History

Liberalism Unrelinquished: Some Tactical Thoughts

Warren Gibson Current Events, History, Liberty, Philosophy, Politics , , , , , , ,

Today is #LiberalismDay. My friend Dan Klein of George Mason University along with his colleague Kevin Frei have launched a project called “Liberalism Unrelinquished.” An impressive list of economists and others have signed their petition which declares that they “affirm the original arc of liberalism, and the intention not to relinquish the term liberal to the trends, semantic and institutional, toward the governmentalization of social affairs.”

Other bloggers will presumably rehearse the tale of how that storied term lost its original meaning, at least in the U.S., as it has been appropriated, since at least the 1930’s, by statists.  (Example: George Leef’s fine piece). I just offer a few thoughts on some tactics that may be appropriate to this battle.

  • We must stop using the word liberal to denote present-day statists. This should be easy since they themselves have largely abandoned the term in favor of “progressives.” (Note that modern progressives hate progress of the material sort more than anything. That’s an issue for another time.) I have nothing better than “progressives” to denote these folks except perhaps a qualified “so-called progressives.” I hope “governmentalists” doesn’t get started. That would be too big a mouthful.
  • Speaking of which, there must be a better term than “governmentalization,” another mouthful. Perhaps just “government takeover” which is more forceful and easier to say.
  • “Liberalism unrelinquished” doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue either. How about “liberalism restored?”
  • Our task will often be easier if we say “classical liberal” rather than just liberal.
  • The term libertarian has entered the mainstream of U.S. politics. We should take advantage of this progress. We can use phrases like “the libertarian position, or as I like to call it, the classical liberal position …”
  • We must understand the price we pay when we call ourselves or our positions “liberal” or “classical liberal.” The price consists in the time and energy required to make clear to our audience what we mean when we use the term. Whether the price is worth paying depends on circumstances.
  • In academic writing, speaking, or debating there is usually sufficient time to preface our arguments by explanations. Attention spans are long enough that the price paid for explaining why we say “liberal” will not be significant.
  • The last place to take this fight would be political campaigns or debates. Attention spans are minute, audiences are unsophisticated, and we will just confuse people by using the term in its classical meaning prematurely. We can, however, try to disavow the tired old “liberal-conservative” spectrum that is currently entrenched in the media. “I’m aTime permitting, we could say classical liberal, and that means I agree with conservatives on some issues and with progressives on others. All my positions are grounded in the notion of liberty.”
  • In letters to the editor where every word counts we can say “libertarian (or classical liberal)” or the other way around.

I congratulate Dan and Kevin on the response they’ve gotten so far and I hope the momentum continues.

Karl Marx versus Thomas Piketty

Brandon Christensen Economics, History, Philosophy , , , , , ,

Both [Marx and Piketty] protest economic disparities, but move in opposite directions. Piketty advances into the domain of salaries, income and wealth; he wants to temper these extremes and give us—to alter the slogan of the ill-fated Prague Spring of 1968—capitalism with a human face. Marx advances into the domain of commodities, work, and alienation; he wants to undo these relations and give us a transformed society.

This is from UCLA historian Russell Jacoby in the New Republic. The rest of the article is not that great, to be honest (I’ll bet you ten bucks that Jacoby – whom I never took during my time in Westwood – is an old man; I can safely assume this because of the praise he lavishes upon Karl Marx at the expense of Piketty and other economists), but I thought this excerpt was a good opportunity to enhance my argument that Murray Rothbard was a great Cold War scholar and a terrible role model for the world we live in today.

Rothbard’s argument – exemplified by this excerpt that Adam provided in the ‘comments’ threads a while back – devastated the Marxist notions of the world held in the 1960s and 1970s, but Rothbard’s argument simply does not grapple with Piketty’s. It’s a whole new ball game, and one that newer scholars who have built upon Rothbard’s foundations are now grappling with. It does us no good to continue parroting a line of reasoning that has long since outlived its usefulness.

