My hunch about libertarianism and AnCap

Miscellaneous Current Events
1

Perhaps I am staying within the same circles too much. Maybe I’m visiting websites that already have my bias. Yet it seems to be that more and more the path of libertarianism points toward Anarcho-capitalism. I’m seeing Rothbard mentioned in many places (as well as For a New Liberty), I’m seeing clear expositions of libertarian stances on aggression and property (and if supporters of these stances are pressed, they could very well turn to AnCap), and I’m seeing very pure explanations of libertarianism which sound like voluntaryism.

And the thing is that I’m seeing these in many different places. FEE, Students for Liberty conferences, smaller libertarian websites, speeches of Ron Paul, etc.

If not AnCap, then we’ll have a bunch of minarchists. That’s not that bad.

Unintended Consequences: A Brain Teaser thread?
2

Even better if we can talk them out of it once they get to minarchy.

3

Are you a minarchist Wheylous?

4

No, I’m an AnCap.

And I shall read that letter, MHGM. Thanks!

5

You may be right, but that may not even be a good thing.

It means those who have stuck with the libertarian message are increasingly radicalizing and leaving comparatively fewer conduits between the mainstream and the hard core.

6

I see it as a continual process, so the new guys get replenished :smiley:

7

Just a bump for the awesome link above:

Objectivism and the State
An Open Letter to Ayn Rand

by Roy A. Childs, Jr.

8

This is perhaps an effect of your trained perception.

By thinking so much about libertarianism all the time, you may be surrounding yourself consciously or not with pro-libertarian material or people, and paying more attention to any libertarian undertone of general purpose material.

It’s like a paranoia, only that you don’t perceive a threat, but something that you wish to happen.

9

Few things are as pure evil as “necessary” evils. Minarchists (especially RP minarchists) in my experience fiercely oppose liberty, because they’re so convinced that government is necessary to maintain order; this is compounded by their tendency to be opposed to any actual studying which might push them toward anarchism, because they’re already so convinced; like most people who latch onto some moral ideology with emotional investment, they can’t be bothered challenging something so obviously ultimate. They aren’t interested in truth, just in emotional (read: moral) validation.

At least regular statism is obviously evil. But minarchism is insidiously evil and its supporters are fiercely defensive and irrationally opposed to further investigation. And of course power corrupts, so failing to overcome a problem and instead defaulting to institutionalized violence will always corrupt. And, naturally therefore, we shouldn’t be surprised that minarchism has proved to be the most powerful resource for explosive government expansion.

Speaking of hunches about libertarianism and ancap, I’m increasingly leaning toward the view that both are “morally superior” backup statist ideologies, and are therefore prone to corruption and long term expanding centralization of evil power. A bunch of minarchists isn’t as bad as a bunch of ancaps (ancaps are even more fiercely defensive and feel even more morally superior while still advocating institutionalized violence), so OP’s right, a bunch of minarchists wouldn’t be “that bad”.

10

“At least regular statism is obviously evil.”

Why?

11

People don’t defend it with moral justification. When confronted, statists invoke a utilitarian defense, making it apparent that it’s just institutionalized violence regardless of how immoral.

Worse is minarchism because its insidiously evil, invoking (pointless, invalid, et al.) moral rationalization for institutionalized violence.

And even worse is ancapism, having a seemingly thorough and consistent (but ultimately pointless, irrational) moral rationalization for institutionalized violence.

12

I’m opposed to all forms of aggression but I don’t think anarchism (i.e. not even minarchism) necessarily follows; this is not to say that you can have a “really low tax” that is “morally OK”… it’s just that I think you start running into definition issues at the low end of government-size. If you have a border patrol agency surrounding a contiguous, purely private property territory (a kind of regional-defense cooperative), is that agency a king? After all, they can set the parameters for expulsion from the territory and it could include expelling arbitrators that interpret the law in a way they don’t like. And while the original defense cooperative may have started out as a wholly private institution, what about 3 or 4 generations down the road when the population has increased, when portions of the properties may have been subdivided and sold to outsiders? The later generations were not “party” to the original “pact” that created the defense co-op. You see where I’m going with it.

