Political Theory

Re: Mises and Anarchism

Juan — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 03:36:14 GMT

Children are persons. They don't belong to anybody, at least for people who subscribe to libertarian morals.

Besides what will the children and the senile do ? Throw bombs ? Help 'terrorists' ? Doesn't make much sense, does it ?

Re: Mises and Anarchism

Stranger — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 03:00:22 GMT

The problem of children and the senile is a matter of individual property. Like anything else, it must be determined to whom the children or the senile belong. In most cases that is obvious and unchallenged (children belong to their parents, senile parents belong to their children), but in some cases that can be brought to court, and the arbitrator must assign rightful ownership to one party over another.

Re: Mises and Anarchism

Geoffrey Allan Plauché — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 00:26:14 GMT

macsnafu:
...which doesn't really help explain Mises' comments about children and the senile. The only thing I can think of is that children and the senile would be incapable of taking care of themselves, but I, too, have trouble seeing how that jeopardizes society.

What explains his comment about children and the senile, and also about the insane, is that he thinks an anarchic society will have no law and no legal enforcement. It therefore can only work if everyone is habituated to always doing the right thing on their own. These three classes of people are each for different reasons not completely habituated to a libertarian morality and so in the absence of a legal system he doesn't see what an anarchist society could do to keep them in line.

Re: Mises and Anarchism

macsnafu — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 23:55:42 GMT

Juan:
as long as there are infants and the senile, some provision must be taken lest they jeopardize society

How can children jeopardize society ? What's that supposed to mean ?

Closest I can get is from the study guide on the section (http://www.mises.org/pdf/humanaction/chapter_VIII.pdf), which says:

Although society serves the rightly understood interests of all people, nonetheless some individuals are too narrow-minded or lack the moral will to respect the rules of civilized behavior. Mises believes that the function of a state or government is to check the antisocial behavior of such people.

...which doesn't really help explain Mises' comments about children and the senile. The only thing I can think of is that children and the senile would be incapable of taking care of themselves, but I, too, have trouble seeing how that jeopardizes society.

Re: Mises and Anarchism

Juan — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 07:28:19 GMT

Macsnafu, I do share your views on anarchism. At the same I wanted some input on the Mises quote I provided. He says that even asuming that most people would naturally respect individual rights (Okay - He doesn't use this terminology, but still) it wouldn't work because

as long as there are infants and the senile, some provision must be taken lest they jeopardize society

How can children jeopardize society ? What's that supposed to mean ?

Also, if somebody can please provide a link to articles/discusion on individual secession - a subject Jeffrey Tucker mentioned - I would appreciate it]

I was arguing with a person who says that anarcho-capitalism is not 'real' libertarianism, and that Mises proved anarchy was not possible anyway. But some of Mises objections to anarchy are rather weak, and some of his ideas seem to support anarchy...

Re: Mises and Anarchism

macsnafu — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 04:07:36 GMT

kingmonkey:
The only experience I have with how humans act is my everyday experience. They routinely lie, cheat and steal. Even the "honest" ones will do whatever it takes to get ahead and those that are too meek to assert themselves are pushed aside. I don't think I can blame the state on all of the ills of the world. Some fault must go to human nature and from what I see about human nature it is naturally self-serving.

It would be silly to deny human nature. Nonetheless, most of the lying, cheating, and stealing I encounter in every day life is largely petty and trivial stuff. I have little fear of my neighbors wanting to do something big like steal my car or clean out my house, and even less reason to suspect them of wanting to murder me.

I believe that most people are more good than evil, and that this morality is something that people learn as they grow up and socially interact with other people. If we can get people to recognize the illegitimacy of government coercion, I suspect that the morality of society will improve from the current status quo. Human nature can be reinforced, positively or negatively, by the incentives of society and peer pressure.

Re: Mises and Anarchism

macsnafu — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 03:57:46 GMT

edward_1313:
Thus, the free market way of doing it will still have to take on certain powers only granted to the state in current society, i.e., private policeman, private courts, etc, would take on a psuedo-state like character since they would have to exert a certain amount of force. That's why it would seem to me that even in an anarcho-capitalist society, technically speaking, there would still exist some sort of psuedo-state like entity. So I'd really consider it minarchism rather than anarchism.

As I pointed out in my previous post, I think the obvious distinction is that states are granted the legitimacy to initiate force, which can never be morally justified. In anarchism, no system of rights protection would have this legitimacy, and would only have the same rights as individuals do, the right to use defensive force and pubicly acknowledged and sanctioned retaliatory force to restore justice. And even retaliatory force must be applied carefully (thus the provisos) lest one cross over into the initiation of force.

