Why do Objectivists Attack Austrians?

Miscellaneous General
161

By hierarchy I mean you set some values above others. Hierarchy can change when other values are achieved or lost. Your own life is a good standard to have as an ultimate value though. That isn’t a claim that living in Nevada is better than living in California. As I said before, a huge part about determining what leads to flourishing is your individual differences from other people. I never attempted to say something like “you’re a terrible person because you don’t like The Smiths,” or “you MUST value the movie Black Swan.” Only you can determine if those values are any good for your life. The only question I would pose is how (and if) you question what is good or bad for you. As I said before, some people use god as a standard, others only emotions.

I didn’t think it was much of a claim to distinguish between emotions and thoughts. I mean, I hope you know the difference between an emotion of sadness as compared to knowing that the Earth is not flat? No, you don’t have to accept that you should validate ideas against some standards, but I don’t know why you wouldn’t. How did you even validate that the Earth is not flat? Surely, you used some standard of proof/evidence.

Thinking is how any person exists in the world. It’s the only possible way to know anything, and the only way to determine how to do anything. That’s true for any person.

162

Eioul, thx for the exchange. I learned a bit about Objectivism. I hope i was able to offer some profitable new thought avenues in return.

Z.

163

krazy kaju,

Just because I said you could form a “government” of your own in an Objectivist society, does not mean that it could be anarchist as the ancaps describe it on this site. I said you could if you do not use force contrary to the objectified principles and laws. Since the Objectivist government already exists, it would be the laws of that government that would determine how you could use force, and it would have to be subject to that government’s oversight.

If a religious sect, or a group of shared values or race or gender or whatever, owned a huge tract of land and wanted to run their own affairs with their own law enforcement function, they could, so long as the use of defensive force there would be in accordance with government standards. It would be their people running it as a kind of sub-contractor of the Objectivist government.

Remember, that the only thing that needs to be decided and enforced is whether or not some human interaction(s) has been can be shown to be coerced. There are no other questions. All other questions would be economic and would be expected follow per the principles defined by Mises.

164

An objective morality must be independent from government laws by definition. I am not against any organization whose purpose is to defend liberty and human rights. Such an organization could call itself an “Objectivist government” or just a “private defense agency.” It doesn’t matter and I really don’t care. But the moment such an organization tries to impose itself on others, it is using violence and thus violating its own purpose. At that point it loses my support.

So to use my earlier example, if I create a private defense agency in an Objectivist society, the Objectivist government has no right to interfere with my business, as long as I conduct my business morally (i.e. as long as I don’t force myself or my business onto others). Having an Objectivist government interfere with my business would contradict those universal, objective morals which the Objectivist government is trying to protect (and which can be summarized as NAP). Thus, a truly Objectivist society must be an anarchist society at its core.

165

Yes, of course if enough people prefer something, and assuming it does not violate any natural laws (which include praxeological ones), then it will probably happen. It is theoretically possible for most people’s value scales to change such that cannibalism becomes desirable (though it is a regression to a form ethics which people have abandoned under the guidance of reason and moral sense), and for that desire to be greater than the risk of life and limb involved in attacking a group of people uninhibited by law from arming and organizing themselves for self-defense (which would constitute an unprecedented change in the values of a culture not under the influence of centralized power). Theoretically possible, but absurdly improbable, in a free society - but states long ago perfected the art of changing cultural values to cause people to do monstrous things to one another on a vast scale, and only through the employment of the political power which states alone possess.

I don’t know of any anarchist who pretends that a stateless society will fully embrace the non-aggression principle. We believe rather that the absence of the state is a prerequisite for the possibility of such a society to exist. And it is telling that in attempting to paint anarchists as utopians, defenders of the state regularly construct absurdly improbable scenarios that attempt to replicate in an anarchist society the sorts of problems which occur under the state as a matter of course.

166

krazy kaju,

As I have said previously, this argument you are clinging to is always the last refuge of the ancaps, but it has a fundamental flaw. Namely it removes the instance of government defensive force cited from the context of its ethical and political purpose and the necessary means to achieve it.

  1. The ethical goal, in principle, is the autonomy of human beings to fulfill their potential unimpeded.

  2. The political goal, in principle, is to stop, prevent, and punish force initiated to impede that autonomy.

  3. The political means to that end, in principle, is to secure an:

a) OBJECTIVELY DEFINED REGION wherein

b) FORCE IS EXERCISED NON-ARBITRARILY

c) by OBJECTIVELY DEFINED LAWS

d) and OBJECTIVELY DEFINED PROCEDURES

e) all KNOWN OR KNOWABLE IN ADVANCE (objectified).