The point is that the realities of implementing this deceptively simple norm - “don’t aggress” - are actually very complex. I think the root problem with most people who come to libertarianism is not that they don’t strongly enough want elimination of aggression from society. I think the root problem is that they don’t fully grasp the complexities of the issues (who does??) The inevitable byproduct of this shallow understanding is utopianism… the desire to “clean the slate and start from scratch.” History is a terrible lesson in the futility and atrocity of even attempting to clean the slate and start from scratch. It can’t even be done. And even if it could be done, it’s not at all clear that it is the correct way forward.

To sum up, I’m against pushing the Big Red Button and I think Rothbard would have re-thought it had the inter-dependency of human relations been brought to his attention in response. We are all exising in a web of social relations that is in some very complex sense “balanced”… an overnight re-arrangement of that web would have massive, unpredictable - yet certainly very bad - effects on the real, existing human relations.

I think the fastest we can hope to really “expunge” the State (or at least push the pendulum to the point of inevitability) from society is one generation… but that’s all! A generation is generally counted to be 25 years or so. And that’s not bad. That fits easily within a human lifetime.

To explain why I say this, I’ll point your attention to the idea of “brain plasticity” in neuroscience. Basically, the brain of a child is constantly massively reconfiguring itself in ways that will turn out to have lifelong consequences for the child’s adult brain, once grown. Once grown, the brain stops this process and is no longer “plastic”… the neural connections are “baked in.”

Think of all the children born into the world this year. Those children will be adults in 2030. Between now and then, they will be forming a social network - friends, family, associates, etc. By the time they are adults, this network will tend to settle down and “bake in”. In other words, social networks exhibit a kind of plasticity. But not only do the social networks themselves exhibit this behavior but people’s mores do, as well. Children are clearly meant to be learning “ought” and “ought not” from adults during childhood… these will have played a critical role in survival in the ancestral environment. All of this “bakes in” during childhood and is very “non-plastic” in adulthood, just like the brain itself.

The problem with the State that makes it so difficult to challenge is that most of the social machinery that makes the State work - the social norms and social connections held by many, disparate individuals and networks of individuals - is “baked in” already. In other words, there isn’t much hope of convincing the retired guy down in Florida that fought in Korea and is collecting Social Security that “the system is aggressive and corrupt.” It’s already baked in. He’s already spent an entire lifetime adjusting his own actions and beliefs to make the best of his circumstances - which is perfectly natural.

So, clearly, the answer is to not worry about changing these guys’ minds. Step 1 is to simply exit politics. It’s a waste of time… it’s run by all the old fuddy-duddys who just want smooth sailing, they don’t want headaches and changes… and who can blame them?

Step 2 is to appeal to the young adults who have not yet formed families and children. This is what Ron Paul has been doing to massive effect. But there is an unusual opportunity that has been created by the Ron Paul effect that we should not let slip through our fingers, because…

Step 3 is natalism! Producing the networks that these young Ron Paul supporters who are 18, 19, 20 years old today will need when they settle down and start to have children in order to teach those children how f’d up the system is and what can be done to change it. For example, a Misesean homeschool curriculum for social sciences would be a great resource in this direction. There are millions of homeschoolers in the US and those numbers will continue to grow as the government’s schools inevitably become worse and worse. Imagine a growing percentage of those kids learning from elementary school about the subjectivity of valuation, about the mutual benefits of exchange, and so on.

