Was Stalin a minarchist?
what a loaded question.
The answer is no.
Defense and law are still services, so even though it might be harder for some to see how they would work in a free-market because of lack of experience I still don’t see how agreeing that the state should be responsible for them doesn’t lead down a slippery slope towards advocating the state’s involvement in other services. How does one deal with such a logical consistency when debating policy with someone who does believe in government run healthcare, government run schools, or even government run grocery stores with a statist. How do you argue that the state should provide an important service; such as law and order, but not provide an important service such as healthcare?
Minarchism does leave a logical gap which can allow Stalinism to creep in slowly but surely. I can’t think of any classical liberal movement or party that didn’t eventually succumb to statism, i.e. the Lib Dems in the UK, due to the logical inconsistencies of classical liberalism/minarchism.
Stalin didn’t care about healthcare. He cared about control. You’re assuming that his motives were the same as modern progressives. I don’t think they were.
Additionally, slippery slope arguments and false continuum and dichotomy arguments are supposed to be logical fallacies.
How do inconsistencies make them apologists for Stalin?
Why am I responding to a troll thread? I always fall for this.
Are you implying that you yourself are a more effective (not more consistent, but more effective) proponent of the free market than F.A. Hayek was?
A Stalinist might also ask, “Are unionists closet apologists for Rothbard? How can one really be an effective proponent of central planning while accepting that the market ought to take care of some services?”
There is a difference between principle and Manichaeanism.
Yes, because in this case I’d argue that consistency and efficiency are mutually dependent upon one another. If someone like Hayek agrees that government should take care of certain services then he leaves himself open to the argument of ’ ah ha, so you believe that there is are arguments for the government running things so how are you going to argue against the government running other services as well?’ Still haven’t heard a good argument of how allowing for the validity of government, and to be more specific government handling certain services, doesn’t leave the door open for the expansion of statism. In this case the issue does seem to be black and white; if it’s in government’s nature to expand then giving an inch will result in the opposition taking a mile, then another mile, and then another mile until eventually there is the possibility that the justifiable role for the state might possibly expand to something similar to that in Stalinist Russia.
A Stalinist could argue that, and from his perspective he would have a point. I could look at unionists and few them as closet Stalinists, and I would have a point from my perspective.
Why are minarchists buying so much Zyklon B and retrofitting cattle cars for human transport? That’s what I want to know.
They plan on making a quick buck.
“You believe government should do some specific things. Therefore, you should believe government should do other specific things.” is an invalid syllogism, and thus a weak “argument” to say the least. So I don’t think Hayek would mind being left open to it.
I haven’t heard a good (or any) argument from you that the reverse is the case.
That’s a big presupposition on your part. Someone else might just as blithely make an opposite presupposition: that any completely anarchist state of affairs will in practice only be temporary, and will be ripe for a totalitarian takeover, and that only under at least a night watchman state can a market economy survive for any significant length of time.
I’m not at all saying that I believe that that is the case. I’m just saying that you have in no way proven the premise for your sweeping (and inflammatory) conclusion.
What’s the point in making a point that can only be thought valid from your own perspective, and from the perspective of people who agree with you anyway?
I am not sure since I am not a minarchist but I haven’t heard a any even half-decent agument from them yet.
A few of my minarchist friends used an argument where they invented a third category of violence out of the blue and said this is special and the state must do this. The third category was self-defence that happens when the aggression is no longer in progress. Claiming back stolen property and the likles is apperently not aggression or defence but something completley different … yeah right.
I don’t really have that much of a problem with having a final arbitrator in society that is guaranteed to always be libertarian. It is just of course that minarchism is a utopia and it will never work. They seem incapabale of understanding the nature of government and power and somehow think they can rule better then everybody else. Who rules is not really the issue we need to worry ourselves with cause it makes no difference..
That’s what I thought. But nay, although he did like to refer to himself as a philosophical anarchist. It’s pretty clear reading Chapter 2, of Our Enemy the State - that he is for government, just not the State. I’m not going to quote it, because I don’t want to. He was so radical people mistake him for an anarchist and that’s good enough with me. His was one of the first Liberty books I bought too and it radicalized me to a big extent.
Well said indeed.
So you think Rothbard is criticizing D. Friedman for not taking efficiency seriously enough? If so, I disagree.
Rothbard writes:
In short, there is no sign that David Friedman in any sense hates the existing American State or the State per se, hates it deep in his belly as a predatory gang of robbers, enslavers, and murderers. No, there is simply the cool conviction that anarchism would be the best of all possible worlds, but that our current set-up is pretty far up with it in desirability. For there is no sense in Friedman that the State – any State – is a predatory gang of criminals.
Perhaps the word that best defines our distinction is “radical.” Radical in the sense of being in total, root-and-branch opposition to the existing political system and to the State itself. Radical in the sense of having integrated intellectual opposition to the State with a gut hatred of its pervasive and organized system of crime and injustice. Radical in the sense of a deep commitment to the spirit of liberty and anti-statism that integrates reason and emotion, heart and soul.
It seems to me the best way to interpret Rothbard’s criticism of Friedman is visceral/emotional vs cerebral/analytical. Rothbard is criticizing Friedman for not having an emotional opposition to the State. This also seems to be how Friedman saw the issue:
Rothbard has a piece, webbed somewhere, in which he criticizes me for not hating the state. In his terms, he was correct. In my view, the fundamental conflict is not between bad men and good men but between mistaken beliefs and correct beliefs.
So I’m inclined to disagree with your interpretation.
I would contend it is the consistent natural rights libertarian who would oppose the state as a mental exercise, as opposed to hating it. For the consistent natural rights libertarian, right or wrong is not about love and hate (that would be “emotivist yaying and booing” as G.A. Plauche says). For the consistent natural rights libertarian, right or wrong is a scientific question, the answer of which is to be deduced logically from certain premises. If the consistent natural rights libertarian were confronted with some master logician, and was was shown using formal logic, that the state was right, in spite of his bloody hate for it, he would be impelled as a scientist to drop his libertarian stance. But most natural rights libertarians are probably not that consistent; they would never accept such a conclusion, and would rationalize away any inferences that led to it. I think this is because the hate for state is actually the deeper cause of their libertarianism, and natural rights philosophizing is an intellectual super-structure erected around it and for the sake of it.
Well, if you come across a logical proof that contradicts all of your intuitions, that’s a very good reason to be skeptical. That’s how reflective equilibration works.
Moreover, how is this any different for a consequentialist? If they were shown that Keynesian economics was right, wouldn’t they likewise have to abandon libertarianism, but “would never accept such a conclusion”?
I don’t personally think Keynesian economics was wrong in the sense that spending can probably end recessions and/or depressions. It’s been done. The problem with Keynesian economics is that it seems to ignore the consequences for doing so. In particular, the consequences for doing so while the country is running a massive cyclical and structural deficit. As if spending all that money wouldn’t have any negative side effects at all. The basic economic rule Keynesian economics seems to overlook is the rule that “you can’t do just one thing.” Now, I’m no expert on Keynes but I can’t imagine that he would’ve advised us to take the course we did and are continuing to take under past and current conditions. I think that any tool has to come with a set of caveats and because Keynes’ didn’t, they’ve been used inappropriately by people who don’t seem to understand that everything has consequences.
I don’t think one has to abandon libertarianism just because one thinks Keynes was right under certain circumstances. Not only that but I think rigidly adhering to a certain set of beliefs in the face of contradictory facts and information is not…reasonable.
My impression too. Few people are that intellectually honest.