Ancaps are, to the person, oblivious of the necessity to use defensive force to prevent the subjective (arbitrary) use of force, even when it would be otherwise moral and just. The particular fact they ignore is (in my words) that:

OVER HALF THE VALUE OF LIBERTY IS THE JUSTIFIABLE EXPECTATION OF IT IN OUR DAILY LIVES.

To achieve that psychological state in the minds of a populace, the use of force (aggressive or defensive) may not be left to the subjective choice of individuals. It has to be objectified—in the sense of being concretized.

All men are fallible. That does not mean that a perfect government is not possible.

The specific goal is, by nature, twofold:

A.) The principles, laws, and procedures are to be objective and hence valid.

B.) They, the proofs, derivations, arguments, challenges, applications, implementations, enforcement etc. are to be required and to be publicly objectified.

There is no government system that can guarantee infallibility of men. But every system that fails to pursue both of the above two requirements is invalid from the start.

The error of the ancaps is that they believe that the incentives inherent in the application of Misesian economics and the subjective theory of value will prevent the consequences of failing to objectify the use of force per B) above. The mistake in that is that the human actions that economics describes are applicable only to economic goods—the products of human minds in production and voluntary trade in the service of their lives.

The personnel and materiel that are the physical means of producing the product, defensive force, are in fact economic goods that may be exchanged in a free market. But the force that is their product is not such a good. It is the opposite of an economic good, which can only be the subject to a bilaterally voluntary exchange. To the contrary, the exercise of force is inherently unilateral and involuntary.

Furthermore, the unilateral exercise of force or the threat thereof to preclude initiated force is the prerequisite of any free-market of goods. It cannot possibly be a subject of free-market exchanges, because it must already be fully implemented in a defined jurisdiction before the first free-market exchange can take place in that location in the universe.

Note also that in a free-market exchange of goods, both parties will necessarily profit by gaining what they value more (subjectively) in exchange for what they value less.

An exchange of force among parties per their different, subjectively defined values, however, is the opposite. The exchange of force that occurs in any conflict by parties who may subjectively exercise it precludes the goal and possibility that both parties will profit from it. Therefore, it does not qualify as a free-market exchange.

The proper subject of exchange in a free market, is the product of rational minds. Force and mind, however, are opposites and mutually exclusive. As Rand said, “The mind ends where the gun begins.” A market exchange of force is what we call “war.”

[Addendum: The inability of the ancap arguments to deal with the relationship of ethics to politics to economics is their downfall. Do not underestimate it or fail to understand and become fluent in it. To that end, in this immediate thread, one should carefully read and understand Initiate’s four posts starting here on page 3. And then read Rand and Peikoff.]

167

See this post:

168

But, either way, Michael, how would we get from our current system to the Objectivist one?

169

I. Ryan,

"Sure, it’s a fallacy (a misuse of words) to illustrate the imaginary construction that we usually call the “free market.”

The error begins here. Words are concretes that refer to specific abstract concepts. The meanings of those words in each particular context have a necessary relationship to the facts of reality—the reality that we access by the sensory perception from which we abstract the similarities and differences among particular objects and integrate into the concepts which constitute our knowledge. There is nothing imaginary about that process at all.

Fallacies are not just “a misuse of words.” They are a mis-integration of conceptual knowledge. Their use in an argument invalidates it, marginalizing your efforts on the way to your intended purpose.

A “market” is a physical venue and/or condition in which values are exchanged. A free market is a market in which an absence of forced exchanges is a justifiably expected attribute thereof. These are assertions of facts, and facts are not imaginary. You can change your mind all you want about how you express these assertions of fact, but the difference that will result will only lie in whether we will need an interpreter or not to translate. The validity or invalidity of the facts will not change. Therefore, if you want to debate this subject you must stick to the facts and refer to them precisely.

As for the rest of that reply, my post above answers all of the issues you raise.

Re, how to get from here to there, Rand described it in great detail 50 years ago. If, in a world dominated intellectually by mysticism in its many forms, a philosopher rescues our knowledge of man and his relationship to the rest of the universe, new intellectuals will take note and integrate the better explanations into their own personal philosophies and pyramid of knowledge (Note Rand’s book titled, “For The New Intellectual.” Some of the new intellectuals will argue at parties, by office water coolers, in fora of whatever kind and now on the internet. Others will pursue philosophy to its deepest corners applying the new ideas and will write books or become teachers or professors. The latter then teach students while the more proficient of the former become personalities and talking heads in the media.

