The First Church of Mises

Miscellaneous General
41

Absolutely. I’m struggling with how to frame it, though. I like the NAP but I feel that it is only a first-order approximation of the correct ethics of social order, so a simple statement of the NAP would be open to legitimate criticism.

How about food and dancing? Food is part of every social function in every part of the world and dancing is one of those things that I think we’ve lost. There has been a revival of interest in square/folk-dancing for weight-loss reasons, of all things, in the US. All the old-fashioned dances (and I’m sure there’s been new ones invented - not break-dancing or hip-hop dry-humping, of course) are a great way to socialize, to meet and touch other human beings in a positive atmosphere that fosters feelings of well-being.

The food can be a chance for people to show off whatever cooking skills they have. Perhaps prior to the food you could have some kind of brief speech (15-20 minutes) on social issues from a classical liberal perspective - imagine something like “Say’s law illustrated through a humorous anecdote” or “The broken window fallacy told in the form of a brief fairy tale”. And so on.

The key problem will be locating and activating the organizational and pedagogical talent.

Clayton -

42

I think the ‘presumption of freedom’ per de Jasay should supplant the NAP as the basic justification of liberty. Essentially he argues that the burden of proof must fall upon those attempting to prohibit free action, rather than on those freely acting (his actual argument is much fuller than this). In general we need to emphasize the (customary) prohibition of torts as justice, rather than the state as justice.

43

Indeed. Michael van Notten has shown that the Somali law system explicitly prohibits any but a victim or a victim’s family member from making a tort claim and I think this “legal detail” is one of the reasons their society is not flooded with all this “social justice” nonsense that has taken over most of the rest of the world, in one form or another. The final discharge of a tort - so that it can never be raised again - through a payment (rather than prison time or “community service”) is also an important point that woudl do away with a great deal of the nonsense in our present social order. The freedom to switch clans is also another.

In general, I think we need to get out of this modernist narrative that we’re more enlightened than our forebears. Obviously, we have the advantage of historical hindsight on our ancestors as our descendants will have on us, but that’s it. Almost everything they discovered about the human condition is still relevant and in the narcissistic obsession with “the modern”, we lose sight of just how deep and useful the repository of knowledge we have inherited from our ancestors really is.

Clayton -

44

Jasay on the presumption of freedom:

In the West, at least two centuries of ever more elaborate legislation, regulation, taxation and public services - in short, recourse to the rule of submission - have bred a reliance on the state for securing social cooperation. Society has therefore less need for the old conventions, and its muscles for maintaining old conventions and generating new ones have atrophied.

Jasay expresses pessimism at the capacity of society to deliver itself from the State because of this atrophy. But I think that’s precisely what I have in mind is that we need to start “physical therapy” to reinvigorate our social-order muscles outside of the context of submission and obedience to statutory dictates.

I think there is another way to make Jasay’s case in the above article - this would be “mind your own business” liberalism. Starting from the Epicurean conception of satisfaction, we can note the simple fact that satisfaction is experienced subjectively by the individual. I do not know what satisfies you better than you know it yourself. But any attempt on my part to “rectify” a social justice situation is implicitly claiming exactly this, that you do not know your own satisfaction as well as I know it.

We don’t need a presumption of freedom if there is a presumption that the individual actually knows his own mind, that is, knows whether he is or is not satisfied. Victimless crimes reduce to a much less grandiose claim that the activist is mentally injured by the fact that the vice he or she dislikes is occurring. This is a much less impressive sounding offense than “a crime against society”. In the case of redistribution, again, we simply note that the individual(s) who feel they are harmed by the excessive wealth of Bill Gates should organize their own lawsuit against him. If they fail to do so, then clearly they are not being harmed unless we are to believe that the social justice planners know the minds of those they “represent” better than they know their own minds.