The Discovery Doctrine of Land Ownership

Fred Foldvary Economics, History, Religion , , , , , ,

The legal basis for land ownership in the Americas is “Christian Discovery.” This land doctrine derives from the 15th century theology of the Catholic Church. The moral origin of the Vatican’s land doctrine is its old claim of the supremacy of Christianity over all other religions. The “Christian discovery” doctrine is not in the US Constitution, yet it has been adopted by the US government and upheld by the courts.

“Bully’s Justice” by George Zebrowsky, an eye-opening article on Christian Discovery, was published in the June/July 2014 issues of Free Inquiry. Under Christian Discovery, the first Christians to “discover” land previously unknown to the Christian chiefs of state, and held by non-Christians, have a legally legitimate claim to that land. The indigenous and current dwellers have no legal property rights.

A court case in 2005 showed that the Christian Discovery doctrine is still in force. The Onondaga Indian (native American) nation in the State of New York sought federal-court recognition to title of ancestral lands. Also in 2005 the Oneida and Cayuga Indian nations had their land claims dismissed by the US Supreme Court. The Onondaga claim was dismissed in 2010 based on the 2005 Supreme Court decision.

The Supreme Court stated that “Under the doctrine of discovery,” the ownership of “lands occupied by Indians when the colonists arrived became vested in the sovereign, first the discovering European nation and later the original states and the United States.”

There are three moral justifications of land ownership. First is natural moral law, the universal ethic that is inherent in human nature and is a moral imperative for humanity. Second is tradition. Third is force. Natural moral law invalidates both tradition and force as moral rationales.

The laws of the United States derive from English common law, the US Constitution, natural moral law, and the Vatican’s doctrine of land discovery. The US Constitution recognizes the supremacy of natural moral law in its Ninth Amendment, and it also recognizes common law. The US Constitution does not recognize the legality of tradition, force, or the Christian Discovery doctrine, yet the US Supreme Court continues to adhere to Christian Discovery.

As stated in “Bully’s Justice” (p. 28), this Doctrine of Discovery is “one of the rare principles of American law that came not from English common law or from the pen of some Enlightenment philosopher but rather from the Vatican.” The US Supreme Court recognized the doctrine in Johnson v. M’Intosh in 1823 under Chief Justice John Marshall.

The doctrine of Christian Discovery originated in 1455 when Pope Nicholas V issued the papal bull Romanus Pontifex. Without any Biblical justification, this declaration justified the conquest of African lands by the king of Portugal. Pope Alexander VI extended the doctrine to the Spanish conquests in the Americas. The doctrine of Christian Discovery authorized European Christian explorers and their monarchs the rationale to claim lands not occupied by Christians. The doctrine deprived the indigenous inhabitants of any legal land rights.

As ultimate legal owner of the land, the state can then lease land to private tenants, and it can sell or transfer land titles to private persons, but such titles are always secondary to the state as senior and supreme owner, as the state can tax land, control its use, and forcibly buy back title with eminent domain.

The current Pope has expressed concern with global inequalities, but he has not gone to the core cause of inequality and poverty: privileged land tenure and the denial of labor’s self-ownership rights. The Catholic Church would have to confront its old doctrine on the conquest of land, and this is cannot do, and therefore popes must confine their concern about poverty and inequality to laments and exhortations. Now come economists such as Thomas Piketty calling for massive redistribution to treat the effects of income inequality, but refusing to acknowledge the origins and remedies in land and labor.

The Christian Discovery doctrine is based on supremacism, the belief that one’s religion, culture, and traditions are superior to those of others, justifying the use of force to maintain this supremacy. Such supremacy has been adopted by several religions, but this violates the human equality that is the basis of natural moral law and that has been recognized in declarations of human rights. Such constitutional cognitive dissonance does not seem to bother legal authorities.

If we seriously apply natural moral law to the question of land ownership, we need to confront both the false justifications of Christian Doctrine of Discovery and also the aboriginal land claims. As stated by John Locke in his Second Treatise of Government, human moral equality implies that one may fully own land only so long as there is free land of that quality available to others. When such land is scarce and has a price, the analysis of Henry George kicks in, that one may have possession conditional on paying the land rent to the members of the relevant community in equal shares.

