How do the “customs and laws embedded in society” differ from the customs and norms of the majority?
Z.
If 51% of people strongly support abortion and 49% strongly oppose it, would abortion necessarily be legitimate in this society? It is not simply a matter of majority, but of overwhelming majority, i.e. such a majority that those who disagree are so marginalised, ostracised, ignored etc. that their views are essentially of no consequence and have no enforcement. This is very imprecise language, but I don’t think it is necessarily clear-cut and I don’t know the exact answer.
It’s whatever (%) majority it takes to make it too costly (in blood and treasure) for the minority to oppose it. Listen to the link in the OP.
Z.
True. As you say elsewhere, if 90% of people hate redheads, they’re going to be have a hard time even in a stateless society. I hope no one here disputes that. The thing is, if 90% of people hated redheads in a statist society, those redheads wouldn’t just have a hard time, they’d be dead.
Of course who knows what would really happen, but the point is that centralized power is a lever for the majority to disproportionately bear down on the minority (and usually far more leveraged than that: sometimes a tiny minority can virtually enslave the majority). In other words, anarchy works no miracles; it merely stops the state’s effect of magnifying such biases against, say, redheads, that are inherent in the population.
Hence I believe the effective force of anti-state arguments is, as my phrasing implies, entirely negative in that I think they are best when simply advocating a withdrawal of support for and belief in the need for states. Of course they can use Austrian observations about capitalism and ones about customary law to alleviate people’s fears of what will happen without a state, but I don’t find any positive advocacy productive (except for in the meantime while states are still the norm).
AJ, as I started in my OP: There’s no way around it. The state vs. no-state dichotomy does not (can not) exist in reality where the individual has no choice but to submit to the majority’s judgment on legitimacy (i.e. the free market in law). Calling it a state (or not) is mere semantics. Whatever you call it, it has been, it is, and probably always will be there. IMHO, the best hope is that the majority moves toward subjectively preferring individualism (and capitalism) over collectivism (and socialism) after being educated (via Austrian Economics) that that’d ultimately be in their best self-interest.
Glad to see you posting again!
Z.
On a related note, libertarians bash “democracy” as “two lions and a lamb deciding what’s for dinner” and such, but in a society that really was two lions and a lamb, the lamb would be dinner no matter whether it were a democracy, a republic, or anarchy. Of course if democracy means that all must be subject to the whims of all, immediately, then society would destroy itself…but it takes a central authority to pull off such a feat, to implement the will of the majority.
I see no reason why the word democracy can’t mean simply that the people have all the power they would normally have if there were no centralized power. There is no reason why the individual demos cannot rule in their own concern, that is, interact with each other in a spontaneous order, with no connotations that there is a central authority guided by majority vote.
In other words, the tyranny of the majority cannot be fully eliminated, but the disproportionate tyranny of that majority - courtesy of the leverage afforded by centralized power - can be. In a stateless context, democracy is no longer a dirty word, as it is just a description for what anarchy is: power to the individual people, or rather a ceasing of the exaggerated stripping away of that power via the state machinery.
I thought you said there’s no way around that the majority will determine what happens, which I agree with.* I see a substantive difference (not just semantics) between having a centralized power structure for the majority to use as a lever, and not having such a structure. Of course, when you allude to individualism and collectivism, maybe you mean that the majority supporting collectivism is (over time) the same as having a centralized power structure. Maybe I would agree, but I would think that “over time” part is important. There are certain institutions and systems that take time to set up, both individualist ones and collectivist ones.
So maybe the issue that is causing us to not see how we actually agree with each other yet is the time factor.
*Except that we have to be careful not to reify “the majority” and treat is as an acting entity that “determines” things in a literal sense. Can I get a head-nod that there is a difference between (1) the majority collectively determining, say, a monolithic law that redheads can be bought and sold (throughout the land), and (2) each member of the majority individually supporting anti-redhead laws locally and in their own circles or law jurisdictions? This difference is obscured by the words, so we have to be especially carefully to keep it latent.
I mean to say that the majority will determine what is acceptable in a state in the (1) sense, but that without a state the majority will only determine what is acceptable in the (2) sense. Perhaps this disambiguation will shed some light on something.
