Governments exist in every culture so the predisposition to accepting the moral/legal double-standard which comprises the “root cause” of statism cannot have its root in cultural conditioning of any sort. This suggests that its origin is, in fact, biological. I think the most likely biological behavior which is the basis for this tolerance for moral/legal double-standards is alpha-male mating since we evolved from primates that engage in alpha-male mating patterns.
Clayton -
I agree with what Clayton has said. But i have to ask, are you guys defining libertarianism as having no government or hierarchy? Because I don’t…
Bryan: Not no governance, but no government (in this thread aversion to libertarianism seems to mean “affinity for statism”).
Clayton: I agree it has to be something inherent in human beings, and I also agree with your monogamy explanation. But there is something else inherent in humans: the fact that we are social beings and must use words to explain our internal thinking to each other. Words cannot convey much detail tersely so they tend to be aggregating/collectivizing in terms of concepts, simply out of convenience:
“Drugs are addictive.” True, because there are addictive drugs; yet also false, because not all drugs are addictive. It’s simply more convenient and succinct not to get into the details but rather to collectivize all drugs into that category.
“France and Germany are at war.” Does France refer to the French government or all the people in the territory? Of course it refers to both. The semantic ambiguity leads people naturally to collectivism (“You’re German so you must be my enemy, because we’re at war!” “We the people are the government.”). Probably not solely because of propaganda, but also because we have no choice but to use words, and we can only say so much before people stop listening.
Since most people are in the habit of using words to guide their thought process and words color their thinking to a large extent, most people’s thinking may for that reason have a fundamentally collectivist bias (among other word-based biases and systematic thinking errors). So there’s another universal factor that could be posited.
"Walter Block is one proponent, he uses a bathtub snake analogy to introduce it. "
I think he’s partially correct and partially wrong. We’re not hardwired to intuitively understand it, but we are hardwired to realize the benefit of social cooperation.
We can intuitively understand the benefits of the division of knowledge and labor at the very local and micro level but we are unable to extract from that a broad theory of social cooperation without extensive and systematic mental effort. I think this is the challenge.
Education is indeed a challenge, especially as we need more libertarians to realize ancap as we need to safeguard it. (In ancap, only a few % trained judges/philosopher can keep civilization going, just as we only need a few % engineers to make good cars.)
So socio-biology would teach us that people have a predisposition to hierarchy, and that leads to statism. Would you guys agree? If that is the case, which I believe to be so, then the goal is what consultant just pointed out about only needing a few % of judges just as engineers. I’ve always explained this using what I like to call the power pyramid. I intended on using this model in a novel I’m writing, so it’s not exact - it’s more for elegance than precision, however I think it will work here.
It’s a basic class structure for upward mobility based on privileges given (voluntarily in a ancap society) by the community. There are 3 layers. At the bottom is the Common Folks. (I don’t want to say commoners because that sounds almost demeaning). That’s just about everybody. The next class up is the Warrior class. Not very many citizens. This class exists in every society, but in America and in a free society the Warrior class is defined by their privilege to exercise FORCE. This could be security guards, cops, bouncers, militia, military, coast guard, whatever. Those recognized to be allowed by the rest of us to use force in order to preserve our rights. Without getting into examples of people abusing it, I want to say that the key is to ensure enough liberty for the common folk that upward mobility to this class is possible. At the top is our leadership, coming out of the warrior class. The leaders are invested with the power to command force.
Now, getting a good leader in a libertarian society would rely on knowing the difference between a leader and a ruler. A Ruler tells people what to do, punishes them if they don’t obey. Leaders typically lead by example. It’s the journey that defines them. And this a key point because it explains why personal liberty is so important in this model. Rulers get where they are through self sacrifice. It’s true. They give up a lot of things to get authority and be in charge, quite often they sacrifice close personal relationships, possibly other dreams and aspirations. So, when they get to the top of the hill they are (A) paranoid about having their authority taken away, & (B) of the impression that everybody else owes them since they had to sacrifice so much. That is what makes a ruler, based on my understanding of human nature. But a Leader does not sacrifice himself. One of the most important variables seems to be creativity. A creative person should not be willing to self sacrifice, only using authority to ensure that they can keep creating without restrictions.