Re: Mises and Anarchism

macsnafu — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 03:52:27 GMT

Juan:
Society cannot exist if the majority is not ready to hinder, by the application or threat of violent action, minorities from destroying the social order. This power is vested in the state or government.

The problem is that there is no good reason to vest this "power" in the state or government. And what power would one be investing in the state? If it were merely to come to one's defense, or to apply retaliatory force to restore justice, one still has the right to reserve that power to oneself. But states are too often granted the "power" to initiate force against people, a power that no one has a moral right to.

Re: Mises and Anarchism

edward_1313 — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 00:22:11 GMT

kingmonkey:
Admittedly I don't know the in's and out's of anarchist theory but from what I understand, and I'm sure I'll be corrected if I'm wrong, this organizations that you talk about, private defense agencies, private courts, private police, even crime insurance, etc. are all dealt with the same way we deal with any other business in the free market. Say you have insurance against crimes committed against you. From what I understand you could basically let the insurance company handle everything from hiring the police to investigate the crime, arrest the criminal, try him and then punish him. A good company would certainly handle the problem quickly because the longer it takes the more it will cost them. However, all of these organizations from the private police agencies to the insurance company can be fired at any time by you if you are no longer satisfied by their performance. Basically good companies will thrive while bad companies will perish.

Yeah I'm definitely all about privatize courts, police, etc. I'm just saying that at some point someone's going to have to exert some sort of force against this criminal as long as he is unwilling to admit that he's done anything wrong. Thus, the free market way of doing it will still have to take on certain powers only granted to the state in current society, i.e., private policeman, private courts, etc, would take on a psuedo-state like character since they would have to exert a certain amount of force. That's why it would seem to me that even in an anarcho-capitalist society, technically speaking, there would still exist some sort of psuedo-state like entity. So I'd really consider it minarchism rather than anarchism.

Re: Mises and Anarchism

kingmonkey — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 20:50:20 GMT

edward_1313:
Here's the point. Even in a society where everything is provided for via the free market there would still exist some sort of organization or implicit agreement among the cooperaters such that the characteristics we attribute to the state would need to be taken on by the free market. To me this constitutes a sort of mini-statist society and that is why I still consider my self a minarchist.
Once again, I think many of the arguments could be completely avoided if we stopped using the word "anarchism" to describe the libertarian philosophy. It impedes progress in libertarian ideas substantially.

Admittedly I don't know the in's and out's of anarchist theory but from what I understand, and I'm sure I'll be corrected if I'm wrong, this organizations that you talk about, private defense agencies, private courts, private police, even crime insurance, etc. are all dealt with the same way we deal with any other business in the free market. Say you have insurance against crimes committed against you. From what I understand you could basically let the insurance company handle everything from hiring the police to investigate the crime, arrest the criminal, try him and then punish him. A good company would certainly handle the problem quickly because the longer it takes the more it will cost them. However, all of these organizations from the private police agencies to the insurance company can be fired at any time by you if you are no longer satisfied by their performance. Basically good companies will thrive while bad companies will perish.

It really is a revolutionary way of thinking for me. I use to think that a state was necessary for certain things but now I realize that it is not. I'm still a minarchist in a way though. For now I focus on trying to limit what government we have. I think trying to switch society over to an anarchist society overnight is impossible. But if we can slowly get the people to understand the benefits of liberty then it will be easier. I guess I would call myself a Fabian Anarchist. Slow and incremental. That's why socialism is winning today. Long term goals, slowly implemented. I've got a friend who is about as free market as a person can get (without regularly visiting the LvMI website) but he firmly believes that SCHIP's isn't socialist medicine because it insures children.

Re: Mises and Anarchism

edward_1313 — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 19:31:36 GMT

kingmonkey:
I'm a recent convert to the whole anarchist way of thinking so I'm still learning the whole philosophy. I'm saying I don't know what humans will do but I can say that I'd rather worry about my neighbors than the jack booted thugs of the state kicking my door down.

I too have been thinking over the prospect of anarchism from some time. One simple problem that I wish would be fixed is the actual meaning we attribute to the word "anarchy". It means so many different things to different people. As a result, there are so many pedantic quibbles over "anarchism" not because they disagree on the end result but because each misperceive what the other attributes to the word. It's semantics. I've already said it before, but using the word anarchism is a horrible idea imho.