Therefore the native American Indians may not take full ownership of their former lands. The land rent belongs not to them but to all humanity, or at least to all Americans. Also, the rental value of land due to civic improvements is a return on the capital goods, not the natural spacial resource.

Justice requires the abolition of the supremacist Doctrine of Discovery and its replacement with natural moral law. Some compensation and restoration of rights of possession are due to the aboriginal inhabitants, but history cannot be erased, and the current residents, users, and title holders, having followed the current rules, also deserve some consideration.

Economists and Environmentalists: Divergent Values?

Brandon Christensen Books, History , , , ,

Following Simon, the author of The Bet suggests that the disagreement between environmentalists and economists may be due to a divergence in values. People in Ehrlich’s camp believe that values can exist outside human minds and claim priority over human values. Although Sabin does not go there, the practical implication is that people in Ehrlich’s camp feel justified in imposing their ideal society on those who don’t share their values, which they disguise under the mantle of science. Hence the environmentalists’ inclination to boss people around.

This is from Pierre Lemieux’s new review of The Bet, a book on an infamous bet between an economist and a biologist in 1980 (the economist won).

One could easily replace ‘economist’ with ‘libertarian’ and ‘environmentalist’ with anything and could find the same debate being played out. This observation of mine, if correct, prompts a number of questions (such as “why aren’t all economists libertarians?” or “why are libertarians so pugnacious?”), but so does the loser of the bet’s reaction to his loss (you’ll have to read the review to find out!).

The Bet is by Yale historian Paul Sabin. Here is the link to his book.

Hume and Humboldt

Federico Sosa Valle History, Liberty , , , , , , , , ,

Divergent dichotomies are not unusual to be found in Hayek’s writings. Besides the essay “Two Types of Mind”, we have his 1945 lecture “Individualism: True and False” on the difference between the British Enlightenment and the Continental Rationalism. Grounded in Edmund Burke’s Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs, Hayek traces the origin of true individualism to Bernard Mandeville, David Hume, Josiah Tucker, Adam Ferguson, Adam Smith and Edmund Burke himself. The XIX Century adds Lord Acton and Alexis de Tocqueville to the list. On the other hand, Hayek states that Jean Jacques Rousseau exemplifies the Rationalist individualism, which postulates isolated and self-contained individuals –whereas, for the former, the individual is determined by his existence in society. The “true variant” of individualism is the notion of “subject” of Hume’s philosophy: the outcome of repetitions, expectancies and habits. Finally, Hayek concludes his lecture with the censure to the German type of individualism, rooted in Wolfgang v. Goethe and Wilhelm v. Humboldt: the individualism expressed in the original development of the personality and defended in J. S. Mill’s On Liberty.

Notwithstanding in this 1945 lecture Hayek claims that this German individualism of self-development has nothing to do with what he regards as true individualism and it is “an obstacle to the smooth working of an individualistic system,” much later, in Law, Legislation, and Liberty, he will restate his opinion on Wilhelm v. Humboldt’s legacy.

This reconsideration of the value of liberty as the development of the unique and particular character of an individual will be acknowledge not only regarding legal theory but as well in his 1976 proposal of denationalization of currency. In his late writings, Hayek will endorse the development of the originality of character as an important trait for the competition to work as a discovery process.

The key to understand his shift onto this new type of individualism is closely related to Hayek’s involvement into the ideas of cultural evolution. The “true individualism” was important to state how a society can achieve certain order. The “Humboldt’s individualism” is needed to explain the dynamic of the evolution of that order. Hume’s notion of subject is related to the ideas of integration and convergence, to how an order may emerge. Humboldt’s ideal of self-development of the unique and original character of each individual implies differentiation and divergence. These two traits are the key to the adaptation to the changes in the environment that defines the notion of blind evolution. A social and political system that assures the development of differences has keen aptitudes to survive to the changes in its environment. At the level of the “true individualism”, individuals are made of institutions, repetitions and expectancies. But at the level “Humboldt´s individualism”, successful institutions are made of differences, divergent series of facts and adaptation.