So, if you really love liberty and you really want to change things, stop trying to clean the slate - there’s already a “blank slate” right in front of you… the next generation. Get to work. Make “liberty for kids” YouTube videos. Get a PhD and put together a liberty-based social science homeschool curriculum. Start a meetup group for young liberty lovers in your area (it doesn’t have to be SFL, maybe you have your own idea on how to go about it). Start a family and teach them about liberty! You get the idea…

Clayton -

13

Occasionally I agree with Clayton to some extent; this is one of this instances. Naturally a few critical thoughts also present, and this response doesn’t fail in that regard.

Absolutely. Hopefully I can demonstrate the irony of you having this view while simultaneously advocating the idea that the genetic traits which produce this fact can be overridden by impacting beliefs. Hopefully also, I’m not misunderstanding you and please believe I don’t intend to misrepresent you.

Absolutely…even impossible (absent genetic modifications). I want to argue that this is due to our genetics, not due to the beliefs of any given generation.

This is where I tend to be critical of your overall thought process. Disregarding the very real fact of the capacity of an adult brain for neuroplasticity and neurogenesis (especially in the future with bioengineering), I want to comment on the connection between a concept of “baked in” and the root problem. “Baked in” are our genes. Our genes produce societies of beings characterized by the tendency toward hegemonic dominance hierarchies. Naturally therefore, “power corrupts”. The capacity of this tendency to manifest is restricted by various environmental factors, to be sure, but “baked into” our genes is the tendency toward corruption, not the environmental factors themselves. Thus the root problem isn’t the beliefs of any given generation, it’s the fact that we’re genetically homo sapiens and on the whole we tend to prefer having more power than less, and tend to exhibit in-group loyalty and out-group hostility and all the psychological facts resulting in a species which exhibits the tendency to perpetuate hegemonic dominance hierarchies.

That this is even a “problem” may be considered a misunderstanding. That we have this tendency isn’t a “problem” that needs to be “fixed”. Rather, this tendency evolved for small groups, and so as we’re increasingly linked in ever-larger groups through social networking technologies, and as we rely less and less on our natural genetic structure, the tendency toward HDHs may cause less tragedy for individual gene-carrying machines in the future.

Sure, bioengineering and social networking technologies may nullify the genetic tendency within a generation. But the tendency won’t nullify itself through efforts to change the beliefs of a generation. That said, I do support the views that change starts with the individual, and to a limited extent that you be the change you want to see, and to an even more limited extent that you don’t treat others as you don’t want others to treat you.

14

@hashem: When I say “root cause” I do not mean root cause of the State, I mean, root cause of the fixity of the State order. In my view, the root cause of the State itself is natural (agricultural revolution) but the solution is moral (and exists). As far as genes go, I will simply point to other genetic dispositions which human beings have - such as the urge to rape or male jealous rage - and note that the social order can actually counteract even very powerful genetic tendencies, on the whole. This is why human beings have catapulted out of the primitive state of nature vis-a-vis all other species. Unlike those species, we have the mechanisms to alter our environment - including humanity itself (as just another aspect of the environment) and these mechanisms have given rise to extremely rapid alteration of the environment and the social order, relative to the rate of change of other genetic systems.

Clayton -

15

Point well taken, and in line with what I was getting at. Humans have genetic drives that are tempered by environmental factors. So I’m with you in that theoretically we can push the pendulum toward a peaceful ideology, and that since humans act based on their beliefs we can thus achieve a peaceful society. I would just clarify that the genetic drive toward statism hasn’t therefore been overcome, just repressed when and to the extent that environmental factors continue to impress restrictions and proper incentives upon it.

Absolutely. What I’ve been arguing is that homo sapiens does tend to expand its sphere of power of the natural world, so it’s nice to see someone else acknowledge this somewhat. Like you said, this has given and will continue to give “rise to extremely rapid alteration of the environment and the social order”. I’m saying that the alterations relevant to “expunging” statism will be more along the lines of restrictions that are forced upon us as we move into ages of social networking technologies and genetic engineering, and less due to a sudden intentional change in the mindset of an entire society in a single generation. Because power is already well entrenched and established, in practice and in our genes, so it’s not likely to be persuaded out of the mindset of society, and it’s not likely that those in power will give it up so easily. But it is likely that we’ll continue to advance social networking and genetic engineering, and society will experience a shift in the incentives toward violent power whether any given individual actively chooses to want that or not, because we’ll be more interconnected and, as each person wants the best for himself, so society will want (and have the knowledge to properly choose) the best for everyone the more interconnected we become.