One interesting way of looking at the prospect of an utterly free society is to look at from the perspective of the marginal utility of cooperation. Just from what I've read, I think Mises overlooked this slightly. I'm sure others have already looked at it this way, I just haven't read their work yet. A crude explanation goes some like this:

The more cooperators there are in a society the less the marginal utility of cooperating becomes, and further, the higher the marginal utility of not cooperating becomes. So at a certain point in a society were almost everyone is cooperating it will be in certain individuals interest to not cooperate as the marginal utility of not cooperating will be greater than the marginal utility of cooperating. I think this needs to be refined but it is, more or less, fundamentally correct.

That excerpt from Mises in Human Action makes it seem as though he thought that those who broke the law misunderstood their own value scales. I would really not say that's the case. With any evolutionary process there's never one simple way that's the best for all individuals, cooperation in his case.

The real argument, however, is how we go about quashing the non-cooperators. It's most obvious there will always be non-cooperators.

From what I gather, most on LvMI who consider themselves "anarchists" believe the free market would evolve to fill the role of quashing the non-cooperators, the role which government has fulfilled as far as we can remember.

On the other hand, I think that many "minarchists" perceive the idea that the free market would take on such a role, technically speaking, as itself constituting a sort pseudo-state process.

Correct me if I am wrong as I'm not that well versed in the hypothetical libertarian process of law and order. Take an example.

If there is say, a robber, and he is running around stealing from all of the cooperators. The cooperators would go to their local policeman and pay that policeman to take this guy down, he's violating their property rights! Policeman who work for profit would most assuredely be more efficient than state policeman, that I do not doubt. The policeman would take this guy down and bring him in where the cooperators would bring their charges against the guy.

Now they all have their own private insurance companies but the robber doesn't, so they can't get any material compensation for what's been stolen from them. Instead they demand punishment. But to punish the robber their must be a sort of implicit agreement amongst all members of this society that there are certain laws that exist and if those laws are broken violent force can be brought at against an individual. Now the arbitration of whether the individual has broken these implicit laws can be performed, and most efficiently so, by private judges, etc. I also agree with this idea.

But if the robber continually upholds that his actions do not constitute actions which deserve punishment, etc. then violent force must brought against him. Thus, there must be some sort of entity which takes on a role similar to that of the state. Further, the simple fact that a set of laws are implicity agreed upon amongst the free citizens is itself indicative of a sort of organized society, i.e., a psuedo-state.

Here's the point. Even in a society where everything is provided for via the free market there would still exist some sort of organization or implicit agreement among the cooperaters such that the characteristics we attribute to the state would need to be taken on by the free market. To me this constitutes a sort of mini-statist society and that is why I still consider my self a minarchist.

Once again, I think many of the arguments could be completely avoided if we stopped using the word "anarchism" to describe the libertarian philosophy. It impedes progress in libertarian ideas substantially.

Re: Mises and Anarchism

kingmonkey — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 18:38:58 GMT

Inquisitor:
KingofMonkey, even if we grant all those assumptions, why expect a state, qua territorial monopolist of law and order, to not be subject to all these frailties?

I'm a recent convert to the whole anarchist way of thinking so I'm still learning the whole philosophy. I'm saying I don't know what humans will do but I can say that I'd rather worry about my neighbors than the jack booted thugs of the state kicking my door down.

Re: Mises and Anarchism

Richard A Garner — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 16:36:19 GMT

The problem with the anarchist society is that from what I know about history (which admittedly isn't as great as I'd like) there hasn't been an anarchist society.

There hasn't been a cure for cancer, either. Does that mean we shouldn't want cures for cancer?

So if there is no historical example to base these theories off of then how are we to think humans will act?

An odd question, on Mises.org, on a thread about Mises. Did Mises think that economic theories could only be proved empirically, that only empirical testing proves economic theories? No, he though that propositions in economics are proved if they can be shown to follow by deductive logic from irrefutable premises.

<p>Who is to say that man does not naturally create governments? I believe cities naturally occur because people need other people and it creates a stronger chance of survival if you are around others.</p>

People may well naturally get together for security and form organisations to protect themselves. It may even turn out that everybody in one geographic area selects the same organisation to join for this purpose. But that is not a state, since it is still subject to potential or indirect competition. A state <i>by definition</i> is forced on people, not "formed naturally."

Re: Mises and Anarchism

Inquisitor — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 16:11:17 GMT

KingofMonkey, even if we grant all those assumptions, why expect a state, qua territorial monopolist of law and order, to not be subject to all these frailties?

Re: Mises and Anarchism

jtucker — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 16:04:23 GMT

We just recently published a piece on this, with MNR explaining that Mises's views on secession amount to something near an anarchist position. His thought on the state itself was not fully developed, IMHO. Also on anarchist societies, MNR wrote 4 volumes on colonial America as a way of showing how well a nearly stateless society works.