(Originally published in http://www.fgmsosavalle.blogspot.com)

#LiberalismDay: Calling all classical liberals and libertarians

Brandon Christensen Current Events, History ,

The following is a message I got from Warren via email:

Hello again! You were recently gracious enough to endorse Liberalism Unrelinquished, a project I’ve been working on with Dan Klein.

I wonder if you’d be willing to help keep the ball rolling by participating in related initiative, #LiberalismDay. Liberalism Day is an internet event aimed at amplifying a simple message: the word “liberal” used to mean something different than it does today.

To participate, all you have to do is write a blog post, tweet, or anything else on or around June 16th that contains the hashtag #LiberalismDay. (The hashtag is what ties everything together in search engines.)

You can add as much or as little nuance as you’d like. You can link to a favorite article (e.g. Milton Friedman’s essay “Liberalism, Old Style”), make a meme, write a blog, or even just tweet about the event to your audience.

From my vantage outside of academic circles, I’d guess that maybe 1% of the population has ever learned that the word “liberal” ever meant something else. I believe if we can boost that fraction a bit, it could spread organically. Merely knowing that 19th century liberalism was more akin to modern libertarianism will help correct a lot of false narratives, e.g. that Lincoln Republicans were really modern Democrats, or that libertarian ideas are a modern invention.

Again, all you have to do to help is plug the event with the hashtag #LiberalismDay and make a comment or share a link on liberalism. Our friend Mike Munger has already chimed in on his blog, and Richard Epstein has offered to rep it on his twitter feed, too. 🙂

Feel free to let me know by email or by leaving a comment on LiberalismDay.com if you plan to participate and I will add a link to your blog or website!

Thanks!

Kevin

Aside from Dr Gibson, I know that Dr Delacroix, Adam, myself and Dr van de Haar are going to be participating in this project on this blog. Any other bloggers out there thinking of doing this? It sounds pretty cool, and if there was any way to wrestle the term ‘liberal’ away from the American Left I’d be more than willing to do it. This may make a small impact in doing just that.

A Renegade History of the United States: a brief response

Rick Weber Books, History , ,

A while ago I finished reading (by audiobook) A Renegade History of the United States. The overarching theme of this entertaining and interesting book often seems to be: “look at these fucking squares!”

And that’s important, because the author points out their illiberal, short sighted, and irrational views, the reactionary nature of those views. But the author turns it into yet another A vs. B situation; a linear spectrum. There’s the “renegades” and the “squares.” I’m absolutely on board with the idea that there are establishment squares to be derided. But just because The Man is stupid, doesn’t mean he’s got a monopoly on it.

The positive message is that “renegades” are exemplars of freedom, and especially the freedom to be wrong. If you aren’t free to make mistakes, you aren’t free. And the point of freedom (besides the fact that freedom is excellent) is that it allows a dispersed approach to figuring out the good life. I’m increasingly doubtful that The Hitchhikers’ Guide was anything but correct when it posited that Earth is a computer set in motion to determine the question that matches the answer to “Life, The Universe, and Everything” (the answer is 42, the question is something besides “What is 6×7?”). This history shows a number of instances that show how breaking from the status quo, actively doing what everyone else is convinced is wrong, contributes to the overall flourishing and success of later generations.

All told, I’m happy giving it 4 stars.

Slavery and the footnotes

Brandon Christensen History, Religion , , , , , , , , ,

I came across this old essay on slavery by economist Gordon Tullock (h/t Tyler Cowen) and what struck me (aside from an excellent presentation of the economics of slavery) was this footnote on the inevitable dissolution of Marxism (this paper was written in 1967):

It may be that the dissolution is not the first step toward the total elimination of this powerful religion, but merely a breaking away of the talmudic encrustation of the true scribes and pharisees of the Second and Third Internationals. Such a development is not uncommon in the history of other religions. My personal opinion is that the disintegration which we now see is more fundamental, however, and I doubt that Marxism will survive the century as a living faith.

