Political Theory

Re: Civil Obedience Theory

I. Ryan — Sat, 22 May 2010 02:06:14 GMT

scineram:

As Jeff Hummel said, revolutions are public goods, and are undersupplied

Not necessarily; not if "the market" provides it. See this post for a rough sketch.

Re: Civil Obedience Theory

scineram — Sat, 22 May 2010 01:48:45 GMT

I don't see why it would.

Re: Civil Obedience Theory

shazam — Fri, 21 May 2010 04:56:33 GMT

As Jeff Hummel said, revolutions are public goods, and are undersupplied

This seems to be what I am asking. Doesn't the fact that civil disobedience needed for the state to wither is obviously a public good fly in the face of Austrian economic theory?

Re: Civil Obedience Theory

scineram — Tue, 11 May 2010 15:34:57 GMT

As Jeff Hummel said, revolutions are public goods, and are undersupplied.

Re: Civil Obedience Theory

Merlin — Tue, 11 May 2010 11:38:53 GMT

I myself have always found meta-voluntary obedience towards the state a very strange fact. Boetie might have brought it to the fore, but he certainly has not explained it. Molineux has tried, but I’m not convinced. While the Mises/Rothbard/Hoppe “the state of ideas” seems just a makeshift analysis to me.

In short, the mechanism, be it proximate, of voluntary obedience is still unexplained. So, you’ll have a hard time finding conclusive answers to you questions.

Re: Civil Obedience Theory

Layano — Mon, 10 May 2010 17:40:11 GMT

Libertarians aren't even against strikes, as long as it's not violent and the boss has the right to fire the people who don't want to continue to work for their current wage/working condition.

Re: Civil Obedience Theory

PirateRothbard — Mon, 10 May 2010 04:49:56 GMT

Well if you define individualism as as avoiding groups, that type of individualism is just a bad idea. Libertarians aren't against the formation of organizations or even the idea of a popular movement, as long as no aggression is used. So it appears your idea of individualism just needs to be thrown out.

Re: Civil Obedience Theory

Giant_Joe — Mon, 10 May 2010 00:21:46 GMT

The state is legitimate because people see it's leitimacy through the actions of others. If people see that other people are no longer legitimizing the state, the person could be better assured that their rejection of the state wouldn't lead to them being harmed. So rejection of the state isn't only what each individual thinks of the state, but also what each individual thinks what other people in society think of the state. People still form the idea of society in their minds, and that affects their individual decisions. So I don't think it's a problem with methodological individualism, but I'm hardly and expert on that topic.

I think Omnipotent Government might be a decent read for a more in-depth look at this, but that's just a guess. There's probably better stuff by Mises and others on the topic.

http://mises.org/store/Omnipotent-Government-The-Rise-of-Total-State-and-Total-War-P53.aspx

Civil Obedience Theory

shazam — Mon, 10 May 2010 00:11:18 GMT

Etiene de la Boetie, Ludwig von Mises, and Murray Rothbard have all proposed that the state cannot last as long as the majority of the population (or a significant number) refuses to obey the state. However, common sense demonstrates that if any one refused to obey the state by himself, they would be unsuccessful and end up in prison/killed. Thus, it is apparent that the number of people disobeying must reach some critical mass for this strategy to be successful. How can this be reconciled with individualism, if it would appear that civil disobedience by groups is more effective that civil disobedience by individuals? Also, when Boetie, Mises, and Rothbard refer to the majority of the population withdrawing consent, do they refer to the majority of the entire dominion of the state? If the majority of some would-be secessionist area withdrew consent, would it be effective? What if this secessionist area happened to be my house?