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Flyover Country #33: Admeyerin’ your Reasonable Libertarianism
See what we did there? It’s a play on words, regarding a man we all highly admire, this week’s guest: Tom Meyer. Tom sticks around for the whole show to discuss libertarianism, social conservatism, as well as his own personal climb up the ladder of influence at Ricochet.
I don’t have any dispute with this. I just think that it is unavoidable. No matter how benevolent or tolerant, government will always gore somebody’s ox. George Washington’s famous quote “Government is like fire; a powerful servant and a fearsome master” is entirely correct and it tempers my view of the state. Merely because it is imperfect however does not mean you discard it.
Just as there is a Laffer Curve for tax rates and revenues, I think there is a similar operating curve for governance/societal function. With a relatively small amount of governance you get sharply improving societal function, with very poor function at either extreme of either complete government domination or zero governance whatsoever. However, the functionality never approaches unity. There is always room for improvement and circumstances represent a moving target which we’ll never really be able to hit.
p.s. I would kill to have Bill Whittle or Andrew Klavan on the show. If any of you happen to be friends with one of these, put in a plug for me!
Majestyk, do you think my comment #59 addresses this question? If not, why?
I think that’s mostly correct. People should have the ability to say “I don’t consent” without having to move to either another country or to an undeveloped wasteland. It just seems wrong to say “You consent to all the laws by living on your own land, don’t worry though, you have a vote.”
The thing is, I don’t know how everything would turn out, and it will work a lot better once more people don’t expect government to take hold whenever there’s a vacuum. That’s going to take a while, and likely much longer than my lifetime.
No, not all the shortcomings of the current system. Many, many, many laws and regulations and agencies and departments and bureaucrats and politicians and all of their combined pernicious influence would be removed. Gone. Disappeared.
Hey don’t look at me, Ed opened the breach.
I agree this is possible. If government is inevitable (and we have pretty strong anecdotal evidence in the form of human history to suggest that it is), it’s reasonable to suspect that there’s an optimum amount of it.
I don’t disagree with you except in assuming that government will always be unavoidable.
I think it’s close, but my objection to it would be (if I were an Orthodox Libertarian) even if you decided to pack up from Galt’s Gulch and move into the middle of the North Slope of Alaska you’re still technically under the jurisdiction of the Federal Government and Federal Law with its innumerable rules, taxes and the like.
I think that your statements about coercion in the podcast regarding being OK with coercing people to do certain things like drive on the righthand side of the road and even jaywalking were right on target – everybody benefits from this “coercion” in some spheres, aside from a person who has the idea that they are entitled to jaywalk. Such a person doesn’t consider the interests of the people who are using the road for its intended purpose: motor vehicles.
Caplan has, of course, also been a guest on EconTalk, although I didn’t see one where he discussed A-C specifically. That’s too bad. Here’s one about Hayek, and this one about the rational voter probably touches on some of those ideas.
Yes, I agree. I’m wondering if the non-monopoly argument is really a valid one against my suggestion that localization doesn’t eliminate the problem. If there are only local governments, you will have the option of homesteading in Alaska if you want, free of taxes and the like.
Now, this does bring up the primary difficulty with the libertarian position when it comes to national defense.
It is too bad. I wish he would talk about it more but he probably feels others do it better and he likes to write mainstream but counterintuitive books about voting, having babies, (and in 2017) the problems with education.
I highly recommend looking up Michael Huemer on YouTube. His arguments make so much intuitive sense! They come to crazy conclusions, but the logic is so simple and exquisite.
I think that there are enough anecdotes of this type to constitute “data.” Derb talked about that on his podcast this week. That such a society has never spontaneously formed is similarly telling.
Anyways, I think it’s worthwhile to note that the LVMI is specifically not located on either the North Slope of Alaska or in downtown Mogadishu, Somalia. It’s located in Auburn, Alabama.
What that indicates to me is that the people who run the LVMI institute likely value strong governance and like taking advantage of what it has to offer them in terms of security and the relative freedom to champion their ideas.
I just look at what people do and give it more weight than what they say.
I dispute the idea that anarcho-capitalism is “orthodox” libertarianism. I think “fundamentalist” would be a much more accurate adjective.
It’s heterodox. Somehow it seems wrong to call it “fundamentalist”. It’s too heterodox for that. YMMV.
Yeah, I have the same complaint about pacifists. As Annefy said on another thread recently, “you seem to be the sort who was born on third base but thinks you’ve hit a triple.” Pretty easy to talk about capitalism, defense, etc… when you live in the Suburban United States. I remember arguing with a liberal who lives about 3 blocks from me in a pretty good upper-middleclass neighborhood. He was talking about how we all value our security and blah blah having something to do with foreign policy, railing against violence and guns and whatever else… (haha, now I wish I remembered the quote) Yeah, when you live in this neighborhood that’s a pretty easy position to take. Jesus said turn the other cheek; it is really easy for me to talk about it when you’re the one getting slapped.
Fair. As Midge said, YMMV.
He didn’t say what to do after your other cheek got slapped, now did he?