If anyone who brings a lawsuit had to explain how he himself is injured, the entire dynamic of Western law would be fundamentally altered. It is allowing “the public prosecutor” to speak on behalf of others (who did not agree to be spoken on behalf of) and to speak on behalf of an imaginary entity (the “State” or “Society”) that is the culprit. From this flows all the mischief of modern law. And the same is true at the level of social norms. If you don’t approve of something, you should provide an explanation of why it is bad in terms of how it harms you, that is, reduces your satisfaction. If you are speaking on behalf of someone else who did not agree to have you as their spokesperson or if you claim you are speaking on behalf of God, the State, Society, Culture, or whatever, then forgive us for ignoring your arguments until you can at least produce your plaintiff in the plaintiff’s seat.

The arguments for the State are like an onion - layer after layer of justifications and defenses. But - at root - they are really very flimsy because the State is not about social order, it’s about exploitation.

Clayton -

45

Agreed on both points. Most of our contemporaries, but especially academics, politicians, and journalists, suffer from the twin errors of technocratism and the Whig theory of history. Truth and justice as a measure of ideas is replaced by novelty and authority.

EDIT: Just saw you post on Jasay. Yes, that’s essentially what I was thinking also - that although the state attempts to monopolize law at the expense of the creation of customary law, some of the aspects of the latter can develop beneath the tyranny of the former, ultimately perhaps to the decline of the former.

46

Dennett never explicitly identifies the State as a culprit in memetic engineering and I remain perpetually mystified as to why Dennett/Dawkins/etc. lay the blame for wars on religion when it is obvious that the generals and Presidents are the immediate organizers of war.

I’m not familiar with Dennett’s work on religion or politics, but I am familiar with his ontology, specifically with his approach to the mind-body problem (See “Consciousness Explained”), which is eliminative materialism: i.e. the outright rejection of the existence of consciousness and the subjective. In my experience, radical materialism, atheism, and statism seem to occur together very often, especially in academics - it’s not hard to see the connections.

In any case, as for the idea of a libertarian church, I like it. I think a stateless society desperately needs some solid institutions to keep it from drifting toward non-libertarian practices: one such institution could be a church. At the mundane level, what does a church need? It needs a symbolic leader, a book, and an icon. A Christ, a Bible, and a cross. Our symbolic leader would obviously be mortal, and dead, and a famous libertarian. Our book would be some definitive work on the basic principles of libertarianism. And our symbol would be…well, may I suggest a crossed-out beehive? : )

47

What the hell is up with that beehive, anyway??

48

delete

49

I disagree. You are asking people to take it on faith force will spontaneously organize and apply itself justly in the absence of a state.

I have often stated the following observation. All societies that have, do, or ever will, exist in a global environment of anarchy.

I have identified the following methods to intelligently organize a geographical majority of force:

  1. Convince a majority of force

  2. Breaed a majority of force

  3. Geographically organize a majority of force

I used to include:

  1. Eliminate an existing majority of force

But minority of force > majority of force.is not logical.

If liberty is not an end… why bother going through all the trouble of implementing The First Church of Mises in order to convince a majority of force? Ok, maybe it’s an idea “not to die for” but give me a break on suggesting you are interested in going through all this trouble because…

I probably could not have said it better. Perhaps you were not aware of the contradiction and meant something else like…

What can I say… those self-treacherous ideas of something outside of and greater than yourself yadayadayada… will get ya everytime…

I feel this merits a rebuttal but I don’t feel like making one right now.

That sounds a lot like…

…sacrificing to The First Church of Mises for the the purpose of attaining greater satisfaction in the long-run because individual liberty is an end (but not worth dying for), versus self-sacrifice on the behalf on an external beneficiary because the liberty of others is not an end.

If individual liberty is an end but the liberty of others is also not an end I reckon we can throw the entire concept of society including those of a free market variety out the window. Maybe I am confused about the concept of a free market and any presumed parasitic benefitting actors.

After much reflection over time and espousing of the bulleted points above on many occassions… I have come to a new conclusion:

If you want to make a change in the world absent any concept of force… change what satisfies you.

50

Doesn’t this imply a standard beyond the individuals own preferences to determine what produces the greatest amount of satisfaction?

51

Well, seeing as that is my central thesis and that everything else you responded to are just tangential points, I am happy to wait until you feel like rebutting it.