In a free society, with governance based upon negative liberty and personal property and initiative considered to be of the highest value this structure will still arise, but if central planning is rejected then it will lead to more leaders than rulers, and those who wish to rule as opposed to lead may be deposed.
Feel free to dissect that. Like I said it’s part of a novel I’m writing but I like it nonetheless.
Leader = entrepreneur or business president.
Class system = not centrally planned, but resulting from the natural order - you posit?
Yes on both but I would expand leader to a little more than that. Could be an intellectual leader. Maybe even a spiritual one. It’s open to interpretation because it results from the natural order. Could be a sheriff that we hire and elect to watch our homes while we’re at work.
The market will most likely pick different type of leaders for different types of services (defense, courts, …)
Alright, fine. I’m talking about the leader of community. Or the nation. The political leader.
I believe we’re naturally wired toward creating a state (don’t want to call it statism, though) simply because we evolved as social, cooperative creatures. Had we evolved as as solitary animals, then I’d say a libertarian approach would seem intuitive.
But maybe the aversion we feel toward libertarianism isn’t socio-biological at all, but a pro-statist bias we share simply because we’ve been indoctrinated with it by the State from birth.
I think of the state as behaving almost like an organism, concerned primarily with its survival and growth/expansion.
Given this, Libertarianism is a natural enemy of the State, one that threatens not just its expansion, but its very survival. Thus, the State has clear incentives to discredit the philosophy and thwart its acceptance among its citizens. We see it all the time, the propaganda, the misinformation, the smear tactics. The latest example is how the government is trying to shift the blame for the financial meltdown from the Fed (and government) to the free market. Not one person ever called Obama out when he says this nonsense. Nobody ever asked him how you can have a free market if you have a central planner setting interest rates at the same time. And if you noticed, this lie ends up smearing Libertarianism because of its close association with free markets. It’s no surprise what’s going to happen. The State will promise a solution to the problem that it created, and the end result will be more government.
If my hypothesis is correct, States increasing their power/expansion should be the rule, not the exception. If this is clearly not the case, then I’m dead wrong.
Yes. I agree. I was trying to use a model that demonstrated how we organize that social and cooperative instinct into order. I think that we do need leaders to fight statism, but the leaders should be those we see as creative and not self sacrificing. That was what I was trying to illustrate with the ruler-leader dichotomy.
I really like the point about a state being an organism. I would call it a superorganism. That’s what Howard Bloom call’s it. In fact, his books tackle everything we’re talking about. The third one is all about capitalism (and it’s pro). If you’re interested in finding a really entertaining book that deals with what you’re talking about I would suggest The Lucifer Principle, the first of his three books.
It would have to be established that humans are averse to libertarianism before an explanation is attempted. As it is there is no reason to think that anyone significant portion of people are. I managed to live 19 years before knowing that it existed and I was a scholarly kid.
Collectivists killed individualists one by one.
“I believe we’re naturally wired toward creating a state (don’t want to call it statism, though) simply because we evolved as social, cooperative creatures. Had we evolved as as solitary animals, then I’d say a libertarian approach would seem intuitive.”
I think you are conflating libertarianism with individualism or egoism. I agree that humans have an evolved social context. Our very biology testifies to this fact (our bodies biologically presuppose clothing, shelter and cooked food). Nevertheless, I disagree that a social evolutionary context implies a State. The State is something more than just people interacting with one another, it is a social construct that is characterized by a pronounced asymmetry in the rules of interaction between State and non-State individuals.
There is another human social relationship that shares this strong asymmetry and that is the relationship between a very small child and its parent(s). The small child accepts, as a matter of course, the coercive actions of its parents. It should be obvious, biologically, why this is the case, since the small child is unable to care for itself, even unable to keep itself safe from basic dangers.
I can clearly see why the family evolved and how it benefits humanity. It is not as easy to see why the State evolved and no matter how hard I think about it, I cannot come to any other conclusion than that the State benefits the few on the backs of the many. This “few” or elite somehow provided a real advantage to human survival and reproduction, otherwise, it would never have arisen. But really understanding this is, to me, an unsolved problem of monumental significance.
