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Conservatism, Libertarianism and Other Distinctions
I recently got back from attending the 10th annual meeting of the Property and Freedom Society. It’s a libertarian organization of the anarcho-capitalist variety, started by Hans Hermann Hoppe (anonymous recently reviewed one of Hoppe’s books). I found the visit rejuvenating: rarely do I spend four or five days in the company of so many libertarians.
Even on Ricochet, there seems to be a constant conflict between conservative and libertarian ideology. What most people — including many of my fellow Ricochetti — would find most surprising about the conference is how conservative these anarcho-capitalists are. I present to you a speech from last year’s meeting by Dr. Gerard Casey, a Catholic, conservative anarchist, and a lovely and brilliant man. To me, it encapsulates why so many anarchists exist in the libertarian movement, and why they aspire to the same morals as most conservatives.
Published in Culture, Religion & Philosophy
If it had a recipe, it would not be freedom. It would be called central planning.
There are all sorts of existing recipes, as you put it, for organizing human beings that are not central planning. You appear to reject all of them and offer nothing in their place with the promise that this time nothing will work just fine.
Nor did you even respond to my bit about culture.
Look, I like dreaming up a utopia as well as the next person, but you cannot tell me there a great future without any sort of government. And I can tell you why:
Given a power vacuum, someone, will try to seize power. It is human nature.
What you argue is basically that everyone will self-govern and leave everyone else alone. I am a student of human nature. I don’t believe that is possible. Humans are horrible.
Do conservatives here believe that he is right to say that political conservatives want the state to impose their values? What is the difference between a political conservative and a cultural conservative? Do full bore libertarians believe that police order and defense can be organized by spontaneous citizen organization? He doesn’t explain these areas to me, otherwise I agree with everything he says. I watched both videos.
Well, I disagree with his saying that because I am conservative, I want to use the power of law to enforce my cultural views on others.
I am conservative because I think humans are same as they always have been, and we need government to protect us from each other.
If men were angels, we would not need government.
Humans may be the same as always, but just like science, moral knowledge has vastly improved. Both types of knowledge still have a ways to go. It isn’t the government that stops slavery, it’s enough people realizing slavery is objectively wrong. It’s also objectively wrong to steal people’s money for the “greater good” or because there’s a “free rider problem.” It’s also wrong to steal people’s money and regulate their action just because 50% of voters or 50% of voter’s representatives agree.
People understand this intuitively, but we have a very good indoctrination system that convinces everyone “government” is an exception (or at least our government is the exception), or at least some kind of least evil. I believe eventually people will realize even this evil is unnecessary.
Inherently doubting government is so far outside the Overton window that people respond with LOL when confronted with it.
I enjoyed the video immensely, but I was — I know Mike H. will be shocked — annoyed at it’s conflation of libertarianism with anarcho-capitalism, as well as the explicit slight of minarchism. Every philosophy has disagreements and gradations.
Agreeing here with Mike and Barkha. Not that long ago, people thought republican government such as we’ve (largely) enjoyed for the last few centuries was a naive fantasy, certainly one of this scale. They were wrong.
I’m not an anarcho-capitalist, and I’m not convinced that — if we ever get to minarchism — it’d be worth the trouble of abolishing the final remnants of government. If we do get there, I’d be happy to reevaluate.
Again, hold out for me the template, so that I, too, may understand it.
What would it look like?
And, I am not so sure our republican government is long for the world.
And, slavery did not end because of morals. It ended because of technology. We don’t need slaves because we have other forms of energy. The Steam Engine ended slavery in the West.
I expect Sex Robots will help end sexual slavery (except for those people that just have to abuse another human being).
I defer to the anarcho-capitalists.
It’s a tough question to answer because it’s sort of like asking what the next technological breakthrough will be. It’s hard to predict what people will produce in a free market. General outlines consist of rights-enforcement agencies which would deal with other competing ones by pre negotiating the outcome of disagreements between their customers. The outcomes of these negotiations will depend on how much each group is willing to pay for a certain law. Thus, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were stricter abortion laws and less of a libertarian ideal than under minarchism. Arbiters would be employed to resolve disputes. Rights-enforcers and arbiters would depend on their track records to keep clients and stay in business. They would escue violent encounters because violence is expensive and if you can’t tax your “citizens” without their explicit consent, you’re unlikely to have enough wealth where starting wars would be profitable. This requires there to be many Rights agencies, if there were only a couple it would probably fall apart, but with people’s widely differing views and economies of scale breaking down at some point for most types of companies (without government intervention) there’s not a lot of reason to assume a monopoly would likely form.