In my own experience in the classrooms of powerful and plebeian universities alike, Marxism has indeed disintegrated into virtually nothing. Marxism has, rather, become a sort of an embarrassing older uncle that professors chuckle about in a manner that is more reminiscing than bitter. They all realize that Marxism led to very bad things, but they are unable to acknowledge that capitalism – Marxism’s Other – has brought about peace and prosperity for untold billions.

It would be wise for us, therefore, to continue to focus on this dead religion. Deep-seated beliefs are hard to let go of, even after these beliefs have been shown – theoretically and empirically – to lead to horrors of the worst kind. “Yes,” the embarrassed former adherents grudgingly admit, “communism has failed miserably, but socialism has not. It has not even been tried, and besides, it is capitalism that is responsible for the world’s ills today.”

This is not obstinance. This is deceit, plain and simple.

So how do we go about combating obvious deceit (rather than the sophisticated theories of 20th century Marxists)?

I think the answer is to just debunk their examples on a case by case basis, in as public as a forum as you can muster. Famines in east and central Africa, for example, have often been attributed to capitalism because of the policies of the World Bank and IMF. Libertarians ought to agree with most of this, and then simply point out that the World Bank and the IMF are central planning agencies designed, created, and supported by governments in the West. Once this fact -which is not quite as simple as it appears – is acknowledged, you can go from there and take a public choice route, an Austrian route, or even a populist libertarian route to explain why capitalism is not responsible for famines.

Wars, genocides, ethnic cleansing campaigns, etc., can all be explained (and eliminated) if libertarians focus on the role of the State in all of these ills rather than on the theoretical or empirical weaknesses of socialist explanations and proposals.

Piketty’s numbers on inequality don’t add up

Brandon Christensen Books, Current Events, History, Politics , , , , ,

The Financial Times, a center-Left British publication, has the story here.

Piketty, an economist at France’s most prestigious business school, recently wrote an almost 600-page treatise on the growth of economic inequality in the West. The book has earned him lots of fame and has been discussed ad nauseum for about a month now.

Here is what I have found most interesting up to this point on the debate about inequality: The factions and their strategies regarding data and how it is interpreted. I think Dr Delacroix’s approach to the way data is interpreted is best, namely that the study design itself should be analyzed first and foremost.

Regarding factions, remember when that graduate student from the heavily neo-Keynesian UMass-Amherst found discrepancies in the work of Kenneth Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart on austerity in the West? The Left attacked savagely. The Right came up with excuses that would have earned an ‘F’ on most undergraduate tests.

Now that the Left’s own preferred conclusions have been borne out by bad data, what do you think is going to happen? Who wants to bet that the roles of Left and Right will be reversed? When Rogoff’s and Reinhart’s mistakes went public, the graduate student was invited to speak on televised talk and radio shows around the world. His work was (justifiably) hailed in the national and international press, and also (much less justifiably) as an answer to the deplorable state of the discipline of economics. What do you think the odds will be that the researchers responsible for finding flaws in Piketty’s data will get the same reception?

My money is on the answer “not good.”

All of this discussion about austerity and inequality is great, of course. The fact that researchers are expanding their findings to include more than just the data within their own countries is perhaps the most satisfying development in regards to epistemological human progress. I will await further developments to lay down my own verdict on the matter of inequality in the West. With the mistake of Rogoff and Reinhart, I decided, after carefully reading the merits and weaknesses of both sides of the debate, that their mistake was small enough to overlook and that austerity generally leads to better economic outcomes in the near- and long-term and that public debt is a drag on economic growth.

Depending on how the Left responds to its critics, I will see if economic inequality is indeed growing in the West.

Neoliberalism: When French philosophy thinks about American economics

Brandon Christensen Economics, History, Philosophy , , , ,

From an economic perspective, the vision of man becomes very, very poor. Man is a being who responds to stimuli from the environment, and we can modify his behavior with a choice of stimuli. And what government is, what power is, is the use of different kinds of stimuli. The economic theory gives a set of tools, a “good manner” to use stimuli to obtain the right comportment. In this respect, the result of the theory, perhaps, is to produce a vision of man that is very impoverished.

