Idealism and Ideologies are dangerous

Economics Political Theory
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I’ve read about the Austrian economical principles and austro-libertarianism, however I think most libertarians running around teh internets are very naive. Idealistic just like communists, but just from the other end of the political sphere. Free market is usually the most efficient way to allocate resources, so many draw the conclusion that anarcho capitalism (or minarchism) is the most just society. I disagree. I don’t want to draw my morality, understanding of justice, from any economic theory while I do admit that austrians have made contributions to economics.

Why did Mises prefer limited government over anarcho capitalism? Because he saw the collective benefit of the society more important than the individual freedom. In other words, he balanced individiual and society’s benefit and did a rational decision just like an adult human being. He didn’t think the government police was a perfectly efficient way to organize protection from coercion, he was full aware of the fact, but that didn’t stop him from making a rational decision.

Justice or just society cannot be merely calculated by economic principles. We have all own our opinions about abortion, punishment, fraud, animal rights, intellectual property, weapon/explosive rights (WMD’s), children rights etc. I don’t need an ideology to state what my moral values are on those, while I think any stance won’t be ideal and always open to cultural change. This goes for other social issues too. Democracy is one method to decide the rules of justice and I know its hundreds of drawbacks, but in real life, not everything is perfect, not even Mises Institute.

Many ideological purists try to form simple principles like NAP and then call everyone else disagreeing with them socialists, fasicsts, statists, whatever. Socialism by dictionary definition usd to mean government owning the means of production, currently practically extinct except North Korea and Cuba. Now I wouldn’t find fascism totally inappropiate to describe what USA has been doing in the Middle East but the people that use it for every bit of state intervention, really need an honest reality check.

When people die because they simply cannot afford eg. health care, freedom is meaningless. You can blame their family, charitable organizations but its not going to fix the problem. To me, such is social darwinism. In all honesty, if you got beat up and went to a ER or police, and they wouldn’t accept you as a “customer”, would you think that such a society is great? Or you would call 911 only to realize you don’t have enough money on your credit card? Or possible you get a terminal illness and you cannot work but cost of your treatment is in 6 digit category, then you die, tough luck? Or maybe you made a mistake in your fire fighting insurance and you die when the house burns down. Justice has been served?

Think about it for a second. Why isn’t everyone (including Mises and Hayek) here an anarcho capitalist? Because some people are skeptical about its workability? But why would they be, freedom from taxation is unnegotiable! Why is social darwinism any better than mere survival of the fittest? If people die from lack of health care because they had no money to pay it, its not any better than they die from lack of protection because they had less money than the offender for their defense. Atleast not in my valuebook. If you simply don’t care what happens to people in your society, but value liberty above all else, you should really check your moral values.

Now I’m not saying welfare measures are necessary for a working a society. I think a country could be run as a limited government with no welfare measures whatsoever but people shouldn’t be so quick to condemn the arguments of welfare measures by just stating “taxation is theft”, unfortunately reality is a bit more complex than that. Those people remind of those who just preach all day about their stance on abortion and how their stance is superior never listening what the other one has to say.

I want to encourage discussion and want libertarians also to understand the opposite view . Most people who live here actually like the welfare measures, and of course it has its issues just like any state measure would have. So thanks I’m fully aware of the calculation argument.

In Europe, Iceland is almost bankrupt. Just go there and talk about laissez-faire, and see the reaction. And yes I’ve read the article here about it. It doesn’t convince me. Maybe the analysis is correct, but given that the country had the most free financial policy in Europe and ended up almost bankrupt while other scandinavian states with tighter financial regulations took only mild hit, the solution that if it only wasn’t the moral hazard and regulation couldn’t prevent this (eg. excessive maturity mismatching and over-cheap credit from foreigners) from happening doesn’t convince me and frankly, not the Icelanders either, and I don’t blame them. Albert Einstein once said: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

Why am I saying this? Well because I used to be like some folks here, preaching about libertarianism, and I want others to think these things through before rushing to ideology. In my personal opinion, ideologies are dangerous, whether its anaracho capitalism, communism, anarchism, fascism etc.

To quote Deng Xiaoping: “One should not talk of methodology every day. In real life, not everything is methodology.”

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sigh Is it that time of year again? Time for more of the garbage that we’re “naive”, “idealists”, “assholes”, “selfish” or what have you? I read your post. It doesn’t convince me. If we’re gonna talk about “dangerous” things it’s this mentality that is truly dangerous. So go preach to someone who cares.

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I think we have to look at how our moral values have been skewed over time by compounding changes in society. On either side of the room we could perhaps realize first how each other might have ended up so far apart, why we choose separating into groups..

Economy is a measured value of society perhaps a necessity of quantifying values of individuals. Between individuals there are interactions of varying degrees and how on a psychological level feelings, emotions helps us over time in assessing morals and value of each person.

A Best friend would be invaluable to another individual as a best friend or being valueless to another person. Billions of these interactions at a broad view might be considered a psychological valuation system.

All of this really relates to time and distance. Everything from Atoms, to the universe scale up and have similar patters. Our brains i believe operate in patters of perception during interactions to create familiarity.