A significant portion of the populace—the thinking portion—will become equipped thereby with intellectual ammunition. To the degree that the philosophy is valid, everything that proceeds consistent with it will reinforce it by the obvious beneficial results that those knowledgeable with it can explain to all. Everything that occurs contrary to it also reinforces it by demonstrating that the original presentation by the philosopher of the philosophy was prophetic and the predicted disasters followed accordingly.

With an apparent suddenness, the philosophy will seem to be everywhere, references popping up in every debate of every issue. It leaps the first hurdle by becoming not unheard of, but rather familiar. Legislators begin to tentatively admit to embracing some of the ideas. Its enemies who have written it off for decades as beneath their stature to comment on are unprepared and ill equipped to critique the philosophy the influence of which is rising like the floodtide, so they resort to slurs, innuendo, ad hominem, and unsubstantiated assertions. To any honest mind that reduces them and their ideas to ludicrous ranting. which ultimately devalues them and their corrupt educational system and fuels the logic that it needs to be replaced.

In public discussions the long-standing errors of past philosophies and the unprovable beliefs of mystics to the contrary can no longer be uttered without someone from the legions of thinkers who have digested the new ideas rebutting with impregnable arguments, eroding one brick at a time, the fortress around the intellectual status quo that underlies the miseries of the populace.

One idea at a time, one law at a time, one region at a time, one government at a time, accelerating as it progresses, reason will prevail and liberty will emerge.

170

Before I respond to the rest.

Sure, but that’s not how I was using that word.

Anyway, if you want to get past your knee-jerk reaction to the words that I used, try reading this, especially the second and third section.

Wait, Ludwig von Mises thought that our idea of a pure or unhampered (free) market economy was an imaginary construction?

Well, before you knee-jerk react against the words, maybe try to understand what he means when he uses them. After that, it’s not very surprising.

Not that it’s relevant to this argument, but I’ll respond anyway.

Give me an example of a fallacy (in the sense that I was using that word in my response!), and how to actually think what it’s supposed to refer to, rather than simply use the words, and I’ll concede to your point.

(Because, if you can’t think what the words refer to, it’s nothing but a misuse of words.)

EDIT:

Actually I just realized just how useless that debate would be right here. Suffice it to say that I was simply using the word “fallacy” as synonymous to “a misuse of words”. I mean, people do use words differently than others, right?

171

i think you would have to say that in reference to your statement about a philosophy popping up suddenly everywhere, in the last few years austrian economics has got a sudden windfall of airplay, and now you hear all sorts of the old school establishment powers misusing and expressing gross misunderstandings of it, such as one i saw a little while ago that compared austrian economic theory to communism!

i think fundamentally objectivists and austrians don’t disagree on the ends, of an improvement of the operation of society towards a reduction of arbitrary force and increase in co-operation, only the means. this is something amply discussed by mises and others but this facile point of the identical ends aimed at is not discussed by many others than austrian economic theorists. it just reinforces the austrian concept of the sovereignty of the consumers also, because ideologies are the constructs used to market politically and of course nobody disagrees with these ends, but everyone disagrees with the means and this disagreement is purely upon the basis of misunderstanding of other ideologies, and so it therefore is a neccessary upshot of this that the prevailing theory, in the end, will be the one that both logically and historically delineates the lines of cause and effect between theories and their practical application, as well as the epistemological foundations.

i should just like to refer to the question of real world anarchist systems that are already in operation, the zone in south east asia dubbed ‘zomia’ is a case in point, there is a wide variety of variants but the discouragement of infringement of rights of property and person is done using a market-based construct where the offenders remunerate for their crimes to a degree that meets a middle point between the demand for justice on the part of victims and society, and the marginal level of disincentive for the offenders (the most serious offenses are punished with exile and total confiscation of property) according to the judgement of the local community in which the arbitrary uses of force (crime) occur. these systems work on a basis of customary and localised rules of social conduct and aside from the natural respect hierarchy are not applied through a monopoly of force (state) but through community social co-operation.

i guess it is perhaps the necessary consequence of the co-operation inducing features of socially recognised benefits of division of labor that might lead someone to interpret austrian theory as being akin to communism but such a view would be extremely superficial and selective in which elements it pays attention to and which it ignores.