This is French philosopher François Ewald taking a moment away from his task of explaining Foucault’s thoughts on Gary Becker’s work to elaborate his own thoughts on the discipline of economics. Read the whole thing (pdf). It’s a short paper on Michel Foucault’s thoughts about American liberalism (or neoliberalism) and particularly Gary Becker’s work.

The Problem with Modern Monetary Theory

Fred Foldvary Economics, History, Liberty , , , , ,

“Modern Monetary Theory,” a doctrine about fiat money, has captured the attention of some reformers and progressives. This doctrine – a set of propositions contrary to logic and evidence – purports to explain why the US and other economies are ailing, but is beset by contradictions with the historic facts and within the doctrine.

For example, The New Inquiry on 11 April 2014 featured an article by Rebecca Rojer on “The World According to Modern Monetary Theory.” The author regards it as a revelation of MMT that the “rules of money are not immutable laws of nature.” Since the science of economics explains the effects of incentives and decisions, evidently these money “rules” are the outcomes of private and governmental decisions, and since the effects are not immutable laws, people can arbitrarily create whatever outcomes they wish. That would indeed be wonderful, to just print money are thereby eliminate unemployment, depressions, and poverty, all without creating price inflation, because the rules of money creation are not immutable, so we can have whatever outcome we wish!

Science is based on logic and evidence rather than “revelations.” It is possible that there have been revelations, but these create religion rather than science, since if an experience or experiment cannot be duplicated, the revelations are not sufficient for scientific warrants. Various religions have had different revelations, and the members do not believe the revelations of the others.

The author provides an example of the MMT doctrine. Suppose there is an island that has minerals. The owner of the mines hires workers and pays them with fiat money, like the paper and bank-account money we have today, i.e. money created out of nothing. But the owner also imposes a tax on the wages of the miners. So evidently this mine owner is a government, and we are not dealing with private enterprise, but a coercive socialist state. The miners work enough to both pay the wage tax and be able to survive.

But a premise of this MMT island example is that prior to the mining, the people were able to hunt and farm without working too hard. So why would anyone work in the mines? The historical explanation is the “enclosures” movement, in which land that was held by small-scale farmers or by villages was forcibly taken by the aristocracy or by the state or by foreign invaders. This is not a money story, but a land-grab story. Another way to get forced labor, other than chattel slavery, is to require the payment of taxes in money, which forces subsistence farmers to work on plantations at least long enough to pay the taxes. That is more a tax story than a money story, since if the government insists on being paid in coconuts, and a farmer does not grow coconuts, he must work on the coconut plantation, get paid in coconuts, and then pay the tax. Therefore the forced labor is based on the government’s restrictions on alternative employment opportunities.

MMT is correct in stating that one way that the government gets people to accept its fiat money is what economists call the “fiscal theory of money,” that the government reinforces its money as a medium of exchange by requiring the use of that money for paying taxes. However, if the government currency is being hyper-inflated, taxpayers would keep their savings in, say, gold, or a stable foreign currency, and then convert it to the fiat money only when a tax payment is due. The fiscal effect only works if the government is not creating too much inflation.

Therefore MMT is incorrect as stating, as a “core building block,” that forcing people to pay taxes with fiat money “gives it its value.” That was not the case, for example, in Zimbabwe, which suffered hyperinflation. One “immutable” economic law of money is that the creation of money, beyond what is needed for transactions, results in price inflation, and the payment of taxes becomes tied to that inflation, via the nominal rise of prices and wages, rather than preventing inflation.

A related fallacy of MMT is that “sovereigns” in general create money by “spending it into existence.” That can indeed happen, as for example in the Zimbabwe hyperinflation, but in the US and most countries today, government spending comes from taxes and borrowing, not money creation. The central bank, such as the Federal Reserve, does not create money by spending it for goods, but rather by buying bonds and then increasing the banks’ reserves or funds to pay for the bonds.

Since the “core” proposition of MMT, that price inflation can be controlled by government’s taxing and spending, is incorrect, the whole superstructure of the MMT doctrine built on it collapses. Actually, MMT does accept the proposition that monetary inflation creates price inflation, but that true proposition contradicts the core MMT premise that tax-paying gives money its value.