The purpose of the organization I have in mind (I’m not calling it “The First Church of Mises”, a wholly facetious name as I pointed out in the OP) would be to help people on a holistic/spiritual level by providing a forum for them to come together and establish community bonds outside of the confines of existing organizations which - to a one - are statist at one level or another. So, the choice to participate would be on the basis that you feel you’re getting something out of it, not so that you can sacrifice and put something into a “cause”.

The single most important way that people can be helped is to show them how to shed the fear and guilt with which they have been programmed since childhood at the prospect of frankly acting in their own self-interest, that is, thinking about the world exclusively in terms of their own satisfaction. We all do it anyway (if we did not, the human species would perish virtualy overnight), but we put it in the same mental/moral category as masturbation - a dirty shameful thing you pretend you don’t do but which, in fact, you do. This is the very thing that is hindering people from realizing their potential, from flourishing and simply being satisfied with the incredible beauty and wonder of life.

Another way to say it is that we need to begin reversing the infantilization of society. Fear and guilt about acting on your cognizance without permission is an infantile way of thinking. Adults don’t need permission to act and do not seek it. Statist memes have browbeaten people into this place of timidity, servility and infantile approval-seeking. For their own good, they need to expel these hobbling memes from their minds and begin to act within the world unapologetically as adults who do not need or seek prior approval for their chosen course of action. Most of the work to be done in this regard is spiritual, not logical. That is, it has to do with healing one’s emotional well-being and developing one’s spiritual understanding of self more than “grasping” libertarian arguments about this or that.

The goal is not to bring about an anarchic society. I wrote about why this is wrong goal a long time ago, here.

Clayton -

52

How clever of sheep to acquire shepherds?

53

Proposed name: The Well-Being Society

54

… Belive it or not, that’s the direct translation for “welfare state” in Finland.

55

Well, the socialists have long been co-opting the language of genuine well-being and twisting it around to collectivist ends. It is unavoidable that an honest name for what I have in mind would collide with the distorted language of the collectivists.

The difference, of course, is that I have in mind the well-being of the individual, not of some imaginary entity, such as “the collective.”

Here’s an example of the kind of moral instruction that I think could be profitably spread. This is more negative (what to avoid, protect yourself against) than positive.

We’ve all seen the following “joke” a thousand times in TV, movies, even from talks show hosts and news broadcasters:

It really isn’t a joke, actually. It can be looked at several different ways. Insomuch as Hollywood is a conduit for messages the Establishment want to convey to the general public, it is a conscientious reinforcement of a reasonable fear. Prison rape is widespread and anyone who isn’t part of a gang is at much greater risk of being victimized. The nature of the victimization is far worse than any kind of crime you could be subjected to outside of prison because there is no legal recourse and victimization - once it begins - tends to be perpetual for the duration of the prison sentence. So, they can’t burn us at the stake or jab our eyes out with hot pokers but they can send us to prison for years where they will turn a blind eye while we are raped.

But why do people laugh at this “joke”. This trope is as reliable as the swift kick in the nuts for getting a laugh from audiences. This leads me to the other way to look at it - this laughter can also be thought of as the uneasy laughter of commiserating potential-victims who understand that they or a loved-one could be subjected to this treatment if they happened to be falsely accused and very unfortunate circumstances led to their conviction and sentencing to prison.

A final way to look at it - unfortuantely, this is probably the most factual - is that it appeals to our capacity for schadenfreude - taking pleasure in the misery of others. Stocks, dunce caps, drunkards-barrels, heretics garments and other forms of public humiliation have been employed as punishments by the authorities in times past. Why do such punishments work? In part, they work because of the participation of the general public in heaping scorn upon those who have been so marked by the authorities. So, this dark capacity for real schadenfreude is the very thing being appealed to by the “go to prison and get raped for the rest of your life” trope.

I think it is important to note who are the primary targets of the trope: poor, non-criminal, young men. It is the poor who are targeted because they are more likely than others to be arrested, the non-criminal or petty criminal because they are the ones who are less likely to be members of gangs and, therefore, are the primary victims of prison rapes. And it is men because very few women get arrested or go to prison by comparison to men.