16

Those in power will never be persuaded to voluntarily lay it down. It has never once happened and never will. But it’s not about those in power, since they are a negligible minority of the population… it’s about humanity generally.

As far as changes being forced by circumstances, I somewhat disagree. I think that any technology can be turned to the use of those in power. The use of broadcast technologies such as radio and television for centralization of military and economic power in the 20th century are obvious examples. It’s often taken for granted today that radio and television should have this effect but that is not what was envisioned the inventors of these technologies, who foresaw humanity becoming more intelligent, more well-informed, etc. (which has actually happened, by the way).

So, if technological changes are ultimately to be harnessed in a direction that serves the purposes of all individuals instead of the purposes of a tiny Elite, there must be self-conscious application of these changes in that direction. This is because the social order is, in fact, a “mixed economy”. While no one can even come close to completely controlling the social order, the Elites are able to shift the social order this way or that way, using the immense resources at their disposal. Language is the perfect illustration of this tug-of-war. Language is inherently anarchic… no one controls it. No one “invents” the dictionary. Yet the Elite do, in fact, push the language in directions that suit their purposes. They don’t have total control and they can’t just dictate to people how they will use language but they can induce deep changes in language over time. The word “monopoly” is a great example of this in action as Rothbard and others have illuminated… but there are countless other examples. The feminist demonization of the gender-neutral use of “he” “his” “man” “-man” etc. in English is another great example. It will take some time before the feminist alterations “bake in” to English but at least some of them eventually will.

The unconscious process of social evolution is too immense to be arbitrarily rewritten as the Elites might like to do. They understand that. But the key here is time-scale. Just as culture can change much faster than genes, giving rise to the rapid evolution of the human social order, so the conscious action of the Elites responds much more rapidly than the unconscious process of social evolution. The Bush administration, for example, was able to twist language to suit specific agenda items in the War on Terror (“enemy combatant” “detainee” “military tribunal” “enhanced interrogation” etc. etc.) These language twists will certainly die in time but they have already served their purpose, so it doesn’t matter.

Unopposed, this rapid process of conscious direction of the process of social evolution by the Elites will result in perpetual failure of the social order to give birth to a genuinely liberal society, as it naturally would do if it were not for the continual intervention of the Elites. Nevertheless, as the old saying goes “two can play that game.” And, in fact, the job of the liberal “interventionist” is infinitely easier than the job of the Elites since all we need to do is simply undo what they’re trying to do. No positive action is required to bring about a liberal social order, it will happen naturally because it is efficient. All we need to do is defuse the distortions of language, the corruptions of mores and culture, the dehumanization of the individual, and so on. They’re the ones fighting gravity, not us.

Clayton -

17

And as long as I’m shilling for Childs, Libertarianism.org recently released a very nicely priced collection of Childs’ essays for the Kindle which I highly recommend. It enthusiastically covers most of his writings before he turned to the dark side. It’s one of those collections that’s so far outside of what you normally expect from Cato-think, it makes you wonder…

18

Going with your point that the power elite are a minority, consider the implications of a few subsidiary assertions…

  • The basic driving motives for action are power and pleasure

  • The power elite are by necessity, not by desire, opposed to the flourishing of the masses, not because they value seeing others suffer, but because they enjoy power and pleasure, and given the current and historical state of technology flourishing masses threaten that power since it comes at their expense

  • Humanity on the whole (maybe not necessarily for every individual in all circumstances at all times) tends to expand its sphere of power over the natural world

  • Humanity tends toward social networking since that expands our capacity to achieve power and pleasure, and through technology we’ll continue to expand our sphere of power over natural limitations to that tendancy

  • Humanity (again, on the whole, not at the individual level) doesn’t derive enjoyment from watching others suffer, but rather we do want power and pleasure and given the state of technology that currently comes at the expense of others. As a corollary, the power elite want power and pleasure, and violent subjugation of the masses has been a means to that end but it isn’t the end in itself.