Two seconds after we design and implement a perfect system some [expletive] will show up and [expletive] the whole thing up. Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently motivated fool. This isn’t necessarily an argument against trying to design and create a perfect system, just a realistic expectation of achieving that end.
When my Utopia arrives it better the hell be riding a unicorn.
Well Sal, some people just grow at different rates. We are willing to keep trying if you are. Better come back on the show.
hahaha – yeah, or what to do if it’s a sword coming at your cheek rather than the palm of someone’s hand. I think “turn the other cheek” is one of the most misapplied texts of all time.
Prawn, get outta my head.
you’re both nerds. I had to google YMMV.
Midge: “It’s heterodox. Somehow it seems wrong to call it “fundamentalist”. It’s too heterodox for that. YMMV.”
I agree that it’s heterodox, but you find a lot of fundamentalist Christians with fairly heterodox beliefs.
Isn’t “turn the other cheek” a radical socio-economic statement for the time? As in, when a rich man who thinks they’re better than you slaps you with the back of their hand, turn the other cheek in order to dare them to slap you with the palm of their hand which would represent the slapper being your equal.
I’m pretty sure it’s one of the quotes attributed to Jesus that historians unambiguously say is true because of it’s radical implications.
I don’t think that is the commonly accepted interpretation in protestant circles, anyway. I’m not sure about the Catholic side (although they are likely quite similar). I looked it up in a relatively mainstream commentary, which references back to psalms in saying that, somewhat crudely put, “it takes two to tango.” Meaning, that particular line is directed at personal responses to injury or insult, suggesting that the offending party might be affected more by your forgiveness then by a return of the blow.
I think if you attempt to use that sort of verse to guide your foreign policy decisions, you’re in for a world of hurt. Keeping in mind, also, that what you’re likely talking about is a social relationship (within something of an accepted framework); so you’re not talking about turning the other cheek when some guy jumps you on the street (i.e. self defense) or if someone breaks into your home, etc… or outright attacks you. I think it is intended to address a personal quarrel.
I am hesitant to buy your interpretation, as it sounds pretty similar to some other social-radicalism interpretations of the new testament that I’ve stumbled across… they tend to be rather self-serving and specifically (and all too conveniently) political with not much historical precedent. Another example is the parable of the talents, which is sometimes interpreted as an anti-capitalism message where the servant who buried his talent is considered the hero for rejecting the greed of his master.
If James of England stumbles across this post, he could surely expand on what I’ve somewhat crudely addressed…
Not necessarily. That these private law enforcement and private lawgivers would be efficient oe even honest brokers is still only an assertion – a weak one IMO.
The insurance companies or private law enforcers are government. Ans sometimes they will coerce you without your consent too.
Couple of things… so since anarcho-capitalism likely leads to entities that people go to in order to settle disputes you call it “government?” First of all, this is an incredibly common critique and also purely semantic… so what? It’s different in kind to what we have now. Calling it government doesn’t change what it is.
People will obviously be involved in coercion because otherwise you won’t stop evil people from doing bad things, but there will almost certainly be a much smaller amount of it. I don’t know how that argues against it being better.
Mike, do we have any examples of nations that employ this system? My concern is that when you say “there will almost certainly be,” what you’re relying on is not only theory, but theory that is very difficult to test through any method other than implementation. I have to think that Hayek’s “Fatal Conceit” still applies to this in the same way that it implies to economics… yes, he’s suggesting that we cannot design economies, but he has examples of emergent order along those lines. We also have examples of emergent order when it comes to governance, but it ends up looking a lot like what you’re arguing against. The reason he says we cannot design economies is because we cannot possibly predict human action (von mises, too, eh?), but is that not what you’re doing, here?
I’m pretty sure all or nearly all aspects occurred in different places in different times throughout history. I believe medieval England and Iceland have some good examples. There was a time when there were no democracies on Earth and people would think you were crazy for suggesting the people in power would peacefully give it up after the next election. There are still places that this is true. There are places where the expectations are not conducive to even have democracy. But expectations change gradually.
I don’t think it will have to be implemented. I think it’s most likely to be a gradual change. Just like we’re getting changes in marriage and pot legalization. People can seem like their worldview is set in stone until it changes suddenly and rapidly. I have sympathy for Ed in that he’s right that anarcho-capitalism is a threat to a lot of things he holds dear. I think the things he likes so much require immoral action, and almost everyone feels some immoral action is justified to protect things they really care about and they feel are important. He doesn’t like it when I make inevitability arguments, but if I’m right, people will eventually be convinced about the moral truth for the simple fact that’s it’s correct and respond accordingly.
There’s some amount of prediction, but I really don’t know what it’ll look like because I’m not as smart as the market. I don’t know how people will react, but the market tends to push people in a more rational direction and government action almost always creates disastrous artificial incentive structures, which then people tend to respond rationally to. Anarcho-capitalism means seeing what people come up with using the maximum amount of free market incentive structure. There might be some bad outcomes here and there, but the sum total should to be compared to the current structure which has its fair share of bad outcomes.