172

But, either way, Michael, how would we get from our current system to the Objectivist one?

See Chapter 20 of Reisman’s Capitalism:

TOWARD THE ESTABLISHMENT OF LAISSEZ-FAIRE CAPITALISM

http://www.capitalism.net/Capitalism/Laissez-Faire%20Capitalism.htm

173

I. Ryan,

Words only have different meanings in different contexts. So if you decide in the middle of a discussion to suddenly use a word differently, you need to make sure that the context shift is both apparent and justified.

In this case, you shifted the context from politics to economics unannounced. Mises’s use of imaginary constructions to explore the vagaries and machinations of human action in an unhampered economy is unrelated to the process of recognizing that an absence of force is a prerequisite condition for the ethical pursuit of autonomy.

The interactions between PDA’s and their customers is not Exhibit A when condemning the concept of “a free market in force” until an otherwise irreconcilable conflict arises. Then, the ensuing use of force nowhere objectified and knowable to them violates the liberty of the rest of the populace.

174

Where did I do that?

(Are you still talking about how I used the word “fallacy”?)

What’s the difference?

When did we start talking about the “prerequisite condition for an ethical pursuit of autonomy”?

(Aren’t we were talking about whether the behavior of PDAs could be considered to be a part of the free market?)

It’s not an exhibit at all.

Like what?

What ensuing use of force?

And why wouldn’t it be “objectified and knowable to them”?

175

What’s the word “value” mean in that context?

Which would include the relationships between the PDAs and their customers.

(Because otherwise we would refer to them as “governments”, “gangs”, or something like that.)

Honestly I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.

176

By the way, I wasn’t even talking about his “use of imaginary constructions to explore the vagaries and machinations of human action in an unhampered economy”. All that I did was refer to “the free market” as an imaginary construction. That should be uncontroversial. So I have no idea what you’re trying to disagree with. I mean, I could’ve just written “what” rather than “the imaginary construction that”, and everything that I said in that post would have meant the same thing. Calling it an “imaginary construction” (while totally unremarkable) wasn’t necessary at all. So let’s just forget about it, and get back to the actual debate. Seriously.

177

I. Ryan

Me: “In this case, you shifted the context from politics to economics unannounced.”

You: “What’s the difference?”

Politics is an ethical science dealing with the right way to manage the use of force in a society. Economics is a specialized applied science that describes what men will or will not do given a particular politics. Therefore, is a derivative of and dependent on first prescribing a politics. So the theories and descriptions of economics cannot be a foundation for devising a politics.

Any discussion about PDA’s vs. a government is about politics, and the resulting economics is not relative to that subject.

“When did we start talking about the ‘prerequisite condition for an ethical pursuit of autonomy’?”

Because that is the prerequisite on which any rational politics must be built. The name of that prerequisite condition is “liberty.”

Me: " …until an otherwise irreconcilable conflict arises."

You: “Like what?”

Like every serious instance of murder or mayhem that fails to be resolved by arbitration between two stubborn parties and thus necessitates the use of physical force to resolve it.

Me: “Then, the ensuing use of force nowhere objectified and knowable to them violates the liberty of the rest of the populace.”

You: "What ensuing use of force?

And why wouldn’t it be “objectified and knowable to them”?"

The use of force I just mentioned.

And it would not be objectified and knowable, because no PDA could be required to make the principles, laws, or procedures publicly known to all of the populace before enforcing them. Nor would there be anything to stop a PDA from springing into existence on the spur of the moment to exercise defensive force per whatever standards would suit its intentions if it thought (rightly or wrongly) that it was well armed enough to stave off retaliation against it by whatever other PDA’s might disagree with that particular use of force by it.

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Unless that’s what the customers wanted.

Besides market forces.

And, anyway, what would stop the Objectivist government from doing the same thing?

179

Sure, but only if you define those words like that.

And, even with those definitions, I’m still totally confused about where I “shifted the context from economics to politics unannounced”.

180

…And if the customers didn’t demand “objectified and knowable” principles, laws, and procedures as you, Michael, would define them; or if they didn’t object to a PDA springing into existence to defend them from an actual threat which they, themselves and the necessarily inefficient, socialist monopoly state (Objectivist or otherwise) could not repel - then by what means would the monopoly state bring those “objectified and knowable” things into being in accordance with their own standards, other than by either initiatory force (which would cause the Objectivist state to contradict its own founding principles), or by offering them to those willing to accept them (in which case it is no different from a market anarchist PDA)?