I believe we are on a large evolutionary arc away from the State and toward a family order. This might seem counterintuitive to the modern, Western mind where the family has, apparently, been on the decline and the State has been on the rise for the last 150 years. But it’s exactly the fact that there is a conservation of momentum between the family and the State that I think is significant. The State only derives its power in the context of the decline of the family. States 5000 years ago were far more powerful in real terms than States today. The family, on the other hand, has been steadily increasing in importance until about 150 years ago.
Clayton -
That is a common type of fallacy regarding evolution. Anything can arise that does not constantly decrease the population on the margin. Conference of advantage is not required. There can be a very detrimental trait that lasts forever because there is enough to counteract it.
As others have said, I don’t see any inherent aversion to libertarianism within humanity. Rather, what I see is the vast majority of people being 1) hobbled in their critical thinking abilities, and 2) because of 1), more or less simply accepting whatever they’re “taught” as being true. In other words, the modern aversion to libertarianism seems to be a product of statist indoctrination.
I think it’s also important to note that “social animal” is not the same as “collectivist animal”. Nearly all human beings have an instinct to seek out signs of approval and acceptance from other humans around them. Dogs have the same (or a very similar) instinct. The impact of this instinct on our behavior cannot be overstated. But that in no way means that human beings are inherently collectivist. Here I define “collectivism” as the idea that groups of individuals necessarily give rise to separate entities, with their own separate wills, whose interests necessarily trump those of the component individuals. Notice that this idea is inherently fallacious and absurd, if for no other reason than that it commits the reification fallacy.
If there’s any “inherent” aversion to libertarianism that some people feel, I’d say it’s an aversion to a sterile, every-man-is-an-island presentation or interpretation of libertarianism. Objectivism is inherently guilty of this, I’d say. That’s why I think it’s important to stress that libertarianism is not (or, at least, should not be) about stripping humanity of any and all social context. Rather, it’s about 1) informing people that part of their current social context (namely the state) is in fact anti-social, and 2) advocating that they therefore oppose that part. Hopefully, if 1) is done well enough, 2) will come about on its own!
haha, brilliant.
I disagree. Child is able to care of itself (at least, to a degree). Otherwise human species wouldn’t have survived. It’s an evolutionary trait to preserve one’s life and there is really no need to violently protect it from “dangers” (there are exceptions, of course). The error here is that this flawed system of parenting is so deeply grounded into our lives, that we think now, that without forcefully protecting child it will die or commit a crime etc. It’s taught by parents, it’s taught in public schools.
To stop this is the only way - to stop using force over children. Force kills their incentive to act as responsible beings, because they think then that “oh, somebody will save/protect me anyway”. And this “somebody” is the STATE in a modern world.
From this, I believe, comes all “aversion” towards libertariansim.
I’ve given this some more thought. Is there a link to the original paper I can read so I know what he’s asking and how he’s defining terms?
If he’s asking if there’s a socio-biological reason why humans have an aversion to Libertarianism, is he also stating we have a socio-biological bent toward collectivism or statism? I assumed so, but I never read the piece.
Also, is he assuming that there can be only only one reason why so few people are Libertarians, and that reason must be rooted in socio-biology? Would propaganda by the Statist regime not also be a possible answer?
Would it be fair to ask whether people in Saudi Arabia have a natural aversion to atheism? Or is the answer far more likely that their aversion springs from societal influence and isn’t socio-biological at all.
I’m also puzzled by what constitutes a socio-biological explanation. Does the law of scarcity count as a socio-biological reason? If so, then I’d pretty much agree that our actions are greatly influenced by socio-biological reasons (or incentives).
Anyway, I don’t know how he defines Libertarianism, so I’ll give it a shot here and proceed. I’ll define it as a philosophy where people believe in the sanctity of private property and that all interaction be voluntary and free from coercion.
If this is a reasonable definition of Libertarianism and it’s natural to be repelled by this philosophy, then we should also naturally be repelled by idea of having property rights, freedom of choice without coercion, natural rights, and the freedom to pursue your own happiness.
Since I’m not exactly sure what a socio-biological reason is or how these reasons might affect other reasons (do these reasons trump, say, the socio-biological reason for self preservation?), my answer is: I don’t know.
If it’s fair to say socio-biological can be described as natural (something you’re born with not taught), then I’d say ‘No’, We have no natural aversion to Libertarianism. The opposite might be true, however.