I decided to make this to show someone what their logic looks like when they suddenly find a slight procedural flaw in an AnCap system (which is not set in stone anyway):
Start from “The State” and follow the arrows:
You reject that society can have free will and then go on to use society as a collective noun. Sloppy word choice perhaps?
Hm, possibly.
What the opponent means by “will of society” is some “law of goodness and social prosperity” which magically arises to direct our actions in a way that maximize societal good. I say that this doesn’t exist. What does exist is a society in which people interact and can convince each other of what is good and may act as groups to affect the structure of the free market.
Maybe a slightly sloppy word choice.
To be fair, you even say that maybe by ‘society’ people mean ‘the majority,’ which you seem to be appealing to now, that the majority of society can act in such and such a way in a free market.
Yes, and here’s the thing:
In a democracy if 75% of people want to get Perry, they can. In a free market, they can as well.
Difference?
In democracy it’s institutionalized. You have created a system whereby you can do anything to anyone. And in the current democracy people don’t realize that taxes are aggression.
Birthday Pony, the resident sophist.
Wheylous, I think you’re oversimplifying a little bit. Is the market really free from institutions, and are compulsory taxes a necessary part of democracy simply defined as majority rule?
Institutions exist, yet, but what is an institution bigger than the government? What I mean by institutionalized aggression is that it is the monopoly on psychology at the moment. To achieve anarchy you need to educate about the NAP to have people see that government is coercive in nature.
No taxes = no government. Simple democracy not = government. Democracy is a system to come to some decision. But when you talk about democracy, you usually mean institution of government through democracy, which is bad.
I take it that you reject the concept of emergence? You take a reductionist view of society correct?
Sorry, can you elaborate?
On another note, why am I getting mostly non-AnCaps flocking to this thread 
Emergence is the idea that says the whole can be greater* than the sum of it’s parts. So for example, termites do not individually have an idea of what the function of the overall colony is. They react to chemical signals and carry out a behaviour associated with that signal. On the level of the entire colony however, a strategy of survival exists that the individuals are unaware of (building a termite hill for example). So the ‘aims’ of the collective are different to the aims of the individual.
Now, in the case of termites, this emergent property has come about as a result of natural selection, but other types of emergence can occur simply out of the interactions of individual parts. Hayek was quite interested in this area and the work he did on Spontaneous Order is closely related to Emergence (the two concepts are covered under the umbrella term of Complexity Theory).
An example of this type of emergence can be seen in ‘phantom traffic jams’. This is a phenomenon whereby traffic jams on motorways occur without any obvious cause. Studies of this type of jam have show that localised jams such as this ‘flow’ back down the traffic corridor in a way that can be mathematically described with the same equations found in blast waves caused by explosions.
Now, noone could claim that the individual drivers have consciously made the choice to get together and create a phenomenon with such mathematical properties (most would be completely unaware of the mathematics anyway), and so this is often given as an example of Emergence.
Your argument seems to be that the actions of society can be reduced to and explained by the individual preferences of people. I would argue that in a system as complex as society - that has an almost infinite number of inter-connections - it is inevitable that emergent phenomena would occur. These phenomena would be almost impossible to predict in precise terms (from an Austrian perspective this would provide backup of the critique of planned economies), and very difficult to control.
This is one of the reasons I am uncertain about the belief that markets will provide stability. whether or not markets are the only option available is another issue, but certainly they do not necessarily produce results beneficial to people. The results of markets are beyond individual choice.
- When I say ‘greater’, a better term might be ‘different’. 'Greater implies quantitatively more than its parts whereas ‘different’ is a qualitative statement and is closer to what Emergence theory is trying to get at.
On another note, why am I getting mostly non-AnCaps flocking to this thread
It’s more fun when people disagree.
What do you mean by ‘stability’? You mean a perfect situation in which no resources are misallocated ever?
You can’t get there. One just ends up trying to plan and impose what one thinks and hopes nature would do if left to its own devices, without having any idea. As you say, no individual can possibly know how the entire system is actually working, so no individuals can plan for how the system should work.
These phenomena would be almost impossible to predict in precise terms … The results of markets are beyond individual choice.
Alrighty, no one can know of these patterns then. This means we should have government, which magically obtains the ability to predict these patterns?
It means we should embrace aggression?
Even if AnCap is to somehow send us hundreds of years backwards in technology, it should be adopted, as it is the system which maximizes individual freedom.
it is inevitable that emergent phenomena would occur.
Ok. 1) Are we gonna need to manipulate all of them? 2) Didn’t we discover how the traffic system worked?
predict in precise terms
Nirvana.
So your options are 1) a society with a government which cannot (supposedly) predict these phenomena 2) A society without a government which cannot (supposedly) predict these phenomena
Crap! Neither can (supposedly) predict the phenomena!
Your argument appears to be a general “life sucks and we can’t predict everything” argument, which is irrelevant as it applies to any societal system.
TL; DR - Nirvana.
Regardless, the picture I drew was more of a generic flow chart showing that a slight technicality doesn’t suddenly disprove a whole system and embrace aggression. I was not highlighting the specific argument.
Plus, I challenge your assumption that these phenomena are as impossible to model as a whole economy (which is the basis of Austrian economics). You seem to be taking an argument (“you can’t model system x”) and using it to apply to many more systems without proof that the same conditions exist in these other systems as exist in X.
Just to be clear, I’m not arguing from the standpoint of a statist. The inconsistency I’m referring to is your assertion that society has no will and then you’re saying that society can do things like decide, speak, etc. You qualify that perhaps a statist means majority rule when they reference the will of society.
My question is, what do you mean when you say society that enables it to have will and action and how is it so different from any other notion of society in which it has a will?
What do you mean by ‘stability’? You mean a perfect situation in which no resources are misallocated ever?