Ahhh… we’ll muddle through, for well after we’re all alive I’d bet.
Sex slavery isn’t a huge problem in the West (of which America is the best example) because most people’s morals already disallow it. Morals are a kind of technology as well, but I’m not sure slavery was technologically necessary, seeing as free workers would likely be far more productive.
All of this talk sounds a lot like the communist transformation of man into a new being that does not need government.
All your talk sounds like the skeptic’s greatest hits.
“I demand you convince me succinctly of your unbelievably complicated new paradigm…
…
… Oh, your word limit conforming response didn’t convince me, even after I asked for it after you referred to the necessary books. How are you any different than Marxists?”
Let’s see, you propose a form of non-government that has never existed in history, refuse to tell me how it will actually work because you don’t know, then ridicule my skepticism? Our own republic got mentioned, as an example. Lots of people, including the Founders were skeptical of it. At least they had a written document on how it was going to work.
Well, you seemed to ignore Comment #40.
With no taxes, your nation would be easy pickin’s. You might not be interested in war, but it will be interested in you.
Maybe you think this is world wide? We cannot manage to plant democratic rule that you seem to see as no different than dictatorships around the world. You think your magic beans are going to work in Africa or the Middle East?
It won’t work anywhere. Some man (and I mean male) with ambition and charisma will arise, amass power and take over.
Our form of government, flawed though it is, is designed to try to check ambition and lust for power as best it can. It sucks at it, but it is better than autocracy.
A monopoly would form as soon as one group could seize resources from another and make it stick,
With the amount of surplus wealth generation, it’s conceivable that big companies could develop their own war machines to show their solidarity.
No, like I said, it wouldn’t even “work” in America right now.
This is true until it isn’t. Look at America now. Amassing of as much power doesn’t happen. There’s nothing special about the Constitution that prevents this, it’s people’s expectations for it not to happen.
I agree, but it could do far better. Why isn’t violating the Constitution a criminal offence? Why is the only consequence being told not to do that thing anymore? Checks and balances are part of the American fantasy. There’s not a lot of reason for the parts of governments to be at each other’s throats rather than collude.
Perhaps, but stable monopolies are rare in a free market.
Did you really just make that argument? Big companies with their own war machines. What is to stop them just to defend against attackers and not, say against the people or each other?
A monopoly on violence is the most stable type, and free markets have nothing to do with it.
First you talk about our government as radical and different, and then say there is nothing special about the Constitution. Interesting.
Checks and balances are not a fantasy, as thus far, no one man or small group has seized power. As far as making violating the Constitution a criminal offence, that is the path that leads to political prisoners. It would be a step away from Liberty not towards it.
Imagine that someone proposed that the key to establishing social justice and restraining corporate greed was to establish a very largecorporation, much larger than any corporation hitherto known—one with revenues in the trillionsof dollars. A corporation that held a monopoly on some extremely important market within our society. And used its monopoly in that market to extend its control into other markets. And hired men with guns to force customers to buy its product at whatever price it chose. And periodically bombed the employees and customers of corporations in other countries. By what theory would we predict that this corporation, above all others, could be trusted to serve our interests and to protect us both from criminals and from all the other corporations? – Michael Huemer
I cannot quote the whole thing and have words left.
He does not make much of an argument other than “Oh, Government is bad.”
I understand that part of what y’all are saying. Moving on from that, neither of you have an answer for what to replace it with.
On the specific challenge of another nation attacking a state with no taxes and no military, the answer postulated by your cohort was:
Now, nothing you just posted in your quote above supports why that would be a good idea, nor does it refute my contention that those big companies would not use those forces against me.
Big companies conspire to maintain the status quo. They are anti-free market. They would just become a different form of government.
So, to sum up: What is your answer to invasion?
That it would be considered crazy for them to try, just like it would be crazy for a president to try to hold onto power. And it would hopefully be more profitable to sell things to people than threaten them when the population will naturally be against someone trying to create a government. Like I said, this is all extreme speculation and it’s hard to guess what the eventual solution would be. One of the nice things about defense is it doesn’t really cost more to defend more people. You don’t really need to build more nuclear weapons or aircraft carriers as your population increases. So the larger your country population the less it necessarily has to cost per capita. When it gets down to it, there are people who care about and worry about defense much more than others, so it would seem to follow that the people who think it’s more important will put more of their resources towards it and just have to live with the fact that many people will free ride.
