I have been talking to a liberal friend of mine about some of the politics I support and the aristocracy came up. I could not think of a convincing way of defending natural elites and an aristocracy though I believe in it. Are there any good references for this?
Be careful when talking about aristocracy.
While there will always be people who are better at some things than others, I highly doubt the idea that a group of general natural elites will form an oilgarchic aristocracy in a free society.
With the internet giving millions access to free information the idea of a natural elite is a dieing one.
And of course the end of state corporatism, small business lincense restrictions, welfare and min wage will bring about a much more equal world.
this is pretty good artical about the same subject:
http://reason.com/archives/2010/02/12/the-fable-of-market-meritocrac
the subheading is slightly wrong (Markets don’t reward smart people. They reward value.) cause markets reward both! ^o^
You don’t have to be a John Galt to be free, you just have to live.
A true aristocracy doesn’t want you to defend them.
Nothing can defend the aristocracy better than having an entrenched position within the state, or provided by the state. Period.
Furthermore if an individual remains in the upper class upon a free market then the only way that they can do so is to either live graciously off of the funds voluntarily left for them, or by providing services in line with the voluntary structure of production.
“I could not think of a convincing way of defending natural elites and an aristocracy though I believe in it.”
If not a single good reason comes to your mind, why do you believe in it? Be wary of making leaps of faith. It makes you look like a fundamentalist and a loon.
FIRST you find the reasons, and THEN you adopt a position. Not the other way around. Saying “I don’t know” or “I´m not sure” on a topic is nothing to be ashamed of.
Depends on what one sees as an aristocracy. I remember either Rothbard or Menken using the term “natural aristocracy” (yet I’m vague in my memory in what it was in reference to). If one becomes successful (and powerful and “elite”) due to their contributions to society through the market then why not defend their success? If one uses the State to obtain their means why would anyone aspire to be like them? (Rhetorical question). There’s a difference in moving up economically and socially through merit, and moving up by making legal hurders for others and using the State to advance their success.
Reminds me of Yakov Smirnoff jokes. In Soviet Russia, aristocracy defends YOU!! [:D]
Really? Is that really our goal? I despise the very idea of an “equal world” to be frank. I think ending state corporatism would be a fairer world, not necessarily a more “equal” world. Correct me if you think I’m wrong here.
My reason for believing in an aristocracy is that people have different abilities and some are meant to be naturally aristocratic, but my friend could not be convinced with that.
In a free world, aristocracy would probably be a misnomer, since they would have no (coercive) power, hence invalidating the whole “-cracy” part of the word.
Would there be elites? As in, people others would look up to, follow their advice, want to learn from them? That would be decided by the people (both the ones aspiring to greatness, and those willing or unwilling to recognize their efforts), and I really don’t see how or why you would need to defend this idea.
According to wikipedia: “Aristocracy is a form of government in which a few of the most prominent citizens rule. The term is derived from the greek aristokratia, meaning “rule of the best”.”
With phrases and connotations such as “a form of government” and “rule”, one would think that anarchism (no rulers) and aristocracy (rule by the best, or rule by the sucessful, which isn’t necessarily the same thing if one realizes that success isn’t metaphysically or universally based on merit) are incompatible. This is not the same thing as the obvious fact that people naturally vary in their abilities and talents - and furthermore, even granting this fact, superior ability would still not justify the position of rulership. I could care less if you’re the most amazingly talented person in the world, I wouldn’t accept you as a ruler. I would also be weary of commiting the fallacy of assuming that because someone is sucessful, they must necessarily be especially endowed or have earned their social status through hard work. So no, I have no interest in defending aristocracy.
As far as I am concerned, even what passes for “democracy” in the modern world is really just a watered down aristocratic oligarchy (aristocratic not in terms of superiority in ability, but in terms of economic success) with an electoral system and wealthy and wealthy-connected rulers that employ populist rhetoric. I’m not aware of any state in history that wasn’t run by a small portion of the population that tends to be wealthy already.
I agree with Brainpolice. Defending government officials seems like a very odd question for these forums.
Cut the guy some slack, he obviously meant aristocracy as in elite, not people wielding coercive power.
Emphasis mine.
OK, that somewhat changes the situation, but it still looks more like an awkward phrasing than a defense of government.
I don’t see how a merit-based aristocracy wouldn’t devolve into an inheritance-based oligarchy or plutocracy in a generation.