Would you neighbors dare tell your son who to marry nowadays? Well, under ‘communal democracy’ we had under communism, they did, and their decision was enforced! So, there’s a huge difference between a majority under democracy and a stateless majority.
I still think it’s semantics. If you agree that the majority will determine what happens (or what is legitimate), then you also must agree that the same majority will determine the level of centralization for its power structure. If the majority wants the structure, then the free market in law would ensure that no-structure is not an option.
I always felt that we probably agree on much more than what language has permitted to come through.
Head-nod.
Z.
Oh cool, I am going to bed now (3am in Japan), but I think I might have seen how to agree with you. And it is interesting!
"If the majority wants the structure, then the free market in law would ensure that no-structure is not an option. "
I don’t quite agree with this, even though I understand your point. Majority-minority is interesting word-play. The smallest minority is individual, that’s one thing for sure. And individual must submit to some rules, if he wants to interact in a society (other individuals). If there is a neibghourhood of 1000 people and majority of them wants law on something, well, then they gonna be prepared to pay for it. However, minority can equally find (or invent) an alternative agency, that will provide different kind of law.
What if those two agencies collide? Well, then they gotta use some mediation/arbitration services of some third party that they both agree with and so on.
But in free market majority can never decide for minority, like there is in a statist society.
I doubt that there would be a minority that doesn’t want law at all. Maybe some individuals. But then again, it is not in their best self-interest to be “alone”. Everyone has it’s version of law. And free market gives that possibility to enforce it. Or live lawless in expect that nothing bad happens.
I think I agree, but this seems to mean that as long as you can get the majority not to want any appreciable amount of centralization (such as through anti-statist arguments) - in other words if you can just convince enough people on that one issue - you can do without the power funnel of the state.
This has always been my argument: there is only one preference that needs to change for a stateless society to work, and that is the preference for centralized power. Why Capitalism? contains a strong argument for convincing people to prefer decentralization, for instance. Other works explain why it wouldn’t be chaos, and all sorts of other details. I find all these useful in that they help to dissuade people from preferring centralization. It seems to me, that, no matter what else people are persuaded of, if they are persuaded to be suspicious of centralization the state will perish, and if they are not, the state will survive. That is why I view all other issues as, to some extent, peripheral or supplementary (and frequently divisive; for example, it should not be too hard to convince left libertarians to abhor centralization, but it can be very hard to get them to buy other capitalist ideas).
I completely agree with your whole post. I also like Danny’s thread. I believe that the problem is one of education and persuasion. De-centralization would likely lead to chaos (destruction of wealth, property, and productivity) when brought upon an un-persuaded population as we witness currently in some Arab countries. I agree that the information revolution and increased interconnectedness will help toward that goal but I am a bit less optimistic than you regarding the speed (and sometimes even the direction) of that trend.
Z.
Whoah, that’s great to hear.
And this is a very interesting point. If you are correct about that, and I suspect you may be, it seems to have big implications for current libertarian thinking and strategy/focus. This would make a cool top-level post if fleshed out a bit.
Regarding speed, I really don’t have a good way of estimating that. I just like to be optimistic as it’s more relaxing and fun.
Did you ever develop this idea elsewhere? It sounds like an interesting possibility.
Don’t know why I didn’t see this post earlier. I disagree strongly. You are missing the conditions under which “majority opinion” matters and that is where there is a strong State order - massive wealth redistribution, under-production of private security + over-production of public security, etc. The stronger a private property order, the less the opinion of the majority matters. Ferrari doesn’t care what the majority of people might like to see in a car. They only care what their customers - a distinct minority - want to see in a car. Ferrari’s design decisions are a matter that does not concern the majority exactly because Ferrari is privately owned and operated, it does not have a monopoly, its customers are private citizens spending their own money, and so on. That law is monopolized by the State’s courts is an important reason why majority opinion matters on issues that don’t concern them. In a private law society, questions of law would be decided by those to whom it matters and the opinions of those to whom it does not matter would be completely irrelevant.
Clayton -