Liberty Fund and will read although it's called Hobbes on Civil Association. That's what you meant, correct?
Yep, that's the one! Jan Narveson is also a Hobbesian. It's mainly the moralistic-type libertarians who don't like Hobbes.
Right about what? Necessary for what? Falsify what about Hobbes's work?
I'm guessing you mean Hobbes's assertion that, in the state of nature, men would be perpetually antagonistic, trying to cheat one another, and that promises/contracts will only be kept if the sovereign is there to enforce them. One can certainly find instances in which this is not the case, and many other instances in which people created and enforced contracts when the state was derelict.
If Hobes was right, we must still fight for the right of small communities to secede and for a world of Monacos, each sporting its own spontaneous order, not imposed pro-democracy bs. Not a very long shot from full-blown anarchy, you'll agree.
Jan Narveson is also a Hobbesian.
Jan Narveson told me in person that Hobbes made a mistake to conclude that the state is necessary to solve his wolf vs wolf problem.
Of course not. Hoppe specifically addressed this.
There is little use in quarreling over whether or not man is as bad and wolf-like as Hobbes supposes, except to note that Hobbes’s thesis obviously cannot mean that man is driven only and exclusively by aggressive instincts. If this were the case, mankind would have died out long ago. The fact that he did not demonstrates that man also possesses reason and is capable of constraining his natural impulses. The quarrel is only with the Hobbesian solution. Given man’s nature as a rational animal, is the proposed solution to the problem of insecurity an improvement? Can the institution of a state reduce aggressive behavior and promote peaceful cooperation, and thus provide for better private security and protection? The difficulties with Hobbes’s argument are obvious. [Hoppe then goes on to explain the obvious...]
"Government and the Private Production of Defense" by Hans Hoppe from The Myth of National Defense ed. Hoppe. Available online.
The problem with the Hobbesian argument has nothing to do with the nature of man. It is the assertion that there exists a state of permanent underproduction of defense in the absence of a Leviathan. That is the claim of the Hobbesian myth that is obviously false and which Hoppe obliterates in the above-mentioned essay.
Clayton -
Assuming that Hobbes is right, it doesn't necessarily follow that we need a State. What does follow, though, is that we cannot trust the free market to determine the content of the law (of course, just law is solely based on the non-aggression axiom). Assuming a free market of competing protection agencies within the same territorial area (which all recognize the same law), there is no good reason why this shouldn't be just as good as a State at preserving law and order. Actually, since free competition makes most things better, we should expect better law and order provision from the market than from the monopolistic State. Of course, competing firms on the free market have every right to use whatever force is required to stop crime. The State is not necessarily to provide the defensive force necessary to stop (private) crimes.
Unlike many people on this site, I am absolutely against any form of "anarchism" which does not recognize a single legitimate code of law based solely upon the non-aggression axiom. I see solid evidence that a "free market" in the content of the law would lead to a tyrannical situation. My basis for this stance is in my realism regarding human nature and my rejection of the "tablua rasa" myth. A large number of people (probably a majority) do not really want to be free and would rather impose their beliefs on others or live parasitically off of others.
Hobbes is mainly a problem for the pacifists. As long as you believe in self-defense and the non-aggression axiom as the absolute and universal natural law, it is immaterial whether or not Hobbes was right.
Assuming that Hobbes is right, it doesn't necessarily follow that we need a State. What does follow, though, is that we cannot trust the free market to determine the content of the law (of course, just law is solely based on the non-aggression axiom). Assuming a free market of competing protection agencies within the same territorial area (which all recognize the same law), there is no good reason why this shouldn't be just as good as a State at preserving law and order. Actually, since free competition makes most things better, we should expect better law and order provision from the market than from the monopolistic State. Of course, competing firms on the free market have every right to use whatever force is required to stop crime. The State is not necessarily to provide the defensive force necessary to stop (private) crimes. Unlike many people on this site, I am absolutely against any form of "anarchism" which does not recognize a single legitimate code of law based solely upon the non-aggression axiom. I see solid evidence that a "free market" in the content of the law would lead to a tyrannical situation. My basis for this stance is in my realism regarding human nature and my rejection of the "tablua rasa" myth. A large number of people (probably a majority) do not really want to be free and would rather impose their beliefs on others or live parasitically off of others.
I also reject tabula rasa but I think that the blank slate myth reinforces the case for a monopolist of adjudication, not the other way around. If people are blank slates, then they easily can adapt to any law system (however corrupt). However, if human brains have "moral content" and moral expectations from the legal order of society (that is, their brains are hardwired to expect it to be illegal to rape or murder, for example), then a free market in adjudication should result in the development of legal norms consistent with those hardwired expectations, just as the free market in restauranting results in the development of food dishes that satisfy customers' palates, rather than serving rat poison.
Caley McKibbin: Jan Narveson is also a Hobbesian. Jan Narveson told me in person that Hobbes made a mistake to conclude that the state is necessary to solve his wolf vs wolf problem.
Yeah, but that's a misstep in game theory. In all of his essential assumptions, Narveson is a Hobbesian, as are most people who aren't quasi-religious.