To be honest, I’m not sure. This is the trickiest part and I haven’t yet got a picture in my head for how/if it would work. What I do know though, is if defence means we have to have a government, it’s still vastly immoral that the government does practically anything other than defense. So at best, a minarchist government is all that can be morally justified.
The talk was in a forum of anarchists.
No one wakes up and goes from a communist to an anarchist overnight (well, not many). I think most of us as children think of ourselves as communists (I could be wrong).
Once you get that State is a monopoly that uses force to increase it’s power, even one with explicit laws written to limit those powers, the transition to anarchy is not far behind.
State is like comfort food though. When I decided to give up meat for health reasons, I had a mental agreement with myself to have the option to eat whatever I wanted when I felt like it. Having given it up for 8 years now, I have never wanted to. Voluntarily agreeing to “be governed” in a small part of your life (such as writing on Ricochet and agreeing to their rules) is not the same as surrendering to a monopoly that will use force if you disobey in every aspect of your life.
It’s a big step. As Mike H puts it, we need a cultural evolution before it will materialize. Enough people with faith will do it. And the easiest excuse is safety. And the Government knows and uses it.
OK, so we are agreed that anarchy cannot defend itself against an outside attack. Thank you.
It sounds like then, the only role government should play for you is to defend against attack from the outside.
Does this include stopping people from entry into the nation who are not ready to live there? (based on the notion that no one in the world is ready for this new form of non-government).
Once anyone has a monopoly on force, their power tends to increase. It is odd that we agree on that point, but you see no danger in anarchy.
In Anarchy, the monopoly on force will go to the first man to seize it. Every time we see a collapse of government, we don’t see people break out into self-governing family units. What we see are strong men that take power, and the innocents trampled.
The current Government that you and Mike so deplore, has one of the best track records on rights in the history of the world. It is far from perfect, but let us be honest about what it has done right.
No magic culture shift is going to change human nature. There will always be ambitious men willing to subjugate others. Look at any HOA.
I don’t see how it would be crazy to try. It seems to me like it would work. If I were in charge of the only army in the nation, I would use it to enforce my will. Granted, that would include a totally liberated labor market with no rules other than “enforce contracts”, but it would also mean the death penalty for lots of evil people. I like to think I”d keep free speech in tact, but you know how it goes. ;)
Seriously, the point it, I do not see how any cultural shift of any kind can produce Humans that are not self-motivated, and willing to put the other guy down to get ahead.
It is extreme speculation because it requires a fundamental change in how humans behave. That is just like the Gospel of Marx. It does not surprise me at all a Communist could become and Anarchist. Same type of thinking.
I’m generally on BG’s side of the argument, but I think that I understand the point that MH is making about the Constitution being “nothing special.” As a piece of paper, it’s “nothing special.” The critical feature in our system is the commitment of a substantial majority of the people to the ideal of limited government expressed in the Constitution. Absent such commitment, the Constitution is of little use, and thus is “nothing special” in a certain way.
I am 100% with you there. But what it says is radical, as is the Declaration of Independence.
Following up on TM’s point in #36, I’m reminded of a Churchill quote that went something like: “It’s not a question of yes or no, but rather of more or less.” Very few libertarians want to completely abolish the state.
I agree with BG that the use of the term “anarcho-capitalism” suggests a view at the far end of the libertarian spectrum, near the complete abolition of the state. But how, then, would any laws or norms be enforced?
Until the Second Coming, people are going to mistreat each other. There will be murders, robberies, rapes, and thefts, and many other bad things.
Is the victim to take retaliation and compensation into his own hands? This seems a recipe for tyranny of the strongest and vigilantism.
Are there to be competing enforcement companies? This seems to lead to perpetual conflict and war between the competing companies, as each seeks to enforce the rights of its members or customers. Violence is one of the things we’re trying to avoid, and this would escalate it. And where are we going to find paragons of virtue to head these enforcement companies, who will be immune from the temptation to use their power for their own advantage?
These are the reasons that societies develop governments, which have a legal monopoly on the use of force. The libertarian view accepts this ideal of a “night watchman” state, while my impression is that the anarcho-capitalists do not.