A worse MMT fallacy is that the taxes paid to the government destroys money. MMT tells us that governments create money when they spend, and then the money disappears when taxes are paid. But a tax no more destroys money than the dollars used to buy bread. The seller of bread now has the money, and the government now has the dollars paid in taxes, and they then spend that money.

There have been various theories and doctrines on money and banking in the history of economic thought, and in my judgment, the explanations that best fit the facts are a combination of the monetarist and the Austrian schools of thought. The monetarist core is the equation MV=PT, which explains that the quantity of money (M) multiplied by its annual velocity or turnover (V) equals the price level (P) multiplied by the amount of transactions (T) measured in money. Thus high price inflation, a rise in P, is usually caused by monetary inflation, an on-going increase in M.

The Austrian school explains how excessive monetary inflation not only cause price inflation, but distorts relative prices, such as when house purchase prices rise faster than rentals. Austrian theory shows how governmental central planning fails because the knowledge to do so well is always lacking, and that applies to money as well. Hence the Austrians propose free-market money and banking, so that the market sets interest rates and the money supply.

Indeed the Fed failed to prevent the Great Depression of the 1930s and the Great Recession of 2008, and its policies generated high inflation during the 1970s and the cheap credit that has fueled land-value bubbles. MMT cannot do any better, because, as the Austrian theory explains, the optimal money supply is not only not known, but not knowable. The pure free market provides the optimal money supply just as it provides the optimal amount of bread and the optimal amount of shoes.

“The Economic Origins of Territorial States”

Brandon Christensen History , , , , , , , ,

That’s the title for a paper by Scott Abramson in the Department of Politics at Princeton. Among the gems in this excellent paper:

[…[ before the French Revolution, before the era of the mass conscript army, wealth could not only purchase the technologies of violence, but also the manpower required to prosecute major wars. That is, rather than being an age when large states dominated militarily, this was a period where the population and natural resource advantages of territorial states provided little benefit in the production of violence. Leaders of states could, for a negotiated price, hire a Hessian colonel or an Italian condotierro and retain their men for a campaign season just as they could use these resources to purchase the most advanced technologies of coercion like siege artillery or rearms. It was by virtue of their economic capacity city-states like Genoa and Florence or groups of independent towns like the Swabian league could raise armies that matched or even exceeded those of territorial states like France or England

and

[…] the relationship between geographic scale and survival probability is the opposite of what war-making theories predict. Over this span small states were more likely to survive than their larger counterparts. In other words, rather than being an age of the territorial state” the period between 1500 and 1800 was one in which small political communities not only persisted but remained the typical form of political organization.

Read the rest of the paper here. So small territorial units dominated much of Europe during the initial phase of modernity and industrialization. What I’m trying to piece together is a way to incorporate the ability of small states to provide for themselves while at the same time maintaining ties with multiple neighbors in a way that binds them economically and politically, but without the coercive apparatus of a central government.

I think Madison was thinking about the same thing when he drafted the federal republic of the US, but it seems to me there is a right way to do federal republics (US) and a wrong way (Latin America). Does this make sense?

George Keenan’s racism *AND* affinity for the Democratic Party confuses Left-wing journalist

Brandon Christensen Current Events, History , , , ,

From the New Republic‘s David Greenberg:

Normally a supporter of Democrats—in the diaries, he voices support for the presidential bids of Adlai Stevenson, John F. Kennedy, Eugene McCarthy, Frank Church (“promptly regretted it deeply”), and Bill Clinton (“without enthusiasm”)—Kennan was nonetheless profoundly conservative in his worldview.

How on earth could a Democrat be a conservative? The logic of Progressives continues to astound me. Kennan, in addition to being an ardent supporter of Democratic Party candidates, also expresses adulation for ugly racist stuff like eugenics and even goes so far as to express sympathy for Apartheid in South Africa.

Libertarians and honest conservatives have long known about the intricate links between institutional and scientific racism and Left-wing political causes. The logical outgrowth of this subtle racism can be found in many of the Left’s pet political causes, such as Affirmative Action or government housing projects. These are inherently racist policies and if you read the justifications for such policies you can see why they are a natural  outgrowth of Progressivism.

