I think the gov’t is another branch of the free market that over-time it had monopolized with coercion. The middle ages saw monarchy with loose protective affliations rise to absolute monarchy by the time the Age of Reason strolled into the picture, which ushered in an era of democratic-republics that grew in its infiltration of the free market. I don’t think the gov’t produces anything and all of the production comes about by the hands of people working in the market even under threat and acts of extortion for centuries.
Propagandist appeal that gov’t is necessary to ‘stop the bad guys’ isn’t the act of coercion.
But the constitution is not good, economically or morally. Heh.
The only reason why we may grow economically under a limited constitution is because of the simple FACT that more ANARCHY is allowed into the market system, the constitution itself is still a negation of that freedom and as such will limit the market to the extent it claims.
There is also no possible way in a democracy to keep a constitution limited, or for the constitution to even be taken seriously. This comes back to Hayek’s quote, and rational ignorance. Somethign I deeply wish you would actually read about, I know I’ve mentioned it to you several times.
I agree with you here. But I think statists know that most people’s intillectual framework revolves around a ‘safety-net’ the state. They assume you subscribe to a certain level of this, and that is why fear mongering is particularly useful to them. First they had to build the intellectual dependency, which they have done over several centuries. Now, after the fact, they exploit it to maintain that level of intillectual dependency. Fear mongering in all cases can be misleading, but also a useful tactic as statists have shown.
As Wilderness pointed out,
I think the point of Wilderness’s regimentation theory is that fear is a common demominator amongst men. Possibly one of the lowest. Because of this it becomes easy to develop social framework of coercion thats foundation is built apon fear, as most people understand and recognize fear. Where as most people may not understand or recognize the benefits of trade. Trade in this sense would not be a lower common denominator.
Sure the fear technique could work for ancaps, or anything else. The point is that the fear argument removes logic to make a point, and assigns emotion. It is particularly effective because most people understand fear, as opposed to other non-intuitive arguments of the market.
There’s a huge difference in clarity between coercion to maintain trade and coercion to attack trade. And trade is the appeal of the free market. Liberty, peace, and justice is the appeal of just property. There’s definitely an appeal to the focus of a persons time and energy put into this:
or this
as opposed to the focus of the person wanding this
Just to clarify my “pessimistic view”. People, in general, don’t want to educate themselves. Consider - 50% of the human race has a below average intelligence. And at least some of the remaining 50% are lazy. I forget who, (and am lazy to a degree myself so I’m not looking it up) but a Roman philosopher once said that people don’t want freedom, but a just master. It makes their lives easier. They are willing to give up some of their freedom to have a bit of security. So when someone comes along promising them security, whether it be moral or physical, they take the person up on it. Government is formed. This could be a PDA in anarchy or a politician in a state, but either way it means the government grows. And as stated, once it starts, it doesn’t stop. Eventually, it takes too many liberties and the people aren’t feeling so secure any more. Something eventually triggers a revolution. The government comes tumbling down, perhaps being replaced by another, perhaps leaving anarchy. The people, last knowing a state of tyranny, are afraid of it. For now, they DO want liberty. But soon, they get tired of being responsible for everything. Freedom is hard. And someone comes along to say, “Just give me a little bit of your liberty, and I’ll give you some security…”
So why bother? Because the cycle does include a point where people want liberty. And by studying it, and thinking about it, and popularizing it, we can make that point stretch out a little farther each time. It’s like a vacation - it doesn’t ever last, but don’t you want it to be as long as possible?
For rational reasons as well. People don’t have the time nor interest to be economic and ethical know-it-alls. This is why we have the division of labor. Perhaps we need to accept the fact that not everyone will understand the details of Austrian Economics and/or market anarchy. All that implies however is a change of strategy, I’ll describe below.
Most methods of measuring intellectual capacity are arbitrary and not wholly correct. People are specialized in different things and their skills are not always easily representable on paper. People used to think fisher men were simple minded people with limited intelligence. Then the Discovery channel released a show called “Deadliest Catch” which changed peoples perspective on the skills and disciplines needed to be a good fishermen.
We live in a world with the division of labor. It is not in people’s best interest nor in ours for everyone to be experts in economics and the principles of liberty. Though I do agree with you partly about education, I’ll explain more below.
A wise old man once climbed up a hill and shouted to his followers below. “Go forth and pick your noes’s!”
Simply because some old man said something one day while he was on the can doesn’t mean we should abandon logic to consider his point. Likewise just because some old Roman philosopher, who happened to be a member of one of the worlds largest states at the time, believed as he did does not make it true. He is not the authority on the human psyche.
But your still subscribed to this notion that we are in perpetual repetition in history. We are not. Man does not repeat history, he may repeat certain actions of history but history is history, and cannot be repeated short of going back in time. The fact remains that man does change, and has historically changed for the better.