  • Genetic engineering and biomechanical engineering will eventually lead us to overcome many (all, and more than we can even fathom right now?) natural genetic limitations

I find myself adding these ideas together and seeing a future where the masses are more interconnected, intelligent, and empowered. Simultaneously, the power elite will be able to achieve power and pleasure while gradually finding less and less incentive to cause suffering as a means to that end. So if humanity is tending to be interconnected and powerful (and as a corollary, more intelligent), then it will tend more and more to act as a unified being, the way billions of different organisms work together toward the flourishing of a body. And like you said the power elite are a minority, so as humanity tends to have greater incentive to work together toward pleasure and power, so will they have less incentive to be, as you pointed out, the minority going against the flow.

I also think of progress in terms of creative solutions that don’t require violent subjugation or force over others. So if there is in face a natural genetic drive toward violent subjugation, maybe we’ll alter that genetically. Or maybe people will have access to virtual realities where they can be psychopaths there instead of meeting that need through violence or control of real people. Or any combination of the two or any other possibilities.

Obviously, like you said the power elite react to trends and changes in technology, and could theoretically (and do in fact, at least during the current state of technology where the incentive is to) use propaganda and technology to permanently limit the capacity of masses to oppose them. But I tend to feel like homo sapiens just wants power and pleasure, and the only reason violence and force are mainstream institutions is because of the lack of technology throughout history—in other words, due to the lack of technological capacity for creative, nonviolent, nonforceful solutions. I see that changing in the future, and I see the tendency toward social networking playing a major role in limiting the incentive toward violence (compounded by the fact that the elite are a minority necessarily opposed to the flourishing of said interconnected humanity).

19

I think you’re right. This may be a kind of “golden age” for it.

Why that is, hard to tell (other than the obvious RP campaign); my guess, the fact that the system is obviously in a state of decline unparalleld in some time (60’s maybe?) causing radicalism - mixed with the obviousness that left wingers are bat shit crazy, and it’s somehow become slightly more difficult to hide behind their typical BS.

20

I would cut this down to just pleasure. Power is actually a means, it is not an end in itself. Suppose Alice is pinning Bob down to the ground. She has power over him. For what end? Pinning Bob down as an exhibition of dominance could arguably be called a simple exercise of power for power’s sake, but even here, we can safely say “because it brings her pleasure.” So pleasure remains the only ultimate end of human action and power is a means.

I would say that liberty is the ultimate means to the attainment of pleasure. This is what makes liberty so important! And the line between liberty and power is conscience and law. In this sense, the Elites can actually be thought of as a kind of libertarian… they simply want to maximize their own liberty and if the masses do a bad job of defending their liberties, well, that’s too bad for them. My point though is that in order to be able to distinguish between proper and improper means to the attainment of pleasure (liberty and power, respectively), we need a healthy context of social norms giving rise (through the division-of-labor) to morality and law.

We are definitely on the cusp of some astonishing technological achievements in genetics. But I would rather see us start to shift things towards liberty before we get there, if possible… in other words, as soon as possible. I don’t believe there is anything inherent in past technologies or in the fact of resource limitations that necessitates power. In fact, I hold that, logically, the wanton exercise of power (economic parasitism) can only go on unmitigated during periods of rapid expansion. As we reach the boundaries and there are no more frontiers left, power itself has to be scaled back. This is the inexorable logic of evolution… those organisms that permit themselves to be wantonly exploited by the parasites will be selected out of the population.

Clayton -