How can that be possible without a state? My question is about the possibility of a natural aristocracy in an ancap society. Do you think the meritocratic natural elite will suddenly become an oligarchy? Seems like a leap of logic to me.
They would need to agree not to compete with one another to do that, and why would the most dynamic members agree to this?
Stepping outside of the political context, even this could be critisized to some degree. I would re-emphasize the fact that someone being within a sucessful class does not necessarily inherently mean that they are specially endowed and productive individuals, and hence it strikes me as nonsensical to indiscriminately defend “the elite” as some sort of “natural” reflection of merit. That’s loaded with normative dynamite and brings up suspicions that some people are seeking apologetics for their social or economic status.
To step back inside the political context, the notion of defending “the elite”, even holistically as members of society that are not government officials, could still be questioned insofar as the government functions as an extended political body for “elite” special interests and grants legal privilege to such “elites”. In short, it seems like in one’s zeal to defend “the natural elite” one can end up defending political privilege. You don’t have to be a government official to be subject to political critique as far as one’s role in a larger interconnecting system is concerned. The Hoppean idea of the “natural elite” seems to be a romantisization that excludes all of the political, coercive, and non-meritocratic elements of “the elite” from the picture.
I think this is an excellent point that defenders of the market would do well to realise. Steven Horwitz had a piece about this not long ago and Hayek emphasized this in a chapter of The Constitution of Liberty, it is by no means true that those who do well in a free market do so by virtue of their innate ability, their work ethic or their worth as a person. All too often people get rich who are not particularly talented or hard-working, they’re simply fortunate enough to have the right idea under the correct circumstances of time and place.
The term elite can be used subjectively: “elite” can be merely another term for “the best market actors in their respective fields” or “the most talented based upon merit” is ignored.
I don’t remember Hoppe explicitly endorsing political, coercive & non-meritocratic elements of “an elite”, just as he never explicitly endorses monarchy (but provided analysis on it in comparison to democracy, regardless). An actual quote or two from him might clear this up, if he did, in both cases.
Technically, a master / teacher could be a natural elite in comparison to his apprentice. One day, the master dies, & the best of his apprentices / students may take his place, & so on.
Ignoring the subjective use of “elite” by various people in different possible arguments seems to give advantage to anyone paranoid of any hierarchy whatsoever.
How would natural elites not inevitably form (and fall, since natural elites would eventually die, & others would take their place) in the stateless society (“natural elites” in a state-society seems to be a misnomer, since the entire market is distorted from day one due to the state, and it is widely based on anti-meritocratic, pro-coercion, pro-political means)?
It’s not unreasonable to see that what is usually thought of as an “aristocracy” (in this case, the elite) in a stateless society would mean something different than in a state society.
I’m not sure if you could call the people who are the very best at their jobs, have widely renowned reputations for such, consistently outperform others while reaping the benefits based on their own merit over those who may be far more mediocre, a “ruling elite”, unless we’re talking about criminals, politicians, etc.
Not everyone who is good at what they do, fits the bill as endorsing or preforming the “political, coercive & anti-meritocratic” bill of what is usually attributed to said “elite”.
Should ability really be opposed on an assumption that greater ability than others automatically equals coercion, because they are not at the same level as others?
Wouldn’t those that apply as “natural elites” simply be the result of natural selection?
The underlying problem here is what I percieve to be a sort of naturalistic fallacy - the assumption that nature (or the market), absent the state, is a pure meritocracy. And while there are obvious affinities, I think that applying evolutionary concepts from natural science to the social sciences can be stretched too far. Hoppe’s notion of “natural elites” very blatantly seems to be an attempt to portray the preferences of cultural conservatism as the naturally arising consequences of a meritocratic nature.
I never proposed an opposition to ability or the claim that greater ability automatically equals coercion. It seems to me that in one’s opposition to absolute anti-heirarchicalism, there is a temptation to tend to make the opposite mistake and defend socio-economic “elite” status by appealing to some mechanism of natural meritocracy that doesn’t quite exist. The whole problem is that there is a danger of simple socio-economic apologetics via appeal to natural selection.
It simply is not the case that “the market” inherently allocates wealth and social status strictly on the basis of natural merit, particularly given the element of sheer subjective value involved and the begged normative question of what is virtuous in the first place. In other words, markets function in a cultural context. In a culture that values poopoo, “the market” will produce poopoo, but nothing normatively meritocratic about the poopoo industry necessarily follows.
laugh I said poopoo.