So essentially we are saying the same thing, only differently.
So coming back to my point on education. Wilderness has established that the lowest common denominator in recognized human thought may be fear. I tend to agree. What if we replaced that lowest common denominator from fear to liberty. I don’t mean in the republican/nationalist/conservative/ fake liberty sense. I mean in true liberty, genuine liberalism.
As it stands it’s clear that a fundamental concept of liberty is not widely held and that it’s understanding varies from parties to parties. If we focused on changing the lowest common denominator from fear to liberty our tactics change. No longer do we need to get caught up in the mundane tasks of step by step explanations of liberty and economic freedom. Perhaps instead we make a vast propaganda campaign. One that eliminates fear, and in its place puts a desire to be free.
What I’m trying to say is this. What we need to do is make the lowest common denominator an attribute that will make liberty and economic freedom be most favorable. In this way we no longer have to spend years on a single person teaching them the itemized details of AE and other topics. Instead it becomes a part of the culture. Freedom propoganda?
If people were more concerned with freedom than they were with fear our social framework may be entirely different.
In the current mainstream political climate as they scare everybody into the herd for safety and abandon reason, what is beautiful, and logical, then what happens is those latter are less to nil exercised in the pursuit of recognizing truth. It’s a dumbing down process and the mediums of propaganda to perpetuate this duping, dumbing down process, ie. public schools, media, politicans, etc… are currently very far reaching geographically and perpetually delude the minds and hearts of people. There are some people that go around and try to offer kernals of truth due to the time such people spend in contemplation on what is wise; and then there are others that spend their time asking others to essentially give up, roll over, and die because it’s “human nature” - no call of liberty at all in that kind of thinking cause they say it’s “fixed”. These latter people of course only perpetuate the duping, dumbing down process.
I’ve been tossing around a concept which may refute the idea that man inherently is subject to creating government as an inborn physiological flaw which has been presented here on this thread. It seems to me that there is one irrefutable attribute of man that contradicts that point, The attribute being Human Action. The axiom that man acts, not men, but man acts. In order to act however man must be free to do so. Human Action implies that man is free, capable of acting.
There may be situations where man is naturally incapable of acting, but if he otherwise chooses not to act he is still acting in that sense. The state seems to be counter-praxeological and seeks to restrict human action, or manipulate human action to service its needs. In such a situation the people who are making decisions are still acting in their best interest, they only seek to use the state as a tool to negate the actions of others and have them comply to their own agendas. This is why the State operates even in the negation of Human Action. It’s formation is done at the will of a minority, it than exploits a majority to perpetuate it’s agenda. The Majority who goes along with it are only doing so in error. They think that this does not effect their action, or that it effects action in their favor. They are deciding rationally, it is observed after the decision however that it is done in error.
At the root it seems that the state can only prevent human action. This most basic fundamental attribute of man, the most irrefutable attribute of man. Man may decide to install a restrictive system, but he does so in conflict with himself. Or perhaps he installs restrictions because his actions are not restricted, only the actions of others, and others are forced to comply with his. There are a number of ways that the state can be formed, and despite the praxeological attribute of man that doesn’t necessarily mean a state cannot be formed, obviously its the contrary.
The point however is that the most fundamental aspect of man is that he acts, he thinks, all by his own free will. The state is a direct negation of acting, it prefers inacting or the manipulation of action. Its counter-praxeological as it were.
Considering that point I cannot accept that man has an inborn physiological attribute that has made him prone to developing a state. At the very core man seeks the freedom to act. At the very core man seeks to be free, whether he realizes it or not. This is no different from the marxists to the socialists to the murderer. They seek to be free for their own agenda’s.
It would seem that the state is in direct conflict with Human Action.
Exactly. Liberty is an inalienable right. It can’t be taken away, but it can be corrupted with limitations, ie. control, thinking one is the state, etc… With the latter this limits ones own negative liberty by surrounding oneself with restrictions physically and mentality. The restrictions even for Hitler to his own negative liberty was he couldn’t change his impossible dogma and had to continue on with the Nazi rituals. He had to participate with the same rituals that restrict choice. Everything becomes more standardized. Of course new things, events pop up and choices are made, but choices in accord with a preconceptions that are arbritrarily chosen and therefore not logically known to all, ie. common sense.