I have some general familiarity in different forms of thought be it psychology, sociology, economy so even though i can’t give specifics i have a general perception of a subject matter. systems thought, better know each other to better know the world?

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If you don’t care, why do you reply?

I never said you were asshole or selfish, I’m just fearing that many people are thowing into this too recklessly just like many people threw into real estate business. People make mistakes, and every idea that is produced by humans will have problems.

Just go to talk to ordinary people about privatizing the police, you argue that its efficient and less corrupt, which might be true but many will remain unconvinced. Is it because they are irrational? Not necessarily, its just because they have weighted the pros and cons with the given information and don’t want to take the risk. I think such an opinion is justified, even if the existence of police is violation of NAP.

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that they are scared of attempting to live justly doesnt justify their advocation of tyranny and slavery.

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People’s opinions about the world did not fall from the sky. They are the result of an educational process, and this process is in many cases heavily biased in favor of the state. That which people learn in public schools, the military, from many religious groups or from the mainstream media supports the view that you need this alleged above-it-all entity, even if it’s inherently evil. I don’t think this proves anything.

I advocate an emergent market order and do not believe it will be flawless. I argue that markets have way more correctional mechanisms than states and are thus preferable, aside from the many performance benefits they offer.

And when it comes to things like “market fundamentalism”, It is precisely the open-endedness of market anarchism that discerns it from ideologies like communism. Democracy is trying to achieve a similar scenario, but suffers from a number of shortcomings (see H.-H. Hoppe on this one).

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So, you don’t have an argument, just a ‘personal opinion’. Wait - maybe you are preaching about your personal opinions … ? That’s way off topic …

Sorry, but these people keep arguing back using fallacies. This is not about risk but about logic. Also, whether they want risk or not is irrelevant - what matters is the fact that they force their system upon dissidents.

So if you have a consistent argument showing why the majority is justified in ruling over individuals, go ahead …

If on the other hand, all you have are ‘opinions’ …

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Saying that force is always immorral is an opinion too. You may see force always as immorral but to be honest, I don’t think it constitutes a justice.

Suppose ten families live on an island peacefully, each self-sufficient. Then its found out that one family tends to beat up kids regularly, or you can come up with some cruel abuse if you wish, and the question remains whether the others would be allowed to intervene? Some say that’s the right way to grow up kids, others that its totally imoral child abuse? Which one is right? If the last one, are they allowed to intervene? Doesn’t the family own the kids?

I simply think justice cannot be easily deducted from simple principles.

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What is the legitimate basis for establishing your limited government?

Why should we use democracy? Why should we resolve ourselves to such base pessimism?

Well no one would call someone who disagrees with a social principle…a socialist. Perhaps you are confused and think that you can use previous examples from different places.

And if people are coerced into giving all their funds for strangers, what is freedom then?

…And?

What is this whole rant of health care then?

Again what is this whole rant about not being free unless we have healthcare?

You preach minarchism…danger Will Robinson danger!

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Everything is just opinions. Why bother with any argument at all ? Except as a meaningless exchange of opinions ?

Not at all.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance

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Not at all. Miniarchism doesn’t benefit ‘society’. Firms competing for the defense of life and property do. Mises failed in his reasoning - I don’t know why, but the cause of Mises flawed reasoning is irrelevant anyway.

Wholly false.

edit : A state doesn’t help ‘society’ and doesn’t help individual freedom either. ‘Collective’ benefit and individual freedom are not in conflict by the way.

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An ideology is not dangerous. Danger is a value placed on something by an individual who evaluates the ideology or by an individual evaluating others acting upon that ideology.

As for all ideologies, I am for only 1, that is: Individuals may act in their own volition and are free to do so as long as they do not violate the private property rights of someone else. There are two ways a person can act: 1. They act by their own volition, or 2. They act by the volition of someone else.

Government with a monopoly on force will use that power to make people act against their own volition each and every time. Furthermore government will always violate the private property rights of others each and every time. So the old addage is very true: A government that governs best governs least. So the optimal is one that does not govern at all.

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Err.. you are constructing a strawman. Most advocates of limited government do not advocate organization based on purely economic grounds. If this were so, all limited-government folk would be utilitarians, which many aren’t.

Firstly, which countries are people dying of these in? The US, contrary to both left and right propaganda to the contrary, does not possess a free market in healthcare. I don’t believe India has a free market in healthcare either. Secondly, lets look at the track record of socialized medicine in countries like Sweden. There, waiting lines are long, and getting longer, and indeed people have died for lack of care. Let’s not even get started on what the hospitals are like in places like Cuba, North Korea or the Soviet Union. Thirdly, justice relates to interaction between intelligent creatures. Unless someone deliberately infects you or sets your [building] on fire, the question of justice is effectively irrelevant to a man caught in these predicaments. That doesn’t mean it’s a desirable condition, but it’s not generally one that comes from another man oppressing you. This is the difference between dying from a criminal and dying from what is called an Act of God in some legal and insurance systems.