The trope itself adds a booster effect to the victimization. Imagine, for a moment, being raped by a ruthless prison thug with a shiv stuck to your jugular - it’s a terrible thought, isn’t it? But now imagine that being done to you with millions of people standing around, watching, laughing. Even worse. And that’s exactly what this trope does. It converts a real crime that tens of thousands of men (and some women, too) are victimized by into a joke - we all know that it’s actually happening but instead of doing something to stop it, we simply laugh.

So, what are some steps we can take in response to this sick and disgusting trope? First, if you are a young, non-criminal man below the line of comfortable, middle-class income, refuse to be intimidated by this trope - avoid situations where you are likely to be arrested (thus being put at risk of being raped in prison) but otherwise dispel these veiled threats from your mind. Spit on the threat for the disgusting thing that it is. Even if you’re not one of those in the targeted group, you can still express your own moral and aesthetic views on its use in culture. Second, simply note that it’s not actually funny in the vast majority of cases where it is used. It’s just lazy writing - cheap laughs bought on a morally questionable basis. Third, note that taking pleasure in the misery of others - even the psychological misery inflicted through veiled threats - is immoral. Refuse to participate. Raise the issue with your friends and point out the fact that prison rape is a fact, that people who are innocent are at much greater risk of being raped in prison than people who are actually guilty and that the “joke” is simply barbaric and disgusting.

This is an example of the kind of thing that I think people really need to hear. The best way for them to hear is to simply start un-hearing the bad stuff to begin with (supplant it with good things instead, such as healthy social interaction in a community setting) but direct confrontation of the filth within the culture is also critical.

Clayton -

56

Admittedly I don’t watch that much tv but the whole prison rape thing was played straight in Shawshank Redemption and American History X. No jokes at all.

57

Don’t know how I missed this…

No. It implies that not all the means to attaining one’s preferences are under one’s own control. To be clear, when we use the word “ends”, as in many ends, these are proximate ends which can, in turn, be understood as means to some other final end. Aristotle says in the opening of the Nicomachean Ethics,

Now we call that which is in itself worthy of pursuit more final than that which is worthy of pursuit for the sake of something else, and that which is never desirable for the sake of something else more final than the things that are desirable both in themselves and for the sake of that other thing, and therefore we call final without qualification that which is always desirable in itself and never for the sake of something else.

Now such a thing happiness, above all else, is held to be; for this we choose always for self and never for the sake of something else, but honour, pleasure, reason, and every virtue we choose indeed for themselves (for if nothing resulted from them we should still choose each of them), but we choose them also for the sake of happiness, judging that by means of them we shall be happy. Happiness, on the other hand, no one chooses for the sake of these, nor, in general, for anything other than itself.

…

Happiness, then, is something final and self-sufficient, and is the end of action.

Presumably, however, to say that happiness is the chief good seems a platitude, and a clearer account of what it is still desired.

And he goes on from there to give his account.

The point is that the final end - happiness, satisfaction or what Epicurus termed ataraxia - is ascertained solely within the mind. If a proximate end does not lead to happiness, we can say that it was, in some sense, an objectively wrong end. But the final end itself is the very standard by which the insufficiency of the proximate end is being judged, and it can never held to a higher standard than itself precisely because it is ascertained solely within the mind. So we see that all proximate ends can be thought of as themselves means. What we ordinarily refer to as ends - specific purposes present within the mind - are really means not ends.

As a result of our human nature, some means lead to no one’s satisfaction (say, drinking a quart of sulphuric acid) and other means lead to everyone’s satisfaction when the conditions are properly specified (e.g. eating), and excepting pathological cases. We can safely refer to all the former as “evil” and all the latter as “good.” And while this body of values is universal - because it is a consequence of our nature - it is precisely because these courses of action have been discovered to consistently lead or not lead to satisfaction that they are to be considered good or evil. Therefore, the final end - happiness, satisfaction - is the only criterion of morality and it lies entirely within the mind.