The state is counter to human action. Political boundaries that world currently understands are a new phenomena anyways. If I remember correctly the British played a big role in determining the political boundaries of the world that usually didn’t have anything to do with the actual people with their differing customs around the world. The nation-state is a new phenomena to the world. Culture is not government. Government is a territory monopoly and culture is the norms, values, and beliefs of a society. The capability of liberty to be enacted in any one culture would define how much of a monopoly the society holds upon the individual. And liberty is not power so various cultures had more liberty than say the U.S. back into ancient times I would say outside of the tyrant-kings that emerged in, ie. Eygpt, Babalyon, Rome, China, etc… Simply because an individual grows up to learn a particular culture that culture doesn’t necessarily restrict their liberty. And technological innovations are a gaining of power not liberty. But with new technologies the exercise of choice does multiply, not because there was a limitation on choice previously, but due to the additional choice of, ‘Do you want to ride the train or car?’. But there wasn’t necessarily a limitation on liberty previous to this technological choice. Culture doesn’t necessitate limits on liberty. Not yet having the idea to do something doesn’t mean the idea is not potentially available. Culture doesn’t initiate physical aggression, but individuals within any culture has the potential to choice control over their neighbors rather than allowing their neighbors to live freely.
I agree.
The state is not directly defined as culture. These are two differenct concepts as I said above. A state is a monopoly initiated with coercion and legislation is always trying to mold human action. Tyrant-kings/queens, rulers in general, are always molding society according to their arbritrary whims - not necessarily in accord with the current spontaneous culture that all individuals that have ever lived spontaneous mold in their exchanges. Individuals in the government are ONLY ever deciding, ie. legislation, decree, what culture is supposed to be. And there are always individuals thinking spontaneously out of the control of any gov’t. As you point out it is praxeologically impossible for a gov’t to ever maintain an ideology based on a central planner (all governments) and thereby gov’t has never actually developed a foothold on civil society to this day.
No, I pretty much agree. I’ve been able to take surprisingly a whole lot from this discussion. It’s been a while since I felt like I’ve learned this much from a thread. A nice suprise which cannot be said for some of the other poorer quality discussions I’ve been involved in as of late.
I learned a lot too. I was hoping Z would try to continue on with the discussion, but he got caught up in other ventures. That’s the way the ball bounces.
This was a very enjoyable discussion. Thanks to all that contributed to help me think this through. If there’s more, by all means continue. Simply wanted to let everybody know.[:)]
Wilderness, I shared some of our dialogue with my local Ancap Meetup group. Every single person in my group is pretty genius so they presented some excellent additional information. As a result I have some additional stuff I’d like to share on our topic. Would you be interested?
Well in our regimentation theory we were discussing lowest common denominators, from that Hayek Quote. One of my friends introduced me to Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs. Have you ever seen this and do you think it fits in without model? I think it makes perfect sense. Here’s the wiki
yes, i’ve seen this before. What we were talking about, this model can be applied, but I wouldn’t say Maslow’s Pyramid is solely what we were discussing. But it can be used to help provide insight into our discussion. For instance, politicians are operating with safety and physiology and therefore don’t have a foundation to develop further up. They’re constantly operating on those levels so their focus can’t go higher until those lower levels are solved and the gov’t, ie. politicians, trying to solve those levels collectively will not happen. The gov’t does dabble with family so that’s the third level up. There are probably other operations of the gov’t that involve higher levels, but what is happening is the application or the job task is being applied with threat of or use of coercion, so, I don’t even think that’s in the pyramid other than maybe under safety. The gov’t is afraid of society collapsing, even maybe on a moral level (depends on the individual politician), but their job is performed by force so the build up socially and thus psychologically in the social interaction is not reason but force application.
Could a politician, an individual one, move beyond those lower levels, yes in his or her personal life, but then again that’s the persons personal life and it’s not dealing with the job. In the daily job task of a gov’t politician (or any gov’t employee for the most part that I can think of) the focus when the work papers hit the desk is a constant focus on these lower levels. So the gov’t works on a different level. In gov’t it’s either in general, sociological factors of physiology (that level) or safety. Economics is performed on the gov’t level to handle collectively these bottom two levels. So when is the gov’t going to do a job that works on a higher level? That has happened, especially in the Holy Roman Empire with the Inquisition or Late Middle Ages with their form of the Inquisition, ie. Anabaptists. But again this was trying to work upon even higher levels but yet did it with threat of or use of initiating coercion, which is circular and back to square one in that the job task was performed not by reasoning but by force or threat thereof. This method of relating to others turns inward in a regimentation manner, not full out military order, though Machiavelli wasn’t full military or Spartan. Yet there is a “rank and file” obedience to order found operating within the gov’t. A bunch of people who get what they want and at times with threat or applied coercion, ie. legislated, executive orders, judicial rule; and how much do they get their way by approaching life this way. I would doubt a politician likes to be questioned.
It makes perfect sense. So Government has established itself primarily in the lower two levels. Maybe even attempted to conflate the two. For example “Health Care” is now apparently some kind of need, just as important as access to oxygen.