The New Republic‘s David Greenberg is unable to put two and two together, however. To him, the fact that Kennan was a racist and an imperialist and a Democrat does nothing to show him why the Democratic Party is the party of reaction, of conservatism writ large in the United States.

By the way: Just because I think Affirmative Action and government housing projects are racist does not mean I do not support reparations for the US government’s theft of labor from slaves and theft of land from Native Americans. I just think there are better ways of atoning for our government’s sins than engaging in even more fruitless, racist policies.

Short blurb on Murray Rothbard

Brandon Christensen History, Liberty ,

Murray Rothbard (1926-1995) was an economist at UNLV and is considered to be one of the most important figures of the post-war libertarian movement. Rothbard earned his BA and PhD from Columbia (his dissertation on the banking panic of 1819 is still cited by economic historians), so it’s not like he was some hack with an unwarranted vendetta against the government. His contributions to a more libertarian world can be felt in numerous ways, from think tanks to economics graduate programs to the presidential campaigns of Ron Paul in 2008 and 2012. His daring foray into anarchy is, of course, his most important contribution to the scholarly world. However, I don’t see why this man has such a cult classic following within the libertarian movement. Could somebody explain this to me?

My best guess is that Rothbard’s strategy of appealing to the intelligent layman with well-disguised fallacies instead of discussing his research with the scholarly community has something to do with it, but this is only a guess.

His work just has “Cold War” written all over it. For instance, the first book of Rothbard’s that I cracked open, Conceived in Liberty Volume 1, read like a 1970s Marxist diatribe on economic development (by the way: see Dr Delacroix’s “The Export of Raw Materials and Economic Growth: A Cross-National Study” in the American Sociological Review for an excellent rebuttal of Marxist development theory). Again, I think part of this can be blamed on the time period he was writing in (mid-1970s), but even though it must have really sucked to be a scholar during the Cold War era there is really no good excuse for Rothbard’s present-day status as a saint within libertarian circles.

Not only has his scholarship become a stepping stone rather than a shrine (as all scholarship inevitably becomes), but the cult-like attitudes of some of his fans makes me cringe as a libertarian. At any rate, I’d really like to know why he has such a devoted following, and why his followers seem to think that their devotion to him is a good thing for the movement.

Is the Political Left Today’s Conservative Faction?

Brandon Christensen History, Politics , , , , , ,

I tend to think so. I come across more and more anecdotal evidence to support my thesis with each passing day. For example, in my current research on Dutch colonial responses to Javanese political strategies, I came across the following passage by Dutch historian Eduard JM Schmutzer in his 1977 monograph Dutch Colonial Policy and the Search for Identity in Indonesia 1920-1931:

The abuses in government exploitation under the so-called “Cultuurstelsel” (Cultivation System) and the subsequent criticism by humanitarians […] made the liberals aware that new methods for the exploitation of the East Indies and for the development of its inhabitants were to be found. In contrast to the conservatives who maintained that the central role of government in economic life was necessary to protect the natives against the overpowering influence of private capital, the liberals argued that the doctrine of free enterprise and its beneficial laws of unrestrained capital and labor market, promised in Indonesia an increase in the sagging production and an improvement in the welfare of the natives. Both conditions [free capital and labor markets – bc], the liberals maintained, would be to the advantage of the population at home and abroad.

However, the channeling of capital into the structure of government monopolies by private investors did not result in the expected increase per capita productivity [Ya don’t say? – bc]. (1)

The emphasis is mine. Can anybody name any factions in today’s world that advocate restraining private capital in the name of (condescendingly) protecting those who are too stupid to know what to do with their own money?

Anybody at all?

Needless to say, the liberals lost those important colonial policy battles of the late nineteenth century (probably because they were outnumbered by both the theocrats and socialists who believed private capital was bad for the natives and that therefore authoritarian paternalism was in order).

I can’t help but wonder: Does the anti-globalization Left realize just how conservative its position is?