Essentially yes.
You can’t get there. One just ends up trying to plan and impose what one thinks and hopes nature would do if left to its own devices, without having any idea. As you say, no individual can possibly know how the entire system is actually working, so no individuals can plan for how the system should work.
I agree. No overall ‘plan’ can be put into action as the economy in unplannable - on this point I agree with Austrian Econ 100%. I do believe however, that it is possible for stability to be induced via the control of certain variables. Bassically a mixed-economy.
Alrighty, no one can know of these patterns then. This means we should have government, which magically obtains the ability to predict these patterns?
It means we should embrace aggression?
I find it odd that you decided to remove the following part of my post;
“These phenomena would be almost impossible to predict in precise terms (from an Austrian perspective this would provide backup of the critique of planned economies), and very difficult to control.”
Maybe I was just communicating badly. So no, I do not believe that government can predict (and therefore plan) the patterns, but it can learn what the possible states are in which the system can operate. No planning is possible, but manipulation of variables to bring an economy into something resembling and equilibrium might be.
Ok. 1) Are we gonna need to manipulate all of them? 2) Didn’t we discover how the traffic system worked?
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No, just some of them
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Yes, I concede on this point. Like I say above, prediction is not possible but manipulation might be.
So your options are 1) a society with a government which cannot (supposedly) predict these phenomena 2) A society without a government which cannot (supposedly) predict these phenomena
Crap! Neither can (supposedly) predict the phenomena!
Correct, neither can predict the exact course of variables, but the boundaries within which variables operate can be discovered. So prediction is a no-no, but understanding the dynamics of the system is possible.
Your argument appears to be a general “life sucks and we can’t predict everything” argument, which is irrelevant as it applies to any societal system.
Nope. Life is what it is. I just disagree with AnCaps that life would necessarily improve if the state dissappeared and left everything to the market. It seems unlikely to me that this would happen.
Regardless, the picture I drew was more of a generic flow chart showing that a slight technicality doesn’t suddenly disprove a whole system and embrace aggression. I was not highlighting the specific argument.
Fair enough. I agree that any theory has to be understood as a whole. You are correct in saying that slight technicalities cannot destroy a theory in one foul swoop.
Plus, I challenge your assumption that these phenomena are as impossible to model as a whole economy (which is the basis of Austrian economics). You seem to be taking an argument (“you can’t model system x”) and using it to apply to many more systems without proof that the same conditions exist in these other systems as exist in X.
I see that I did not explain myself very well on the prediction point, so I’m sorry about that. Essentially, yes it is possible to model systems to understand the dynamics. Predictive models are the ones I have a problem with. I’m not sure many Austrians would disagree with me on this point. I’m pretty much on the same page.
Manipulate variables
So force people to do what’s “good” for them even if they don’t want it?
Also, again, in a voluntary society you can have these uber economists say “if we do not do X we will see a dip in the economy 2.37 years from now” and society (or, if BP will, an informed general spontaneous agreement) can decide (as individuals seeing that experts might know better than them) to follow the advice of the economist.
The difference with government is that you must follow the ideas.
I don’t want doctors operating on me if I disapprove of what they’re doing even if they claim it’s beneficial.
"It’s for your own good Chain saw sounds in the background "
Again, we come to the idea of aggression. If you accept institutionalized aggression, you reject self-ownership outright. Without self-ownership, you live the life of someone else, the (baldy-)optimized function out of someone’s idea of what society should be like.
There is no “natural order” where people have natural entitlements to the lives of other people.
Now, @ BP:
The inconsistency I’m referring to is your assertion that society has no will and then you’re saying that society can do things like decide, speak, etc
Society’s will can be defined as you like, so if you define it as majority will, then fine, it is majority will. There is a societal will. This point doesn’t affect the conclusion reached from it, though. The conclusion is that the “will” of society is anyway tempered by the biased, favoritist, and non-universal opinion of the person you’re talking to.
Now, could “society decide” to take down Perry in a free society? Yes. But as I said, the difference is in the institutionalization of violence. That is why anarchy has to come about as a general education of the public in violence.
No government is a law of physics. The best we can do is affect people’s psychologies and hope they will see that non-aggression is best and fundamental.
Or we could reject self-ownership and live out our megalomaniacal dreams at the expense of everyone else (which would still require psychology, mind you). As much as I’d like that, I believe in self-ownership, so an aggressive takeover of the world is out of the question (though I could possibly get people hooked on some really delicious donuts, what do you think?)
Wheylous, you’re dodging the question. And to say that this doesn’t effect the conclusion you reached is, for one, not how flow charts work. If there’s an inconsistency at the beginning the entire thing falls apart.
You have yet to effectively differentiate institutionalized violence that occurs by “society’s will” in the market and institutionalized violence that occurs by “society’s will” in the contex of society meaning a majority. Moreover, in this thread, and outside of the flowchart, you’ve equated the society that you disdain (the majoritarian one, that supposedly has no will outside of the will of the majority) and the one you like (the market, which you’ve said could be just the same majoritarian rule).
Saying society has no will is a pretty broad statement, especially when you go on to talk about society as if it does. And once again, aggression is not a neutral term.
Saying society has no will is a pretty broad statement, especially when you go on to talk about society as if it does. And once again, aggression is not a neutral term.
Right. If by society one means something like - the customs/ culture you are in that most people get the “gist” of the expectations (AKA: laws/justice, institutions, and expectations exist in some form or another) - there is sense to what you bring up. I think Foucault (perhaps one of the few sane French philosophers) would look at it in a way akin to this?
The fact that you are able to trade, buy, sell, vote, not expect to get murdered on the street or whatever is because people generally accept the institutions in place - and form at least somewhat of an expectation that we can speak of to various structures that exist.