I think he can and does. What the politician does is attempt to make a government service or good appear to be in the lower two levels. So in this way everything is a security/health issue. That way they can exploit fear with all it’s potential.
I think we don’t realize that many items are already on the higher level, because we’ve been indoctrinated into believing they are a security/safety/health issue. Take socialized education for example.
But when questioned they always resort to fear tactics to justify themselves. For example when I questioned Congressman McDermott about capntax his response to me was a non economical/ non environmental response and totally an emotional response. In an indirect way implying that I’m insensitive and that if more people don’t start caring we will all be harmed. Therefore we should remain in this perpetual state of fear.
And on a side note, it is interesting how government has entrenched itself in the family section. Even most Christian’s now days believe that marriage is sanctified by the state. The have allowed the State to supersede their own God.
Here’s (below) an interesting system of authority that I happen to believe in that deals with what Lacnala is getting at. It does require omniscience and omnipotence to exist but since I believe in the existence of beings with those characteristics, this is not a problem from my perspective. I guess that it probably would be, however, for many of the people in this forum.
34 Behold, there are many called, but few are chosen. And why are they not chosen?
35 Because their hearts are set so much upon the things of this world, and aspire to the honors of men, that they do not learn this one lesson—
36 That the rights of the priesthood are inseparably connected with the powers of heaven, and that the powers of heaven cannot be controlled nor handled only upon the principles of righteousness.
37 That they may be conferred upon us, it is true; but when we undertake to cover our sins, or to gratify our pride, our vain ambition, or to exercise control or dominion or compulsion upon the souls of the children of men, in any degree of unrighteousness, behold, the heavens withdraw themselves; the Spirit of the Lord is grieved; and when it is withdrawn, Amen to the priesthood or the authority of that man.
…
39 We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion.
40 Hence many are called, but few are chosen.
41 No power or influence can or ought to be maintained by virtue of the priesthood, only by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned;
42 By kindness, and pure knowledge, which shall greatly enlarge the soul without hypocrisy, and without guile—
Anyways, I think I understand what Lacnala is getting at: there is a fundamental deficiency in human nature that tends towards the dissolution of (earthly) governments. That doesn’t mean we should give up hope or stop trying to accomplish good things - it doesn’t excuse an attitude of apathy towards seeking to make progress in matters of government or science. It’s just a recognition that ultimately progress in those areas is dependent on the inner states of existing individuals. Since effective “rights” or effective laws of government ultimately depend (as Jackson LaRose points out in another thread) on group dynamics (what we are willing to enforce as a group - whether we let the “big” guy take unjust advantage of the “small” guy), there is no form of social organization (or government) that can guarantee good outcomes over the long run. What this does suggest is that there is value in promoting personal goodness at the individual level just as there is value in seeking to identify more general principles of human organization or government.
And of course the fact that governments ultimately cannot escape the aggregated (or collective) conditions of their constituent citizenry, by no means implies that some forms of government are not more likely to produce good results than others. It just means that ultimately governments (systems of laws) cannot escape the fact that they are implicitly inherently tied to the group dynamic. Laws are only effective when the group treats them as such by choosing to comply. (Anyone who has lived in a 3rd world country for a significant period of time can attest to this fact.) Here’s http://scriptures.lds.org/en/mosiah/29 an interesting discussion of this idea in the context of a pre-colombian civilization here in the “new world”, where a just king ultimately changes the form of government to a representative one and explains why such a change can’t guarantee the civilization’s success (ultimately this one collapsed - several centuries later, around 400 AD) even though representative forms of government do generally speaking(i.e. over a broader range of underlying conditions) represent an improvement over monarchical forms of government. The reference is admittedly religious in nature; so those who find that kind of thing offensive will probably not be interested.
As for myself, I don’t think there is a person on the planet that has ever lived anything other than a “religious” life, since no one (perhaps not one even in all the history of mankind) lives strictly according to logical deductions based on known facts. Besides the fact that the human brain is not programmed to work like a computer (strictly confining itself to logical deductions), we all “fill in” the (huge) gaps in our understanding of the world with things that are not known (with certainty and in the collective sense) to be true. Religion in its most general sense is acting on beliefs that are not provable - or at least are not generally susceptible of unconditional publicly-verifiable demonstration; and pretty much everyone does that to one degree or another. Of course this doesn’t mean that all principles or world-views are of equal value (e.g. equally “true”, equally promote our happiness, etc.); it’s just a recognition that there are limitations and that the practical consequence of those limitations is choice of beliefs that are not generally speaking provable. It is my understanding that this lack of public verifiability is actually an important part of our condition - I mean that I believe that our circumstances are that way by construction that ultimately has to do with the purpose of life.