Following from that, by your reckoning, is a paraplegic with AIDS living in, say, Switzerland less free than a well-treated slave on an 18th century plantation? The slave may not be capable of stopping working for the master but he is certainly freer to move about, act and more free from disease, in all likelihood. Is the law of gravity the greatest impediment to human liberty? Can I sue nature for oppressing me whenever an earthquake damages my property?

Fourthly, I agree with you the terms “socialist” and “fascist” are thrown around too often, both in general and around here. I believe a better term for programs such as socialized medicine and the like (entitlement programs) would be “socialistic”. They agree with the Marxist principle of “from each according to his ability (the taxpayers), to each according to his need (the recipients of these programs)”. Whether this is a bad thing or not, of course, is up to debate, but it cannot be denied that entitlement programs and Marxism share this commonality, and I do not believe it unreasonable to draw comparisons between them.

Appeal to majority. Your claim the majority of the citizens in your country (I’m assuming you are European) support welfare measures has little bearing on their validity or economic viability, even if it is true (which it probably is). To follow on from points made earlier by other posters on the subject of government indoctrination (which, in Europe, is probably a tautology when describing their government schools), even if, hypothetically, a completely impartial poll revealed the majority of the citizens of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea supported the policies of Kim Jong-il’s government and Juche ideology, that would not mean that Juche ideology or Kim Jong-il’s policies are valid, be it economically or ethically.

There are probably plenty of people in the United States, to draw an ideology, that believe the Federal Reserve system is an economically wise and sustainable policy, despite the fact the US Federal Reserve is the primary cause of the global financial recession (Iceland did not exist in an autarkic vacuum). Opinions do not equal facts.

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You ask why Mises was not an anarchist, but you fail to consider the world in which he grew up: as a son of a recently ennobled family(IIRC, it was his grandfather who got the title) of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Not only was he closer than most to the center of power, the German culture(I’m inferring the connection to Austrian culture) is pretty fanatical when it comes to things being in order. Einstein spent the latter years of his life trying to disprove the nondeterminative nature of quantum mechanics.

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That is because “there is no third solution”. It’s the market or the state (paraphrasing Mises)

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The existence of a government does not imply that government is socialist or fascist. Socialism is a system of government whereby the means of production are owned by the government. As jiriki pointed out, very few countries today are socialist. Cuba, North Korea, maybe the Democratic Republic of the Congo, that’s about it. Similarily, fascism (be it regular, capital F italian Fascism or Naziism) is a dead ideology with virtually no adherents who run actual governments these days.

There are certainly similarities between, say, Obamite nationalization of industry and fascism, but that doesn’t mean they are the same, any more than the fact both social democrats, communists, communitarians and Nazis all support government healthcare doesn’t make them all the same ideology.

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The Production of Security - Gustave de Molinari - 1849

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I don’t care about how “unrealistic” or whatever it is you deem libertarian ideology to be.

No, it’s because they are misinformed and too afraid to try something they’ve not experienced, that is what. Their “weighting” of the procs and cons is skewed, am sorry to say…

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I think my sig is your answer.

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There is a simple, easy response to this… (Although this isn’t it)

pseudo-realism and a “shurg your shoulders” attitude toward any attempts at systemic ethics is dangerous.

Anarcho-Capitalists DON’T draw their ethics from economic theory (Although some do propose a vital linkage between the two) they are NOT utilitarians for the most part. (Friedman and co. exempt). Most would (from my experience on this forum and elsewhere) claim Anarcho-Capitalism as ethically superior on the basis of “Natural Law”.

You seem to have a rather intimate knowledge of what Mises did and exactly why he did it. Is it possible that he just made a mistake, an error?

Once again, ethics IS NOT deduced from economic principles to my knowledge. While they can be linked, one doesn’t require the other to funciton.

While there is a bad habit of name calling that emerges from time to time on this forum (no names will be stated to keep the peace and to provide simplicity in the discussion) You’re not addressing overall points.

In fact the Police ARE NOT obliged to protect and serve you, they have every right to NOT assist you. Also, government services don’t come out of thin air, they are already paid for, and also you seem to simplify the anarcho-capitalist positions on “public services” insofar as payment is concerned.

Taxation IS theft. We can argue this, and it will be proven. Reality is more complicated than ANY ethical proposition, but that is irrelevant. While it certainly isn’t wise to resort to such quick fixes in a discussion and or arguement, it is certainly not invalid. Libertarians DO listen (A majority in a majority of situations anyway) to the other side of the debate, sometimes the discussion is productive, other times, not so much (Absence of shared understanding of what defintions of particular concepts are is a problem that isn’t always overcome)

When you say “Ideologies are dangerous” you are correct, there is an interit RISK to actually having a particular worldview. THis doesn’t imply that one ought not have a worldview. The formation of a worldview is an important step in an individual’s life, and an ongoing process. We ALL have an ideology, although one with a very long name. (Ex. Anarcho-Feminist Capitalist Utilitarian w/ Mutualist sympathies, Left Libertarian, Austrian on matters of economic theory) The important component is to be open to new information, this doesn’t require an abandonment of ideology, but the UNDERSTANDING of it.