The parent is merely fulfilling a temporary pedagogical role in this respect. He is simply giving his child “hints”, pointing him in the generally right direction and warning against lurking dangers.

Clayton -

58

What if my happiness comes at your expense?

In other words, what if what makes me happy necessarily makes you unhappy?

Am I still acting morally?

59

In other words, what if what makes me happy necessarily makes you unhappy?

Two ways to look at this

  1. Happiness and unhappiness are determined by your actions, not some set idealistic mindset or words that are supposed to have “eternal” meaning alone. If you say to person X’s actions “boo”, that can only be seen as your optimal actions to happiness in the situation at hand. In this case get rid of the word “unhappiness” and just see it as a comparison of less “social currency” of happiness to person X.

There is no zero sum: if you do an action, it is always a positive one, and always the most optimal, and always “happy”. Saying you are “not happy” is just the easiest way to press your comparative advantage to get what you want at that given point in time. As a rule of thumb, it can be stated that things that are stated “negatively” automatically signal they have “less value”, and are probably a scoundrels last resort, than something stated positively.

  1. If someone’s happiness is coming at such a high expense to relevant people -he will be eradicated in some form or another because he is being antisocial. In so much that the person exists within society, his happiness is “correct”.
60

Awesome questions - that is exactly what social order is all about. From my article Action and the Soul:

Norms arise instead from interpersonal conflict. It is easy to see why this is the case. Imagine that Crusoe’s island has become a popular tourist attraction and is filled to the brim with people. By chance, it happens that no one ever comes into conflict with anyone else on the island. In this case, there is no difference for each individual than if he were completely alone on the island. That is, the question of right and wrong is merely the question of pleasure or pain. The problem of right and wrong as a matter of normative principles simply never arises.

When we reintroduce the possibility of conflict on the island, the question of how conflicts will be resolved arises. Regardless of who is right or wrong, the problem is that one individual’s chosen end involves obstructing one of the chosen ends of another individual. One individual can only be happy by frustrating another. Disputes arise whenever the chosen ends of two individuals come into conflict, that is, whenever the chosen ends of two individuals are mutually exclusive.

The purpose of a norm, then, is to determine who should get to pursue their end unobstructed and who should stand aside and accept the frustration of their chosen end. Once the purpose of a norm is understood, it is easy to see that most discussions of ethics and morality go astray right from the outset. A moral rule or norm doesn’t exist for its own sake. If it did, then we would be correct in suspecting that Crusoe is subject to moral rules even when he is completely alone on the island. A necessary condition for moral problems is the existence of two or more people pursuing mutually exclusive ends.

…

As many disputes are settled between individuals, patterns arise in what sorts of behaviors result in what sorts of outcomes, that is, which party usually defers. However, unlike law – where the threat of potential violence always stands behind the verbal dispute – the threats employed in the process of settling non-legal disputes are less violent. The threats employed are those of public humiliation, snitching, nagging, guilt, family estrangement, hazing, petty vandalism, community shunning or ostracism, and so on. Since everyone but sociopaths finds these outcomes highly unpleasant, such threats can be effective even though they do not rise to the level of violent threats.

Because these retaliatory behaviors are present in every culture, we can safely conclude that the human brain must have circuitry that permits other humans to impose this wide array of negative feelings on the brain without the use of outright violence. The fact that these circuits exist attests to some process of evolution by which they came about.

…

As individuals act, they are forced to weigh the satisfaction they expect to receive from a given end against the retaliation which may be taken against them by someone else as a result. The attainment of ends which leave an individual vulnerable to retaliation by another individual who has a mutually exclusive end becomes more onerous by virtue of the added risk of retaliation.

Behaviors which will result in negative social consequences - head-wagging, humiliation, verbal berating, emotional browbeating, etc. - can simply be called “wrong” and those behaviors with the opposite effects can be called “right”. So, the facts of right and wrong - the essence of social order - are really sociological facts, they are facts about how human beings behave, socially.

I explain these ideas in a clearer manner here.

Clayton -